Are You Struggling With Your Identity?

Are You Struggling With Your Identity?

In this heartfelt episode, I unpack the four most common types of identity crisis I see in women—role confusion, loss of self-worth, sexual identity, and spiritual identity—and how trauma and expectations can disconnect us from who we truly are.

You’ll learn:

• What identity crisis really looks like (it’s not always obvious)
• How trauma can shake your sense of self
• 3 powerful ways to begin reclaiming your peace and reconnecting with your inner voice

I share real stories, including my own, and offer guidance rooted in AromaPsychology and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to help you find compassion, clarity, and calm.

Whether you’re in midlife, navigating a shift in your role, or carrying shame around who you “should” be—this episode will meet you with empathy and offer real steps forward.

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Check out my website to see how we can align HERE!

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Transcript

 Beautiful, beautiful people. so happy to have you here. I want to create a disclaimer that I implore you to look through eyes of compassion and love and lean into that.

It's so easy for us to judge ourselves and others when it comes to these controversial, heavy topics. We're gonna be talking about are you struggling with your identity? That can take on so many different forms. But before we get into that, my disclaimer to you is take a deep breath.

Open your mind and heart to see through eyes of compassion for yourself primarily, as well as to those who you may know in your life that are going through some sort of identity crisis. Because it takes a lot of courage to become aware of what our particular identity. Is and our struggle, whatever that is for you, I know what my struggles are.

You know what your struggles are. So that being said, those of you who are coming in now,

I hope this information is worth it for you. I will love to celebrate you to know that you took the time to be here and to listen to my perspective, to how I support others and my perspective of these very heavy and seemingly controversial subjects.

For those who do not know who I am, my name is Amy Robinson. I am an aroma psychologist, which makes me a holistic practitioner. Yes, I am certified. Yes, I went through schooling for that and I continue to educate myself in the aromatherapy field, as well as aroma psychology, which is the specialized field of using essential oil.

To work with emotional dysregulation especially in women with trauma. I am a cognitive behavioral therapy coach, I work with your mind to help you make sense of your trauma, to make sense of what's happened to you in your past.

I help you with action plans, to step out of that and to step into your best self and to let go of years of heavy weight of trauma.  I do that using aroma psychology and cognitive behavioral therapy techniques.

Even more than the education that I've received, because I've received a lot of education in this field already, is the passion that I have for helping you. Because each time a new potential client comes my way, I fall in love with them immediately and we build a relationship of safety and trust.

That forever sticks deeply in my heart because I understand what it feels like to be a trauma survivor, a sexual abuse survivor, an emotional and mental abuse survivor. I understand how that feels and what it feels to live in that environment and to step out of that environment and to become an empowered person so that I could thrive in my life.

So I understand that even before you step in my space. I can feel that with you and I work, my skillset is to tap into that, to support you, to help you to get out of your current situation into your best self. So that's me. That's who I am in a nutshell. Other than that, I love a good coffee. I love quality time with my friends.

Oh, I love those deeper interconnections. I don't have a lot of friends by choice. But the friends I have are gold. They're silver, actually. 'cause silver is a lot more challenging to find than gold. And they are lifers and they're good people. So that being said, let's get into this. Are you struggling with your identity?

Are you struggling as a midlife woman, with the role of mother, wife, single person? Newly divorced person. Newly separated person. Are you dealing with career shifts in your life that force you to question, who am I? What do I bring to the table? Maybe you're a young person who struggles with your sexual identity.

That happens. It's what we're imperfect. That's life. It happens. Maybe you're in your midlife and you're struggling with these. Yes, I have had spiritual women come into my space who struggle with these things. All of them. All of the above. And it affects them deeply. Is that how you feel?

Have you felt so shaken by your loss of identity or your. Maybe never being able to connect to your full identity, to the point where you just don't even know who you are and how to step forward in your life. That's understandable. What causes these identity crisis? First, let's talk about what an identity crisis is.

