How Do I Get To Know Myself? (Why It’s Hard and How Therapy Helps)
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We are mysteries to ourselves even when we try not to be. Layered like an onion, the psyche gives up its secrets only very slowly and only with our consistent, patient effort to unveil them.
The point many of us come to therapy is the point when we’ve reached the end of what our dedicated efforts to gain self-knowledge can achieve.
It can be shocking to realize that despite years of spiritual work, meditation, journaling, and speaking openly with friends about your inner life, there are parts of yourself you still don’t understand.
These parts may be twisted or innocent, harmful or harmless, empowering or humiliating. They might be elements of your personality your friends are familiar with or something you put a lot of effort into hiding from everyone else.
The one thing all these shadowy aspects have in common is that they resist your efforts to see or change them. They seem deeply rooted in a murky part of your psyche where the visibility is zero.
We all have these hidden parts. And very few, if any, of us ever come to fully fathom them on our own. But there are many rewards waiting for us if we enlist someone else’s help to solve the mystery of our selves.
One of the best allies on the quest for self-knowledge is a therapist. From the earliest days of therapy, when Freud was sharing his new method with the world, therapy was designed to help people get to know themselves better—to “make the unconscious conscious.”
And while there are now many types of therapy that can help you achieve many different goals, therapy still excels at its original task. Read on to learn how therapy can help you gain access to parts of yourself that nothing else can.
What Don't We Know About Ourselves?
There are things that hurt to know. And our fiercest, most powerful instincts push us away from what hurts and toward what feels good.
And our minds do more than just try to keep us away from things outside of ourselves that can hurt us. They try to protect us from the painful or dangerous things that are hidden inside ourselves, too.
DEEP DIVE
What Does It Hurt to Know?
Some of the things your psyche tries to protect you from include:
- Painful emotions like grief
- Memories of traumatic events
- Memories of emotionally painful events
- Thoughts that make you doubt or question things
- Thoughts that make you feel defeated, hopeless, or bad
- Emotions that make you feel vulnerable, raw, or exposed
- Emotions you don’t think you’re supposed or allowed to feel
- Thoughts or feelings you were punished for expressing in the past
- Thoughts or feelings that make you want to do things that feel unsafe
- Thoughts or feelings that push you toward change and away from the status quo
Basically, your psyche will block you from seeing, feeling, or knowing anything that it views as a threat to your sense of self or well-being.
It’s good the psyche can do this. Locking away painful feelings and memories gives you room to attend to the demands of the present moment. Sometimes, the best thing any of us can do is compartmentalize and set aside the things that are too much to deal with right now.
Unfortunately, though, there are things that, if you leave them in the dark for too long, fester and become inflamed. Your life becomes consumed by them anyway, as your mind pumps more and more resources into keeping them out of your conscious awareness.
One of the things that makes therapy so powerful is its ability to break this cycle. Therapy can help reveal hidden leaks of mental and emotional energy. It can show you that there are things you don’t need to protect yourself from anymore—a message which can reach all the way into your subconscious, freeing you from blocks you may have had for years.
Another consequence of leaving parts of your psyche in the dark is feeling stuck in a sense of self that doesn’t quite fit. Your ego tries to keep you from doing things that don’t feel like “you”—and lack of self-knowledge can make you think certain ways you react to life are “you” when they really aren’t.
Good therapy has the power to do more than just improve your mood or reduce your anxiety level. It can free you from previously unseen parts of yourself that trap, hurt, or limit you. It can introduce you to your true self.
Vanessa's Story, Part 1
I feel stuck. The thought pops into Vanessa’s mind for the third time today. Where did this come from? she wonders. Her life is fine. Nothing major has changed lately. But this feeling, and now this thought about this feeling, have crowded into her mind and won’t leave her alone.
She figures this has been going on for about three weeks now. Did something happen three weeks ago? She wracks her brain.
Her life is basically the same from week to week. Wake up, work, errands, workout, home.
She has friends. She’s been single for a couple of months, but the last breakup wasn’t painful. She’s honestly relieved it happened. All her friends agree: you dodged a major bullet, losing that dude.
Well, there was that thing Shaina said… No, that can’t possibly be it. That one stupid comment. Shaina is always full of them. She speaks before she thinks. She’s passive-aggressive and lowkey rude. Otherwise a good friend. But you can’t take the things she says too much to heart.
“You’re too needy,” Shaina had said. “You drive men away.”
How the fuck would she know anyway? Vanessa seethes even now, remembering the smug look on Shaina’s face when she said that. She had wanted to smack it right off.
But as mad as it makes her to give Shaina’s stupid comment any power, she hasn’t been able to stop thinking about it.
She’d never admit it to Shaina—or anyone—but she’s thought the same thing before. Things go well in her relationships until she starts to open up. Then, everything starts to fall apart.
“Men are no good,” Rachelle said to her right after the breakup. “They’re so emotionally stunted. You’ll find one who’s emotionally intelligent someday.”
