Codependent Doctor
Podcast focusing on codependency. Learning how to create healthier relationships, healthier self and healthier lives.
Codependent Doctor
39: Losing Yourself in a Role: How to Find Your Identity Beyond Your Job Title or Being ‘The Mom’
In this episode of The Codependent Doctor, I delve into the concept of losing ourselves in the roles we play, whether as a professional, a parent, or a caregiver. Many of us tie our self-worth to our titles and responsibilities, often without realizing it, leading to feelings of being stuck, lost, or drained. I share my personal journey of how I identified too closely with my role as a doctor, to the point where I struggled to articulate who I was beyond that title.
We explore the societal pressures that encourage us to define ourselves by our achievements and productivity, often at the expense of our true selves. I discuss the risks of this mindset, including burnout, fear of change, and the slow loss of personal identity.
To help listeners reconnect with their authentic selves, I offer practical steps, such as spending time alone, revisiting old hobbies, and asking reflective questions about joy and identity. I encourage everyone to introduce themselves in ways that reflect their passions rather than their roles, and to embrace the complexity of being more than just a title.
As I wrap up, I share my excitement about my upcoming book, Enough As I Am, which focuses on self-acceptance and personal growth. I invite listeners to engage with journal exercises that promote self-discovery.
Remember, you are enough just as you are, and it's time to reclaim your authentic self.
I am so excited to share my codependency recovery workbook with you. Click on the link to be brough to Enough As I Am on Amazon.
Hey everyone and welcome back. Today I'm talking about trying to identify too closely with the roles that we play. It's something that a lot of us don't even realize that it's happening until we start feeling stuck, lost or maybe completely drained. Maybe it's your job title, maybe it's being a mom, and maybe it's being the responsible one or the helper in your family. Whatever it is, it can be so easy to lose sight of who you are outside of what you do for everyone else. We're going to talk about why this happens, how to recognize if it's happening to you and, most importantly, how you can start reconnecting with the real you, the person who's underneath all the titles and responsibilities. I know I got stuck doing this. My worth became tied to my title and I know that I'm not alone, so let's dive in.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the Codependent Doctor, a weekly podcast focusing on all things codependency. Are you struggling to love yourself, feeling burnt out or having trouble forming loving and meaningful relationships? I can help you heal from the past and move forward with healthier selves, healthier relationships and healthier, more fulfilling lives. Join me as we reclaim your authentic self. I'm your host, a family doctor and fellow codependent, dr Angela Downey. We can do this together. Here we go. Hello to all my wonderful podcast listeners and welcome to the 39th episode of the Codependent Doctor. I'm your host, dr Angela Downey, a family doctor and fellow codependent. I am so grateful.
Speaker 1:Today I woke up in the best mood ever. I had a great night's sleep. None of my animals vomited in my bed overnight. I woke up, the birds were singing, it was a beautiful day and I got really excited, and I don't know why I don't wake up like this every day, but I guess that some days are just specialer than others. No-transcript to hear from me. Do you have any topics or questions that you'd like me to address on the show? I'd love to do that. I do get emails from time to time, so I'd like to share one with you. It came from Kim and she says I listened to the episode yesterday and she's referring to the understanding, the connection between addiction and mental health. It was so good and I was actually able to apply my new response with positive results. That's amazing and this is why I do this. I love knowing that I'm able to help someone out there. We can all use a little hand from time to time, but I really appreciate it when you let me know that something that I've done resonated with you or was helpful. So today I'm talking about losing yourself in what you do instead of who you are as a person. I want to start by sharing a little story from my own life, and for those of you who don't know, I'm a doctor and I'm really proud of that.
Speaker 1:But for a long time, being a doctor was pretty much the only thing that I knew what to say about myself. Whenever someone would ask me tell me about yourself, I would just say, oh, I'm a doctor, and I would stop there. In all fairness, saying that you're a doctor usually keeps the conversation going. People get curious and they ask questions and there's a lot to talk about. But deep down it scared me that if someone pressed a little further, I didn't really know what else to say. I had no idea who I was outside of that title.
Speaker 1:I remember sitting at a job interview once and the interviewer who was across from me said something like tell me something interesting about yourself. And I just stared at them. I was like a deer caught in the headlights, completely blank. All I could think was I'm a doctor, but beyond that I didn't know what to say. And the thing is, I'm so many things I'm funny, I'm creative, I'm curious. I'm someone who loves learning, I love connection, I love trying to help people in all kinds of ways, I love animals, nature and reading. But I couldn't see any of that because I was so tightly tied to the role that I thought made me worthy to other people. I kept working and striving until I had a title that sounded impressive and one that felt like it proved that I was enough for other people. But somewhere along the way, I lost sight of the fact that I was already enough even without the title.