It's when you question your sense of self on a deep level. The world we live in is chaotic. It's gotten more chaotic. We think of older generations. I'm 50. My generation was chaotic. My parents' generation was chaotic. I can't even imagine what our younger generation is going through. I want to connect. I want to be a part of it, but the pressure is harder than it's ever been.

And if we can feel it in our midlife, imagine our young people feeling it and not understanding, still trying to figure out who they are as people. So it's a questioning of our sense of self to the deepest of levels that these moments can create emotional chaos, turmoil, especially for those who have grown up in a home where they've experienced trauma.

Even some young people have grown up in a loving home and still have a deep sense of questioning who they are, just because. Of their imperfection, of maybe their environment ; it forces them to question themselves. There are four main types of identity crisis that are common among the women that I see and work with.

The beautiful. Women that I work with, and men, if you're watching this and need a coach to support you, my husband does the same thing I do. Just, well, less the aromatherapy and more of the cognitive behavioral therapy and neuroscience.  He is working, he's a cognitive behavioral therapy coach as well as a neuroscience coach.

So he works primarily with the mindset and the mind, but he works with men. That have to work their way through trauma. So if you know a man in your life who's struggling, let me know. I'll let him know. Or you can, go to his page. The man coach, the man coach on Instagram. His Instagram may not have a lot in it, but I promise you he's a very impactful coach

his supports to the deepest of levels and feels to the deepest of levels as well. So these four roles, these four identity crisis that we are common. One, the role crisis. Maybe you're a woman who got married young like I did. I got married at 22. I was young, my husband and I, we were young, we were full of passion, fell in love with each other Very quickly, we decided to get married.

And we fell in love and we just loved the idea of being married. We really did. We best friends, we still are today, but then four years later, I became a mom, right? I became a mom. Now, I was not just a wife. I had to adjust to that role and then I became a mom on top of that, and that just drew me off, kil her.

'cause I didn't know how to do that. That's the first time I've ever become a mom. Right. And those in our spiritual community add spiritual responsibilities on top of that. That was a lot going on back then. Right? So many of you women are in that situation. Some of you are in the role of a mother, maybe 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 kids

or maybe you're at a period of your life where you've been married, you've got the parent thing down, you've got the mother thing down. Maybe you didn't lose your identity as a mom at the time. You were a really amazing mom, and I'm gonna say this to every single one of you mothers out there. I promise you, you did the best you could with what you had.

If there's any guilt around that, understand if you see your child struggling, how they respond to you speaks volumes. You did what you could with what you had. 'cause we all carry trauma. And we bring that on with our children. We pass it on to our generational transgenerational trauma until we become what?

What does the generation say? I don't even know. This might be old now woke, right? We wake up, become aware. You start to work on ourselves, or maybe it's a career change. Maybe you're a career woman. Maybe you've stayed single and you have a heavy responsible spiritual load. You have a really good job that you really love, and now you're getting to a point where you're like, do I want this anymore?

What do I do in my life? Any role change can create a crisis. It can create, a heavy sense of, no longer feeling fulfilled. Trauma can intensify this. If you grew up in a house with chronic and complex trauma, what does that look like? Alcohol abuse, domestic abuse. Emotional abuse, mental abuse, sexual abuse, and maybe you've come into our spiritual community.

Maybe you were raised in our spiritual community and still saw these things because it happens. These things happen. Imperfection comes into our households and maybe we were the product of that, and then we get married to our own mate, and there's a level of that in our own home.

And so you're trying to be a mother, a wife, a spiritual woman, trying to be guided by God's principles. And this is a challenge for you, this can happen, and trauma can intensify the uncertainty. It can make you question who you are, what's my role? Am I a wife first? Am I a mother first?

Am I a spiritual servant first? I want to be, but how does this impact the rest of my life? You want these roles to align, but you just don't know how. So that's one type of identity crisis. The second loss of self-worth trauma, especially in childhood or relationship trauma. Women who have been in a narcissistic relationship in marriage and they've come to realize that their childhood, they had overbearing parents or maybe their, one of their parents was a covert narcissist where nobody else saw it, but it was a subtle, crazy, chaotic war zone in your home that will chip away at your self worth.

