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Do you take drugs instead of improving relationships? Drugs are easier than applying intelligence, focus and analytical skills. Drugs are cheaper for patients (in the short term) and more profitable for health professionals than resolving your relationship issues. Do you want more than drugs?

It is unwise to ponder personal identity issues while driving or operating machinery ...

Most of us live in cultures that ignore emotional responses. Our competitive society rewards both achievement and lack of emotions. Many of us are encouraged to not-feel!

Some people seem totally dissociated from their emotions. They may appear normal, and are often very intelligent, yet they seem insincere and shallow to people who want to talk about feelings. Dissociated people may say that they empty - but under the emptiness is often grief, fear, anger and unworthiness.

Questioning the emptiness can disturb dissociated people. They usually prefer to avoid their feelings - which they often call irrational, stupid and childish.

We find that it is difficult to help dissociated people regain identity, and as incomplete coaching may cause mentor damage, we are rather careful about coaching people with these symptoms. We need assurance that they will follow through - even though the person will deal with disturbing emotions.

Identity Loss, Dissociation & Dissociative Disorders

We find that abused children may avoid feeling anger, sadness and anxiety by dissociating, which, while lowering the possibility of insanity, can inhibit life. If the dissociated self remains dissociated, this identity loss may impair thinking, inhibit memory and limit flexibility.

Dissociative disorder refers to behavior patterns typical of people who repress traumatic or abusive memories that are associated with unpleasant emotions and relationships.

[Include some psychobiology of cerebral cortex - hind-brain communication here].

Few people with identity loss or dissociative disorders can define their goals; and endless encouragement or goalwork may not help them. The best goals they can provide are often abstract or incongruent (often stated as vague abstract complaints e.g. I don't want to feel so empty all the time! People with identity loss often sabotage their own goals.

Identity loss refers to a loss of self. Many people, following trauma, abuse, membership in cult-like organizations, or incompetent therapy, appear to lose access to some of their human qualities. These qualities are often replaced with unpleasant emotional reactions, compulsive behavior and confusing communication. People with identity loss usually express few emotions and little personality.

When helping people resolve identity loss, we may:

• Offer exploration: “This is only a start...”
• Offer systemic coaching: if we know we can complete coaching
• Use metaphors: we may offer solutions embedded within isomorphic metaphors

As it is not easy to work with dissociated people, and as incomplete coaching may cause mentor damage, we are careful about coaching people who appear to have lost their personal identity. We need assurance that they will follow through - even though the person will deal with disturbing emotions.

Extreme cases of identity loss may be called nervous breakdown or emotional breakdown. Many people become frustrated, angry and anxious, and later dull and empty, devoid of anything except irritation and perhaps boredom. A rich sense of life may be replaced by a desire for distraction.

1. Lost Identity - cannot describe feelings or express own values - dissociated - expresses few goals and little sense of self
2. Relationship Bonds - feels unpleasantly bonded to someone, yet cannot leave. Shows obsessions, compulsions and strong limiting beliefs
3. Identifications - attempts to live another person's life, shows chronic irrational emotions
4. Identity Conflict - behavior swings between two extreme moods (may be bipolar)

Following trauma, abuse, therapist damage or membership in cult-like organizations, people may lose access to some of their human qualities. This loss or dissociation may accompany or follow stress or distress at home or at work. The resulting identity loss and bonded relationships may be existential (all of life) or contextual (only in some part of life). Depression is common if life lacks sense.

Many people show at least one of the common symptoms of identity loss. If the lost qualities represent a significant part of a person's identity, the symptoms of identity loss are easier to recognize.

A few people become desperate, and may harm themselves or others. Such people may feel armored, invulnerable and emotionless. A search for sense of life is replaced by fantasies. Our private sessions and professional training can help most people regain access to their sense of life.

We train people to recognize, resolve and prevent identity loss, and solutions for common identifications resulting in chronic anger (identification with a victim), chronic sadness (identification with a dead person) and chronic anxiety (identification with a hero).

Dissociation & New Age Techniques

Dissociating is easy, and many so-called therapies and New Age techniques specialize in dissociation. Have you been advised to clear your emotions, to throw your self-talk into the sun, to destroy your ego, to leave your intellect behind you? Have you asked some esoteric entity to take your thoughts or feelings away? The consequences of such cures can be worse than the symptoms ...

Dissociation is simple - but the consequences often include a loss of identity. Repeated dissociation may result in long-term identity loss; which is often followed by addictive and obsessive behavior, and membership in cult-like organizations, as people strive to feel human and connected again.

