Ep 35 - The Identity Gap: Why You’re Changing But Still Showing Up the Same

You’re doing the work.
You’re thinking differently.
You can feel that something in you has shifted.

So why do you keep showing up the same—especially with the people who know you best?

In this short solo episode of Rewired, Tiffany explores the neuroscience behind what she calls the “identity gap”—the space between who you’re becoming internally and how you’re still behaving externally.

Grounded in brain science, this episode breaks down how neuroplasticity is already reshaping your brain daily… and why your identity and behavior don’t always keep up. You’ll learn how your brain defaults to familiar patterns, how social environments reinforce old versions of you, and why your need for belonging can quietly override your desire for authenticity.

Most importantly, Tiffany shares a simple, practical way to begin closing the gap—using small, real-time shifts and the power of cognitive reappraisal to reinforce who you’re becoming.

This isn’t about becoming someone new overnight.

It’s about learning to show up—on purpose—in the moments that matter.

✨ In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why your brain changes faster than your identity
• What the “identity gap” is and how it keeps you stuck
• How familiar environments trigger old patterns
• Why belonging can override authenticity
• A simple, real-time reset to help you practice new behaviors

If you’ve ever felt like you’re growing on the inside but stuck on the outside—this episode is for you.

Work with a Brain-Based, ICF Certified Coach at Empower Coaching & Training: www.YesEmpower.com

