Tag Archives: counselling

Navigating Self-Discovery: Understanding Your Inner Identity

There’s a particular kind of question that doesn’t arrive lightly. It tends to surface slowly, often after years of getting on with things, doing what’s expected, being who you’ve always been. And then, one day, it lands with a weight that’s hard to ignore: Who am I, really?

For many people, this question shows up in their late 20s or 30s, sometimes later. It might be stirred by a life change, or it might seem to come out of nowhere. On the surface, life can look fine; work, relationships, responsibilities all in place. And yet underneath, something feels off. Not dramatically wrong, just quietly out of place. People often describe it as a sense of disconnection. As if they’ve been living a life that looks right, but doesn’t quite feel like theirs. Alongside that can come a mix of emotions that are harder to make sense of. Low mood, restlessness, anxiety, or a kind of flatness where things that used to matter no longer do. For some, it can feel more intense than that, like everything they’ve built their life on is starting to crack. It can feel frightening. It can feel like something is going wrong. But very often, something else is happening.

When the Self You Built Stops Fitting

In developmental terms, our teenage years are when we begin to form a sense of who we are. Not just what we do, but what we value, what we feel drawn to, what seems to fit. In an ideal world, development in teenage years unfolds with enough space to explore, question, and push against expectations. But many people don’t get that kind of freedom.

If you grew up in an environment where approval mattered, where certain emotions weren’t welcomed, or where there were strong expectations about who you should be, you likely adapted. You learned, often without realising it, how to be acceptable, how to stay connected, how to avoid conflict or disapproval. You might have become someone who copes well, achieves, keeps the peace, doesn’t make things difficult. These are not small things. They take awareness, sensitivity, and effort. Over time, though, those ways of being can become less like choices and more like identity. Not because they fully reflect who you are, but because they were what worked.

Until they don’t.

The Quiet Shift That Changes Everything

At some point, often without warning, the fit begins to loosen. What once felt normal starts to feel effortful. What once made sense starts to feel restrictive. You might notice that you’re saying yes when something in you wants to say no, or that you’re moving through your days without a real sense of connection to what you’re doing.

It’s not always dramatic. In fact, it’s often quite subtle at first. A kind of internal friction. A sense that you’re slightly out of step with your own life until gradually, it becomes harder to ignore.

This is often the point where people begin to worry about themselves. They wonder if they’re becoming ungrateful, or unstable, or if something is wrong with them. Especially if their mood dips, or their motivation drops, or they feel more emotionally reactive than they used to. But this shift doesn’t usually come out of nowhere. It tends to emerge when the version of you that was shaped around external expectations no longer fits the person you are becoming.

You Didn’t Get It Wrong

It’s important to say this clearly: the version of you that got you here is not a mistake. It was, in many ways, an intelligent and necessary response to your environment. It helped you navigate relationships, maintain connection, and find your place in the world as it was presented to you. But adapting to an environment and knowing yourself deeply are not always the same thing. And there often comes a point where something in you begins to ask for more alignment. Not more achievement or approval, but more honesty. More congruence between how you live and what you actually feel, want, and value. That’s not failure. That’s development continuing.

Why It Can Feel Unsettling

When this process begins, it can feel less like growth and more like things are coming undone. Part of that is because the roles you’ve relied on for years start to feel less solid. The ways you’ve understood yourself, capable, easy-going, reliable, accommodating, may still be true, but they no longer feel complete. At the same time, what comes next isn’t immediately clear. There can be a sense of standing in between versions of yourself, without a clear sense of who you are becoming.

That in-between space can feel uncomfortable, even frightening. It can bring up questions about your relationships, your work, your direction in life. It can also bring up grief, for the time spent being who you needed to be, and for the recognition or ease that may not have come with it. For some people, the intensity of this experience leads to thoughts about wanting to escape entirely. Not necessarily because they want their life to end, but because the way they have been living no longer feels possible. Seen this way, those thoughts are less about wanting to disappear, and more about wanting something to change at a very deep level.

