Last Thursday night something happened to me. I had gone round to babysit for my sister and only thought i was going to be there for a short time so left my laptop in the car. I ended up lying on the couch, closing my eyes and just exhaling slowly, letting my anxiety rest for a few hours. I picked up my notepad and began to think over things.

My life is totally insane.

I am in love with a girl who is totally convinced i am out to harm her at every opportunity, attacks me pre-emptively the closer i get to her and is psychotically devoted to the idea that i don’t care about her at all. I have just sold my company. I have written books and music. I have given 4 years of my life now to protecting my nephew. I’ve lost my direction and turning to politics. I’ve been invited into the arms trade. I’m hurting but i’m full of unconditional love. I don’t trust anyone. I’ve had to fight myself all the way and i’ve changed so much in the last few months for the better that i can’t explain it. I am in the middle of a storm that is wrecking and reorganising everything and my first instinct is to grab the slippery fish in your hands, but of course the harder you grab, the faster it slips away.

But why do i let these romantic things get right into the middle of my life? Why is it so traumatic? Why am i always thinking about this? Why do i feel like i’m teetering on the verge of obsession and can’t get myself out of this? Why is this like an addiction when i know people are not mean to be addictive? What is it inside me that attaches who i am to the feelings of the other person? Why am i always focusing on how she feels and what’s going on with her when it’s me that counts? It’s total, utter madness to attach your sense of worth and esteem to someone who is openly incredibly confused and does the same thing themselves. Why do i feel totally consumed and worthless because of how she feels about me? Why is the way i feel about myself governed by what she feels about me? Why and how do i lose myself so easily?

Facebook was going off, as was MSN. Both of them were causing a problem in the form i was beginning to live my life around Kel like that proverbial bunny in the headlights and killing my productivity. I needed to break through and find out what the hell was going on with me and why on earth i was doing it and couldn’t break it. Love? Maybe. It’s unhealthy. If i loved myself i really wouldn’t allow it to happen in the first place. So i decided to investigate, because it seemed to me to be an issue of identity.

I would urge anyone to do this – it’s easy once you know what to do. Find a quiet place and get a pen and paper. I was literally amazed at what i discovered. All though asking yourself questions, and letting your heart and mind answer them automatically.

You could just sit there and do fuck all. Or you could take 3-4mins of your dire daily drudge in the office to sit out in the park and write a few lines on a piece of paper and change your own world. I bet sitting there and doing fuck all is far more appealing.

So the first question. What is your identity? What makes up identity?I started listing different things that tell you who you are. Who is Alex Cameron?

Appearance, character, values, talents/gifts, relationships, experience, achievements, occupation, intellect.

Next, i asked myself which were the most important ones to me, and numbered them from 1 to 10, with 1 being the most important. Surprisingly for me, appearance came at number one (i am an unbelievable scruff). Believe me, i didn’t expect that. I was on to something good. The next thing i did was to ask myself what i honestly thought of my version of those things.

What i discovered was that my views on it were very negative, but also, crucially, they were also derived almost exclusively from who my dad is, and what he thinks of me. Bingo. Your sense of identity is primarily imparted on you by your father. So maybe i am unique, but my sense of identity is very poor, and the things i value in someone are those things that my dad is not. But where was love on the list? Nowhere. There are probably quite a few other lists people have made but that was just my one. Start out by asking yourself what identity means.

So what was the identity my dad gave me? I started listing the things he thinks about me. Not good. Then i listed what my mum thinks of me, which turned out to be 3 lines long. I have a feeling that it is a good thing, as i believe the good things i don’t need to examine or validate them.

Then i asked myself, “who do i think i am?”. Wow. Very negative indeed. All this negative shit was just flowing off the page. No wonder everything has been such a struggle - my mind’s been fighting this shit in my heart.

I remember praying about this exact subject and asking who i was, and what my identity was. What is the basic building block of identity? The answer to that prayer was intuitive but loud and clear - your character. Your character is your basic identity. Character comes through suffering and perseverance, so the more you have suffered, the more immensely strong your character will be. It is the values, principles and experiences inside you that make your character, and your character is the basis of your identity. If you don’t know who you are, ask yourself what your character is. Ask other people what they think it is.

At that moment i realised that i had to have some character and stop being weak. Other may do things they know to be wrong, but i would have no part in it. I wrote a letter that night saying “i cannot support you if …” because i somewhere, somehow, i found my character. Everything may change my character and principles must stay constant. It seemed to me a fair and righteous position – no judgement, no anger but also no giving in or accepting either. You’re wrong, and i cannot, and will not, be complicit. This is who i am.

So to recap, there were 5 questions i asked, the answer to each was a small list of simple words and ideas. The power of doing that is the lists are so massively different, but you can also pick out trends and patterns you notice. I had no idea my dad’s influence was so incredibly negative. I had no idea that my sense of identity was so appallingly bad. Now i look at it and can see it, but it took to list it out and question myself actively to realise it.

