1. She tries on identities throughout the movie. She explicitly tries to be the better version of Ben, the one who doesn’t fail. To be a good student and Jedi. But she ends up assaulting her own Jedi Master because he’s not the ideal she wanted him to be, needed him to be, and he’s not giving her the clear sense of purpose and belonging she set out craving. The opposite side of wanting belonging from elders is that, in her disappointment, she’s tempted by the kind of anger and rebellion that Kylo represents. Ultimately, she sees the “kill the past” nonsense for what it is.
2. I really don’t think Rey’s moment of elder abuse is supposed to be a good thing! Or her being an “emotional sherpa” to Luke. The only other person in this sequence of films who’s attacked an old man is Kylo Ren. It’s not intended to be a good look on her!
3. Second, she tries to be a better Luke Skywalker. to succeed where he failed, to outdo him. And finds herself failing at that in a way that she’s able to find compassion for him and herself through. Despite having her own set of failed parents and mentors, she’s able to accept them for what they are, failures included. She’s able to become an adult, someone who can forgive others and herself, instead of constantly blaming others, like Kylo continues to do, in his immaturity.
4. She literally goes into a cave and faces her worst fear in a very mythic sequence that mirrors Luke fighting “himself” and then turns to Kylo, her animus/shadow self for a time, only to positively integrate the things he, as the antagonist, has not been able to: pain over rejection, resentment over the failures of the adults in her life, loneliness and the temptations of entitlement that come with the kind of raw force power they both have.
5. By the end, she’s able to recognize that there was a hole inside her where the love of her parents should be and it’s not going to easily be filled. And constantly living in denial or seeking someone to fill that hole is only going to leave her broken and vulnerable to darkness.
6. In the same way that Finn worked through the things holding him trapped in the past, including patterns he learned from his life-time of abuse, Rey ends the film no longer trapped in the past, but having integrated it.

I was ashamed of what I was. But I’m done with the First Order. I’m never going back.