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From Attachment To Identity: How Early Relationships Shape Who We Become · Inside The Consulting Room - Understanding the Child Behind the Behaviour

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome.
• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is Kim Lee, child and adolescent psychotherapist.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: We are now on episode four on the in the series that is to do with facing psychological reality and understanding the variety of processes that invisibly take place.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: In this episode, I want to talk about identity formation and identity foreclosure.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Interesting terms.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'll see what I can do in terms of turning them into understandable language.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: The thing is, identity isn't something we choose in a single moment.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's not some kind of declaration or it's not a label.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: An identity is a kind of developmental achievement because it's something that forms slowly relationally and often unconsciously, long before we even attempt to describe it.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: From infancy, the self is shaped in relationship.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: And a child doesn't discover who they are in isolation.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: They discover who they are by how they are responded to.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: So when distress is met with calm, the child internalizes safety.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: When curiosity is welcomed, the child internalizes legitimacy.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: And when emotion is recognized, the child internalizes coherence.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now these are important features because over time these experiences accumulate into a full sense of self.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: In John Bowlby's attachment theory, he reminds us that relational experiences form what he called internal working models.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: And these are unconscious templates about the self and others.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: Am I safe?
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Becomes, am I worthy?
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Are others reliable?
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: Becomes, can I trust connection?
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: And identity begins there because it's during adolescence that this question of identity becomes explicit.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Famous psychologist Eric Erickson described this period as the stage of identity versus role confusion.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because the young person begins to ask questions that feel both urgent and destabilizing.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Who am I?
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: What do I believe?
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Where do I belong?
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: What kind of person am I becoming?
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: And these questions require space because they need psychological freedom and they require the capacity to explore with others without contradiction.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: But exploration isn't always tolerated, internally or externally.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now, identity foreclosure, it's a term I used earlier, occurs when the developing self is prematurely fixed, and by fixed I mean rigid, rather than exploring, what happens is that the individual adapts.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: So rather than reflecting, they conform.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Rather than integrating complexity, they accept ready-made answers.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: And this can happen for many reasons.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes because anxiety is too great, uncertainty feels intolerable, and the pressure to be someone outweighs the patience required to become the self that you are.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: So identity is adopted from family culture, ideology or peer group without deep examination.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes foreclosure occurs because relational environments, for whatever reason, aren't able to tolerate differentiation.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: So if a young person senses that disagreement threatens belonging, they may silence curiosity and they may comply rather than risk rupture.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now I see this in the consulting room with young people who are stuck in their identity formation.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Almost a kind of if I if I am myself, then others won't be able to tolerate that, or they will be damaged by it, or I am somehow not meeting the unspoken and unwritten family expectations.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now the cost of this, whilst it's subtle, is quite profound because when identity is organized around adaptation rather than integration, the true self becomes submerged and fragile.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it may appear coherent externally but feel hollow internally.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: It may understand conformity but collapses under challenge.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: So identity foreclosure isn't always dramatic.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: It can look like certainty, it can look like conviction, confidence, but internally the exploration has been bypassed.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: So it's appearance rather than substance.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I see this in adults too, that the presenting self actually hasn't had the opportunity to be underpinned by the real self.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: So healthy identity formation requires tolerating uncertainty, and it also requires something more difficult, and that's the willingness to encounter parts of oneself that are uncomfortable or experienced as unacceptable.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Identity isn't only built from strength, because it has to include vulnerability, contradiction, doubt, and change.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: And adolescents who are permitted to question narratives without being shamed or dismissed are more likely to develop integrated identities.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes when I talk to patients about parts, essentially what I'm saying is you as a self are made up of many parts, and that includes the able part, the functional part, the part that is frightened, the part that is underdeveloped, the part that is fearful, self-critical, and so on.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I liken it to a house with many rooms.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: And each room represents a part, but there are some rooms that we get stuck in and we don't know our way out because we can't find the door.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: And there are other rooms that we spend a lot of time in because they feel safe.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: But true psychological integration, I believe, is the ability to access all of the rooms, regardless of what it's like when you're in there.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: But the capacity to do this brings the parts together.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: That is what integration is.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: Integration is the connecting of parts.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Peter Fonege's work on mentalization becomes crucial here because the capacity to understand one's own mind as separate from others allows differentiation without fragmentation or falling apart.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: The adolescent can say, I think differently without feeling annihilated by relational defense.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: Identity formation is integration.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: It requires that early attachment experiences, social belonging, cognitive development, and personal reflection gradually align.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: It can't be rushed or imposed, it has to be discovered.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I suppose, in a sense, you know, if we think about who we are, how many of our own rooms do we occupy?
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: If we look back to who we believed we were five years ago, does that picture and that description match with the person you are now?
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: Will it be the same in five years' time?
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, the answer is self-evident.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: No, it doesn't stay fixed.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: It continues to evolve.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a process.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a problem to fix, it's a process to manage.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: And by manage, I mean be able to allow ourselves, and particularly with our children, to recognize and validate all of the parts of that process.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: Growing healthy small people is something which requires an acceptance of the parts, even when those parts are particularly unpleasant or demanding and challenging, because it's part of the person.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: As we are able to recognize the this is who you are and who you are becoming with our children, what we do is to nurture the process, nurture the child.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: I will be back with episode five shortly.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: And episode five is about deception and self deception.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.