I took some very deep breaths because it took a lot out of me. But nothing compared to what was to come.

I had decided it was time to learn more, so the next step was to start talking about some of the deepest parts of me. I had this sense that there is a dissonance in my head between what i think in my head and what i feel and believe in my heart. If i could discover those things i could reconcile and rectify them to have some kind of peace.

The next question was BIG.

“What do i believe about myself?”

Not what i think, not my pretence, not just general ideas about things, what i felt in my heart no matter how strange or difficult it could be. It ended up being 2 pages long. I was beginning to form a very negative picture and coming to understand what has been holding me back. I think i am a positive and confident person but looking on the paper showed me the truth in my heart was something different entirely.

Next up, a few more questions, both resulting in a list of points: “What do i believe about work?” and “What do i believe about love?” “What do i believe about friends?” I was speeding through.

Somehow i managed to get it imprinted into my heart that sex = love. Sex does not equal love. Love hasn’t often got a lot to do with sex. Seduction = validation. I have no idea where either of those beliefs came from, but i suspect it has something to do with sexual abuse, because when a parent shows love but mixes sex in with it, a child comes to associate love generally with sex, and being seduced by a parent as being validated. That in itself is a minefield.

Then a great test that is familiar to counsellors and my exec coach, as it so powerful and shows you immediately what’s in your emotional programming as an image. It helps you to see what you believe and why. It’s a very simple question that resembles word association that you need to answer straight away without thinking – just recalling what automatically comes to mind.

The question is “What does X *look* like?” e.g. “What does love *look* like?” “What does safety *look* like?” What is the mental image you have for each of these things? What do you refer to as your standard, the imprint in your head you use as your map and reference every day?

I must have done 50 or more. Intimacy looks like climbing under the duvet to feel her legs wrapping into mine. Safety looks like having a lot of money. Responsibility looks like doing accounts. Beauty looks like her wearing my shirt next to the window. Acceptance looks like failure. Privacy looks like my unlocked bedroom door. Anger looks like violence. Rejection looks like death. Work looks like a white shirt behind a PC in an office. Trust looks like integrity and absolutely knowing without doubt that she’d send that guy packing if he tried it on.

Suddenly you start to see all the drivers in your life, healthy and unhealthy. You start to realise why you’ve been doing what you’re doing, and what you’re trying to do.

However, the most interesting was what love looks like. I wrote “reconciliation” immediately and automatically. Very strange answer. So strange that i circled it. What a weird thing to associate with love. Love’s way bigger than that. When i think of love i don’t really see that, i see Mills & Boon and being gentle to someone when they’re hurting you etc etc. But no, in my heart, i somehow associate love with reconciliation.

BOOM.

It slowly started to make sense. The only love i ever witnessed as a kid was when my parents made up after a fight (well ok, my mum always gave in and made the peace), and when my mum cuddled me after they tried to emotionally kill me. Reconciliation was the only time i witnessed and experienced love of any kind. So it made sense that i would seek that out. I must have been creating situations in my life to get to that feeling of love, which was experienced after a fight. So logically i must have been deliberately creating fights, offences and god knows what else just to get to reconciliation so i could experience that feeling of love. That would explain why i have always been plagued with arguments and having a go all the time.

My head was pounding by them, but the vodka helped. Luckily i had a very special person nearby who gave me a very big hug as she saw what i’d realised and how much it had affected me (thank you xx). I couldn’t believe how simple it actually was and wondered what it must be like to have experienced that love normally and healthily so you didn’t go around doing that.

I’m a lucky guy because once my mind identifies a belief as false, it removes and discounts it to be replaced by a real one. It’s a strange automatic process for me that i am immensely grateful for. Once i know what’s wrong, mentally it gets fixed immediately, and my head synchronises it all together again correctly and i move on. Now i know what i’ve been doing, i can recognise what i’m attempting to do each time and change it.

I could only handle a few more questions by then so settled on one that was very intriguing: “If i could solve all my emotional problems tomorrow, how would it happen, what would it look like, and why would it solve them?”

Two things stuck out. My dad would be dead, and i would be married to a beautiful woman who was as in love with me as i was with her, and who had unquestionable integrity. Now that is honesty for you.

The most striking thing about my bizarre self-therapy was the difference between what i think consciously in my head intellectually and what i believe in my heart somehow. As i went through life i picked up ideas and made decisions about things that i never knew i actually made. The beliefs and attitudes of my parents, school, friends, lovers and others who influenced me left a mark on my heart that i have been carrying around. They have influenced my actions, driven me to do strange irrational things and totally confused me because i didn’t even know they were there. Now i do, it’s all quite logical and understandable.

And therein lies what i believe to be the source and solution to that endless battle against myself (the title of the semi-autobiographical book i’ve been writing for ages). That secret si that who we are (our character) and what we have come to believe (our programming) are two wildly different things co-existing inside us at the same time, and being at war all day, every day. Once they are reconciled, i believe that healing can take place and there is that inner peace and confidence you’ve been searching for all your life but never knew where to look.