My Intimate Self | Sagebrush Counseling

Individual Therapy Worksheet

My Intimate Self

A comprehensive personal inventory. A full portrait of who you are as an intimate person — what shaped you, who you are now, what you carry, what you want, and where you want to go.

About

What Shaped You

Who You Are Now

What You Carry

What You Want

Going Forward

Before you begin

A portrait, not a problem list

Most conversations about intimacy focus on what is wrong or what needs to improve. This inventory takes a different approach. It asks who you are as an intimate person, in full — the things that shaped you, the things you bring, the things you carry, and the things you want. It is designed to give you and your therapist a complete picture rather than a collection of separate issues.

How to use this. Work through each section at your own pace. Answer as honestly as you can. Some sections will feel easy. Others may need more time or more than one sitting. There are no right answers and no level of complexity that is too much to bring here. When you are done, you will have something you can keep for yourself, share with a therapist, or bring into a conversation with a partner.

This is a living document. Your intimate self is not fixed. The answers you give today may be different in a year. You can return to any section and revise it. What matters is that it is honest right now.

How would you describe your relationship with intimacy in one or two sentences, right now, before you have thought about it for too long?

First honest answer:

"My relationship with intimacy right now is _____________"

Part One

What shaped your intimate self

No one arrives at their intimate life without a history. Messages received, experiences had, relationships that taught something lasting, things absorbed from the world about what intimacy is supposed to look like. This section asks about the most significant of those — not exhaustively, but honestly.

What messages did you absorb growing up about bodies, desire, sex, and closeness? From family, religion, culture, peers, or the world generally. Not a complete list. The ones that feel most relevant to who you are now.

What did your early intimate or romantic experiences teach you? What did they confirm, challenge, or leave you believing?

Is there one relationship, experience, or period that shaped your intimate self most significantly — for better or for worse? You do not have to go into detail. Even naming it and acknowledging its significance is enough here.

Which of these things are you still carrying into your relationships now, and which have you consciously moved beyond?

Part Two

Who you are as an intimate person right now

Not who you were, not who you are trying to become. Who you actually are in intimate life right now. What you bring, how you tend to show up, what feels most true about you in this territory.

What do you bring to intimacy? What qualities, strengths, or ways of being do you offer when you are at your best in a close relationship?

Name what is genuinely there:

"What I bring to intimacy when I am at my best is _____________"

How do you tend to show up in intimate relationships? What patterns do people who know you closely tend to notice in you?

How would you describe your current relationship with your own desire? Not what it has been, but what it is now.

How do you relate to your own body right now, in the context of intimacy? Is it a comfortable place, a complicated one, somewhere in between?

How do you see yourself as an intimate person? What is the story you tell yourself about who you are in this part of your life? This might be a positive story, a painful one, or something complicated. The story you carry about yourself shapes what is possible.

Part Three

What you carry

Every person brings something difficult into their intimate life. Patterns that have repeated across relationships. Things that get in the way. Things carried from past experiences. Things that have not yet been understood or addressed. This section names them without requiring you to fix them.

Naming something does not mean being defined by it. What you carry is part of your picture. It is not the whole of it. The goal here is honest self-knowledge, not self-criticism.

What patterns have you noticed repeating across intimate relationships? Things you tend to do, feel, or bring regardless of who the other person is.

The honest version:

"A pattern I have noticed repeating in my intimate relationships is _____________"

What blocks or gets in the way of you being fully present, fully yourself, or fully available in intimacy?

Is there anything unresolved from your past that is still affecting your intimate life now? Something you have not fully processed or come to terms with? You do not have to go into detail. Naming it is enough. If what comes up here feels significant, it may be worth bringing to a therapist.

What do you find hardest about intimacy? The thing that, across relationships and across time, has been the most consistently difficult.

Part Four

What you actually want

Not what you think you should want. Not what would be manageable or reasonable. What you actually, honestly want from your intimate life. This section asks you to name it directly, even the parts that feel complicated to want.

Wanting is not the same as demanding. Getting clear on what you want does not commit you to anything. It just gives you honest information about yourself that you can work with. Many people have never let themselves know what they actually want. This section is permission to find out.

What do you want from your intimate life? Not what you are getting, not what seems possible, but what you actually want.

The honest version:

"What I actually want from my intimate life is _____________"

How do you want to feel in an intimate relationship? What qualities of experience are you most wanting to have more of?

What do you want from your relationship with your own body in the context of intimacy?

Is there anything you want that you have not quite given yourself permission to want? Something that feels too much, too complicated, or somehow not available to you? This question matters because what we do not allow ourselves to want tends to operate underground anyway, often in ways that create confusion or dissatisfaction.

Part Five

Where you want to go

Having named who you are, what you carry, and what you want, this final section asks about intention. Not a plan to fix everything, but a genuine sense of the direction you want to move and what you are willing to do to get there.

Looking at everything across this inventory, what is the most honest summary of where you are in your intimate life right now?

The full picture in your own words:

"The most honest thing I can say about where I am in my intimate life right now is _____________"

What is the biggest gap between where you are and where you want to be? The thing that, if it changed, would make the most difference.

What are you willing to do, change, look at, or let go of in order to move toward what you want? Willingness is different from ability. You may not know how to change something yet. This question is just about whether you are willing to try.

If you are bringing this to therapy, what from this inventory do you most want to explore? What do you want your therapist to understand about your intimate self?

What would you say to yourself about your intimate self, with genuine kindness? Not reassurance or minimising, but honest care for the person you have just been describing.

Said to yourself:

"What I want to say to myself about all of this is _____________"

Sagebrush Counseling offers individual and couples therapy across Texas, New Hampshire, Maine, and Montana.

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