The Fixation on Identity and the Elusive “Sense of Self”
I've been searching for an awfully long time
In 2015, I decided to jot down aspects of my identity, the things I thought were so core to who I was, they would surely never change. Out of fear of completely misrepresenting who I now consider myself to be in this post, I will spare you the details.
It’s not that I don’t like who I was in 2015. In fact, there are tons of things I love about her. But, if we were to meet now, we just wouldn’t have much to talk about.
So, were those things I wrote down with such assuredness actually my identity? My true self? My essence? Or were they just the things I was into and believed in at the time? What I’m into and believe in looks radically different now, so is this my identity?
The Slipperiness of Self: Observations + Questions
The quest to “Find Yourself” has been at the core of Western doctrine for as long as I can remember. Our folklore reeks of it. Every song, movie, and book can take you on the ultimate quest: for romantic love, finding yourself, or both.
And it’s not just the media.
When I was interning in a trauma assessment center, one of the main criteria we would evaluate in children was a “sense of self.” When I asked one of the clinicians what she meant by this, and if the kids knew what she meant when she talked with them about it, she mostly gave me a shrug and something along the lines of, “it’s what makes them uniquely who they are.”
Vague. Cute. But not an answer.
Even Erik Erikson, a famous developmental psychologist whose work is at the core of any psychology program, decided that developing a sense of self is a key developmental milestone. He taught that failure to define a sense of self stunts your development and leaves you in an ongoing state of identity confusion.
Erikson said, “A coherent sense of self is achieved through identity integration—aligning one’s internal sense with social roles and expectations.”
He said that the components that contribute to a sense of self include:
A coherent inner narrative that can be traced through time
That is shaped through social interaction from our roles and relationships
And is strengthened by commitments and values—to choices, beliefs, and life paths
And built through exploration and integration of crises and experiences
While there are many aspects of Erikson’s model that are compelling in how we come to understand ourselves, shaping a narrative in order to orchestrate cohesion doesn’t address the essence of the issue for me. It doesn’t define identity, unless identity is a story.
Circling the issue of identity doesn’t define it. It doesn’t address what it means when those values and beliefs that help us define identity or our sense of self change, only that telling a story about why it changed is helpful. I have a completely different set of beliefs and values than I did in 2015. While there is a distinct narrative as to what got me here, the narrative is not the identity. The narrative can always change.
So what is it? Is your sense of self what you think of when you’re alone? What others reflect back at you? The roles you play? The stories you tell? The hobbies you enjoy? The narrative you come up with to explain all of it?
Buddhism & the Principle of Not-Self
I recently came across the Buddhist principle of anattā, or “not-self.” This principle conveys the idea that the idea of the self is an illusion—or at least in the way we usually think of it.
Buddhist philosophy proposes that the self is made up of 5 parts, or aggregates, that are in a state of constant change:
1. Form (rūpa) – your body and physical sensations
2. Feeling (vedanā) – pleasure, pain, or neutrality that arise from experience
3. Perception (saññā) – how you recognize and label things
4. Mental formations (saṅkhāra) – your thoughts, habits, desires, emotions
5. Consciousness (viññāṇa) – your awareness, attention, or sense of knowing
The Buddha taught that when we identify any or all of these parts as the Self, it leads to suffering, because none of them are stable, lasting, or fully ours to control.
When we are able to step away from the idea of having a Self, an identity that is constant and controllable, we can find freedom in the ever-shifting and evolving nature of our aggregates.
It’s not that there’s no self at all—it’s that what we call ‘self’ is more like a swirling process than a permanent object.
The argument that there is freedom in letting go of the constant quest to find yourself and have a cemented identity is a compelling one. It opens up room for change, creativity, and room to just be with whatever is most exciting at the moment.
In contrast, the Western ideal of the self as something to build, optimize, and “know thyself” to death is exhausting. Like my last post, The Thirst for Satisfaction, it leads us down the path of confusion and suffering when that core identity starts to change.
Why Not Both?
I’m still very new to the concept of not-self. But even in my newness to the concept, I feel like I’m already finding a sense of relief. Relief that I don’t need to always know exactly who I am, what makes me me, or where I’m going to be in 10 more years.
It frees me from the confinement of identity.
Sure, there are things I believe in and aspects of myself that feel incredibly important and central to how I see the world, and they could change tomorrow.
If there’s anything I learned from my 2015 self, it’s that I have had a whole lot of changing to do over the last decade. I think I’d be disappointed if there weren’t more change to come in the next.
For me, I want to blend these ideas of self and not-self.
Erik Erikson’s take on sense of self still feels important to me. A cohesive narrative as to where I came from and how I got here feels like a cozy fire for my concept of identity.
And the Buddhist principle of not-self feels like a cool, refreshing breeze. It’s relieving that I never need to completely decide or stay static. I can just be with whatever is in constant flux at the moment.
Maybe what matters is how you move through the world, not who you are on paper.
Maybe your “self” is just the space between what you notice and what you care about.
Either way, I don’t think it’s quite as important as we’ve made it out to be. C’est la vie!