Self-Identity and Chronic Illness

I have had a difficult time with my self-identity for decades. My sense of self has had to drastically change. It started when I was too ill to go for my Ph.D. and I had such a hard time getting through my Masters. I did it. And my grades were decent. But I expended a lot of effort to get grades that were not good enough for me. I knew I was getting worse, not better.

I went into the workforce instead. I struggled immensely for a decade or more trying to sustain a career and full-time work. I bombed. Slowly but, yeah, that didn’t go so well. Just a mess of stress and worsening illnesses and stress and illness and stress and… you get it. Sucky suckfest.

My self-worth and self-esteem tanked. And you definitely struggle with your place in the world. And that sense of who you are in the world. It comes with the struggle for meaning.

So the struggle with self-identity is two-fold for me:

I put a lot of who I was in what I did for a living.

I was an academic student on my way to becoming a professor. Then I was a banker. Then I was just a teller. My sense of who I was was constantly in flux and diminishing. Till it was ‘can I even hold a job part-time’. That was my new goal. And when I couldn’t do that… what was I then? If we are defined by what we do… what can I say about being disabled? I couldn’t say anything. I was no longer functional by society’s standards and therefore what worth did I own?

I said ‘I failed’ when I wasn’t able to physically or mentally do things.

Just as I did in my explanation. So… it was me that was failing. I was a failure. And I didn’t acknowledge that my chronic illnesses, mental illness, and chronic pain were a barrier to achieving what I wanted. That it was my actual physical and mental limitations I couldn’t exceed without consequences. Not me, personally, as a failure. It is spawned from beliefs we have about pain that shape our core ideas. And that was one of mine. Another from shame, blame, and guilt can be self-hate or a disconnect between who we are and our ‘bodies’ such that we hate our bodies. A lot of core ideas can be created from our beliefs about pain and illness. Unless we dig around in our brain we won’t know ours. Obviously, mine ate away at my self-worth and self-esteem pretty effectively.

And I lost those sense of traits I valued in myself.

My intelligence with cognitive impairments. My reliability with working made me ‘unreliable’. My strong sense of work ethic was no longer a thing I could say with so much absenteeism and presenteeism. All these things I considered important to my sense of self-hood were no longer my defining characteristics. To the point when a psychologist asked me to name 10 positive traits in myself… I struggled. Because this loss of self was also a loss of self-worth. However, I have valuable characteristics. I have core values that have nothing to do with what I did for a living or making money. I just ignored them and minimized them. I had to breathe a whole lot of life back into them to create some balance in my life again and some sense of self-worth.

So what do you do when your self-identity needs to change?

1. It is difficult. I was defining myself by what I Can’t do and not what I Can do. Because nothing I can do seems worthy to me. But truly our self-identity is so much more than what we can and cannot do. But the things I can do have value to me. Our core values may have little to do with work or a whole lot to do with it, but the key to life satisfaction is having core values that are balanced in all aspects of essential life; health, relationships, socialization, productivity and other things you consider to be fundamental to your existence (being a parent for example, or a caregiver). Not this One thing.
2. I had to stop seeing these changes in my life due to health as ‘failures’ as a person. Because this crashed my self-worth. And I have to now work to build it back up. I am not failing at anything. I am determining what my limits are and how to live within them. I am nudging my limits to see where they are. I am seeing what I can do. And when I fail I see that as a normal human function and not as a personal character trait.
3. I had to find traits about myself that I do love: I’m still intelligent, I’m creative, I’m very curious, I am funny/goofy, I’m introverted, I’m very polite and respectful, I’m open minded, and I’m non-judgmental, to name a few. There are many things I can value in myself.

I want you right now to make a list of the roles you have in your self-identity:

• I am a daughter
• I am a spouse
• I am a friend
• I am a writer
• I am a blogger

And all those roles in your life make up part of your self-identity. Obviously these all change with time during different life stages in our existence. As it should be. It is meant to. I am not who I was twenty years ago and who I will be twenty years from now.

And I want you to list 10 traits of your self-hood

1. I am still intelligent
2. I am creative
3. I am funny/goofy
4. I am introverted
5. I am very polite
6. I am non-judgmental.
7. I am very loyal as a friend
8. I am curious
9. I am respectful
10. I am constantly learning

And these traits and values are also part of your self-identity.

Add in your accomplishments and you have your sense of self.

And yes, after dramatic changes we struggle with this sense of self. And we have to remember 2 things

1. Your identity is not defined by work. It is one role of many that make up who we are. One of Many roles that make up who you are that fluctuate with time.
2. Self-identity is fluid throughout our lives. We think once we become an adult it is static. But it evolves, changes, shifts, and adapts through every single person’s life. It is flexible. Who we feel we are now, is different than who we felt we were twenty years ago and who we will feel we are twenty years in the future. It grows with us and isn’t dependent on one thing we can’t do anymore. And it is going to keep growing depending on how we nourish it.

Your self-identity is a rich and complex understanding of your core self. Nothing can diminish it but ourselves. We need to nourish our sense of self and by doing so nourish our self-worth. Being authentic to who you are. Who you think you are. Your personality and concept of self, promotes a healthy sense of self. And this is beneficial for our self-esteem.

Sometimes chronic illness can make us feel like we are not living up to an image of ourselves. To values we once had. To the person we felt we should be or were. And this can lead to a lot of friction. To resolve that friction we really have to think on who we are, currently, in the present. What values we have now that we live by and are important to us. What roles are important to us. What skills. What it is to be authentic to ourselves. What aspects of who we are as a person are important to us. What we value and like about out personality.

See also

Reprint from brainlessblogger.net

https://brainlessblogger.ca/2024/09/06/chronic-pain-and-self-esteem/