Moving Toward Something More Your Own

If there is a direction to this process, it’s not about reinventing yourself from scratch. It’s more about gradually noticing what feels true and what doesn’t. That might begin with small, almost quiet recognitions. Realising that something you’ve always gone along with doesn’t actually sit right with you. Noticing that you feel more like yourself in some environments than others. Becoming aware of how often you override your own preferences. These are not dramatic shifts, but they matter. They are signs that your attention is turning inward in a new way.

If you’ve spent years orienting yourself around what’s expected or needed by others, this can feel unfamiliar at first. There may be uncertainty, or even guilt, in paying closer attention to your own experience. But over time, this is where a more stable sense of self begins to form. Not one based purely on roles or expectations, but one that includes your own voice.

You’re Not Losing Yourself

It can feel like that when things start to shift. As if the ground beneath you is less certain than it used to be. But more often, what’s happening is that you are outgrowing a version of yourself that no longer fits the life you’re in now. The discomfort isn’t a sign that you’re broken or that something has gone wrong. It’s a sign that something in you is no longer willing to stay confined to what once worked. That can take time to understand. And it can take time to trust.

But if you find yourself asking “Who am I, really?”, it may help to consider that this question isn’t the beginning of a crisis. It may be the beginning of a more honest relationship with yourself. And while that process can feel uncertain, it’s also where something steadier, and more your own, has the chance to emerge.

Collette O’Mahony is a Psychotherapeutic Counsellor in private practice, working with clients online. She writes regularly on mental health and emotional wellbeing, with a focus on self-discovery, developing self-awareness, and supporting individuals to take meaningful responsibility for their inner lives.

To book a 15 minute free introduction email me at info@colletteomahony.com

Finding Your Inner Compass:

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From External to Internal Locus of Evaluation

In my counselling practice, one of the most transformative shifts I witness in clients is the move from an External Locus of Evaluation to an Internal Locus of Evaluation. When we live with an external locus, we are essentially living our lives according to a script written by others. When we begin to develop an internal locus, we start writing our own script. Understanding this transition is essential for anyone seeking deeper authenticity and emotional resilience.

The External Locus: Living for the Audience

Carl Rogers developed this concept to explain how people, through therapy or personal growth, shift from needing external validation to trusting their own internal judgment. An external locus of evaluation occurs when we outsource our self-worth and decision-making to the world around us. It is like trying to navigate a landscape while constantly looking at a mirror held by someone else to see if we are going the right way.

Self-worth fluctuates based on the feedback of others. Praise provides a temporary hit of stability, while criticism feels like a profound threat to your identity. Decisions are often paralysis-inducing, filtered through the lens of “What will they think?” rather than “What do I value?”

You may find yourself morphing your personality, opinions, or behaviours to fit the specific audience you are with, leading to a fragmented sense of self. Because you distrust your own judgment, you rely heavily on authority figures or peers to tell you if you are on the “right” path.

The Internal Locus: Trusting Your Own North Star

Moving toward an internal locus of evaluation is not about becoming cold or indifferent to others; it is about reclaiming your own sovereignty. It is the process of shifting your reference point from the outside world back to your own core values.

Your sense of “rightness” is no longer a public vote; it is an internal alignment. You ask, “Does this feel right for me?”

You can tolerate being misunderstood or disagreed with because your stability is no longer contingent on external consensus. Your identity remains relatively stable across different contexts. You aren’t playing a role; you are simply being yourself. You set limits based on your own needs and capacities, rather than shifting them to accommodate external expectations or fear of rejection.

Understanding the Roots: Why We Adopt an External Locus

Perhaps you are wondering: If an internal locus is more authentic and resilient, why do so many of us start with, and stay stuck in, an external one? The answer is rarely about a lack of character; it is almost always about survival and adaptation.

The Survival Mechanism: Why We Look Outward

From an evolutionary and developmental perspective, our early environment dictates how we learn to orient ourselves. We are social creatures; for a human child, connection with caregivers is not just a preference; it is a biological necessity for survival.

Adaptive Compliance: If you grew up in an environment where your needs were only met when you were “good,” “quiet,” or “compliant,” you learned early on that your worth was contingent on your performance. You had to monitor your caregivers’ expressions and expectations to ensure your own security.

The Cost of Authenticity: In many families, expressing a divergent opinion or asserting a personal boundary was met with withdrawal of affection, ridicule, or punishment. To stay “safe” within that system, you learned to suppress your internal signals and prioritize the expectations of others.

