Podcast Episode #53 - Why Do I Feel Like I've Lost Myself?
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[00:00:00] Hello, and welcome back to yet another inspirational podcast episode brought to you by yours truly, Carina. I'm your truth speaker, truth seeker, truth keeper, and I am so glad that you're here with me today
Have you caught yourself thinking, "I don't feel like myself anymore"? Maybe your life still looks mostly the same. You're still working, parenting, answering messages, remembering what everybody needs, keeping everything moving, but [00:01:00] somewhere underneath all of that, you no longer recognize the woman doing it.
And perhaps the strangest part is you do not necessarily want your old life back. You do not even want to become the woman you were before. You just miss knowing who you are But what if feeling lost is not proof that you have drifted away from yourself? What if it's what happens when the version of you who knew how to survive no longer fits, but the woman you are becoming still feels unfamiliar?
Maybe you're not lost Maybe you are between identities
There is a sentence I keep hearing in different forms from women lately, "I just want to feel like [00:02:00] myself again." And whenever I hear it, I find myself wondering which self? The woman you were before children? Before the relationship? Before the grief? Before burnout? Before you became responsible for so many people and so many things.
Because there is often an assumption underneath that sentence that somewhere behind you is a complete untouched version of yourself waiting to be recovered. That if you heal enough, rest enough, understand enough, or finally get your life under control, you will return to her. But what if you cannot return to who you were?
And perhaps more importantly what if you are not supposed to? Life has [00:03:00] changed you motherhood has changed you loss may have changed you The things you have survived have changed you. Healing will change you too. So perhaps the question is not only, "How do I get back to myself?" Perhaps it is also, "Who am I allowed to become now?"
There is a particular moment I keep noticing when women begin changing the patterns that have shaped their lives for years. They finally do something differently. They say no without inventing an excuse. They leave a message unanswered until they genuinely have the capacity to reply. They admit that something does not work for them instead of automatically accommodating everyone else.
They allow another person to be disappointed without [00:04:00] immediately rushing t- in to fix it From the outside, these look like healthy changes, but internally they do not always feel healthy. They can feel uncomfortable, guilty, restless, sometimes even wrong. Instead of feeling proud, a woman may find herself wondering whether she has become selfish, cold, difficult, unlike herself.
And I think that moment matters because she has spent years recognizing herself through the roles she performs, the agreeable one, the available one, the strong one, the woman who keeps everything moving and makes sure everyone else is okay. So when she stops performing these roles in the same way, she does not immediately feel free.
She feels unfamiliar to herself, not because she's made the wrong [00:05:00] choice, but because the behavior that once told her who she was is beginning to loosen. And I think this is a part of healing we do not talk enough about. Sometimes becoming more honest does not initially feel like coming home. Sometimes it feels like losing the map Can I offer you another way of seeing this though?
Maybe you have not lost yourself. Maybe you are between identities. The woman you have been is becoming harder to perform, but the woman you are becoming does not feel familiar enough to trust yet The middle space can feel incredibly disorienting. You might notice that things you once tolerated now irritate you.
Conversations you used to laugh off now sit heavily in your body. [00:06:00] You may no longer want to be the person who always says yes, but saying no still fills you with guilt. You want-- may want more support, but receiving it still feels uncomfortable. You may be less willing to carry everyone else's emotions, yet you do not know what to do with the space that creates.
You might look at your friendships, your work, your relationship, even the way you spend your time and think, "This used to be enough for me." And then judge yourself because it is not enough anymore. But outgrowing something does not mean or make you ungrateful. Changing does not make you inconsistent, and feeling unfamiliar to yourself does not mean you've disappeared.
Sometimes it means the identity you built around [00:07:00] survival is no longer able to contain the truth of who you are becoming. The old identity gave you clear instructions. Be helpful. Be easy to live with. Don't ask for too much. Keep going. Hold everything together, and make sure everyone else is okay. There was certainty in that role, even when it was exhausting.
You knew what to do. You knew who you had to be
But when you begin questioning those instructions, there is no instant replacement manual waiting on the kitchen bench. There is just you learning to hear preferences you have ignored, learning to believe feelings you once explained away, learning that a boundary can be true even when somebody dislikes it, [00:08:00] learning that you are allowed to change your mind, learning that not knowing who you are yet is not failure.
It may simply be the first honest place you've had to find out. Because survival likes a clear identity, it likes predictability. It likes knowing which version of you receives approval, reduces conflict, keeps connection, and gets everyone safely through the day. Maybe being the mature one kept things stable.
Maybe being low maintenance made you easier to care for. Maybe being useful helped you feel valuable. Maybe being agreeable protected you from rejection. Maybe being the strong one meant nobody could see how frightened, hurt, or uncertain you really felt. Those roles were not random. They gave your [00:09:00] nervous system something familiar to organize around, and the nervous system often mistakes familiar for safe.
So when you begin behaving differently, even in healthier ways, your body may not immediately celebrate. It may send guilt, doubt, restlessness, the urge to explain yourself, the fear that you are becoming selfish, difficult, cold, or unlikable, not because the new choice is wrong, but because it's unfamiliar.
The disorientation is not necessi-- not necessarily a sign that you are going backwards. And if you have known yourself for years as the woman who copes, carries, accommodates, and keeps going, putting any of that down can feel less like changing a behavior and more like losing [00:10:00] a piece of yourself. But perhaps what you are losing is not yourself.
Perhaps you are losing the certainty of a role that once told you exactly who you had to be. And when you understand that, something begins to shift. You stop demanding that you immediately know who you are now You stop treating uncertainty as evidence that you have made a mistake. You allow identity to become something you discover, not something you perform correctly.
Maybe you do not need a dramatic reinvention. Maybe the woman you are becoming arrives through smaller moments. The opinion you no longer soften, the invitation you decline without inventing an excuse, the quiet preference you finally admit, the moment you notice something no longer fits and choose not to force [00:11:00] yourself back into it You are not required to have a polished answer to the question, who am I?
You are allowed to become acquainted with yourself slowly. You are allowed to be surprised by what is true now. You are allowed to become someone your survival identity could never have imagined Finding yourself is not always a return to who you were. Sometimes it is finally becoming who you never had room to be.
So the question I would leave you with today is this Are you trying to find yourself? Or are you trying to return to a version of yourself you have already outgrown? Just let that sit with you And this week, notice the moments when you think, "This isn't like me." [00:12:00] Maybe you say no when you would usually say yes.
Maybe you feel less patient with something you used to tolerate. Maybe you want more quiet, more honesty, more space, or something you cannot name yet. Do not rush to correct it. Do not decide that the old you was better. Simply notice whether, "This isn't like me," might actually mean, "This is new for me." No fixing, no forced answer, just curiosity And if this conversation has opened something for you, there is an earlier episode I would gently point you towards.
Episode 48 is called Who Were You Before Survival Taught You Who You Had to Be? That episode explores the parts of you survival may have asked you to leave behind. [00:13:00] Today's conversation is the next layer, because returning to yourself does not always mean returning to the past. Sometimes it means creating enough space to meet the woman who is emerging now.
You will find episode 48 linked in the show notes if you'd like to continue there. And until next time, just because it was doesn't mean it will be. This isn't your personality. This is survival. With love, Carina