On Becoming Who We Already Are

The Quiet Question at the Centre

Most of us are not really trying to become someone else. We are trying to become ourselves without losing our work, our relationships, or our sanity in the process. Psychology has a name for this: self-actualisation. Maslow described it as the unfolding of what a person “can be” and, at some level, already is. It sounds clinical, but in plain language it means: growing into the person you were meant to be, rather than the person fear and circumstance trained you to be. Rogers frames therapy as a space where a person can become 

“more fully functioning,” less controlled by conditions of worth and more guided by an inner sense of rightness. - Carl R. Rogers – On Becoming a Person: A Therapist’s View of Psychotherapy (1961).

People rarely come to therapy asking for “self-actualisation”. They come because something hurts:

• anxiety that no longer listens to reason,
• a relationship that keeps collapsing in familiar ways,
• a loneliness that appears in a life that “looks fine on paper”,
• a sadness that lingers long after the crisis is over.
• “If I am not just firefighting… how do I actually want to live?”

Good therapy is not only emotional first aid. It doesn’t exist just to patch you up so you can go back to playing the same role in the same painful way. It begins to ask what kind of life your symptoms have been protesting against. Self-actualisation is not about becoming perfect; it is about becoming more real: less driven by old fear, less organised by other people’s expectations, more guided by an inner sense of rightness, even when nobody is watching.

In The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment. Winnicott describes the “false self” as a defensive, compliant self-organised around external demands, and the “true self” as spontaneous, creative, and felt as real – very close to your contrast between the person you were meant to be and the person life scared you into being - D. W. Winnicott – “Ego Distortion in Terms of True and False Self” (1960)

Masks, Roles and the Backstage Self

By the time an adult walk into a therapy room, they often have a whole wardrobe of masks ready. There is the Responsible One, the Always-Okay One, the Funny One, the Clever One, the Strong-for-Everyone-Else. These roles did not come from nowhere. They kept us safe in families where there was no room for our feelings, in schools where difference was punished, in workplaces where vulnerability is treated as a defect. They are not lies, but they are only partial truths. Some parts of us were allowed on stage. Others were sent backstage and told to stay quiet.

“The persona is a kind of mask, designed to make a definite impression upon others and to conceal the true nature of the individual.” -  Carl Gustav Jung, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology

Self-actualisation begins with a simple, unsettling question: who is still waiting in the wings of your own life, holding their breath, hoping to be allowed onto the scene? Therapy is the place where the backstage door is gently opened and someone says, “If you come out, I will not throw you back into the dark.

“In social interaction, there is a front region where the performance is given, and a back region where individuals can set aside their role.” -  Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

Rogers, Jung and Meeting the Rest of Ourselves

Two different strands of psychology meet at this point. Carl Rogers spoke about the actualising tendency: a natural movement in every person towards growth, healing and authenticity, given the right conditions. Those conditions sound deceptively simple empathy, honesty, and acceptance without judgement. Under that kind of light, people do not become monsters. More often they become kinder, truer and strangely more ordinary.

“Man becomes whole, integrated, calm, fertile, and happy when (and only when) the process of individuation is complete, when the conscious and the unconscious have learned to live at peace and to complement one another.” - C. G. Jung, Man and His Symbols

Carl Jung, from another angle, spoke of individuation: the slow process of becoming a whole person, where we become conscious of the parts we have disowned our vulnerability, our rage, our longings and begin to integrate them instead of dumping them on everyone around us.

Put quite simply, Rogers reminds us that something in us is already trying to grow, and therapy helps protect that growth. Jung reminds us that we are already larger than the small role we have been squeezed into, and therapy helps us meet the rest of ourselves. Self-actualisation sits in the crossing of those two paths.

“We cannot change, we cannot move away from what we are, until we thoroughly accept what we are. Then change seems to come about almost unnoticed.” -  Carl R. Rogers, On Becoming a Person

When the Old Story No Longer Fits

There comes a quiet moment in many lives when the story we have been living no longer fits. The high achiever realises that success has not cured their emptiness. The family carer notices they have no idea what they want for themselves. The “strong one” feels their strength cracking in places nobody else can see. From the outside, nothing dramatic has changed. On the inside, something whispers: if I carry on exactly like this, something in me will die.

“Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.” - Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak

Therapy does not hand out a new script and send you away. It sits with you in the gap between the old role and the not-yet-born life, and asks: who are you when you are not performing? The answer is rarely immediate. It arrives slowly, in sighs of relief, in uncomfortable truths, in the first tiny acts of saying “no” where you used to say “it’s fine”.

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves… Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” - Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Self-Actualisation Is Not Selfishness

In many families and cultures, any movement towards the self is quickly labelled selfish. “Who do you think you are?” “You’ve changed.” “You used to be more reasonable.” But self-actualisation is not the same as abandoning responsibility to chase a shining dream. It looks more like telling the truth about what hurts, setting boundaries that stop quiet resentment from poisoning love, admitting that the way you have been living is not sustainable, and owning your gifts instead of either hiding them or using them only to keep everyone else comfortable.

“What you are is what you have been. What you will be is what you do now.” - Buddha (attributed)

A person who is becoming more themselves is often easier to live with, not harder: less resentful, because they are no longer betraying themselves every day; clearer, because there is less inner confusion; safer, because they are less driven by unacknowledged rage, shame or hunger. In that sense, self-actualisation can be an act of care for the people around you as well.

“Self-actualizing people are, without one single exception, involved in a cause outside their own skin, in something outside of themselves.” - Abraham H. Maslow, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature

The Therapy Room as a Place Without Performance

In a good therapeutic relationship, nothing has to be performed. You do not have to impress the therapist. You do not have to protect them from your truth. You do not have to be the strong one, the easy one, the amusing one. You are allowed to be ashamed, jealous, petty, confused and contradictory, and still held in regard.

“Unconditional positive regard means being warm and nonjudgmental toward other people… accepting the client’s goals and their right to choose their own path, even if one might inwardly disagree.” - Carl R. Rogers,

Rogers called this unconditional positive regard: a way of seeing a person as more than their worst day or their most defensive behaviour. It is not indulgence; it is an act of faith. There is something in you worth trusting, even when you cannot feel it yet. Under that kind of steady gaze, people begin, slowly, to treat themselves less like enemies and more like someone they might want to look after.

“How can I provide a relationship which this person may use for his own personal growth?” - Carl R. Rogers

A Direction, Not a Finish Line

Self-actualisation is not a finish line. There is no morning when you wake up and think, “I am now fully myself; job done.” It is more like a direction of travel. Each time you tell the truth instead of shrinking, each time you choose a kinder boundary instead of silent bitterness, each time you notice an old pattern and gently refuse to replay it, you take a step in the direction of your real life.

“Self-actualization is not only an end state but also the process of actualizing one’s potentialities at any time, in any amount.” - Abraham H. Maslow

There will still be bad days, regressions, and moments when the old costume feels safer than the new skin. The difference is that now you can feel when you have wandered too far from yourself. You know the taste of your own truth, and you notice more quickly when you are starving yourself of it.

A Blessing for the Road

For anyone who is in therapy, considering it, or quietly doing the work alone with books, late-night notes and difficult conversations, perhaps this is enough for now: you do not have to become someone else to be worthy. The work is to become more truthfully who you already are, and to allow that person an actual life.

The highlands of the soul are not reached in a day. But every honest session, every small act of courage, every time you turn towards your own heart instead of away from it, is another step up the path. Somewhere ahead, there is a view of your life that makes more sense than the one you started with. Therapy cannot walk the path for you, but it can keep you company while you remember that you were never meant to stay in the valley forever.