External Anchoring: When caregivers are emotionally inconsistent or preoccupied, a child may struggle to develop a stable sense of self. They turn to external feedback as a way to “check” if they are okay, essentially using others as an external barometer for their own internal safety.

Conditioning Through Life Experiences

Beyond childhood, our environments continue to reinforce an external locus. We are rarely rewarded for being “internally validated”; society, in fact, is often structured to keep us in that external loop.

Educational and Workplace Systems: Many structures are built on hierarchies that prioritize conformity over critical, independent thought. When grades, promotions, and bonuses are tied entirely to how well we adhere to someone else’s rubric, we are being trained to maintain an external focus.

The Echo Chamber of social media: Modern life presents us with a constant, quantified feedback loop. Likes, comments, and views provide an immediate, data-driven “external locus” that is highly addictive. It is easy to start believing that our value is quantifiable, leading to a profound erosion of internal trust.

Moving From Safety to Selfhood

It is important to approach this realisation with profound self-compassion. If you have an external locus, you do not lack individuality; you successfully adapted to a world that demanded your compliance. Your individuality strengthens when the scaffolding of conditioning is dismantled.

The struggle to develop an internal locus is not about fixing a broken part of yourself; it is about realising that the survival tools you needed in your formative years are no longer the tools that serve you as an adult. When you were younger, looking outward was the smartest way to survive. Now, looking inward is the bravest way to thrive.

How the Shift From External to Internal Locus Facilitates Change

This is not a binary switch, but a journey of reclamation. As you practice shifting your locus of evaluation, several profound changes occur:

Reduced Anxiety: You stop carrying the exhausting burden of managing other people’s perceptions.

Increased Agency: When you trust your own judgment, you feel capable of navigating challenges without needing constant external reassurance.

Self-Compassion: You stop the cycle of global self-condemnation. A mistake becomes a data point for learning, rather than evidence of your personal inadequacy.

Deeper Relationships: Paradoxically, by relying less on others for stability, you become more capable of forming genuine, interdependent connections, as you are relating from a place of wholeness rather than neediness.

If you are currently feeling as though you are living for an audience, I invite you to start small. Next time you face a choice, pause. Ask yourself: If I knew that no one would ever know, or if I knew that no one could judge my decision, what would I choose? That small act of inquiry is the first step toward your internal compass.

Collette O’Mahony (Dip.Psy.C) May 2026

To book a free introduction session click here.

When Grief Uncovers More Than Loss

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How suppressed emotion shapes our experience of bereavement.

Grief Is Not Always Singular

Grief is often spoken about as a singular experience: a response to loss that moves, however unevenly, towards some form of resolution. In practice, it is rarely so contained. For many, grief does not arrive alone. It brings with it emotions that have been suppressed, deferred, or never fully felt. What presents as grief may, in part, be something older. Loss has a way of lowering the threshold of our emotional defences. The structures that once helped us manage or contain difficult feelings can become less reliable under its weight. In this sense, grief is not only an experience of loss, but also an encounter with what has been held beneath the surface.

The Spring-Loaded Box

One way to understand this is through a simple image. Suppressed emotions can be thought of as being placed into a spring-loaded box, held shut over time with effort and adaptation. For many, this becomes an unconscious posture: sitting on the lid, keeping things contained, maintaining function. It works, often for years.

When a significant loss occurs, the impact can be enough to release that pressure. The box flies open. What follows is not only grief, but a surge of feeling that may not seem directly connected to the loss itself. Emotions that have long been contained begin to surface all at once, surrounding us and clamouring for attention.

This can give rise to a particular kind of distress. Alongside grief, there may be a sense of overwhelm, disorientation, or even ‘madness’. The world can feel unfamiliar or unreal, not only because something important has been lost, but because the internal landscape has shifted so suddenly. What was once held in place is now in motion.

