Most of us have been taught to define ourselves by what we do, not who we are. In this reflection, I explore what it means to move beyond roles and achievements to uncover the deeper truths that live beneath the surface—the parts of ourselves that long to be seen, trusted, and understood.

I’ve heard people say things in therapy that most would never dare to admit out loud. When someone whispers, “I wish my parents would die,” I don’t hear cruelty — I hear pain that has nowhere else to go. Complex PTSD isn’t about one traumatic event. It’s about growing up in an environment where love and fear coexist, where safety was never guaranteed. This piece explores what it means to live with that contradiction — to crave closeness while fearing it, to long for healing while still carrying the weight of survival.

I’ve noticed how often we measure ourselves against an invisible standard of “progress.” Patients worry they’re not changing fast enough, or that circling the same themes means they’re failing. But therapy isn’t a straight climb upward. Growth is messy, cyclical, and often quiet. What looks like stasis is sometimes deep integration. Repetition isn’t failure—it’s how we turn experience into meaning.

Frankl, the creator of Logotherapy, explains that survival is based on meaning and that the absence of meaning is attributed to the vast array of mental health concerns which individuals can experience, such as depression, anxiety and substance abuse. Fundamental elements of human existence involve pain, guilt and death or as Frankl termed it, the Tragic Triad . Logotherapy promotes that individuals embody a Tragic Optimism, that is, despite what they are faced with, their stance or attitude towards the experience can dramatically change their interpretation of the experience. An individual who struggles to embody this optimism instead suffers and becomes stuck in what Frankl termed as an Existential Vacuum