Holding Multiple Identities: Therapy for the Whole, Layered You

By Clay Klaus-Wade ·

The short answer

None of us is just one thing. We're shaped by our families and where we grew up, by race, culture, faith, class, gender, sexuality, body, and mind, and by the communities that held us or didn't. Sometimes those layers sit together easily. Often, they don't. You might feel at home in one part of your life and like a stranger in another, or feel that every room asks you to leave some part of yourself at the door.

Therapy for multiple identities is about making room for all of you at once. It's less about choosing which part of you is "really" you, and more about understanding how the layers fit together, where they pull against each other, and how to live with more wholeness.

What is intersectionality?

The term intersectionality comes from the legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, who introduced it in 1989 to describe how Black women faced discrimination that couldn't be understood by looking at race or gender alone (Crenshaw, 1989). Laws and movements that examined one dimension at a time kept missing what happened where those dimensions met.

Since then, the idea has spread far beyond the law. Public health researcher Lisa Bowleg has argued that identities like race, gender, sexual orientation, and class don't simply add up; they interact, and they reflect larger systems of privilege and oppression (Bowleg, 2012). In therapy, that means your experience can't be understood by checking boxes. A queer person of faith, a first-generation professional, or a neurodivergent parent isn't living several separate lives. They're living one life with all of it woven through.

Why holding multiple identities can be hard

Living with many layers can be a source of richness, creativity, and resilience. It can also be exhausting. People often describe:

  • Feeling like they have to choose between communities that matter to them
  • Code-switching so often that they lose track of which version of themselves is the real one
  • Being misunderstood by people who see only one part of who they are
  • Carrying different kinds of stigma at the same time, sometimes even within their own communities
  • Grief or guilt about the parts of themselves they've had to set aside

None of this means something is wrong with you. It means you've been doing a great deal of quiet, invisible work to hold your life together.

Identity isn't fixed

The psychoanalyst Erik Erikson thought of identity as something we keep developing across the whole lifespan, with each stage of life bringing its own questions and possibilities (Knight, 2017). I find that freeing. It means questions about who you are aren't a sign that you're behind, and it means a new layer can emerge at forty, or sixty, or later, whether that's coming out, finding faith, losing it, getting a diagnosis, or claiming a part of your heritage you'd kept at a distance.

How therapy helps you integrate the layers

My approach to this work draws on a few traditions. Psychodynamic therapy helps us understand how early relationships and messages shaped the parts of ourselves we learned to show and hide. Narrative therapy, developed by Michael White and David Epston, adds a powerful idea: we live by the stories we tell about ourselves, and many of those stories were written by other people. Part of the work is noticing those stories and deciding which ones we want to keep.

In practice, therapy for multiple identities might look like exploring how each part of you developed, noticing which parts get pushed aside and why, making sense of tension between communities or values, and slowly building a sense of self that has room for all of it.

Why "Layered"

This is the idea at the heart of the practice's name. We're all complex, we all contain multitudes, and we grow and heal by identifying, exploring, and gleaning insight from the many layers that make us who we are. I think of that process in three movements, Explore, Discern, and Integrate: getting curious about each layer, understanding what it holds and how it relates to the others, and weaving them into a life that feels more like your own.

Therapy for multiple identities at Layered Health

Layered Health is a Philadelphia-based psychotherapy practice opening in Summer 2027. My work is psychodynamic, attachment-informed, and grounded in cultural humility, with a particular commitment to affirming care for LGBTQ+, consensually non-monogamous, and neurodivergent people.

If you're looking for a therapist who will make room for every part of you, I'd love to hear from you.

Contact me

Frequently asked questions

What does it mean to hold multiple identities?

It means being shaped by many aspects of who you are at once, such as race, culture, faith, gender, sexuality, class, and neurotype. These layers interact with each other and can be sources of both strength and tension.

What is intersectionality?

Intersectionality is a framework introduced by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989. It describes how aspects of identity like race, gender, and sexuality interact, so a person's experience can't be understood by looking at one identity alone.

How can therapy help me integrate different parts of myself?

Therapy can help you explore how each part of your identity developed, understand where they conflict, and build a sense of self with room for all of them, without having to choose one part over another.

Is identity fixed?

No. Many theorists, including Erik Erikson, describe identity as something that keeps developing across the lifespan. New questions and new parts of ourselves can emerge at any age.

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