Who Am I: Psychological exercises to develop self-understanding - Tapa dura

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The School of Life is a global organisation helping people to lead more fulfilled lives. We do this via our articles, books, app, films, therapeutic services and corporate offering.

The School of Life Press brings together the thinking and ideas of the School of Life creative team under the direction of series editor, Alain de Botton. Our range of books and products explore essential topics in psychological and emotional life, including relationships, parenting, friendship, careers and fulfilment.

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A guided journal for self-knowledge with which we can study the most elusive and interesting parts of our complex inner selves.

One of the most difficult tasks we face as humans is figuring out who we are. "Describe yourself" can be a surprisingly difficult task. Sometimes, we need prompts and suggestions to engage and energize us.

With unusual, entertaining, and playful exercises, this journal is designed to help us tease out and organize who we are. With beautiful designs by Marcia Mihotich throughout and mini essays on topics like relationships and work, this book shows us how our complicated, beautiful, and sometimes painful experiences all contribute to the richness of who we are.

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3. Avoidant and anxious attachment

Psychologists like to divide us into ‘avoidant’ and ‘anxious’ kinds of lovers. An avoidant pattern of relating to lovers means that, when there is difficulty, we grow cold and distant, and deny our need for anyone. We desperately want to be reassured but feel so anxious that we may be unwanted, we disguise our need behind a façade of indifference. At the precise moment when we want to be close, we say we’re busy, we pretend our thoughts are elsewhere, we get sarcastic and dry; we imply that a need for reassurance would be the last thing on our minds. We might even have an affair, the ultimate face-saving attempt to be distant – and often a perverse attempt to assert that we don’t require a partner’s love (that we have been too reserved to ask for).

For its part, anxious attachment is a pattern of relating to lovers whereby, when there is difficulty, we grow officious, procedural and controlling over small matters of domestic routine. We feel our partners are escaping us emotionally, but rather than admitting our sense of loss, we respond by trying to pin them down administratively. We get unduly cross that they are eight minutes late, we chastise them heavily for not having done certain chores, we ask them strictly if they’ve completed a task they had agreed vaguely to undertake. All this rather than admit the truth: ‘I’m worried that I don’t matter to you…’.