Integrating change into one’s composite of self-definition.
Adapting to the changes within and the new categories of experience that result.
How judgment—and detachment from it—affects your experience of reality.
| p249 | Yet, as you begin to make your peace with the reality of the changes you embody, it becomes less a question of if so much as to what degree these changes are able to be assimilated and are allowed to express through you as identity. The shifts, in many cases, may impact individuals in such dramatic ways as to make them virtually unrecognizable to others who believed they knew them well. Indeed, these ones metamorphosize in ways that distance them from everything that once formed the basis of their perception of themselves. Often, within the expanded parameters of the newfound identity, the trappings of the old create a level of discomfort that feels intolerable. And the compulsion to shed one’s former identity, like an outgrown skin, becomes undeniable. |