Do you feel lost and alone?
Adrift and confused about which way to go?
Do you long for “something more” but have no clue what’s missing?
Maybe you’re not miserable exactly, but you’re not animated and in love with life either.
Your circumstances may even look pretty good on the outside.
But on the inside, where truth resides, you’re bored to tears, unfulfilled, and restless.
Or maybe you’re miserable, stuck in a painful place, silently suffering.
Trust me, I know what that feels like.
Our identities are dynamic and fluid. It’s normal and healthy for identities to evolve with age, circumstances, and changing interests. Sometimes, however, our identities change without our control or awareness. The concept we formerly held of ourselves based on our interest, relationships, values, and behaviors becomes incoherent and incompatible with our observations of ourselves. The object of the declarative “I am” becomes vague and ill-defined. In other words, we lose ourselves.
When you lose yourself, you might feel disconnected from your behaviors, confused by your reflections on reality, or like you don’t understand your motivations. Losing yourself isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, sometimes people seek to lose themselves on purpose, and losing yourself can be a profoundly meaningful experience., but only when you find yourself again. If you want to grow in response to losing yourself, it is critical that you don’t stay lost. Reconnecting with ourselves is easier when we understand how and why we’ve lost our sense of self. Let’s talk about what it means to lose ourselves and some common examples of losing ourselves so we can find ourselves more readily in the future.
When we lose one of our pillars of self we’re left with a void in our identity and buckling of the structure that mediated our interactions with the world. This leaves us feeling distant or disconnected from ourselves- like we’re losing ourselves.
- Losing yourself in a relationship:
Losing yourself in a relationship isn’t necessarily a reflection of an unhealthy relationship. In fact, this process can be catalyzed entirely by good intentions. For example, making sacrifices and compromises to accommodate your partner is theoretically an admirable act of love and commitment, but we can easily lose ourselves if we don’t know when to stop.
- Losing yourself during illness
Illness can decimate our sense of self by limiting our ability to engage in activities by which we define ourselves, diminishing our autonomy over our lives and our future, and making us feel unsafe in our bodies. Being incapacitated by illness and needing help can make us feel like a burden which can challenge our previously held conception of ourselves as capable and independent as well as dramatically change our roles in our social relationships.
- Losing yourself after loss
The loss of a loved one can have a profound impact on our identities. When we lose someone who was central to our lives, we lose a piece of our relational identity or the part of our identity that is organized around our relationships with others. The space that once held our identity as parent, child, sibling, or friend becomes vacant when we can no longer fill the role associated with that identity.
The psychological pain, or grief, that accompanies loss can also significantly affect our self-concept. Grief can be debilitating, leading us to perform poorly or stop engaging entirely in activities that were once a central part of our personal narrative. It can also diminish our capacity to care for ourselves and leave us needing assistance, which often disrupts our sense of self. Additionally, grief can change our temperament and perspectives so dramatically that we feel unrecognizable to ourselves.
Am I losing myself?
It can be hard to tell the difference between healthy changes to your identity that occurs as a function of age and losing who you’re. Sometimes losing yourself happens suddenly and dramatically, other times it is a gradual, more subtle process. Depression can also make you lose your identity. Long term depression is the first step of losing yourself. If you feel like you might be losing yourself but you’re not sure, here are a few signs to look out for:
- Not giving yourself enough alone time
- Negative self-talk
- Not taking care of yourself
- Seeking approval from others
- Losing interest in things you used to care about
- Not knowing what your preferences and needs are
- Feeling powerless
How not to lose yourself?
Though sometimes we need to allow our identities to evolve with our ever-changing circumstances, we can try to avoid losing connection to them. Here are a few ways you can try to avoid losing yourself:
- Setting boundaries
- Saying no
- Positive self-talk
- Affirm yourself
- Mindfulness
- Self-care
- Communicate assertively and ask for what you need from others
- Make time for the things that interest you
- Take some time to yourself
- Journaling
- Self-reflection
I hope you find something that makes you feel alive. Something that reminds you of little miracles in everyday life.