When the System Becomes Overwhelmed

When emotions have been consistently suppressed, they do not disappear. They remain active beneath awareness, often shaping behaviour indirectly. Grief intensifies this dynamic. A person who has learned to minimise anger may find themselves unexpectedly reactive. Someone who has avoided vulnerability may experience waves of anxiety or instability. What appears to be grief “out of control” is often the system attempting to regulate more than it has previously allowed into awareness. It is important to recognise that suppression itself is not a failure. It is often an adaptation that once served a necessary purpose. At different points in life, containing emotion may have allowed relationships to continue, responsibilities to be met, or stability to be maintained. These strategies can be effective, but they come at a cost: a narrowing of what can be consciously felt. Grief disrupts this arrangement. It places a demand on the system that these strategies cannot fully meet.

Not Disproportionate, but Cumulative

At this point, many people become concerned that their response is disproportionate. The intensity of what they are experiencing may not seem to match the loss alone. This can lead to further suppression, as they attempt to regain control, or to self-criticism, as they question their own stability. It may be more helpful to understand this not as disproportionate, but as cumulative. Grief is interacting with a wider emotional history. What is being felt in the present moment includes not only the pain of loss, but the release of what has been held over time.

Working With, Rather Than Against

The question then is not how to force the lid closed again, but how to remain in relationship with what has emerged without becoming overwhelmed by it. This begins, not with analysing every feeling, but with the gentle regulation of attention. When everything is clamouring at once, the task is not to attend to all of it, but to allow small amounts into awareness, gradually increasing the capacity to stay present. In this way, attention becomes a stabilising force rather than something that is pulled in multiple directions.

As this capacity develops, what initially feels chaotic can begin to differentiate. Grief becomes more recognisable as grief. Anger, sadness, fear, or longing can be experienced with greater clarity, rather than as a single, overwhelming mass. The system no longer needs to defend against everything at once. In time, the box is no longer required in the same way. What was once held down can be felt, in part, without the same risk of destabilisation. Grief, then, is not only an experience of loss. It is also a moment in which the inner world becomes more visible. What emerges may be difficult, but it is not without meaning. Within it is the possibility of a different relationship to emotion: one that does not rely solely on suppression, but on a growing capacity to remain present to what is there.

A Closing Reflection

Perhaps the work is not to contain everything that has been released, nor to make immediate sense of it, but to notice where our attention settles in the midst of it. When the internal world feels crowded or overwhelming, we might return, gently, to what can be held in this moment, rather than all that demands to be felt at once. In doing so, we begin to find a steadier ground within the movement of grief, where what once felt unmanageable can, over time, be met with greater presence and less fear.

Collette O’Mahony – March 2026

Contact me here.

The Role of Childhood in Forming Adult Identities

Unlocking Emotional Flow: Therapy Beyond Behavior Change

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Most people come to therapy wanting to change a behaviour. They want to stop people-pleasing. To control their anger. To quiet the inner critic. To ‘fix’ the pattern that keeps repeating in relationships. But behaviour is rarely the beginning of the story. It is the surface layer, the visible structure of something that formed much earlier.

Many of our most frustrating patterns function like ice. They are solid, organised, and protective. They hold shape. They prevent collapse. They conserve energy. At some point in our development, they were adaptive responses to relational or emotional environments that felt overwhelming, unpredictable, or unsafe. A child who learns that anger disrupts connection may freeze it into compliance. A nervous system that cannot safely process grief may convert it into productivity. A system exposed to chronic uncertainty may develop hyper-vigilance disguised as responsibility. What we later call maladaptive was once intelligent. Ice is not a mistake. It is water under particular conditions. The question is not how to shatter it. The question is what conditions would allow it to soften.

Awareness as Heat

Force hardens defensive structures. Awareness softens them. In psychological research, metacognitive awareness, the capacity to observe internal experience without immediate reaction, has been shown to reduce emotional reactivity and increase regulatory flexibility. When we bring non-judgmental attention to a pattern, activity in the prefrontal cortex increases while limbic reactivity decreases. In simple terms, the nervous system begins to feel less threatened by what it is observing.

Awareness is heat. Not analysis, self-criticism, or intellectual dismantling. Just sustained, regulated noticing. When a person becomes aware of their people-pleasing in the moment it happens, the slight tightening in the chest, the automatic yes before checking internally, something subtle begins to melt. The pattern loses some of its rigidity. It becomes less compulsory. The solid begins to liquefy.