Speaker 1:And that's what I want to talk about today how easy it is to tie ourselves to the roles that we play and how, if we're not careful, those roles can become a cage. We're going to talk about how this happens, why it's so normal and, most importantly, how to start finding your way back to yourself, the real you that's underneath all the titles, the achievements and all the responsibilities. It's so easy to tie your identity to what you do instead of who you are and, honestly, most of us are taught to do exactly that without even realizing it, from the time that we're little. We get asked what do you want to be when you grow up, not who do you want to be as a person when you grow up? So it makes total sense that by the time we're adults, we introduce ourselves by our roles. I'm a doctor, I'm an executive, I'm a mom. I'm the one who holds everything together. I'm the achiever. I'm the one who holds everything together. I'm the achiever, I'm the helper. And there's nothing wrong with being proud of those roles. They matter, they're a huge part of your story.
Speaker 1:But the problem comes when those roles become the only way that you see yourself, when you start believing that your worth is tied to how well you perform or how much you give or how perfectly you stay inside of those labels. And it happens so easily and so quietly. You don't even notice. Until one day you realize if someone took your job title away, or if your kids grew up and moved out of the house, or if people stopped needing you to fix things. You're not totally sure who you'd be without it, and that's a really unsettling feeling. It's like building a whole house on a foundation that you didn't realize could shift under you. This isn't a personality flaw. It's something that we're trained to do, usually without even realizing it.
Speaker 1:Society loves to reward titles. It rewards productivity and self-sacrifice. We celebrate being busy, having impressive job titles, hitting milestones and taking care of everyone else around us. We often clap for the people who are working overtime, or the mom who does it all, or the friend who never says no. We tell people you're amazing for doing all that. And they are. It's baked into the way that we talk to each other, into the way success is measured, that we talk to each other, into the way success is measured. You rarely ever hear someone being praised for just being, for resting, for playing, for setting boundaries or for existing without producing something, and a lot of us grew up in families where we were praised mostly for what we did not, for simply being ourselves. Maybe you got a lot of attention when you got good grades, when you helped out, when you made people around you proud. Maybe love or approval felt just a little bit conditional, tied to how good you were, how much you achieved and how much you gave. When that's the case, it's completely natural to start believing that doing equals being valuable, that performing or succeeding or caregiving is the way that you earn your place in the world. I can see examples of that time and time again in my life. I'm assuming that most people can see this in their lives as well and you become tied to the titles that you've worked hard to earn.
Speaker 1:On top of that, these roles doctor, mom, caregiver, achiever, helper they give a sense of structure and safety when everything else in life feels uncertain or overwhelming. It can feel comfortable to tuck yourself into a role and say this is who I am and this is where I belong. It's a safe place. It gives you a way to feel anchored, even underneath it. You start to lose touch with deeper parts of yourself and listen, we all do this to some extent. It's about starting to notice where you might have gotten a little too tightly tied to your role and give yourself permission to untangle from it little by little.
Speaker 1:There are real risks of tying your identity too tightly to a role because, even though it can feel safe and even comforting for a role because even though it can feel safe and even comforting for a long time, eventually it can lead to feeling lost and disconnected, even exhausted. You might experience burnout. When your entire sense of worth is tied to being the helper, the achiever or the caretaker, it feels almost impossible to slow down or to take care of yourself. You don't know who you are without the constant giving, doing and proving. For me, sometimes, resting it feels lazy and saying no seems selfish. So you just keep pushing until your body or your heart finally says I can't keep doing this anymore. Then there's the fear of change, and this one hits really hard.
Speaker 1:If you've spent your whole adult life pouring yourself into a career, what happens when you retire? If you've spent years centering your life around raising your kids, what happens when they leave the home? And if you build your world around a partnership, what happens when that partner passes away or the relationship ends Suddenly? You're not just grieving a job or a life stage or a person. You're grieving a piece of your identity. You're left asking who am I now that I'm not needed? In the same way, where do I fit in now that that role that I built my life around is gone?
Speaker 1:There's also a quiet, aching kind of resentment that can creep in. When you spend years living for someone else or carrying someone else's needs, you can start to feel trapped, even in roles that you once loved. You can start to feel trapped even in roles that you once loved. You love your kids and you love your work, but part of you might feel invisible or angry, or tied to being the dependable one, with no space to just be yourself. Maybe the hardest part, the one that sneaks up on you, is the slow loss of yourself. The hobbies that you once loved, some things, they just fall away. The dreams that you had get pushed off to the side, and the parts of you that didn't fit inside of your role they get silenced until you barely even remember what they are anymore. You stop asking yourself what you want, what you need or even who you are, when nobody needs anything from you. And it doesn't happen overnight. It's this slow, quiet, gentle drift. And then one day you wake up and you realize, hey, I've built a life full of people and titles and responsibilities, but you don't recognize yourself inside of it anymore. So how do you even start noticing if this is happening in your own life?
