Finding yourself

Finding who they are is a deep seated urge for many people.

While not occupying their entire lives there is a sense of not knowing who they are. Of not having a fixed identity. To some people this can be of crisis proportions. Psychology is deeply invested in attempting to reconcile the self and find a coherent identity but is this even possible?
Children are said to recognise their separateness from as young as four, identifying themselves in some way that is different from others (and certainly their mother & father).

This is moving towards self-identity rather than a clear understanding of who they are of course!

We assume and perhaps are lead to believe that a clear sense of selfness is good…and normal, but I would suggest we have a number of selves as perfectly normal human beings, that this is good and that we don’t need fixing. Consider the variety of roles that you ‘play’: a mother, a father, a wife, a husband, parent, leader, follower, a follower of a religion or not.

The list, although probably not endless can go on quite a bit.
If you consider attributes such as hard-working, honest, devoted; occupations such as banker, business owner, florist; affiliations such as a follower of a football team; and relations such brother/sister and so on you can see that each combination may have an associated identity.

Think, for one moment how you are when talking to a close, same gender friend? How you are when communicating with a business associate. And how you are with one or the other or both of your parents (there are three identities right there that you occupy).

No doubt you felt more or less authentic in each relationship situation yet, ‘you’ are quite different in each. For many people this underlies a sense of confusion about who they are and some professions play to that. I suggest that this is entirely normal. Rather than spending vast amounts of time and money and anguish attempting to ‘integrate’ our-selves, consider that as a human being you are complex and somewhat like mercury. Each relationship you have with others – and to the world – creates in you a different being, informed by the rich complexities of your whole self.

The need to pigeon hole ourselves is a holdover from the era where men thought there was an answer to everything. The era of science, where everything could be known: reduced to finite components like a machine.
We are not machines. We laugh, we cry, we rejoice, we dance and play.

This is our total, unidentifiable self at work.