It will. Force you to question what your values really are. Even in the truth, even in our spiritual community, it could force you to question why imperfection. Our God knows these things. He doesn't protect us from everything. He allows us to see life for what it is. We have to learn how to work within that.

Loss of self-worth can be a part of that. You may have spent years seeking validation from others, holding onto that one friend who's constantly telling you how good you are, your mate, always having to cling to them. Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me? Seeking outward validation? Or maybe you have become so imbalanced even in your spiritual privileges.

Because you're clinging from a toxic place to try to find validation. I did that for a lot of years and my life still ended up getting crazy because responsibility and privilege, spiritual privilege does not equate spirituality. Spiritual privilege does not equate spirituality and maturity.

Those two are not the same. So you can say, I'm a pioneer. That should be my self worth. That's a bit of an identity crisis because before that, you are a servant of Jehovah. Before that you are one who he loves. So what happens if you can't fulfill that role anymore? What happens if. That is taken away.

You lose your identity because it was wrapped up in the wrong things, right? I'm gonna clarify this one more time. Spiritual privilege, pioneer, elder, elder's, wife, whatever that is for you. Missionary, SKE, grad, whatever, does not equate spiritual maturity. It just means you're willing and you're gonna do it.

But that doesn't always mean that you have the spiritual maturity to back that up. Just being real here, I've seen it too many times. I've personally experienced it in my life. I've seen that. So that validation, it might become, it might come for, I wanna do this, I wanna do that, I wanna do this, I wanna do that, I wanna do this, I wanna do that.

This, this the third sexual identity. For those of you who are just coming in, look through eyes of compassion and love, not judgment. It's easy to judge. I can't tell you how many times I've heard somebody say.

Ew, they're gross. Look at them, you're homosexual. That is not God's way of thinking, y'all. It is not God's way of thinking. Jesus would've never spoken in that way. He loves people. Doesn't matter what their sexual orientation is. Anyone who exercises faith in him will see life.

Anyone, and you don't have the right to judge it. So if a person, a young person in your life is struggling with their identity, if a midlife woman or man is struggling with their identity, their sense of self may be that maybe that's what they attracted to. It's not the person, it's the act that makes the difference.

It's not the person, it's the act that makes the difference and that is between them and God, not you. So First Thessalonians, make it your aim to live quietly, mind your business. That being said, what if you are on the other end? What if you have struggled with identity, sexual identity? I know I have before I came into this beautiful spiritual community.

I struggled with that. Midlife and trauma can bring out these emotions and feelings in people, men and women. Young children, young people are being exposed to it more so than ever. The world we live in is heightened in this way,

we're all imperfect, so they may have leanings toward things. As a parent, are you equipped to love them through it? Are you equipped to lean into your empathy instead of judgment? I have personally seen parents cast their children away when those children needed them the most

so sexual identity, although we're gonna just talk about it briefly, it can. Make you feel like you are dirty or wrong, and the truth is you're not. You are so loved and valued. I work with women within our spiritual community who struggle with this, and it kills 'em to the core. It hurts them so deeply.

And that pain they carry, the shame they carry. Because of others. Lack of awareness and the stupid things they say. Right? Judgment. So I implore you if you're one who, maybe you don't have this problem, maybe you don't struggle with your sexual identity, you would, you were born and you're like, Hey, I love the opposite sex and that's what it is, and that's whatever I'm, so I kudos to you.

Kudos to you. That does not give you the right to judge others for their struggles . On the other hand, if you're one who, as soon as you could think about these things, you started to figure out what is it? What's going on? Understand you are so loved, you can find peace in the healing process.

Because that in itself is a form of trauma, and especially today with so much hate crime out there, we don't wanna add to that by our own opinions, and we don't want to absorb those things as well because we may struggle with them. So I implore you, again, I encourage you to dig and tap into your deeper level.

Compassion for yourself and for those in your life and in our spiritual community who are struggling because that's what First Corinthians six, nine exposes. Yet that is what some of you were. And some of them, because Greek and Roman history is filled with homosexual acts. Many of them have changed.