Vanessa has no reason to believe Shaina over Rachelle. She knows she shouldn’t. So, she tries to resist negative thoughts like the one Shaina introduced to her brain by saying affirmations every morning when she brushes her teeth and saying them again when negative thoughts come back.
But that one pesky thought keeps sucking her back into it like the water she watches get sucked down the drain.
Vanessa scrolls through her contacts until she comes to the one she’s looking for. I didn’t think I’d have to do this. I don’t really have the money. Maybe I don’t have to… But she knows she needs to, so she calls the number.
The phone beeps to tell her to leave a voicemail. “Umm, Elizabeth? This is Vanessa. You know how I thought I was maybe done with therapy for a while? Well, I think I need to come back. I feel stuck and like things are getting to me that shouldn’t. So please let me know if you have room on your schedule. Okay, thanks, bye.”
How Can Therapy Help Us Solve Our Unsolved Inner Mysteries?
Think of your therapist as a friend with a torch. They don’t go into the mysterious cave of your mind alone, come out with the artifact you were looking for, and hand it to you. You have to go with them.
Your therapist can’t find their way without you. Their job is to walk next to you, help you notice what you might miss on your own, and encourage you to keep going when things get confusing, dark, or scary.
One of a therapist's most important abilities is helping you get past your own defenses.
It’s sort of like in a movie or video game when the mystic guide touches the seemingly impassable cave wall and reveals it was just an illusion. A therapist has the magic touch to reveal when stone is really just air or when a wall is actually a door. In other words, they can help reveal when a thought is realistic and when it’s just a defense.
Why can’t you do this as easily as they can? One reason is that your therapist has been trained to recognize and navigate past psychological defenses. Another is that you can’t ever really do this for yourself because your defenses hide in blind spots that you can’t see from where you stand.
Your mind is working against you when you try to figure out what your defenses are and get past them.
Your mind built up all of these inner structures to protect you from psychological pain or something that seemed threatening, so it hid them well.
This gets confusing, because you’re the one that built your own labyrinth. No one else put it there. When your mind is working against you, it means is you are working against you, even though you normally can’t see or access this part of you that’s holding you back.
A therapist can reveal the secret level where it’s really you who was behind the controls the whole time. They can give you back the power to make conscious choices where before the whole process was kept out of your conscious awareness.
Vanessa's Story, Part 2
“Gosh, Elizabeth, I’m so glad you were able to work me back in so fast.”
“I’m glad, too. It’s good to see you, Vanessa. What’s come up for you?”
“I can’t stop thinking of this stupid fucking thing Shaina said to me.”
“Ah, Shaina… what shitty thing did she say to you this time?”
“She says the reason men leave me is because I’m too needy. She says I get emotional and dramatic and drive them away.”
“Do you agree with her? Do you believe that?”
“No. I mean, yes. *sigh* I don’t know. Part of me can see how Rick was immature and not a good match and how it wasn’t really something I did.
“But there’s a part of me that’s always worried I’m too needy. I’m such a mess and I guess I believe no one can ever really love me once they see how messy and needy I really am.”
“Wow. That sounds like it hurts. Do you really believe no one can ever really love you?”
“Well, I mean, I can get them to love me, if I can keep myself together.”
“But they can’t love the real you? The part that’s a mess?”
“Is that the real me? The messy part?”
“Well, is it? Do you think it is?”
“I don’t know. I’d like to think it isn’t. But no matter how hard I try to keep it together, whenever I get in a relationship, I eventually dump an emotional mess all over the place.” Vanessa starts to cry. “Maybe that is the real me. Maybe that’s why no one sticks around.”
Elizabeth hands Vanessa a tissue. Gently, Elizabeth says, “I don’t think that’s the real you. At least, it’s not all there is to you. But all of us have a messy part inside. Rick has one, too, and so does Shaina. I have one. Most of us are afraid of other people seeing it and judging it. But it’s not something we can just tidy up and throw away.”
“If I can’t clean up the mess inside, what’s the point of coming to therapy?” Vanessa says. A wave of painful disappointment washes through her.
“The cool thing is that therapy helps you learn that you don’t need to clean it up. There’s nothing wrong with you, including the parts that feel messy. You just need to deal with the shame you feel about them and stop trying so hard to fix or hide them. So, would you like to explore this part of yourself with me? The messy part?”
“Yes,” Vanessa says, and means it, even though there’s a part of her that wants to scream, “No.”
Does Figuring Ourselves Out in Therapy Make Us Dull? Does It Take Away Our Juice?
As much as we all want peace in our lives, we also want excitement. We want passion, desire, creativity, and adventure, too. So, we don’t want to become too settled. After all, it’s a sense of restlessness that inspires us to seek out the experiences that change us, move us, and make us who we are.
If we never felt lonely, would we go out and do the things that help us find love?
If we never felt dissatisfied, would we try to fix or change the world?
If we never felt melancholy or loss, would we ever feel inspired to write beautiful poetry or music?
