Why Becoming More of Your True Self Needs You to Become Less
- 5 hours ago
- 7 min read
Jo Warwick is The Money Therapist, host of the Glitches to Gold podcast, and author of The Big Book of Love. Blending over 25 years of expertise in psychotherapy, business, energetics, and Human Design, she guides women to uncover inherited and unconscious patterns that drive their money and success in life.
As women, we spend so much of our lives collecting identities. The good girl. The responsible one. The woman who achieves it all. But what happens when the identities that once helped us belong, survive, or succeed no longer fit?
In this article, The Money Therapist and creator of Glitches to Gold™, Jo Warwick, explores why becoming more of your 'self' might have far less to do with adding another layer and far more to do with finally taking some off.
How many identities are you still wearing?
As women, we collect a lot of identities. The good girl. The responsible one. The woman who holds everything together. The woman who never says no. The woman who is always available. The woman who needs to be needed. Even the high achieving one.
We put them on, layer after layer, until eventually we’re walking through life wearing so many versions of ourselves that we can barely move, and wonder why we struggle to move into our desires without so much effort.
It always makes me think of that episode of Friends where Joey puts on every single piece of Chandler’s clothing at once. “Could I be wearing any more clothes?” It’s funny because it’s ridiculous. Yet, I wonder how many women are doing exactly the same thing with their identities.
Some identities are given to us. Some we chose. Some helped us belong. Some protected us. Some helped us survive or succeed. Some fitted us beautifully for a particular season of our lives. But that doesn’t mean we’re supposed to wear them forever.
Personal development has become obsessed with becoming. We’re constantly encouraged to add another layer. Become more confident. Become more successful. Become a better version, a future version, that version.
What if becoming more of your SELF requires the opposite? What if you need to start taking things off instead?
When an identity no longer fits
An identity that once held you together can eventually become the very thing stopping you from breathing. I think of it like wearing a corset.
A corset can look beautiful. It can create the right shape, hold everything perfectly in place, and even be admired by everybody looking at you. You still can’t breathe.
That’s what an old identity can become. It can look incredibly successful on the outside while restricting the life underneath.
I recently came face to face with an echo of one of my own, the caretaker. I’ve carried this identity for most of my life, and I’ve spent years stripping it back, layer by layer. But when I returned to where my parents live after a month away, I realised a little piece of it was still hanging around.
It was almost like getting completely changed, putting on a beautiful new outfit, walking out of the house, and then discovering you’ve had an old pair of knickers stuck to the back of your trousers the entire time. Oh. You’re still here.
That’s what this felt like. Not the caretaker suddenly taking over my life again. Not me stepping back into an old identity I’d already predominantly put down. Just an old piece of clothing I’d somehow walked out of the house still carrying.
The identity that still wants a job
Within a couple of days, I could feel the familiar pulse in my body. My energy wanted to mobilise. I could feel myself questioning and behaving from a state where I don’t trust my dad to take care of my mum. From there, I found myself asking him questions. Has he done this? Has he sorted out her pills? Has that been taken care of? And then I caught it. Because underneath all of those questions was another assumption. Does my mum actually need someone to take care of her?
There it was. The caretaker. Still trying to find herself a little job. That’s when I realised there was another piece of this identity I was ready to take off. Being responsible for my parents’ wellbeing. Their health, their happiness, their emotional world. Keeping them alive.
Caretaking had woven itself through much of my life. You could see it in my career as a psychotherapist, energy healer, medium, and business consultant.
My natural 'self' is caring. But caring and caretaking are not the same thing. The caretaker in me was overstimulated and overgiving, always ready to mobilise, always looking for who needed help, what needed fixing, and where my energy needed to go next.
Being needed gave me an identity. It gave me a purpose. At one point in my life, it helped justify my existence. If I was useful, if I was helping, if I was taking care of everyone, then I had a place in my family, in the world.
Every identity gives us something
Like so many identities women carry, caretaking wasn’t confined to one area of my life. It affected my work, my business, and my money.
