There's a question I haven't resolved for myself, even after years of coaching people through their bodies, their habits, and their avoidance. Is this work about coming back to a self you already know, one that's been buried under noise and habit and other people's expectations? Or is it about building a relationship with a self you don't fully know yet, the way you'd build a relationship with another person, slowly, through repeated contact?
I've heard both framed as the whole truth by people who sound very certain. I'm not certain. Some sessions feel like a homecoming, a client says something and you can see recognition cross their face, as if a part of them had been waiting to be greeted again. Other sessions feel like nothing of the sort. They feel like meeting someone for the first time, carefully, without assuming you already know how they'll respond.
I don't think I need to pick one to keep doing this work well. What I notice, session after session, is that both experiences are real for different people, and sometimes for the same person on different days. Someone who insists they already know exactly who they are underneath it all might be right. Someone who says they have no idea who they are without the roles they play might also be right.
What I try to offer, one session at a time, is contact. Showing up, noticing what's there, saying the honest thing rather than the comfortable one, and doing that again the next time. That's what building a relationship with someone looks like, whether that someone is a friend, a partner, or, in this case, yourself.
A relationship with yourself, like any relationship, is built through repetition, not revelation. You don't usually get one session that explains everything. You get a hundred small ones, some of which confirm what you suspected, some of which introduce you to a version of yourself you hadn't met.
I'm wary of coaches who present this with total confidence in one direction, as though the destination is settled and they're just handing you the map. I don't have the map. I have a process, and a fair amount of my own unfinished business with the question.
What I can say is that whichever it turns out to be for you, an old self returned to or a new one slowly built, the work looks similar from the outside. Attention. Honesty. Showing up again after the last session didn't resolve everything. Sitting with a client, or with myself, and asking whether what just happened felt like me, without needing the answer to close the question for good.
I'd rather leave it open than hand you a tidy answer I don't actually have. That felt like me is a question, not a conclusion, and I think it should probably stay that way.