Beneath the Structure: The Emotional Layer

When the ice melts, we encounter water. Underneath rigid behaviour patterns lies emotion, often the emotion that was once too overwhelming to process safely. Sadness that had no witness. Anger that threatened attachment. Shame that felt annihilating.
Fear that had nowhere to discharge. Emotions are not irrational disruptions of the mind; they are adaptive physiological signals. Contemporary affective neuroscience shows that emotions are embodied states, involving shifts in heart rate, breath, muscular tone, hormonal release, and neural activation. They are movement in the system.

But when emotion cannot move, when a nervous system remains in chronic sympathetic activation (fight/flight) or dorsal shutdown (collapse), that movement becomes trapped. Anxiety frequently emerges not because emotion exists, but because it has been inhibited. Water that cannot flow becomes stagnant. This is why insight alone rarely produces lasting change. A person may understand why they developed a pattern and still feel powerless to shift it. Cognitive clarity does not automatically restore emotional mobility. The work at this stage is not to intensify emotion, but to allow it.

Allowing as Regulated Heat

When we apply gentle, regulated heat to water, it becomes vapour. In therapeutic terms, the heat applied to emotion is not confrontation, it is permission within safety. It is the experience of feeling anger without losing connection. Of feeling sadness without collapsing. Of feeling shame without being abandoned.

Research in attachment theory consistently demonstrates that co-regulation, being emotionally accompanied while activated, increases affect tolerance and integration. When emotion is allowed in the presence of attuned awareness, the nervous system reorganises. Neural networks associated with threat begin to link with networks associated with meaning and self-reflection. Emotion begins to metabolise rather than accumulate. And when emotion metabolises, something remarkable happens. It rises.

Vapour: Expression, Flow, and Radiance

Steam is water transformed. It is still water, but now it moves upward. It expands. It becomes visible in a new way. Psychologically, this is the stage of expression. Expression is not performance. It is not cathartic discharge for its own sake. It is the natural outward movement that occurs when internal pressure has been processed.

Expression may look like: Speaking a boundary without apology. Crying without shame.
Laughing without restraint. Creating without self-censorship. Saying no without collapse. Human systems are organised around movement. Suppression requires continuous energy. Expression restores energy. From a physiological perspective, regulated emotional expression is associated with improved vagal tone, reduced inflammatory markers, and greater autonomic flexibility. Chronic inhibition, by contrast, correlates with elevated stress hormones and increased inflammatory response. The body does, quite literally, carry what cannot be expressed. We are not built for indefinite containment. We are built for circulation.

We Are Wired to Radiate

On a literal level, the elements that compose the human body were formed in stars. The carbon in our cells, the oxygen we breathe, the iron in our blood, these are stellar materials. We are matter that has already undergone transformation under immense heat. There is something deeply fitting in the metaphor. Just as the sun radiates, living systems radiate when unobstructed. Radiance is not a personality trait. It is what emerges when suppression eases. When maladaptive structures soften into emotion, and emotion is allowed to move into expression, vitality returns. Presence deepens. Relationships become more reciprocal. The body often softens its defensive tone.

This is not mystical. It is regulatory. The aim of therapy, then, is not to dismantle the self. It is to create conditions of warmth. To bring awareness to what froze. To allow feeling where there was structure. To support expression where there was inhibition. Not breaking the ice, but warming it. You were never meant to remain solid. You were meant to move. And when you move, you radiate.

Collette O’Mahony, March 2026

Therapy is not about dismantling who you are. It is about creating the warmth and safety required for transformation. We move at the pace of your nervous system. We begin with awareness, build capacity for feeling, and gently support expression so that change emerges naturally rather than forcefully. You do not have to shatter the ice alone. If you are ready to explore what it would mean to feel more present in your body, more regulated in your emotions, and more authentic in your relationships, I invite you to reach out. Together, we can create the conditions that allow you not just to cope, but to flow and radiate.

An introduction on zoom (15 minutes) Free. One to one sessions (online) £45/ $62.

info@colletteomahony.com – Include your first name, date of birth, goals for therapy.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Collette O'Mahony – Psychotherapeutic Counsellor

Online one-to-one counselling for relationship difficulties, life changes, bereavement and emotional wellbeing.