Is Your Self-Identity Wrong? How Childhood Experiences Distort Your Self-Concept
Sometimes my work as a clinical psychologist requires investigating a “missing persons” report – that is, helping people discover that the person they think they are is not true, and then finding the ‘real’ one who has gone missing.
Sound a little far‑fetched? Hear me out, because that idea is based on science, and I’ve seen it again and again in over 30 years of practice.
You see, the foundation of our self‑perception—our view of who we are—gets built very early in childhood, from the point of infancy. How is it built? Through countless interactions with others.
Think about it this way. Experiences in childhood are similar to walking through a hall of mirrors at a carnival. Every important person in a child’s life—parents, siblings, teachers, peers—acts as a mirror that reflects something back about who that child is. Some mirrors are generous, others harsh; some are simply inaccurate because they are clouded by the adult’s own fears, wounds, or limitations.
If interactions with others cause a child to repeatedly see a stretched, shrunken, or twisted version of themselves, they naturally assume, “This is what I look like.” There is no reason, at age five or ten, to suspect that the mirror is warped, reflecting something that is not true.
The problem is that we tend to keep living by those early “reflections” long after we’ve left the carnival. A child who was met with criticism may grow into an adult who “knows” they are fundamentally lazy or disappointing, despite a lifetime of evidence that they are conscientious and loyal.
Someone who grew up around emotionally unavailable caregivers may carry a sense of being “too much” or “unlovable,” even as friends, partners, or colleagues experience them as deeply compassionate and trustworthy. In this way, a person’s self‑concept can end up reflecting something fundamentally false—an image that is at odds with an individual’s deeper character.
The internal picture they walk around with is not a portrait but a funhouse reflection.
Therapeutic work in this instance is not about sculpting an entirely new self but about finally finding a clear mirror. That means slowing down enough to examine a person’s actual patterns over time—how they respond under pressure, how they treat people they care about, how they recover from failure—and comparing that evidence with the old internal image.
As patients begin to see that the distortion lies in the mirrors, not in their own personal qualities, they can start to revise the long‑held conclusions they have about themselves. It is a wonderful turning point when someone realizes, “My deep character has been there all along; I just never had a faithful reflection of it.”
How Childhood Experiences Shape Your Self-Concept
What I just described is how early childhood experiences often write the “first draft” of how we see ourselves. And that first draft is not always accurate.
But, true or not, these first drafts have profound implications for how we live. An example will help illustrate this point.
Years ago, I performed a psychological assessment in our local jail on a young woman. She was on trial for having neglected to stop her boyfriend from harming her one‑year‑old, who eventually died due to months of abuse.
The young woman told me of having grown up in a single‑parent home; her mother was a drug addict and prostitute. The men she would entertain at times abused her daughter. She did nothing to stop the abuse. Over time, the little girl grew up to believe she had no value, that asserting herself risked abandonment, and her only means of securing affirmation was by using her sexuality.
I needed corroboration of her disclosures, so at the end of the interview I asked her for the name and telephone number of anyone she could think of who knew her well. She suggested I speak with her sister.
Returning to my office I immediately called the sister, and the information she gave me lined up with what I learned from my visit to the jail.
Ending the conversation, I said, “Tell me a little about yourself.” The sister disclosed that she was finishing her last year of college, was currently working part‑time in a legal office, had been accepted to medical school, and was engaged.
“Hold on,” I interjected. “I just left the jail where I spoke with your sister through a plate glass window. She was wearing an orange jumpsuit, grieving the death of her infant, and looking at spending many years behind bars. How is it you two are in such different places in life?”
She responded by talking about Mrs. Vanoldst, her 5th‑grade teacher. “She liked me for some reason. I couldn’t figure it out but she really did like me. Mrs. Vanoldst would stay after school and tutor me almost every day. When I didn’t show up for school she would drop by my mom’s apartment and check on me. Then, when I went to the 6th grade and she was no longer my teacher, she still checked up on me and would even take me to places like the ballet, the theater—and I mean the real theater—and sometimes even to football games. She showed me there was a lot more to me than I realized… in fact, she’s coming to my wedding.”
Two siblings with the same home environment. One had the advantage of a close relationship in which she learned something different about herself and, seeing herself so differently from her sibling, went on to make very different life choices.
This is not a “one off” type of example. Research shows that parenting styles and parent–child relationships deeply influence children’s self‑esteem and broader self‑concept, which in turn shape their social skills and psychological adjustment (Li et al., 2025; Haltiwanger, Hops, & Tildesley, 1994). In other words, children absorb a sense of who they are and how the world works from how important adults treat them and help them make sense of the world.
These early lessons carry profound later‑life implications.
When Early Self-Stories Become Distorted in Adulthood
These early lessons help a child to navigate relationships and expectations. Even in dysfunctional homes the lessons learned are often helpful—but their utility is usually limited to helping the child survive in a chaotic and hostile environment.
