Identity

Identity.

I think it’s one of the biggest issues of our time. Probably the root of a lot of the world’s problems.

What we say out loud…

🤔I’m not a confident person.
🤔I have chronic pain.
🤔I have ADHD.
🤔I’m an introvert.

What we think inside…

💭I’m not good enough.
💭I’m a bad person.
💭I’m not capable.
💭People always leave.
💭People always lie.
💭I’m stupid.

Identities nobody sees, yet they decide everything. Most people have their own version of this list and it sits underneath everything they do whether they realise it or not.

This is where identity becomes a problem. It can restrict everything you do without ever giving you a choice. It stops you from trying something new, it stops you from imagining a different life, it keeps you stuck and unhappy in one place long after you’ve outgrown it, and most of the time you don’t even realise that’s what’s happening.

One of the times it hit me was something as simple as food. I decided to do Veganuary, then extended it for a few months, then became vegetarian and stayed that way for three years. Eventually I realised my body wasn’t happy, my health was going downhill, and to be honest I was really missing chicken! So I went back to eating meat. That should have been the end of it, but saying it out loud to people felt ridiculous. I felt guilty, silly, almost embarrassed to admit I’d changed my mind. And that’s when I realised people stay in an identity because it’s who they were, not who they are now, and even when the old version of you doesn’t fit anymore, you stay stuck there because it feels easier than explaining yourself.

I saw the same thing with chronic illness. I’ve had more health issues than I can count, and at one point I made an Instagram account about it and followed loads of people going through similar things. It helped in some ways, but at some point I realised how easy it is to start identifying with the illness itself. I actually felt worse during that time. You forget that it’s something you have, not something you are. And yes some illnesses are lifelong, but that doesn’t mean the impact of them has to stay the same forever.

Sometimes when people go into remission or things suddenly improve, we treat it like some miracle, but I think a lot of the time it’s because they refused to let the illness become their whole identity. They looked at their situation and thought, this might be happening to me right now but what can I do that might help, where can I start, what’s the next thing that could make life even slightly easier.

That doesn’t mean the journey is simple or that the illness disappears for everyone, it just means identity plays a bigger role in healing than we talk about.

Another example for me was smoking. I smoked for years but always said, when I have a child I won’t be a smoker anymore. And funnily enough I actually quit a month before my son was even conceived, and that identity of being a non smoker has been one I’ve kept ever since. I know I can choose to smoke for a week and then not smoke again for years because it doesn’t match who I see myself as now. That’s how powerful identity can be, sometimes it keeps you trapped and sometimes it moves you forward.

You can see ADHD as something negative, or you can look at the parts of it that actually help you, the parts that explain why you think quickly, notice details others miss, or come up with ideas in ways people without ADHD never do.

Dyslexia is another one people used to see as a dead end, as if it meant you’d never get anywhere in life, yet so many entrepreneurs and problem solvers have dyslexia and have succeeded because the way they think naturally leads them towards solutions others wouldn’t find. It’s there for good reason.

Identity becomes an issue when it stops you living your life. When it causes you to assume things about yourself or others that aren’t actually true. When society labels something as bad and that label sticks to you before you even know it’s there.

And this applies to the deeper stuff too, the darker identities people don’t want to talk about, the ones created by trauma or fear or survival. I often wonder what identity someone carries that makes them capable of the worst things, what story they believed about themselves long before they acted on it.

And on the other side of that I see people who have been through the hardest things and still manage to build something incredible from it. People who refused to let the worst part of their life be the part that defined them.

Viktor Frankl comes to mind, and so do Paralympians who rebuild their entire sense of self around strength instead of loss.

So what’s the cure?

I don’t think it’s about pretending every identity is good, because some identities don’t help you at all. Some need healing. Some need to be released. Some need to be seen as something happening now rather than something that defines your entire life.

But maybe instead of teaching doctors and teachers and society all the symptoms and labels, we should teach the positive attributes inside each identity, the things that help them grow rather than the things that keep them stuck.

Identity doesn’t have to be permanent. It isn’t a life sentence. It’s a moment in time, a story you’re telling with the information you had back then, not necessarily the story you’d write now.

And maybe the biggest realisation comes when you understand you’re allowed to change who you are without apologising for it.

You’re allowed to stop holding on to something that no longer fits, and you’re allowed to choose again, as many times as you need to.

That’s the biggest takeaway here.

Don’t let identity define you.