You Are Not The Roles You Play
By: Annie Tanasugarn
Tags: Self Improvement, Life Lessons, Psychology, Life, Mental Health

Identity vs. Role Confusion

Erik Erikson (1902–1994) was a psychoanalyst and developmental psychologist who is best known for his stages of psychosocial human development. According to Erikson, there are eight stages we move through, throughout our lives from birth to death which include:

Trust vs. Mistrust

Autonomy vs. Shame

Initiative vs. Guilt

Industry vs. Inferiority

Identity vs. Role Confusion

Intimacy vs. Isolation

Generality vs. Stagnation

Ego Integrity vs. Ego Despair

His fifth stage of development, Identity vs. Role Confusion, occurs roughly between the ages of 13- 19. Here is where integrating a solid sense of our Self should occur, where what we do is not as important as who we are and who we are aspiring to become.

With Erikson’s theory being based on stages, each subsequent stage is based on successful completion of the previous one. Where things can go sideways in his stages happens as a result of unsuccessfully completing that stage, where Ego integrity can become compromised.

For example, each stage includes specific goals or virtues that are gained from successfully navigating through that stage which include: hope, will, purpose, competence, fidelity, love, care, and wisdom Bruttain & Lerner, 2013).

With regard to his fifth stage, if we navigate through it successfully, we master a sense of self-competence and an ability to be loyal (fidelity) to ourselves (our Self) and others. Struggling through this stage can create a sense of being unsure about who we 'are' and what our purpose is in life while struggling with remaining faithful to ourselves and others.

… which can affect subsequent stages.

This is why developing a solid sense of Self is so important in adolescence as it literally — sets the stage — for our adult development. Yet, many of us may have not received adequate nurtutance or support earlier in life, where we may be noticing 10, 20 or more years down the road that something may not feel right. If our caregivers were out of touch with themselves, they won’t be able to model the appropriate stages of development for us.

Unsuccessfully completing this stage can feel like you got the short end of the stick growing up or that you’re somehow behind others your age where you’re always trying to hurry up and play catch-up.

This feeling usually goes by the name “identity crisis”.

Building Our Sense of Self

Many of us may feel out of touch with who we are, and we may have moved through life identifying as our roles. Even if we weren’t taught necessary skills for autonomy or a solid self-purpose in its appropriate stage, we can still learn about ourselves and establish a solid self identity as separate from our roles.

Self-Connection. Connecting with our Self starts by recognizing who we are as separate and independent from our environment and others. Though self-connection, we’re reassessing ourselves, from the outside, in. In other words, we begin noticing ourselves based on how others respond to us, how we feel around them, and what our behavior looks like based on our likes, dislikes, values, and how our feelings resonate, both good and bad.

Challenge Accepted. Here is where we can start examining how we react under pressure, or how we feel and respond around people or things we may not like.

This also gives us the chance to compare how we feel, behave and think in times if negative challenge versus positive challenge. These experiences teach us how to stay in the present while remaining forward-focused.

Alone Time. When we’re focusing on personal growth, it’s an inside job and a one person show. There can’t be time for needless things that numb or derail us from our growth, or we aren’t growing.

Time alone should include learning to become our own best friend, becoming our own sense of safety and learning to be the first person we to turn to. This is how we grow self-trust.

Time alone is critical for learning about our sense of Self, as it teaches self-reliance and independence.

The fact is, if we aren’t comfortable knowing and loving ourselves, we can’t expect someone else to be either, as that would be the epitome of identifying with a transient role — if that person left, we would be at risk for an identity crisis.

Recognizing and appreciating ourselves is often trial-and-error and it takes time. There’s no shortcuts when it comes to establishing a solid self-identity.