They stopped the act of it and they've struggled and they've come to peace with their God, with our God, and now they are ruling into heavens. So we don't have the right to judge any of them anyone. Period. So our youth today, this is becoming a bit of an epidemic. I speak to parents that come into my dms, you mothers who are struggling with your children, who are struggling with this, I implore you.

Lean into your love and compassion. Listen to them. Don't judge them. Don't get angry with them for feeling the way they do. It's human. We're all human. Okay. So any of these things, any one of these role identities, these crisis, the role crisis, the loss of self-worth, sexual identity, can link to trauma because trauma can shake our identity to the core, whether it's how we see ourselves in relationships, in our roles, and even in our sexual identity.

It can create confusion and inner conflict. That can make the journey for healing awkward and daunting. But any one of these, can breed depression, deep anxiety, but I want you to understand that you can find and embrace your peace. These are not things that are not figureoutable.

They can be, you can come to terms with these things. I implore you to lean into love and self-compassion and compassion and love for others, and not judgment. Our own imperfections, whatever they are, are a need for forgiveness from our God above all of us. We all battle with something. What are three ways that you can embrace your peace?

One release. Your old expectation release. What this expectation is for you if you're a mom, I have to be the best mom in the world. You're not going to be. But you could be a mom who loves her children. You could be a mom who helps her children to grow in their own self identity by working on yourself.

Release that you're not who you used to be and that's okay. Maybe you're getting older, maybe you become a caregiver and feel like you've lost yourself. Maybe you and your husband are empty nesters like my husband and I, and you don't know what to do with yourselves sometimes.

You're not who you used to be. It's okay to open up space to figure things out together. It's okay to let go of society's expectations of us, including our spiritual community the majority of trauma I work with, along with women struggling with their own identities is the judgment of others within the spiritual community.

Everybody is at their own level of growth. It doesn't mean our organization is not truth because it is, the purest organization out there. The people in it come with a lot of baggage.

Many of you expect way too much of others because. You expect way too much of you, and I want to make this clear. That is trauma. That is trauma that is not godly. Devotion. When you project your judgments and what you should and should not do on others, that is not godly devotion. You are not showing yourself to be more godlike than someone else.

You are exposing your own drama. That's what's happening. And then you're dumping it on someone else, and now somebody else has to figure that out, right? So release those expectations, get rid of 'em. Two, reconnect with your inner voice. I do an exercise with each of my clients when they're ready for it.

'cause we have to work our way to that process where they're ready for it to figure out what their inner voice is, who it is. We all have an inner voice and we do things not from our own inner voice, but from other people's inner voice. What's your inner voice saying ? Micah six, eight. Modesty. Learn your limitations.

Is it somebody else telling you what to do, or is it you telling yourself what to do? Is it God's word telling you what to do? Live in modesty, cherish loyalty, love justice, love people. Be kind. Be tactful, be loving, so many things at play, so reconnect with that inner person or that inner voice.

Trauma has us tuning into other people's voices, so you have to figure out a way to listen to your own. I do a lot of work on this with my clients to figure out who their inner voice is. I have them name it, I have them work through it. It becomes a person so that they can learn how to separate themselves from that person and heal themselves.

How do you, how can you start, if you're just starting on this path? Learn to practice mindfulness. Try to figure out your present situation is to use essential loyals to do this. I encourage them. I actually create a tailored, unique protocol for each of my one-on-one clients, um, within my community.

Um, within my membership, we do this more on a whole basis and I give them more of a, um, because everybody who comes into my healing membership actually fills out an intake form so I can get to know you better and tailor my coaching for you. So you're not going to find the things if you love this free stuff.

If you love my content and you connect with my coaching imagine when you invest in it. It's gonna be tailored for you. You're gonna find topics that are more honed in on what you are working through. I coach in there twice a week on two different topics, aroma psychology and cognitive behavioral therapy.

