The Loss of Identity

Recently, I visited a web page titled 26 Questions To Help You Know Yourself Better. I’ve always been averse to articles like this because there was no way that, at the end of these 26 questions, I’d know myself any better. They’re surface-level questions: What are your strengths? They come with surface level answers: I guess I’m not too bad at cooking. Because when you experience the loss of your identity, questioning who you are comes easy. Finding the real answers to those questions is what feels impossible.

Why does it happen? Well, this article lists the reasons quite clearly:

“We put everyone else’s needs before our own…We’re disconnected from our thoughts and feelings…We experience life transitions and changes in our roles…We feel ashamed and unworthy, and consequently bury parts of ourselves.”

For most people who've experienced the loss of their identity, realising these things does not come as much of a surprise. Understanding this helps in understanding how one loses their sense of identity, however, it does very little to help someone rediscover their identity.

Being stuck in a position where you know you've lost your identity but can't conceieve of a way to recover it is a scary place to be. Rediscovering that sense of stability takes baby steps.

I started off by simply ridding myself of any preconceived notions about what my identity was "supposed to be". Rid of any external pressures or internal criticisms, I would have to discover the person I wanted to be rather than the person I was expected to be.

Accepting loss was the next step. When my identity began to wither away, I feared I’d be losing my entire world. I did everything in my power to hold on to the aspects of myself that I could still vaguely distinguish. But it wasn't long before I realised that I was trying to hold onto a person who was already long gone. I was clinging to parts of me that were familiar, even when I didn't agree with them anymore. This meant that I had to let go of everything that once made me "me". Accepting the blank canvas that my identity was to become was necessary, because I’d soon have to layer it with everything that was true to me now.

After letting go of everything, I was left blank. Nothing about my life up until this point could hold onto my blank canvas. Instead, it appeared that the entire world could’ve been me, and this realisation offered me a certain freedom to be anyone or anything. Suddenly, I’m not confined by the limits of my previous identity, I’m open to a world of possibility and each decision I face will shape who I become.

Whoever I turned out to be, there was only one thing that remained important: that I’d stay authentically me, in the here and now, and that I'd learn from every experience I was confronted with afterwards. I realised that I could only discover who I wanted to be once I dedicated the time to be truly present and aware of myself: my wants, needs, goals, inspirations. Those could only be found in the present moment. That was the only thing I could control, and in the present moment, my mind would have to stay clear of my past regrets or my fears of the future.

Overtime, parts of me that I hadn’t felt since childhood came back to me without force. I was reunited with passions that had been invisible to my old identity. As I remained open to self-discovery, I began to discover a true sense of identity that would stand against time and experience. It felt full of potential to grow and strengthen. It was one that could hold my dreams securely, and one that was eager for change as life unfolded.

The loss of your identity is not as bad as you think. It means there’s something needing to be lost, and something else needing to be found. And guess what? You are the only person who can do the discovering. Because you deserve to be discovered and you owe it to yourself to find out.