True Identity Theft: How We Lose Our Individuality In The Face of Familial Resemblance

When listening to others speak about their personal challenges in life, I've noticed a common pattern. It seems that in most everyone's life there is one influential person they feel intrinsically connected to and yet struggle to not be like. Usually it is a parent or sibling, someone for whom they share enough common history or genetic resemblance with that separating their identity from the other is a chronic tug of war.

Kamie Norrn is a therapist and yet her education and job experience has not been able to save her from joining her clients in the human pitfalls that can affect us all. Kamie has two sides: who she is when she's trying to not be like her sister and who she is when she is like her sister. This constant search for individual identity has created a pattern in her of being inauthentic. She makes claims, promises or agreements under one mindset and breaks them under the other.

A friend confided in Kamie that she had abandonment issues. When they had their first conflict Kamie sent her an email stating, "I will not abandon you," and yet she never answered another phone call or email from that friend again, thus abandoning her.

Kamie told her husband that he did not have to walk on eggshells around her; and yet the moment that he didn't, she accused him of blindsiding her. In less than two years they were divorced.

Every person in Kamie's life who forces her to live up to the claims about herself that she makes, she ends up cutting off and shutting out, permanently. There is no resolution, no working things through. Her way of moving on is to deny reality, which only sets her up for a successful self fulfilled prophesy of being "blindsided" again.

Being blindsided was her main self-proclaimed issue. What exactly does being blindsided mean? For Kamie, it means dealing with the reality of facts that she isn't expecting because she has created an alternate reality of illusion that she is comfortably living in.

Whenever she would speak to me about her fears, she would bring up her sister and her best friend and all the things about them she didn't like, especially her perception of them as narcissistic. I always found this fascinating. She then went on to explain that when she was with her sister she would lose herself, and yet without her sister she did not know where she ended and her sister began.

How can Kamie know herself as separate from her sister? Through honest introspection of who she really is as an individual. Unfortunately, she is trapped between who she wants to be and who she really is; and until she integrates the two, her integrity will be elusive. By accepting what she has in common with her sister and acknowledging what she doesn't, she can reclaim her true self. This will require a tremendous amount of self-acceptance that she is not yet emotionally mature enough to embrace, but through time I have faith that she will.

Of course, if she chooses not to evolve within, it will be reflected in her life without. The world she now inhabits, a rented studio apartment with only her cat to serve as friend or family will become her infinite fate. There's nothing wrong with that, if it's what you want. But if she wants more — and most people do — she will have to find the courage to face herself.

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. -Anais Nin

When not playing blues harmonica, jd smith might be found changing a diaper (her toddler's not her own), skipping barefoot on a beach, compassionately listening to the struggles of others as a psychic mentor, or metaphorically scribbling at bettyconfidential.com

Friendly Fire: How to break up with a friend and still stay friends (in four easy steps)

Friends are like diamonds
…or cubic zirconia.

Step 1: Know which kind of friend they are and which kind of friend you want them to be: season, reason, lifetime…or healthy.

1. Season (The Holiday Card Friend): Dear but low maintenance friends.

2. Reason (The Convenience Friend): These are the people we become friends with not because of common interests as much as common surroundings. This could also be a friendship by fire.

3. Lifetime (The Best Friend): This friend can be both the most comforting and the most overwhelming of all. Your relationship can be the toxic, co-dependent, enmeshed one that all others revolve around and the solace you run to from all the rest.

4. Healthy (The Whole Friend): You email occasionally. You talk on the phone sporadically. Maybe even get together every now and then. This could be your best friend or any number of good friends. These are people who are in your life because they enrich your life. You are consciously choosing to keep them in your life not out of obligation or a momentum of perpetuation, but out of a clear choice. You share common interests, beliefs and often the same or similar values. Your lifestyles are most likely compatible.

Step 2: Reality Check. Define what went wrong to create an impetus for change.

Perhaps you had a baby and your best friend was single and now your lives don't mesh as well. Maybe you were friends with a co-worker but changed jobs, and now it just seems like too much work to maintain a friendship that was built on shared surroundings rather than shared interests. Possibly you bonded through old wounds and now that one or both of you are healing, there isn't anything left to bond over.

Step 3: Share your observations and how you'd like to see the friendship evolve. If your friend responds to your sharing, simply gracefully accept their response, without refute or argument. Remember the intent is not to be "right" and prove a point, the intent is to change the status of the friendship. Give them the last word, if nothing else, as a parting gift.


"Dear Convenience Friend,

Now that we no longer work together I won't be seeing you as much. I would however like to keep you in my life. Therefore, I'd like to upgrade our friendship status to that of a holiday card friend (everything's an upgrade). Your President's Day card is in the mail."

Sincerely,

Seasonal Friend"

Step 4: Move on. I recommend not communicating until the next holiday rolls around when it's appropriate to send a card. Be as sincere as you feel compelled to be. I sent a birthday card wishing that my friend receive all the joy, love and abundance that she deserves (and I meant it).

Word count 486

Originally published by BettyConfidential.com June, 2007