Personal Essay Example: Struggling with Identity

Identity is the way we know and strongly define ourselves regardless of the variable circumstances in our personal lives. Our values, beliefs and personality types are part of who we truly are; our true identity. Identity also comes hand in hand with our past experiences, our present situations and our hopes and plans for the future. Since our situations get altered often than we wish, our beliefs are so often at stake. People who possess solid identities are constantly identifiable as the same reliable unchanging individuals in the past, present and the future. Environmental alterations have absolutely no impact on an individual with an unshakeable persona. However, this does not imply that we must act the same regardless of what is happening around us. It is unlikely to behave exactly the same way when we are around our parents and when we hang out with our closest friends, just like we are allowed to be moody when under stress, but we know we are the same unique person deep down. People going through an identity crisis or a broken identity feel unrelated to their actions in the past. Many a people can relate to questioning who they really were during their childhoods, who they are now and who they will turn out to be in the future.

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Speaking from a personal point of view, I have struggled with who I am from a very early age. My life has been a string of struggles ever since I was ten. As a child, I was completely ignorant of the existence of mental illnesses and I didnt seek any professional medical help. Consequently, I sought solitude and led a very quiet life oblivious of the intensely happy and fulfilling lives other kids led. I once recall being termed as the dumbest in my class and this resulted to more internal crisis. Although that was not true because I was doing marvellous academic wise, I lost my self-confidence and reacted very badly to any kind of criticism. Life became a win or die competition from that day henceforth, success elevated my pride while failure always resulted to depression. Whenever I performed below societal expectations, I lost a glimpse of the fact that success and failure rarely define who one is beneath the surface.

Regardless of often feeling like a burden to my family and friends, I always kept my feelings and suicidal thoughts in check. Instead of solving my feelings of inadequacy, silence magnified how lost and desolate I felt. Problems hovered over me like vultures ready to attack whenever the chance presented itself. In some instances, I was violent, threw things and banged things on walls when my anger was at its peak. It was when I eventually thought that I probably was suffering from a mental illness that I sought help from a friend who referred me to a renowned psychiatrist. On examination, I was diagnosed bipolar and this knowledge answered most of the questions I had meant to ask ever since I was ten. However, I still lacked what I wanted the most; a solid identity. Each mood swing was a bitter reminder of how much of a stranger I was and still am to my own self. Beneath all this, there was a ray of hope that the doctors would fix my illness and I would begin living a wholesome life free of depression and confusion. It is a universally acknowledged truth that mental illnesses do not work that way and bipolar is not any different. Therefore, I surprisingly began to miss the pre-medicated old me, the reserved anti-social individual I had been. However, I knew that bipolar is just a medical label and one is still imperfectly perfect like others without the illness.

As a bipolar sufferer, I often substitute my lost identity with other people's identities. I find it easy to take on the traits of the person I am conversing with but this gets devastating in a group situation. A group situation is difficult in that it is almost impossible to attach myself to the many traits depicted by people in the group. This leaves me confused, wordless since this kind of environment is threatening for a bipolar sufferer. In addition, identity crisis focuses on delight and resentment. In few instances when am in good mental health, being around people who are angry and full of rage is manageable. Still, being in poor mental health and around negative overly critical individuals sends me into an energy-draining anxiety mood. This unwelcome but unavoidable mood sends me into craving to clasp onto the identity provoking me. Inability to identify with that particular person awakens the sleeping demon lying silent within me. Therefore, I either choose to scream out on the individual or rage wordlessly until the beast within calms down. Cooling off the steam takes a lot of valuable time and energy. I experience long periods of restlessness, lack of sleep, appetite problems and poor mental ability.

The good news is that I am enthusiastically pursuing therapy and making progress day by day. My therapist and I are hopeful that with consistent positive thinking and determined desire to gain a solidly built identity, bipolar illness will be manageable. This specific therapy is referred to as Systematic Coaching and it efficiently resolves the identity break. In as much as Systematic Therapy is effective in treating bipolar related personality issues, patience and self- belief are key. I have learnt to accept criticism and failures as staircases to success.