The other side of the coin that this book helped me to see is that I am not my symptoms. There were parts of my behaviour that held me back, but I thought were

The other side of the coin that this book helped me to see is that I am not my symptoms. There were parts of my behaviour that held me back, but I thought were crucial to my identity so I was reluctant to let them go. After I realised that they were symptomatic of psychological injury and not part of my fundamental identity, I allowed the change to happen. It felt more like going through a process of healing in the same way that I might treat a muscle strain, and not spend the rest of my life limping because of a bad fall. I realise that sounds a bit contradictory - I guess the idea is that my mind is part of body and can be treated as such, which makes it necessary to liberate the ego from the rest of the mind. It made the concept of mindfulness finally click for me.