Welcome to our collection of insights into the psychodynamic process and contemporary mental health. These reflections explore the unconscious dynamics of the inner life, and the complex emotional currents within our relationships.
Below, you’ll find our latest articles. Many come with a companion clinical worksheet — a focused, interactive exercise you’re welcome to request at the end of the relevant post, to support the reflective journey in your own time.
Finding Your Sense of Self: Interactive Worksheet
Online Therapy Clinic · Photo: Sóc Năng Động / Pexels
A reflective worksheet on identity, belonging, and self-esteem
A clinical worksheet from Online Therapy Clinic — Ari Sotiriou MA PGDip (UKCP)
Ari Sotiriou, UK accredited psychotherapist · enquiries@online-therapy-clinic.com
Ari Sotiriou provides psychodynamic Individual and Couples therapy via secure Live Video. Dr Ruxandra Ion offers CBT courses and brings a psychiatric perspective, without providing psychiatric diagnosis or prescribing medication. UK practice · 50-minute sessions, on the hour.
🔒
Your privacy is fully protected
This worksheet runs entirely within your browser. Nothing you write is transmitted, stored on a server, or accessible to anyone else. All responses are saved locally on your own device and are cleared only when you choose to reset. Online Therapy Clinic has no access to your answers.
Your progress will be saved automatically as you write.
Complete the worksheet, then save or print your responses
Everybody has a sense of self — usually several, layered on top of one another. Our identity is woven from the roles we occupy, the relationships we hold, the things we’re good at, and the quiet, often unspoken, messages we absorbed about who we were allowed to be. None of this is judged as true or false; it is simply comfortable or uncomfortable, inspiring or not.
This worksheet invites you to slow down and look at these threads individually, without pressure to reach any tidy conclusion. You do not need to complete it in one sitting — your answers save automatically as you go.
Most of us hold several senses of self at once — the roles, attributes, and associations we consider most important about ourselves. Tick any that feel like a meaningful part of how you think about yourself.
Exercise TwoWhere This Started
Construction of identity is rarely a deliberate, self-conscious process. Identities are often imposed, or at least encouraged, by the environments and relationships around us — especially in childhood.
“You’re really smart” tends to make intelligence central to a child’s sense of self. “You can’t do anything right” tends to make incompetence central instead.
Exercise ThreeValues, Skills, and Roles
Effort and practice come easily when they flow from a settled sense of “who I am.” These building blocks help map out what currently feels most like you.
Your values
Your skills
Exercise FourLearning From Setbacks
A steady sense of self does not mean an unbroken one. Identities that have been kindly and firmly held tend to offer more protection during hard times — not because difficulty disappears, but because it no longer shakes the whole foundation.
Exercise FiveAppreciation & Self-Esteem
Small successes count too. Use the space below to build a fuller, kinder picture of yourself — one you can return to when self-doubt spikes.
Individual Therapy via Secure Video
If working through this worksheet has brought something into focus that you would like to explore further in a confidential setting, an introductory conversation is available at no charge. Psychodynamic individual therapy is offered via secure live video in English, French, and Greek.
Identity develops slowly, over years, not in a single sitting. The aim here is not a finished picture of yourself, but a slightly clearer, kinder one — built gradually, in your own time.
A closing reflection
Before you close this worksheet, take a moment to write — without editing yourself — whatever comes to mind in response to the questions below.
A Note for Your Next Session
If you are working with Ari, bring this completed worksheet to your next session. The sections where an answer surprised you, where you found it difficult to write, or where a strong emotional response arose are at least as useful as the sections you completed easily.
Your sense of self is not judged as true or false — only as comfortable or uncomfortable, inspiring or not. It can always be built on a little further.
Ari Sotiriou provides psychodynamic Individual and Couples therapy via secure Live Video.
Dr Ruxandra Ion offers CBT courses and brings a psychiatric perspective; she does not provide psychiatric diagnosis or prescribe medication.
