Dare to Be Differentiated

How do you interact with others? How do you interact with yourself? Are you successfully able to separate your thoughts from your feelings? Are you able to maintain your own thoughts and feelings when you are around your immediate family or your romantic partner? If not, you may struggle with differentiation of self.

The ability to differentiate is strongly related to how we were raised and our parents’ own ability to differentiate. The ability to differentiate is a pattern that, like many other skills that are modeled for us in childhood, is passed on from parent to child. If your parents often let their emotions take the wheel and make decisions based upon those emotions, you are likely to do the same. When you were growing up, how did your family handle disagreement? Were you allowed to have your own developmentally appropriate opinions? If not, your family may have operated on a low level of differentiation.

The problem with the inability to differentiate is that you, or, the self, struggles to navigate life with confidence and a solid sense of who they are. It is hard to be your own guide. You may have trouble taking responsibility. It is likely difficult to express your feelings and you try to bottle them up until you ultimately explode. You may go along with plans or ideas that you really have no interest in. Instead of controlling what you can within yourself, you attempt to control your family, friends, or romantic partners. We become entangled with those that are close to us, we allow that entanglement to influence our emotional state, and we let our emotional state direct our behaviors.       

If you recognize this pattern within your family and yourself, the good thing is, as I have said before, we hold the power to change a pattern. We can work to develop our own unique identity. We can practice being our own guides. We can work on making our own decisions without feeling the need to seek our parents’ or partner’s opinion. We can practice dealing with conflict in healthy ways. We can dare to differentiate.

If you would like to speak to a professional counselor or psychologist about this and are in the Chicago area, please feel free to contact Olive Branch Counseling Associates, Inc. at 708-633-8000. We are located at 6819 West 167^th Street in Tinley Park, Illinois 60477.

Hillary R.,

Masters Level Intern, 2023

Sources –

PhD, W. by: P.-R. T., & MD, R. by: R. A. (n.d.). Differentiation of self: An overview & why it’s important in relationships. Choosing Therapy. https://www.choosingtherapy.com/differentiation-of-self/#:~:text=Differentiation%20of%20self%20is%20a,stonger%20self%2Dindentity%20in%20therapy.