What makes us us? This question drew me to psychology and eventually somatic psychotherapy, which takes a slightly different view of what makes us us. Understanding what makes us us can empower clients who wish to adapt how they know themselves. Likewise, sometimes people’s greatest suffering arises from disconnects in how they feel (somatic sensations that lead to emotions) and how they think (beliefs and narratives that don’t match the feeling). Keeping this in mind, this blog post will provide a basic overview of the triad of identity, which is how I make sense of what makes us us. Using these helpful distinctions, I support clients as they gain influence over how they shape their identities for more satisfaction in life.
A Brief History of Embodiment and Identity
Unlike more traditional approaches to psychotherapy which focus mainly on cognition as the center of identity, many somatic psychotherapy approaches see the soma (where mind and body meet) as the foundation of identity. Moving away from the mind/body split, which is a legacy of the Enlightenment (thanks but no thanks Decartes), early somatic theorists established that people’s experience is grounded in the body, while cognition (ie. beliefs and narratives) arise from that embodiment. Jean Piaget (1896-1980), who lay the foundation for understanding intellectual development, understood that sensorimotor actions are essential to more complex cognition. Piaget’s first stage of cognitive development was labeled Sensori-Motor Intelligence. Here babies begin to organize their physical action schema, which Piaget described as behavioral patterns for interacting with the daily environment in increasingly complex ways. Within these early movements, babies are building maps for what the world is like and what they are like in it. These early movements and sensations (tension, burning, numbness, openness, lightness, etc.) form the bases of people’s identities, as well as their cognitions. This continues into childhood even as language develops and cognition becomes that much more complex, introducing beliefs and narratives into how people’s identities are formed and maintained. As adults, people’s identities are still comprised of somatic stimuli, but language and what Piaget called Formal Operations (complex cognitive processes) take center stage and people often forget that their identities start with movement and sensations in relationship to caregivers (aka. attachment theory). Taken all together—somatic stimuli, beliefs, and narratives—create a dynamic, embodied matrix for how people experience themselves through relationships (internal and external).
Why Does this Matter?
It has been my experience that clients come to therapy because they are not satisfied with something in their lives. Although external events may be contributing to their dissatisfaction, much of their suffering relates to how they experience themselves in various situations and relationships. From these experiences, people create beliefs and narratives about ourselves, others, and the world that solidify a given experience into an identity. While having a solid identity can be very helpful for navigating the world, I believe wellbeing comes from being able to influence this process so a person can engage with their identities when they are no longer adaptive or serving them well. And yes, we can have multiple identities, which can sometimes be on conflict. It turns out working with our identities can be complicated, but nevertheless doable and highly rewarding.
How Do You Influence Identity?
With a plethora of modalities, the field of psychotherapy has taken many approaches to helping people shift how they know themselves, which has an influence on behaviors, not to mention people’s relationships. While some approaches focus on beliefs (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) and others on narrative (Narrative Therapy), somatic approaches tend to focus on the somatic stimuli that contribute to our identities. There are advantages to doing this because as mentioned before, the body (sensorimotor processes) is the foundation for how cognition developed in the first place. In other words, somatic approaches go to the root, and if comprehensive in scope, help people gain influence over all three areas of identity, not just one.
To begin this process, it can be helpful to bring awareness to how your triad is functioning. To support you in initiating this process, I have developed a worksheet that will guide you through triad discovery. I hope this worksheet will show you how somatic stimuli, beliefs, and narratives influence one another and what that means for your identity, not to mention your behaviors and relationships.
Please check out The Triad of Identity Worksheet, my gift to you. I welcome feedback as a way to grow this resource for future readers. Thanks and enjoy!