The art of becoming

The challenge is not that I'm a girl who needs to lose some weight, get a grip on my spending and control my emotions better.  The challenge is that I'm a person who believes she can't who needs to become the woman who knows she can and will.  It's as simple and as complicated as that.  Changing superficial habits isn't enough because without changing the fabric of my nature, I will eventually revert to comfortable, old, unhealthy habits.  I have to see and believe in the version of myself that doesn't exist yet because that belief will be the drive to create her.  The question is how do you be a person you aren't to become a person you hope to be?  It sounds like Alice in Wonderland logic, but as my mom always said "fake it till you make it".  I would roll my eyes whenever she told me that and credit her with knowing nada, but as it turns out (as it annoyingly always seems to turn out) there was some wisdom in her words after all.  It's hard to be the obnoxious, rebellious daughter of a wise woman.  It means that everything you rebel against is actually what you should be embracing, but don't tell my mom I said so. 

Therapists now agree with my mom's old adage and practice with their patients a variant of the "fake it till you make it" philosophy.  Only it's called practicing life skills and it's designed to help a person find healthy coping skills and repair damage to their self-perception.  I'm looking for a therapist currently that will accept sliding scale payments and who offers DBT groups for borderline disorders. I have some work to do on myself, but I also have hope that there's going to be a pay off for all the hardships one day and I look forward to that.