TRAINING  &  COACHING  for  MANAGERS & LEADERS

Case Histories

Systemic Solutions for Identity Loss

Systemic Coaching ... Systemic Coach Training

Many health professionals and patients use drugs as a substitute for change. Drugs are easier than applying intelligence, focus and analytical skills to complex relationships. Drugs are cheaper for patients (in the short term) and much more profitable for health professionals than resolving underlying emotional and relationship issues.

Have you Lost your Mind?

Many people, following trauma, abuse or in cult-like organizations, lose access to their human qualities, values, integrity and emotions, leading to symptoms of what we call identity loss. Identity loss is a common consequence of stress. Symptoms of identity loss are common.

If the "lost" qualities or emotions represent a significant part of a person's human identity, the symptoms become easier to recognize. We estimate that about 25% of Western people will show at least one of the following symptoms (based on workshop and client evaluations in Western countries). Do you show one or more of these common systemic symptoms?

1. Identity Bonds - relationship behavior is controlled by (bonded to) other people
2. Identification - behavior attempts to duplicate a role model
3. Identity Conflict - behavior swings between two or more false identifications
4. Lost Identity - persona cannot express "sense of self" or "sense of life"

Lasting solutions are possible. If you want to recognize, resolve and prevent identity loss and relationship bonds; consider Soulwork Systemic Coaching or Soulwork systemic coach training.

Systemic Diagnosis of Identity Loss

Soulwork systemic diagnosis helps you assess your emotions, trauma, conflict, relationships and consequences. It helps you understand why you do things you don't want to do - and helps you change those behaviors. And you benefit quickly.

In systemic diagnosis, identification refers to the unconscious acceptance (under stress) of a dominant personality. Identity Loss refers to chronic highly dissociated behavior (consider a stereotype mathematics professor engaged in solving a complex problem) and Identity Conflict refers to chronic bi-polar behavior or mood swings (think of "split personality").

A Relationship Bond refers to limiting emotion/belief complex by which a person compensates for perceived injustice.

Identification - I don't know what possessed me!

Most people act as if they are partially identified - as most people learn life skills by identifying with role models. An identified person may feel normal when acting in ways that other people consider abnormal.

Personality identification follows systemic rules, and can be recognized with systemic diagnosis.

• A victim identified person expresses chronic anger and rage
• A dead person identified person expresses chronic sadness and melancholy
• A hero identified person expresses chronic fear and anxiety attacks

The symptoms are often easy to perceive – a victim identified person is generally suspicious and may enjoy annoying or tormenting people; a dead person identified person is generally melancholy and may be obsessed with death; and a hero identified person is generally fearful and anxious and may avoid change. Sometimes identifications are mixed - identification with a dead victim may occur in a child who is born following an induced abortion.

An identified person feels intense  emotions when expressing the unexpressed emotions of a role model (consider your emotional experience at a cinema). Such emotional expressions may be a massive relief, whatever the consequences. An identified person may describe an experience of "rightness in a wrong world".

[ Identifications ] [ Consequences of Abortion ] [ Learning Disabilities ]

Identity Conflict - Split Personality

Have you experienced inner conflict? Part of you wanted to - but part of you didn't? A person with identity conflict may feel normal, just and right, even when switching between two distinct persona with profoundly different behaviors and beliefs. (If a person forgets his or her behavior in the other extreme - this might be diagnosed as multiple personality syndrome).

Identity Conflict can be dissolved with systemic coaching. In severe cases,

• you cannot focus on one thing for more than a few minutes
• you show mood swings between two personalities
• you deny promises or decisions made in the "other" personality
• you may be diagnosed with bipolar syndrome or multiple personality syndrome

Less severe symptoms are so common that they may be difficult to perceive. We can help people with severe mood swings (between the two "sides" of each conflict).

Lost Identity - Nobody is Home

Do you know people who are so preoccupied with their daydreams that they cannot make decisions? (They are a salesman's dream - they can be told what they want.) They may be overly compliant when young - and may become obsessive-compulsive or addicts when older. They may also try to fulfill their empty lives in cult-like organizations.

Lost Identity can be recognized with systemic diagnosis. There seem to be two types - some people disconnect from their core values (or self); and some people disconnect from shared reality (family or community). We help people reconnect with themselves. Who do you know who ...

• express few or no emotions and appear dissociated
• have little or no internal motivation - they must be told what to do
• cannot define own goals - they must be told what to want
• describe feeling detached - they feel outside their own bodies
• describe dark or empty spaces inside or close to their bodies

Systemic Coaching ... Systemic Coach Training

Solutions for Identity Loss

Soulwork systemic coaching offers solutions for symptoms of identity loss. Identity bonds, identifications, identity conflict and lost identity are common and easy to perceive once you notice them. Systemic coach training helps coaches, therapists and counselors deal with these issues.

Copyright © Martyn Carruthers 2003 - 2005 All rights reserved.