Co-authored by Mark Shelvock and Ann Bayly-Bruneel

Every January, the world leans forward and whispers the same familiar instruction: Become something new, as if the calendar change ignites new beginnings and fresh perspectives.

We are urged toward brighter versions of ourselves, as though the self were something to be endlessly polished and perfected. What remains largely invisible is the deeper labor of transformation: the emotional and psycho-somatic work of shedding, undoing, and releasing what no longer belongs to the life that is trying to emerge.

In therapy and in life, meaningful transformation rarely begins with building something new. It begins with unbecoming: the gradual softening and unravelling of identities, beliefs, and adaptive survival strategies. It is the tender relinquishing of what no longer fits because it never really did and/or it no longer reflects who we are.

Most people imagine personal growth as acquisition. Yet human development also requires subtraction: release, space, breath, and a return to a slower, more rooted, and honest rhythm that is etched out of our own authentic belonging.

Unbecoming invites us into the delicate work of questioning the roles we inherited and the stories we learned to tell and inhabit. It asks us to grieve earlier versions of ourselves shaped by social expectations and by conditional, colonial ways of defining safety, belonging, and worth. These are systems that prioritize productivity, obedience, and self-sacrifice over wholeness, and they give rise to familiar identities such as the achiever, the caretaker, the pleaser, the performer, and the rescuer.

This unlearning is necessary and requires an embodied soulful existence as it asks us to deeply listen to our heart, our values, and to question all things that once felt certain. We cannot expand while clinging to restrictive forms........

© Psychology Today