Because attached to the caretaker was another belief that so many women will recognise, if I truly care, I’ll do it for free. I’ll give more, ask for less, keep going, and make sure everyone else is okay first. Until, eventually, resentment begins to creep in because you’ve given away far more than you ever had available to give.
But resentment is poisonous and blocks the flow of life force energy until nothing flows or works well. Perhaps that’s a conversation we don’t have enough of when we talk about identity.
The caretaker gets to be needed. The busy woman gets to feel important. The good girl gets to belong. The woman who never says no gets to avoid disappointing anyone. The woman who holds everything together gets to feel in control.
Every identity gives us something. Not always something good. But it serves a purpose. Otherwise, we wouldn’t keep wearing it.
But eventually, you have to ask whether what it’s giving you is worth what it’s costing you. Does it still fit? Can you move in it? Can you breathe? Or are you wearing an identity that has become so tight around your life that you’ve forgotten what it feels like to move without it?
Related article: Why Stability Has Become the New Luxury for Modern Women
What if you’re ready to take it off?
I don’t hate the caretaker. She had a purpose. She served me. At one point, I needed her. But I don’t need to wear her anymore, and I truly don’t want the job anymore. There is finally no anger or fear in that realisation.
I know I can be caring without being the caretaker. Love deeply without becoming responsible for everybody I love. Share my wisdom without rescuing and support without sacrificing myself. Care without mobilising my entire life force every time somebody I love is struggling.
So am I finally willing to let this identity go? Not manage it better. Not heal it more. Not turn it into a more evolved version of itself. Take it off. Get naked. Be me. Live fully without it?
Yes is the only answer I know to be true to my core.
Who are you underneath it?
This understanding sits at the heart of the Glitches to Gold™ Method. Instead of being encouraged to add another new identity, the more powerful move is the opposite, shedding the conditioning, decluttering, and taking off the layers that no longer belong.
Human Design teaches us that a true SELF already exists underneath the conditioning. You don’t need to dress her up as somebody else. You just need to give her room to move and breathe fully, without hiding.
Shedding an identity can feel so confronting because you’re not simply changing a behaviour. You’re taking off something you may have worn for decades. Something people recognise you in. Something they may even expect you to keep wearing.
And when you’ve worn something for that long, taking it off can leave you wondering who you’ll be without it. But perhaps that’s the wrong question.
The question isn’t, "Who will I become without this identity?" Perhaps it’s, "Who am I already underneath it?"
As I put down the final pieces of the caretaker, I’m not becoming less of who I really am. I’m simply taking off a role that has long been outgrown and has no purpose.
So when you are asking to be more, have more, and feel more alive, have you considered what becoming more of your SELF really looks like? Does it really need you to add more or simply remove? Carry less?
Perhaps it’s time to stand in front of your wardrobe of lifetime identities, decide to declutter, and choose what you wish to take forward into your future.
Ready to discover the truth underneath?
The power of an identity is that it doesn’t just affect how you see yourself. It can affect how you give, receive, work, earn, love, and move through your life every single day.
And when an old identity starts taking more from you than it gives back, it can become part of what I call The Secret Feminine Tax.
Decode the Matrix is my three-day experience for women to uncover the hidden patterns taxing their money, energy, time, and capacity, so they can stop paying for who they thought they needed to be and start experiencing the Gold Standard Life they were already designed for.
Start with the Glitches to Gold™ podcast, with four seasons and 900+ five-star reviews. It’s the perfect place to begin turning your glitches to gold.
Read more from Jo Warwick
Jo Warwick, The Money Therapist and Glitches To Gold Founder
Having rebuilt her own life more than once, former elite athlete Jo Warwick understands what it means to redefine success from the inside out. Drawing on over 25 years of experience across psychotherapy, business, energetics and Human Design, she now works as The Money Therapist, guiding women to uncover the inherited and unconscious patterns driving money and success in life, so they can stop working so hard to become themselves and start living the life they are already designed for.