Our private sessions and professional training includes how to recognize, resolve and prevent identity loss; and how to coach people with symptoms of identity loss to find lasting solutions. We coach people to find themselves again. We help people learn from their past to create a future. We coach people to resolve emotions - and clarify the relationships in which those emotions were created.

Systemic Diagnosis of Identity Loss

We help people assess and change emotions, trauma, conflict, relationships and consequences. We can help you understand why you do things you don't want to do - and help you change those behaviors. We can help you change ... quickly.

In our work, identification refers to the unconscious acceptance (under stress) of a dominant personality. Lost identity refers to chronic highly dissociated behavior (consider a stereotype mathematics professor engaged in solving a complex problem) and Identity Conflict refers to chronic bipolar behavior or mood swings (think of "split personality").

We use the phrase relationship bond to refer to a limiting emotion/belief/behavior schema by which a person compensates for perceived injustice. But taboo bonds cannot be rationalized (consider people who have told you, "I don't know why I keep doing this"), for example, many taboo bonds are with opposite-sex parents (see emotional incest).

Do you easily identify with characters in movies? If so, with whom? (male or female, young or old, etc)

Identification: I don't know what possessed me!

Most people learn life skills by identifying with role models. And many people act as if they remain partially identified with one or more people from early childhood. An identified person may feel totally normal while acting in ways that most other people consider abnormal.

The behavior of people who identify with others follows systemic rules:

•  victim identified people express chronic anger and suspicion
•  dead person identified people express chronic sadness and melancholy
•  hero identified people express chronic fear, anxiety and perhaps panic attacks

The symptoms are often easy to perceive – a person identified with a victim is generally suspicious and may annoy or torment people perceived as victimizers; a person identified with dead person is often generally melancholic and may obsess about death; and a person identified with a perceived hero may be generally anxious, yet avoid any form of change.

An identified person feels intense emotions when expressing the unexpressed emotions of a role model (consider your emotional experience while watching a thriller movie at a cinema). Such emotional expressions may be a massive relief, whatever the consequences. Identified people often deny reality and may describe being right in a wrong world.

Identifications . Consequences of Abortion . Learning Disabilities

Identity Conflict - Split Personality

Do you sometimes experience inner conflict? Part of you wants to - but part of you doesn't? A person with identity conflict may feel normal, just and right, even when switching between two distinct personalities, each with profoundly different behaviors, beliefs and values. (A person with extreme identity conflict may be diagnosed with bipolar disorder. If a person forgets his or her prior behavior when changing persona - this might be called multiple personality syndrome).

You can dissolve Identity Conflict with systemic coaching. In severe cases,

• you may be unable to focus on one thing for more than a few minutes
• you may experience mood swings between different personality types
• you may deny promises or decisions made in your "other" personality
• you may be diagnosed with bipolar disorder or multiple personality syndrome

Less severe symptoms are so common and normal that they may be difficult to perceive. We help people end severe mood swings (between the two sides of a conflict, see complex conflict (transcript)). You need not be alone, consider obtaining private sessions or professional training with us.

Lost Identity - The Lights are On - is Anybody Home?

Do you know people who are so preoccupied with their fantasies or work that they cannot make life decisions? (They may be a salesman's dream - they can be told what they want.) They may be overly compliant when young - and may become obsessive-compulsive or addicts when adult. They may try to fulfill their empty lives in therapy groups, cults or cult-like organizations.

Identity loss can be recognized with systemic diagnosis and dissolved with systemic coaching. Some people disconnect from their core values (or self); and some people disconnect from shared reality (family or community). We coach people to reconnect with themselves. Do you know someone who ...

• has no goals and does not participate in life
• is extremely reserved or generally preoccupied
• cannot define goals - waits to be told what they want
• has little or no internal motivation - must to be told what to do
• describes dark or empty spaces inside or close to their bodies
• expresses few or no emotions or feelings - even when appropriate

Resolve Identity Loss

We help motivated adults resolve identity loss. We coach people to dissolve the original stress or abuse and recover the unpleasant emotions that were denied, hidden or split off. (We define trauma as "events that cause a person to split off parts of themselves"). We then help people find and assimilate these unpleasant feelings and emotions as wonderful life resources. And we train others.

Copyright © Martyn Carruthers 2003-2010 All rights reserved.

Copyright © Martyn Carruthers 1996-2010 All rights reserved. Soulwork Systemic Coaching was primarily developed by Martyn Carruthers. We coach and train people to define and achieve goals, to resolve emotional blocks and to improve relationships. This information is for your general knowledge only. Please consult a physician about medical conditions and before changing any medical treatment. You must get Martyn's written permission to post or publish his work.