Identity Trap: How your warped view of yourself is stopping you from living your best life
Your identity ought to liberate you, free you to become all that you are supposed to be, not keep you trapped.
I was on a bus chatting with a friend a few years ago, bragging about how stubborn I am. No, seriously, I was was going on and on about stubborn I am.
You see, I had always taken pride in being the self-proclaimed the goddess of stubbornness. I was overjoyed when anyone complained about how stubborn I was and even went to great lengths to prove that I was the most stubborn person ever made.
So, on this day, I was living my truth that is until the Holy Spirit stopped me in my tracks with two questions — "Who told you are stubborn?" and "How did you arrive at this conclusion?"
At first, I got defensive then floored as He proceeded to do His job (see John 16:13). He helped me see that this particular trait, the one I had built my entire identity around, was a defence mechanism.
It was something I had created, probably as a child, to appear tough and assertive especially to men so they would know I was not the kind of person to be taken advantage of.
That was my first significant encounter with the Identity Trap. Basically, this is when you take one characteristic, experience, you name it and make it the basis of your entire identity and world.
It's a trap because it limits you, stifles creativity, progress, keeps you bound to what you tell yourself about yourself or what people say about you.
For me, one of the things that kept me trapped was the firm belief that I was the personification of stubbornness. For you, it could be your insecurities, someone telling you that you were too loud or too much as a child/teenager and that's how you started shrinking yourself into this shape and became trapped by the idea of who you thought you had to be.
Most people do not realize how the way other people see us can be a giant trap. A lot of people are living a certain way because we bought into the things people said about us or how we were supposed to be.
The great James Baldwin is believed to have run away from America to Paris to escape the crippling identity of being a black man and become the American novelist, playwright, essayist, poet, and activist we know and love today.
For many people, their trap is an experience like domestic violence, growing up poor, getting bullied, raped, something so traumatic and significant that our whole identity starts to revolve around it.
It can even seem right like being a parent, a husband or wife, having a particular job or career. You don't realize this is a trap until you lose your job, get divorced or when your children move out and you learn that your only identity, a sense of purpose came from being just that.
The identity trap tricks into thinking and referring to yourself as just that (Inem, the writer, the perfectionist, the domestic violence survivor, sex addict, the person who grew up poor and must now hoard things even though I have money now, you get the picture). It doesn't just end there.
You don't realize it, but you start surrounding yourself with like-minded people, doing and saying things that further strengthen this identity trap.
The thing about identity is that supposed to liberate you, free you to become all that you are supposed to be, not keep you trapped.
Now we know how damaging an identity trap is. The next issue will show us how to escape it and live our best lives. It comes out on Sunday, October 11, 2020. I can’t wait for you to read it and go on to live free, full lives.
Rooting for you,
Inem.
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I enjoyed reading this! Thank you!