When the child becomes an adult and is out of the home, those lessons ideally would be discarded and replaced with a healthier and more realistic view of themselves and the world in general.
But by this time the brain has begun to operate using these lessons as its “default” mode. Children don’t become adults and suddenly think, “Gosh, maybe I don’t need to always worry that if I make a mistake I’ll be embarrassed and humiliated.” The brain of the now young adult simply defaults to that conclusion without any conscious thought.
Or, for example, a child who stays safe by being ever vigilant to please a harsh, unpredictable parent grows up believing “I am weak and must keep everyone happy.” (Harter, 2012; Young, Klosko, & Weishaar, 2003). When that same default strategy is used in adolescence and adulthood, it leads to severe dependency and anxiety.
Can You Change Your Self-Concept? The Good News
The encouraging news is that self‑beliefs are not fixed. A study by Goldin and colleagues, for example, looked at folks who struggled with social anxiety and found that treatment not only reduced negative self‑views but also increased positive self‑views and reduced anxiety (Goldin et al., 2014). In other words, as people began to see themselves as more competent and acceptable, their anxiety decreased.
Similar findings appear in studies of depression and other conditions: effective therapy helps shift self‑concept (Pearlstein, Berenz, Brown, & Treadway, 2019). Approaches that target how people relate to themselves—such as cultivating self‑compassion—also show that intentionally changing self‑attitudes can produce measurable emotional and cognitive benefits (Kirschner, Kuyken, Wright, Roberts, & Karl, 2019).
How to Fact-Check and Update Your Self-Image
If early experiences left you believing you are weak, unworthy, incapable, or fundamentally flawed, your first task is to look at these conclusions as hypotheses—don’t treat them as settled facts.
A practical first step is to track moments in daily life that do not fit the old story: times when you persevered under stress, made a difficult decision, or quietly led others through a challenge (Beck, Rush, Shaw, & Emery, 1979; Goldin et al., 2014). Over the course of several weeks this is likely to reveal patterns of resilience and independence that have gone unnoticed because your attention has been narrowly focused on perceived failures.
Another step is to invite specific feedback from people who know you well: “When have you seen me handle something difficult?” or “What strengths do you notice in how I deal with stress?” Research on self‑concept and family interaction shows that others’ responses continue to shape self‑views through childhood and adolescence, not just in early childhood (Haltiwanger et al., 1994; Li et al., 2025).
Finally, structured therapy—especially approaches that target faulty beliefs—can provide expert help in coaching you to behave in ways that counteract these old beliefs. These new ways of behaving create “corrective emotional experiences” that help re‑align your self‑perception so that it is more realistic (Young et al., 2003; Pearlstein et al., 2019; Kirschner et al., 2019).
Rewriting the First Draft of Who You Are
Early experiences are not the final arbiters of who you are and what you might accomplish in life. They provide the first draft, not the final.
Discovering the real core of you requires hard work. You’ll need to take risks. You’ll need tenacity to push through setbacks and tolerate discomfort. But what awaits when you succeed is worth every bit of it. Don’t settle for living a small life, restricted by a distorted self‑appraisal. The real you has been there all along—it’s time to see it clearly.
REFERENCES
Beck, A. T., Rush, A. J., Shaw, B. F., & Emery, G. (1979). Cognitive therapy of depression. New York: Guilford Press.
Goldin, P. R., Ziv, M., Jazaieri, H., Hahn, K., & Gross, J. J. (2014). MBSR vs aerobic exercise in social anxiety: fMRI of emotion regulation of negative self-beliefs. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 9(6), 733–734.
Haltiwanger, L., Hops, H., & Tildesley, E. (1994). Parenting practices and adolescent self-concept. Journal of Early Adolescence, 14(2), 278–295.
Harter, S. (2012). The construction of the self: Developmental and sociocultural foundations (2nd ed.). New York: Guilford Press.
Kirschner, H., Kuyken, W., Wright, K., Roberts, H., & Karl, A. (2019). Soothing your heart and feeling connected: A new experimental paradigm to study the benefits of self-compassion. Clinical Psychological Science, 7(3), 545–565.
Li, Y., Zhang, W., Wang, S., & Yu, G. (2025). Parenting styles and children’s self-concept: A meta-analytic review. Developmental Psychology, 61(1), 89–105.
Pearlstein, J. G., Berenz, E. C., Brown, A. D., & Treadway, M. T. (2019). Enhancing self-concept through cognitive-behavioral interventions: Mechanisms and outcomes. Clinical Psychology Review, 74, 101785.
Young, J. E., Klosko, J. S., & Weishaar, M. E. (2003). Schema therapy: A practitioner’s guide. New York: Guilford Press.
