What It Means to Be a Self: Identity as a Living Process
This reflection explores how the self is not something we discover once, but something we continually become.
The Audio Reflection
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Woman with Hat, 1938
Pablo Picasso
A Closer Look at Identity
Throughout the day, moments sometimes interrupt the familiar flow of living and open a doorway into something deeper. You might take a sip of your morning coffee and notice the fractal patterns within the liquid, or glance at an old photograph and feel the gap between who you were and who you’ve become. Even the glow of a computer screen, right in this moment, can briefly draw your attention to the strangeness of perception itself. These subtle shifts invite us to slow down and look beneath the surface of everyday awareness, drawing us into direct contact with the mystery of life itself.
This existential mystery stands in contrast to a dominant cultural narrative that we all know too well—the belief that the self is a fixed object we must discover, perfect, or force into the correct shape. We often hear that there is a singular “real” version of ourselves, and that once we achieve the right combination of career, partner, traits, lifestyle, or personality, we will finally arrive at a stable identity. Yet in therapy, I frequently meet people who have done everything “right” according to cultural expectations and still feel something profoundly misaligned within their lives. Beneath their achievements lies an unspoken realization: the story they’ve been living no longer fits who they are becoming.
Existential therapy offers a path to understand the self differently—a way of coming into contact with a deeper sense of who we are. From this perspective, identity is not an object we possess but an ongoing process we enact. Jean-Paul Sartre’s insight that existence precedes essence reminds us that we are not born with a predetermined inner blueprint. Who we are emerges through our lived interactions with others, with our environments, and with the meanings we make along the way. Phenomenology deepens this view by understanding the self as a flow of lived experience rather than a fixed idea or thing. And from an enactivist , ecological point of view, identity is inseparable from the relational and environmental conditions that shape and support our existence. We are always becoming, always responding, always in fluid motion with all things.
Within this motion lies another realization: each of us contains multiple versions of who we are. Who you are at work may differ from who you are with a partner, alone late at night, or in moments of joy, anxiety, grief, or deep rest. This multiplicity is the natural expression of being human and is, in fact, the very dimension that allows us to come into deeper contact with who we truly are.
From birth onward, we come to know ourselves through relationships. Identity emerges in response to the presence, feedback, and attunement of others. Existentially, we might say we hear our own voice most clearly in the presence of another. In existential-humanistic therapy , the relationship itself becomes the medium through which identity unfolds. Two people sit together with the shared intention of turning toward the lived reality of who you are in the present moment.
Recognizing the self as emergent rather than fixed also means recognizing the freedom inherent in being human. But freedom often brings anxiety. When we attempt to shift who we are—whether moving toward more fulfilling relationships, stepping back from old patterns, or exploring unfamiliar aspects of ourselves—we encounter the fears and wounds that shaped our earlier identities. This can feel unsettling, yet it is precisely where profound transformation and liberation become possible.
Major life events—loss , illness, relationship changes , career transitions —can rewrite our sense of self entirely. When the old narrative collapses, we may feel ungrounded, as if the story we once relied on no longer supports who we are. These moments invite us deeper into the mystery of identity, asking us to pause, to listen, and to consider who we are beneath the roles and expectations we’ve carried.
If identity is a process, then the path forward is less about “finding yourself” and more about attending to yourself—to what feels alive, what feels true, what troubles you, and what calls you forward. With curiosity, care, and especially in the presence of another person who is attuned to us, we allow the deeper shape of our life to form naturally. This is the heart of the existential-humanistic path: becoming more fully ourselves by listening closely to our lived experience.