Learning how to first, taking steps, practice mindfulness, trying to figure out what your inner voice is, who your inner voice is. Where is it mostly coming from? Mom, dad, friends, aunts, you know, aunties, uncles, right? Because I guarantee you, God's voice is not that harsh.

And when you learn to separate your trauma from who our God really is, you're gonna read the Bible in a very different way and you're gonna connect with him. In a very different way, more Christ-like, . The third thing, practice self-compassion.

This is something that each and every one of my clients has an issue with, we've grown up in trauma environments. Scarcity mindset, go, go, go, go, go. I gotta do this. I gotta do that. I gotta be good around this person.

I gotta do this. I gotta be,

I'll give you an example. My husband and I are currently going through a very heavy trial. One of the most challenging to date.

Not one person who's faithful to our God will be without trials. This one, it kicked us in the gut.

I have to find a new normal. What does that consist of? My husband and I, volunteer our time, full time. We don't have the energy right now. We were supposed to plan to go in our ministry yesterday morning. The weight of exhaustion on us. There's no way I said a prayer. I forgave myself 'cause I already know the God I serve is gentle, understanding, kind, loving, merciful.

Abundant and loving kindness. So I was battling myself. I need to get up, I gotta go. I gotta do this. I gotta be there. I gotta be seen, ba blah, blah, blah. Nope. I look at my husband, he looks at me.

My husband's a very gentle man, had very gentle things to say. We gave each other a kiss, rolled back to sleep. Got up almost at noon. It was wonderful and then had amazing day. Self-compassion was able to get out in my ministry last night because I wanted to, 'cause I had the energy. Adjusting your schedule sometimes is what it is.

What does practicing self-compassion look like for you? It's non-existent for trauma survivors. I coach my clients to do this. I coach them to learn. Ways, very unique ways in their life to be able to practice this. Why? Because it is the doorway in how we heal.

And many, I've heard, many say they can't do this because of one scripture. In all of 66 books of the Bible, they will base their life on that one Scripture. Get behind me, Satan. Don't be easy on yourself, y'all. That's a misreading research. That spiritual organization has some stuff on that.

Learning self-compassion is so important. Healing our identity requires it. It requires us to slow it down. Pay attention, reset, pause, pray. Calm ourselves down, and learn how to be self-compassionate. Embracing peace starts with accepting that you are on a journey, and that in itself is enough because before anything else, especially if you're within my spiritual community, you've come this far only with his support.

Imagine if he just. Released a little bit and actually leaned into that a little bit. Really thought about what that means for you. He already loves you. He's loved you. Before you even knew him. He gave his son for you. You're already making his heart rejoice. So imagine if you learn how to find modesty, balance, self-compassion, nurturing your soul.

How much more that relationship with him will go deeper and grow. It's not for the faint of heart. Are you struggling with your identity? Understand that you're not alone, whether it's your role, identity crisis, your loss of self-worth, identity crisis, your sexual identity crisis. Understand you are not alone and you are so loved and cared for, and that links to deeper level trauma.

There are ways to move forward. The women that I work with, once we work together for a period of time, they start to see the forest from the trees. They can live a thriving life when they learn how to think differently. And how to let go of their past, releasing those old expectations and leaning into reconnecting their inner voice, as well as practicing self-compassion among some other things.

If you need this support, if this is something that you are struggling with, there are two ways primarily that we can work together. If you know you need immediate one-on-one support. I have a couple of programs just for you and work within your affordability.

My passion to support you moves me to be. An impactful coach because I understand where you are and I see where you can be. My healing membership is intimate. It's warm. It's like a cozy space. You go in, you can take in as much information as you want, or embrace your pace.

I take you step by step through it so that you can get the most outta that membership. It's wonderful.

Here is membership link: https://stan.store/WellnessChickCoach/p/radiant-rockstars-healing-membership-community

Have a beautiful, beautiful day, and I'm gonna leave you with this whatever crisis of identity you are working through right now, he loves you so much. And is right here every step of the way with you to support you, to guide you, to direct you. So all he asks is you do your part and he will do his.

Love you. Talk to you soon.