Exercise

Maintaining Identity - Getting Started

What gives us our sense of identity? We all inhabit many different roles in our lives (e.g. nurse, manager, parent, painter, problem-solver, friend, carer). Some of these may be very familiar and comfortable to us so that we slip in and out of them without thinking.

It is these roles, the relationships we have (and thus the communities we are part of) the things that we do, that are important to the way we feel and think about ourselves. They enable us to say “this is who I am”, they enable us to know how to be.

 

Part 1

Consider what makes you who you are. Can you identify 20 things (they might be attributes or qualities you have, roles you play, things you do) that you think best create your ‘identity kit’? Is it possible to reduce this number down to the 10 most important things? Please bring your conclusions to our next meeting.

Part 2

What happens to our identity (or sense of self) when we enter a strange situation in which many or most of those things become irrelevant (or appear to be so)? Becoming a patient in hospital (or at home) or a resident in a care home are obvious examples. How does this experience affect the way we feel, the way we behave, the way we think about ourselves?

In the context of your own care setting, identify someone who is a very new patient or resident and who appears agitated or unsettled. Spend 20 minutes (or more if you are able) sitting with them, listening to them and learning to see their situation and their environment through their eyes. What is their experience like?

Repeat this process with someone else. What do you notice? What do you learn? What does it make you think about in terms of ‘identity’?