When You Do Not Know Who You Are, the Answer Is Not a Better Assessment

Introduction: The Restlessness of Being Suspended

You do not know who you are. What you are good at, when you are most yourself, where you should be heading. Not many people can answer that question clearly. And when the unsettled feeling of being suspended becomes hard to bear for long, we seek urgently for something that will explain us — an assessment, a type, a name. As though a name alone would end the drifting.

What this article treats is not an assessment for finding yourself. It is the structure — why the anxiety of not knowing yourself generates a thirst for naming, and why the road to slaking that thirst is not a more accurate assessment — and a different exit.

Here is the conclusion first. You are not a treasure lying somewhere finished, waiting for the right assessment to dig you up. You are a work in progress, drawn and redrawn while being lived. So the exit lies not in finding a more correct name but in moving the ground from which you describe yourself — from the past to the destination.

The Urgency of Wanting a Name Has Nothing to Do With Its Correctness

What makes the anxiety of not knowing yourself troublesome is that it is a suspended state. Fear has an object; sadness has a cause. Not knowing who I am has no definite shape. People are poor at enduring shapeless anxiety for long. Which is exactly why they seek urgently for whatever will give that anxiety a shape — an outline, a name, an explanation.

A fact here should not be passed over. We want a name not because the name describes us accurately. We want a shape, any shape, because the suspended anxiety is unbearable. First there is the anxiety, then the thirst for a name, and the examination of correctness comes much later — or sometimes not at all. Having a name is more reassuring than not having one. That judgement is less a matter of reasoning than of something closer to an urgent instinct for survival.

Which is why the thirstiest drink without choosing the quality of the water. Those who most urgently want to know themselves are those who most readily accept a frame supplied from outside as who they are. Much of the pain surrounding assessment is generated by that initial ordering.

The Question “Who Am I Really?” Sends the Answer Outward

The question we have long posed is who am I really? That question sends the answer outward. Where is a more reliable test, who is a specialist who will understand me better? The answer is always sought as something located outside the self.

But the question has no exit. No name can fail to leave a portion that does not fit, because a living person is larger than any type. Which means the journey in search of a more accurate name can never, in principle, end. The next name will also be half right and half wrong. And each time, another is sought. Worse, responsibility for the journey never ending is returned to you as well, in the form of you have not searched well enough.

▸ The mechanism by which suspended anxiety leaps at a name is treated in what the Barnum effect is.

Move the Ground From the Past to the Destination

The exit lies in replacing the question. Not who am I really but where do I want to go. Move the ground from which you describe yourself from the past — how things have been — to the future, where you are heading.

Why does moving the ground forward matter so much? Describe yourself from the past and the past binds the present: what could not be done up to yesterday cannot be done today either. Describe yourself from the destination and the destination lifts the present, because a self that has not yet arrived can be described as one heading there. The psychologists Markus and Nurius showed that the images people hold of themselves include not only the present self but the selves they could become, and called these possible selves [Markus & Nurius, 1986]. You are not one fixed name but a spread of selves you could become.

And from this ground, the endless journey of swapping labels does not arise in the first place. Even as you change, so long as the destination is held in view, the description continues to serve. There is no need to swap the name.

Why Describing From the Destination Sets People Free

This is not mere encouragement. There is a firm reason why describing yourself from your destination sets you free.

The psychologists Deci and Ryan studied human motivation over many years and placed the concept of autonomy at its centre [Deci & Ryan, 2000]. Autonomy here does not mean behaving as one pleases. It is the sense that your actions issue from your own values and goals rather than being imposed from outside. When you describe yourself from the past or from external names, the origin of action sits outside you. Describe yourself from where you want to go and the origin of action moves inside. Performing the same action to fit an external name, or performing it as an expression of your own goal, differ entirely in whether you are worn down or move without strain.

One important point here. A genuine wish, or an action issuing from your own goal, proceeds without strain. But this is not judged retrospectively by whether something arrived. Before any concentration begins, discern in relation to action whether the behaviour is an adaptation to a frame given from outside or an expression of your own goal. What continues only by summoning every reserve is generally a matter of fitting yourself to a borrowed name. When force flows without strain in the right direction, the ground is on your side.

Conclusion: You Are the Territory Itself, and It Can Be Rewritten

The anxiety of not knowing yourself generates a thirst for naming. But so long as you try to slake that thirst with a more correct assessment, the journey does not end — because the self is not a treasure to be dug up but a work drawn from the destination. Move the ground from past to future and the same fact of not having arrived turns from a limit into room to grow.

There is no need to let go of trying to understand yourself. What is let go is only the surrender of yourself to a fixed name supplied from outside. You are not one name but the territory itself, rewritable at any time. Even behaving as you do now, tomorrow you may walk a different road — toward a place where you can describe yourself while remaining open. There is no need to hurry. When and how far to deepen the direction received here is for you to decide, at your own pace. Receive the overall design as your next step. How this exit operates across diagnosis as a whole is set out in are personality tests accurate.

References

Academic papers and theory

• Markus, H., & Nurius, P. “Possible Selves” (1986) American Psychologist, 41(9)
• Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. “The ‘What’ and ‘Why’ of Goal Pursuits: Human Needs and the Self-Determination of Behavior” (2000) Psychological Inquiry, 11(4)
• Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior (1985) Plenum Press