She woke up every morning at six-thirty. Before opening her eyes, her hand reached for her phone. Forty-three WhatsApp messages, eight Instagram notifications, two work emails. She read, replied, scrolled. Then she got dressed and went to the office. In meetings, she spoke with such determination and decisiveness that it seemed doubt had no place in her being. At lunch, she laughed with colleagues at jokes half of which she didn’t understand. Returning home in the evening, she collapsed onto the sofa from exhaustion. She turned on the TV without watching it. She ate dinner standing up. She stared at Instagram for an hour. At midnight, she turned off the light. And in that darkness, sometimes – not every night, but sometimes – a thought rose from the depths of her mind: “Who am I?”
There was no answer. Just the sound of the fan and heavy breathing. Then sleep. The next day, the same ritual repeated. This cycle had continued for years. Marjan no longer even expected a miracle. She only knew one thing: somewhere in the middle of this routine, something of her had been lost. A kind of faint presence. As if she was always playing a role, but someone else had written the script.
Has it ever happened to you that you suddenly feel you are not your usual self? As if you have a mask on your face or have become lost in the hustle and bustle of life? If your answer is yes, know that this experience is not unique to you. Research shows that nearly seventy percent of people experience at least one significant period of identity confusion at some point in their lives – especially between the ages of twenty-five and forty [1]. This statistic is not limited to those with serious psychological crises; it includes everyone from successful senior executives to elite students and creative artists.
But what exactly does this “confusion” look like? Identity researchers have identified three common, overlapping patterns [2]:
First pattern: Decision paralysis.
The individual gets stuck in front of major life choices – marriage, job change, having children, immigration. Not because they lack sufficient information, but because they don’t know what they “truly want.” Every time they consider an option, a voice inside says, “This isn’t for you.” But another voice also says, “Then which one is?”
Second pattern: Fear of introspection.
The person dreads being alone with themselves. Whenever an opportunity for solitude arises – traffic, the bakery queue, moments before sleep – they immediately take out their phone, turn on a podcast, or call someone. The fear is that if they fall silent, they might see an image of themselves that does not match who they would like to be.
Third pattern: Unexplained emptiness.
Externally, the person has a successful life: a good job, decent income, family, friends. But they feel that something is off. Like a house that has all the furniture but whose owner hasn’t lived in it for years. They cannot explain this feeling of emptiness with any external factor.
Marjan was stuck in all three patterns. And here’s the point: cultural and social pressures reinforce these patterns, not cure them.
Continuously, through the media, education system, family, and society, a set of do’s and don’ts is instilled in us. “Dress this way,” “Choose this field of study,” “You must be successful,” “You should be married by this age,” “Why don’t you have children yet?” “A man doesn’t cry,” “A woman must be delicate.” These messages are so repetitive and intertwined that we lose the distinction between “my desire” and “society’s expectation.” When our values differ from prevailing norms – for example, if we prefer freelancing to office work, or simplicity to extravagance – we may feel alienated inside our own inner world. Erik Erikson, the renowned psychoanalyst and identity theorist, believes that identity crisis is not a disorder but a natural and necessary stage of human development that peaks in adolescence and young adulthood but recurs at different points in life [3]. This feeling of alienation is not because our beliefs are wrong, but because of the lack of a mirror to reflect and confirm those beliefs.
Sometimes we seek others’ approval so much that we ignore our own authentic desires. Social networks have added to the complexity of this issue. A study conducted at the University of Tehran’s Faculty of Behavioral Sciences and Psychology showed that high consumption of social networks has a significant relationship with reduced feelings of authenticity and increased feelings of emptiness among Iranian adolescents and young adults [4]. Why? Because constantly comparing ourselves to images and videos of seemingly perfect lives of others – which are not perfect in reality – gradually reinforces our sense of inadequacy. Each scroll is a silent comparison: “Why is she happier? Why is she traveling? Why is she more successful?” And each comparison steals a bit of our real self.
In addition to cultural pressures, interpersonal relationships also play a decisive role. How many times have we presented ourselves differently from who we are, solely to gain others’ affection or avoid upsetting them? In psychology, this phenomenon is called the “false self” [5] – the compromised version of our existence built for social survival. The problem becomes serious when this false self dominates the stage of life to such an extent that the real self remains a lonely spectator in a dark theater. Excessive reliance on others’ approval gradually distances us from our existential authenticity. Life is full of various roles: father, mother, child, friend, colleague, boss, customer, citizen. The renowned sociologist Erving Goffman has beautifully analyzed this situation in his famous book *The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life* [6] – he believes each of us is like an actor performing different roles on different stages. It is natural that we sometimes forget who the main actor is.
Core exercise of this subchapter: “The question of the week
This week, every morning when you wake up, before picking up your phone, ask yourself just one question and write the answer on a piece of paper next to your bed: “If no one saw me today – not my spouse, not my boss, not my mother, not my online followers – what would I do differently?”
At the end of the week, put the seven answers together. Look for a pattern. Were the seven answers similar (e.g., “I would wear more comfortable clothes” or “I would say no to someone I don’t like”)? Was there a day when you didn’t write an answer because you didn’t know what to say? Review that day.
Sensory exercise: Backward walking
Once this week, choose a short, familiar path – for example, from the kitchen to the bedroom, or from the parking lot door to the workplace entrance. But this time, walk the entire path backward. Not for fun, not so that someone sees and laughs. Be alone. Go slowly. Pay attention to each step. Now the main question: What feeling came over you during this movement? Laughter? Embarrassment? Confusion? A strange kind of freedom? Now compare this feeling to the feeling of “wearing a mask” in daily life. When you walk backward, do you have a mask on or not? There is no answer, just observe. Then write: “While walking backward, I felt that…”
For those in a hurry:
Feeling alienated from oneself is a common and natural experience (about 70% of people at some point in life). Two main factors:
1) Pressure to conform to others’ expectations (the false self),
2) Multiplicity of social roles (everyday performance).
The key to starting change is awareness of these pressures, not trying to destroy them. Just take 5 minutes a day, before anything else, to ask yourself: “What do I really want?”
For those who want to go deeper
– Book: *Identity: Youth and Crisis* by Erik H. Erikson.
– Book: *The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life* by Erving Goffman.
– Article: “Investigating the relationship between social media use and feelings of authenticity and emptiness” by Seyed Reza Mousavi, Fatemeh Rahimi. *Journal of Developmental Psychology*, 2019, No. 25, pp. 43-58. [4]
Open question for this subchapter:
Now you tell me: Among the roles you play every day – colleague, child, friend, spouse, citizen, customer – which one tires you the most, not because it is difficult, but because every time you play that role, you feel you have distanced yourself from your real self?
