When I was a child my mother used to encourage me to be ladylike and a good girl. Get good grades. To be modest. Dress and sit like a lady, and not like a "streetwalker." But ladylike was not how I identified myself even as a child. It gave me gagging willies 😣 when she tried to push me to be what I felt I was not.
Instead i identified as tough, streetwise, edgy, capable, different from the herd and sexy. This was age 8-13, so some of how I fancied myself was true, and some of that was not. (I had no life experience to be streetwise!) She of course thought she was teaching me the way I should be for success, and to her the only right way.
How much of who and how we are is ego identification vs our inherent nature?