Speaker 1:Sometimes the signs are really obvious and sometimes they're really sneaky. One of the big clues is how do you introduce yourself when someone asks about you? Do you immediately lead with your job title or your family role? Imagine sitting at the last gathering that you had, where maybe you didn't know anybody. And someone said, hey, I'm so-and-so. And you go to shake their hand and you're like hey, I'm Dan, I'm a. What are you? How do you answer that question? Do you answer I'm a nurse, or I'm a mom of three, or I'm an office manager, and then just stop there. It's not that being proud of your role is wrong. It's beautiful, it's a great thing, but when it's the only thing you say about yourself, it might be a sign that you've started to equate your entire worth with what you do for others.
Speaker 1:Another sign is how you feel when you're not actively doing something. If you find yourself feeling panicked, lost or even worthless when you aren't working or helping or fixing other people, it might mean that you've tied your value too closely to your productivity. For example, you might sit down on the couch for 10 minutes and immediately feel anxious like you're wasting your time or being lazy. Or maybe a slow weekend feels unbearable because you're not accomplishing anything and without that sense of doing, you feel lost. Rest might not even feel like rest anymore. It might feel like guilt. You might hear this little voice inside your head saying you should be doing something more or you don't deserve to relax. Yet you haven't done enough. Even when you're exhausted, even when you've done more than enough, you still struggle to let yourself just be. And maybe the hardest realization is when you start to notice that you don't even really know what you enjoy anymore. You know what you're supposed to do, you know what makes you look good, you know what people around you expect and what keeps everyone else happy. But if someone asked you what do you love or what brings you joy, you might freeze, because when you've spent so much time living for other people or meeting everyone else's expectations, you can lose touch with what actually lights you up inside.
Speaker 1:I want to share a quick story. So I was on a date a couple years ago and we've been out a couple times and at one point they pulled out one of those little get-to-know-you card decks. You know the kind with. You know it's got funny and lighthearted questions on there. That's supposed to spark conversation. One of the questions was something like if you were a cartoon character, which one would best represent you. Sounds like such a simple question, maybe a little bit of a fun question. But I just sat there completely stunned, frozen. The seconds dragged on. It was painfully awkward. Stunned, frozen, the seconds dragged on. It was painfully awkward and suddenly what was supposed to be this light, easy moment turned into this internal crisis, and I couldn't even explain what was happening.
Speaker 1:At the time I had no idea what to say Because before I could even pick a cartoon character, I realized that I didn't know who I was. How could I choose a character to represent me when I wasn't even sure what was me? And it sounds funny now, but that simple question haunted me for days after. It shook something loose inside of me that I couldn't just shove back down, because the truth was. For a long time my identity was so tied up in what I did my job, my roles as a mother, my achievements that I hadn't let much space to even think about who I was underneath all that. And that silly little question. It kicked off years of reflection and healing, learning how to untangle myself from the labels that I wore so tightly, learning how to find peace in myself again, not because of a title or because of what I could do for other people, but just because I existed. And here's the wild part Even now, I still don't know exactly which cartoon character I would pick to represent me. But the difference today is that I'm okay with that. I can say with confidence that I am just too many things for one character to capture. I'm too complex and instead of being scared of that, I feel proud of it.
Speaker 1:So reconnecting with who you are is a process that takes time. It might even take a lifetime. And how can you reconnect with yourself? First, you need to spend some time with yourself outside of your usual roles and listen. This can feel a little awkward or even uncomfortable at first, especially if you're someone who's used to always being on for other people, when your whole day is usually being the reliable co-worker, the supportive friend, maybe the available parent or the problem solver. The idea of just hanging out with yourself might feel a little weird. You might even find yourself thinking okay, so what now? Like, what do I do with myself? I don't even know where to start. So start simple.
Speaker 1:Think back to some of the hobbies or the activities that you used to love. Even if it's been years, there's got to be something in there that you enjoy doing. You probably haven't thought about it in a long time, but things that you like doing when you're a teenager, when there was no other pressures and you just got to love what you did. Maybe you used to love drawing or playing music, maybe baking, spending time outdoors. Maybe you like to read or build things with your hands. Whatever it is, it doesn't matter if you're good at it. Now. The point isn't to master it or to be impressive. The point is just to reconnect with the parts of yourself that weren't about being productive or useful, the parts that existed just because they brought you joy. Let yourself play with creativity, even if you're absolutely terrible at it. Now Bake something new and laugh even if it turns out badly. Maybe scribble in a notebook just for fun. You can try painting, even though what you create looks like something a four-year-old made. It's not about the outcome. It's about the freedom to do something just because you want to.