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Welcome to Rewired. I'm your host, Tiffany Grimes, with Empower Coaching and Training. Welcome back, listeners. This is Tiffany with the solo episode of Rewired brought to you by Empower Coaching and Training. And I wanted to start today with a listener question. I love getting these. If you have a question that you want addressed, please do send them info at yesempower.com and just title the email listener question for Rewired. All right, let's get to today's question. I've been doing a lot of internal work lately, really trying to understand who I am and what I actually believe, not just who I've always been around my friends. I can feel that I'm changing on the inside. What I find funny is different. What I care about is deeper. Even the way I connect to people has shifted. But when I'm with my friends, I become the same version of myself I've always been. I laugh at the same jokes even when I don't think they're funny. I don't say what I'm really thinking. I don't go deeper, even though I want to. And afterwards it feels frustrating. Like I'm doing all this internal work, but I'm not actually living it. It almost makes me question if I'm really changing at all. So I guess my question is: why is it so hard to show up as who I'm becoming, especially with the people who know me best? Thank you so much again for writing in with this question. I appreciate it. You are not alone, and what you're describing isn't failure of growth. It's actually very predictable, very human. This is part of how change works. Every single day your brain is changing. This is a process called neuroplasticity. Our brain is constantly reorganizing itself. Neuropathways that were used yesterday are strengthened or pruned away. New proteins are synthesized, new connections are formed. You are not operating with the exact same brain you had yesterday. It's physically a different being. But the tension lies within this. The biology updates daily. Our identity, who our kind of mindset, who we think we are in the world, does not. And so what happens with this tension? You walk into today with yesterday's story. I'm the kind of person who I always struggle with this, I'm good at this, I'm not great at this. This is just how I am. That's not truth, that's pattern recognition. We're waking up, we're grabbing our old luggage, and we're running into each new day. Even though we have a quote unquote new brain to be working with, your brain is predictive, it uses past experiences to decide what to pay attention to, what to feel, and how to respond. So if your identity stays anchored in the past, your brain will keep recreating it. This is where cognitive reappraisal comes in. So let's talk about cognitive reappraisal. Research from James Gross shows that how we frame an experience before an emotional response locks in one of the most powerful ways to regulate our emotions. Not suppress, not avoid, not distract, but reframe. Now let's kind of bring this back to the question. So we'll play with all this and what cognitive reappraisal means and how we do this. So what the listener who wrote the question is experiencing has a name. It's called identity lag. Your internal world has shifted, but your external patterns haven't caught up yet. You're thinking differently, you're valuing differently, you're wanting deeper connection, but in real time, in our behaviors and our relationships, your default mode is to go back to the version of you that has been practiced the most. Not because it's true necessarily anymore to who you are, but because it is familiar. It's what we've practiced it, what it's what feels safe to us. It's what we do without thinking, literally. And here's where this gets even more specific. Your brain is deeply contextual. It doesn't just learn you, it learns you in certain environments. So when you're with your friends, your brain activates these neural pathways that have been reinforced in that space. So this is the same people, same cues, same responses. Your brain essentially is saying, Oh, I know who we are here, right? I know how to act, I know what to say, I know what to laugh at, I know who we are when we're with these people. And this, you know, think about this with family, with friends, with work colleagues. That's not failure, that's efficiency. It's a it's a safety mechanism, right? We know how to show up in these roles and we've practiced them sometimes our entire life, often decades. And underneath all of this is something even more just human, which is that we are wired for belonging, we're hardwired for connection. So your nervous system is constantly asking, clearly on the unconscious level, do I belong here? Am I safe here? And sometimes belonging wins over authenticity. So even if part of you is thinking, that's not funny anymore, or I want it something deeper, another part of you is saying, you know, just stay the same. This is great. Stay connected, don't interrupt this, don't rock the boat, right? This tension, it isn't weakness. This is your brain trying to protect connection, which is like the gas in the tank for the brain. We need to feel like we are part of something. And if we don't feel like we belong, we will go find connection in unhealthy places. We will go find a sense of belonging, even if it's not safe or healthy for us, right? It's just part of how we exist as humans. So this is where your power lives. And this is going to bring us back to some of the topics we brought up before. So you don't control every thought that shows up, right? We can't, we can work with our thoughts when they show up, but we aren't necessarily controlling the thoughts as they enter. But you do have influence over what you reinforce and what thoughts you allow to take up space, because thoughts drive behavior. And this is where people unintentionally give their power away, not because they're lazy, not because they lack motivation, but because they rehearse old identities, they revisit old evidence, they reinforce familiar patterns. And when I say they, I mean we. We all do this. What we practice, notice and return to grows. What we practice strengthens. If we don't intentionally engage in this process, a few things happen. We default to yesterday's wiring. The brain is efficient, it will reuse old brain pathways if you don't interrupt them and not just reuse them but strengthen them, they get faster. Attention gets hijacked, your attention is a finite resource. When it's scattered, your intention disappears. Identity becomes fixed. Even though your brain is adaptable, your story becomes rigid and fixed and repeated, and that's where we get stuck. So it's new potential, old patterns, same results, right? So when you say I'm doing all this internal work, but I'm not living into it, that's actually where we want to hone in. Your awareness has expanded, but your practice behavior hasn't caught up yet. So internally, we are somewhere that our behaviors have not yet caught up with, or our identity as well. Insight doesn't create change. Just having the awareness doesn't mean we change what we do. Practice does. Change happens when you begin to interrupt old patterns in real time. So let's look at some real practical tools. This is, of course, for our listener who wrote the question, but for all of us, because we can all connect with this question. How do I match my behaviors with who I am becoming? So a couple things I want to walk us through here. The first one is to catch the moment. When you are with your friends, or when you're in whatever situation is where you're wanting to see some shifts, and you feel that moment where you know your friend tells the joke that doesn't align with belief systems, or somebody touches your shoulder and you've already put up some clear boundaries around not being touched without permission, right? Name that, notice it, catch the moment for yourself. I don't actually like this. You don't have to say it externally, internally. Here it is, here's the moment. This is, I don't agree with this humor, right? Whatever it is, you're naming it. Pause internally and name it. This is an old pattern. That awareness alone brings you out of habit and into your prefrontal cortex where you get to think and choose and decide out of habit. So coming into the moment, bringing self-awareness into the moment when you're with your friend. Then we're going to practice a micro shift. So you don't have to change everything all at once. You don't have to scratch the needle across the record. Instead, just try something small. So maybe you don't laugh so heartily in your response. Pause before responding, maybe saying something like, you know, I see this a little differently, or ask a deeper question, bring some curiosity into it. What do you mean by that? Tell me more about that, right? Just instead of going into habit and noticing the discomfort and just going along, maybe just a micro shift. What do you mean by that? Change happens in degrees, not gargantuan leaps generally for most of us. Third is to expect the discomfort. So when you show up differently, it might and probably will feel uncomfortable because you have left your comfort zone. You have left your habit zone. And what lies on the other side of habit zone is discomfort as you move towards being in alignment with who you are becoming. We don't step out of comfort zone and into alignment. There are several phases, and discomfort is one of them. And our brain will then be in unfamiliar territory and trying to get us back into comfort zone. The brain wants safety, efficiency, habit. So when we step out of habit, we have to expect discomfort. And that doesn't mean we're wrong. That doesn't mean that discomfort does not equal wrong. It means new. And we need to label it as such. Your nervous system is used to predictability. And so when it isn't predictable, it will let you know about that discomfort. So this is where this cognitive reappraisal comes in that I was mentioning before. So it's the fourth step in this, which is that we want to reinforce that shift. This is cognitive reappraisal. So after the moment passes, your brain then goes into evaluation of it, you know, on its own, or we can get involved. So we will feel that discomfort and then we will start to evaluate it. So we will start to maybe tell stories like I shouldn't have done that, or oh my God, that was so awkward, or I didn't even do that right, or I don't even think they understood what I was saying. What's happening to our friendship? Right? Like it's just your brain's gonna spin. And so what we can do is get involved and say something like, that was different. I showed up a little differently in that, and this is how change feels. This is how change begins. What if we said that to ourselves? This is cognitive reappraisal. You're shaping how your brain encodes the experience so it reinforces growth. This discomfort, this is growth. I wouldn't feel this way if I didn't change. If I didn't, if I just did the same thing, I wouldn't feel this way, right? So just reinforcing that, naming that for yourself. So just to summarize those four steps, we're gonna catch the moment, we're gonna name it, we're going to practice a micro shift, we're going to expect discomfort, notice it, and then we're going to reinforce the shift. That's the cognitive reappraisal. As I read that listener letter, listener question. What I want to reflect on, what I want to say is you are not stuck. You are in the middle of a transition. And that can sometimes feel like stuckness, but it is a beautiful space. Your brain has already started the work. Now your job is to meet it there with identity and with behaviors using these steps that I outlined. Practice it, interrupt old patterns, choose just a little differently when that moment shows up. And know you will be uncomfortable. The version of you that you are becoming is there. It's ready. Now it's time to really let it all arrive. And it happens moment by moment and choice by choice. So again, I want to thank the listener for the question. If you have a question, be sure to email it to us. Take care, everyone, and I will see you next week. Rewired listeners, if this episode resonated with you, I'd be so honored to stay connected. Follow the podcast at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and iHeartRadio. Share an episode with someone in your life, and leave a five-star review. It helps people access these tools and this work and grow our community. At Empower Coaching and Training, we believe that when you understand your brain, you gain the power to change your patterns, your relationships, and your life. If you're ready to go deeper, you can always learn more about coaching and resources at yesempower.com. And as always, listeners, notice what you're practicing, what you're returning to, and what you are rewiring. Until next time.