Becoming Yourself
You know the terminology.
You’ve read the books, listened to the podcasts, and found communities that already made room for you.
Years ago you rejected the message that something about you was wrong, and you meant it.
Then someone’s expression shifts, and you’re editing yourself before you’ve decided to.
The same question is still waiting underneath everything you’ve settled.
Who am I if I stop being who everyone else needs me to be?
It doesn’t go away because you answered it on paper.
You were the good kid.
An acceptable partner, a devout follower, the person your family could understand.
Each of those was a version of you that kept you attached, until the life you were living stopped feeling like yours.
You cultivated those relationships. At what cost?
If you spent years learning that authenticity threatened attachment, belonging, safety, or love, those lessons stay active long after you consciously reject them.
You’re not on the same page with yourself.
Is the judgment against your true self accurate, or have you heard it so many times that you came to believe it?
That one is yours to answer, and you’ve had enough answers handed to you.
Here’s where I learned to sit with that question.
Two years of my doctoral internship were at the Montrose Center.
My published dissertation studied spiritual trauma in the lives of LGBTQIA+ people.
Those two years and that research are why we start further in.
I affirm queer identity and the development of your authentic self and your authentic life.
Early in the work, I name identity out loud.
That includes the identity dynamics between the two of us.
Naming them levels the field.
Then we talk gently about what the systems you grew up inside taught you about who you are. Family, community, a lifetime of messaging.
We go slowly on purpose, because the pace is what lets you look at any of it.
The fear that choosing yourself means losing everyone gets held here and looked at honestly.
Nobody here decides for you which parts are really you.
You do that.
And you do it with company.
You recognize a feeling before it owns you.
Where it came from stops being a mystery.
Then you decide whether it fits the person you’re intentionally becoming.
Conversations with people you love stop requiring a draft.
You stop negotiating your identity to get into the room.
Belonging without performing turns from a value you hold into the way an ordinary Tuesday goes.
You don’t have to already know your destination.
I see clients in Montrose, in Cypress, and online anywhere in Texas.
Call me today at: (832) 308-0467.
The first conversation is a free 15-minute consultation.
You can also start by email: lisa.vanvleet@yahoo.com.
Just knowing you want to become your authentic self is where we begin.
If you've read this far, some part of you is already leaning toward the deeper work.
The skills brought you this far. The deeper work is how the old gravity loosens its grip, how three in the morning gets quieter, how the color comes back up.
This is the work I'd be glad to do beside you.