Speaker 1:And if you're not sure where to start, try sitting with yourself in a quiet reflection without an agenda. Maybe that looks like going for a slow walk without your phone. Maybe it's lying on the floor and staring at the ceiling for a few minutes. Maybe it's sitting on your porch with a cup of coffee and just letting yourself be having the birds sing around you. It doesn't have to be this big dramatic experience where you find yourself overnight. Sometimes the real magic happens in those tiny moments, in the spaces where you stop performing and start remembering. The more that you give yourself permission to be in those spaces, the more that you're going to hear the voice that's the real you, the you that exists underneath all of the noise and all of the rules.
Speaker 1:Next, try asking yourself a few simple but really powerful questions. What brings me joy? That has nothing to do with my job, nothing to do with my kids or anyone else's approval, and maybe, if no one needed me for anything today, what would I want to do? These questions are important because they help you get underneath the layers of expectations and into what actually lights you up, and not just what makes you feel useful or praised. Try introducing yourself to somebody without leading with your job or your family role. How would you do this? What are some of the things that you would say? Instead of saying I'm a teacher or I'm a mom of two, try saying something that reflects in your heart or your passions, your values. You could say something like I love to read or I like working in the garden.
Speaker 1:It's going to feel really strange at first, but it's powerful to remind yourself that you're a person before you're a title, and try exploring some new interests, even if they feel silly or awkward or way out of your comfort zone. It doesn't matter if you suck. Try taking a pottery class. That's something I actually plan to do in the next couple weeks as a date night. I don't know if I'm going to be any good at pottery. I like looking at the pottery that other people do, but I'm probably not going to be good at it. But you know what? I'm going to have fun getting my hands full of clay and getting dirty and trying something new. You can try hiking, start writing terrible poetry or learn to play the ukulele, not because you have to be good at it, but because you deserve to do things that make you feel alive, even if nobody else is there clapping for you, untangling your identity from your roles, from your achievements and from your need to be useful all the time. That's one of the deepest acts of self-love there is. And yeah, it's going to feel strange at first. It might even feel selfish, might feel uncomfortable or awkward, but it's because it's so different from what you've been taught.
Speaker 1:But you're allowed to be more than one thing. You're allowed to be messy and in process. You're allowed to be messy and in process. You're allowed to have layers and interests and sides that don't fit neatly into a job title or a relationship role. You're not here just to be useful. You're not here just to meet expectations. You're allowed to change and evolve. Who you were five years ago, who you were last year, even who you were last week, that doesn't have to be who you stay forever.
Speaker 1:Growth doesn't mean that you're abandoning the old you. It means that you're expanding. You're making space for your whole self to show up. You are valuable just because you exist, not because of what you achieve, not because of how many people you help, not because of how perfectly you perform. Just because you're you. You are enough just as you are.
Speaker 1:And that is the title of my new book, enough as I Am. It should be coming out in the next couple weeks. I'm really excited for you to see it. I've been working hard on it for the last little while. It's a workbook to really find out who you are and how to stop people pleasing, how to stop experiencing chronic guilt, how to show yourself some self-compassion. I'm really excited for it. I'm excited for you to see it.
Speaker 1:If you're interested in doing some journal exercises for this week. I've got a couple of questions lined up for you. If I couldn't describe myself by my job title, relationship status or responsibilities, who would I be and how would I introduce myself? What hobbies, dreams or parts of me have I pushed aside while playing my roles? What would it look like to bring some of that back now? I wish you all a great week as you learn to foster a better relationship with the most important person in your life yourself.
Speaker 1:I'm going to meet you here next week for another episode of the Codependent Doctor, when I'm going to be talking about giving the silent treatment. Ouch, I don't know if you've ever been on the receiving end of the silent treatment, but it is not a good time. So I look forward to seeing you next week. Take care for now. It is not a good time, so I look forward to seeing you next week. Take care for now. Thank you for joining me and I hope today's podcast resonated with you. Click, like and subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes and to help others who might benefit. This podcast is not meant to provide medical advice and should not replace seeing your doctor for mental health concerns. If you're having a mental health crisis, please present to a hospital, call 911 or your local crisis helpline. I'll talk to you next week for another episode of the Codependent Doctor. We can do this together.