When You No Longer Recognize Yourself (But Are Finding Your Way Back)
Something that doesn’t get talked about enough is how much we evolve throughout our adult lives—not just through external achievements or milestones, but internally, in the quiet places where identity lives.
We experience what I call lifequakes, those unexpected, pivotal moments that divide life into a clear “before” and “after.” Sometimes these moments arrive as heartbreak, loss, illness, or big moment of change. Sometimes they’re quieter but no less powerful. Either way, they shift us. Whether we’re ready or not, we change.
During my burnout recovery, one of the most surprising pieces of the process was meeting a new version of myself. I had become so worn down and wounded that I completely shut down. My nervous system needed safety, so I retreated away from the world I knew into solitude. It became my own kind of cocoon.
Reemerging wasn’t a rushed process. It was slow and there were moments I slipped back into retreating. For a while, the only identity I could connect to was what I had let go of. The girl who left her job, who didn’t work, who had stopped her life… the list was long. I had stripped myself back down to a place where I no longer recognized who I was.
Around that time, I came across a self-reflection exercise—twice, actually—in two different online communities. Each version had been inspired by The Authenticity Compass by Pamela Bond. The prompts were simple on paper: What do you talk about most with others? Where do you find joy? What values guide your life? The goal was to list your top three responses for each.
No matter how many times I tried, I couldn’t complete it. For a full year, every attempt ended the same way: with me frozen, and the words “I can’t, I don’t have these things” echoing in my mind.
Then, last spring, something shifted. Maybe it was a meditation that brought me back to my higher self or maybe I had simply softened enough to come back to myself again. On what felt like my twentieth try, I completed the exercise with ease. When I looked down at my responses, I felt overwhelmed in a way I couldn’t explain. I remember clearly looking down at my notebook saying out loud, “I have my identity back.” That’s when I realized just how far I had drifted.
The truth is, maybe I didn’t lose myself completely. I let go of a version of me I thought I was supposed to be. She was anxious. She swallowed her feelings to keep the peace. She stayed small to survive in a world that didn’t reflect her. She had grown so used to discomfort that it felt normal.
From finally completing the exercise, I had four core themes started to emerge: wellbeing, connection, beauty, and creativity. All important in their own way to me. Wellbeing was my whole life. Connection was something I learned in this process was deeply important to me. It need to be deep and meaningful. Beauty was something I appreciated in nature or how I decorated my home, I knew I appreciated when something was beautiful to my eye. Creativity was how I built and imagined my way through life. If something in my life didn’t align with one of those words, it no longer had a place in my future.
Today, I’m still me—but I carry myself differently now. I move through the world with more ease, more calm, and more clarity. That doesn’t mean the old patterns are gone. They still show up in certain moments, especially when stress creeps in. I can feel it in my body going into old stress responses, tightness in my stomach, racing thoughts, a surge of anxiety.
Now I know those sensations aren’t signs to run from. They’re reminders to pause and come back to who I am today. I ground into the version of me who no longer needs to dim her light, make herself small, or stay somewhere just because it’s familiar. I respond from that place—with boundaries, with honesty, and with deep respect for the life I’m rebuilding.
Healing doesn’t require forgetting who you were. It asks that you release the patterns, places, and people who no longer support who you’re becoming. It takes practice. It takes gentleness. But when you begin to make decisions from a place of authenticity, your life starts to feel like your own again.
If you’re in a moment where you don’t recognize yourself, know this:
You are not broken. You are becoming.
You haven’t lost yourself—you’re simply being invited to meet the next version of you.
Take good care of yourself,