If therapy proposes to help you uncover and heal your core wound, what’s left when it’s over? Are you still you?
These are deep questions, but there’s one we can definitely answer: even when therapy is supremely successful, and heals some of your core wounds, it doesn’t take away your zest, your juice, or your passion for living.
It doesn’t render you soulless. It doesn’t take away your ability to feel the bitter along with the sweet. In fact, it does the opposite.
Therapy helps you let go of and replace psychological defenses that keep you from feeling a full range of emotion. It helps you overcome fears and limiting beliefs about yourself that make it hard to take risks or create. It connects you to your true self—the seat of your authentic passions and your sense of childlike wonder and play.
Shutting down emotionally is a natural response when you've been hurt or traumatized.
Over the course of our lives, many of us become less open and more locked down and regimented.
When we’re wounded, we do what makes us feel safe instead of what makes us feel alive. We avoid the experiences we used to seek out. We fall into the habit of numbing ourselves to cope with the fallout of chronic stress, disappointment, and exhaustion. We push away the pesky questions that drove our younger selves on important quests that shaped who we became.
Therapy can help you reverse this process. By examining where you’ve gotten stuck, shut down, or blocked, you can figure out what you need to do to heal and open up again. You can reconnect to the deepest parts of yourself and embrace life fully again.
When you can heal your core wounds, you’re much more likely to do the things that demand your full presence and courage. You’re less likely to shrink away from the spotlight in shame. Healing doesn’t mean losing yourself—it means finding it again.
Vanessa's Story, Part 4
Elizabeth and Vanessa unraveled the thread that led from her present feelings all the way back to her childhood. Vanessa started to remember how her emotions had overwhelmed her parents.
She remembered how they had lashed out at her and made her feel bad when she wasn’t able to “keep it together.” It was even worse when her feelings affected how she did at school. Her parents made her believe it was wrong to ever break down or struggle and that it was a sign of personal failure.
She had only felt loved when she was able to “keep it together” and do things that impressed her parents. It seemed like their love and approval always hung by a thread—the same thin thread that held all of Vanessa’s emotions in place and out of sight of everyone else.
Vanessa couldn’t understand why or how, but just learning this about herself—the “origin story” of one of her most painful beliefs—diminished her fears of being emotionally messy. Elizabeth helped her see how her parents’ reaction to her hadn’t reflected the truth, but their limitations.
Next, they explored how Vanessa’s core wound had been inflamed and deepened when the first guy she ever fell in love with called her “needy” and broke up with her. From that point onward, Vanessa had always assumed someone was thinking that about her—”You’re too needy”—when they rejected her, pushed her away, or grew distant.
Vanessa had ended many relationships herself before the other person could end them. Even though Elizabeth didn’t say it to her directly, talking about these breakups had helped Vanessa see how rarely someone had actually rejected her for being needy—or even rejected her at all.
Now, Vanessa isn’t nearly as afraid of someone thinking she’s “needy” or “a mess.” She not only expresses her emotions more freely in front of Elizabeth, but in front of others, too. She feels more authentic when she’s with her friends and she’s even in a new relationship that’s going pretty well.
Vanessa is grateful that she called Elizabeth when she did. It would have been so easy to write it off and dismiss her irritated reaction to Shaina’s comment as something to just “get over” and try to forget. But now she understands that even those small things can lead to big insights, especially when you want to know the truth and when you have a therapist to help you.
She plans to keep seeing Elizabeth for a while, but can anticipate the day when she’ll “graduate” from therapy—or at least this round of it. In the meantime, she is so excited to see how much deeper she can go in her relationships now that she’s not trying to hide so much of herself from others.
Conclusion
We become mysteries to ourselves for many reasons. One is that our minds use defenses to block access to thoughts, feelings, and memories that increase stress or cause emotional pain.
In order to defend you from dangerous states of mind, your psyche censors everything from memories of acutely traumatic events to emotions you were punished for expressing when you were younger.
One of a therapist’s most important abilities is helping you get past your defenses. A therapist can help you bypass your inner censor, get to know yourself better, and heal the wounds hidden behind your mental walls. They can help you remove and replace defenses that are limiting or maladaptive.
Working with a therapist can free you to choose consciously instead of being forced to let an automatic, unexamined process in your brain choose for you.
The healing that is possible in therapy doesn’t dull life’s edges or take away your creative drive or passion. In fact, it does the opposite. It helps you feel more and fear less. It gives you access to the parts of yourself that are playful and adventurous. Unblocking yourself in therapy helps you express yourself more fully and freely.
Good therapy hands you the keys and puts you in the driver’s seat. It makes it possible to choose the route you take through your life instead of letting what happened in your past limit where you can go.
If you feel ready to start your therapy journey, but aren’t sure where to begin, let us help. You can explore our site to learn more about how to choose a therapist and which therapy method might be best for you, among other topics. You can also use our directory to look for an affordable therapist near you. With a therapist’s help, you can free yourself from the limitations of the past and discover just how much is possible for you.