Latest / Thinking Out Loud | Kimberly / Why Don't I Know Who I Am Anymore? | Thinking Out Loud
Transcript
- Kimberly: Why don't I know who I am anymore? That question has been following me for a while. I used to think I lost myself. Now I wonder if I was ever given the chance to know myself in the first place. Growing up, I wasn't simply told what I did. I was told who I was. I was asked, what's wrong with you, so many times that eventually I stopped asking whether something was wrong with the situation, and I started asking what was wrong with me. Every label became another box I had to squeeze myself into. When I struggled in school, I believed I was lazy. Years later, I learned I had a disability. I wasn't lazy. I was surviving an education system that wasn't built for my brain. When people called me spoiled, I stopped believing I had the right to be upset when things were stolen or when my consent was assumed. When I was mocked for cutting my hair or expressing myself, I learned that my appearance somehow determined my worth and even my sexuality, which weird. When I was called too sensitive, I learned to laugh at jokes that hurt me because speaking up made me the problem. I became an expert at masking to the point that I didn't even know I was doing it for the longest time. I was great at performing At becoming whoever everyone else needed me to be. Label after label, I lost sight of the person underneath all of them. The hardest part wasn't realizing I had autism instead of bipolar. The hardest part was realizing how many years I had spent trying to prove I wasn't the labels other people had given me. As a behavior therapist, I see this happen often. Parents tell me, my child is manipulative, she is difficult, he's narcissistic. what I usually see is a child trying to survive, a child communicating the only way they know how. A child responding to an environment not revealing their actual identity. That's why I've become cautious with labels, because labels can help us understand ourselves. They can also become cages. Sometimes the labels that wound us the deepest aren't usually the ones the doctor gives us. They're the ones our families repeat until we mistake them for our identity. Maybe the better question isn't why don't I know myself anymore? Maybe it's who would I have become if I hadn't spent my whole life trying to become who everyone else said I was? Welcome back to Thinking Out Loud. Hi, it's me Kimberly. Before we begin, a quick note. This podcast is for reflection and conversation, not professional advice. Take what resonates and leave the rest. Here we slow down and we explore life's gray areas, especially in relationships and behavior patterns we can observe and reflect on. I'm here to offer frameworks that help you understand your relationships, strengthen your thinking, and hold space for complexity. let's get to thinking out loud. Layer by layer, I've been realizing how good I became at acting. I became good at performing, the version of myself. I was taught everyone expected. That I forgot there was a real complex person underneath it. For years I thought I was crazy. I thought I was too sensitive. I thought I was the problem. I wasn't surviving my emotions. I was surviving the people who convinced me my emotions were the problem. That's the heartbreaking thing about growing up this way. The good moments are often frequent enough to make you question yourself when the bad moments return. As a child, when the people you depend on tell you who you are, you believe them. The turning point for me came when I became a parent. I started getting curious. My daughter did things that reminded me of stories I heard about myself growing up. She had meltdowns, she got frustrated. She struggled with transitions. The difference was that I chose to flip the script. Instead of asking why is she being difficult, I started asking, what is making this difficult for her? What is she struggling with? Instead of she's manipulative, I asked, what need is she trying to communicate? Instead of seeing bad behaviors, I started looking for unmet needs. Ironically, I learned this because of friends I made in adulthood. They would tell me, Kimberly, you're doing your best. No wonder you're tired. You're not lazy. You're out of capacity, hun. No one had ever framed it that way before. So I started doing the same for my daughter. You're overwhelmed. You're having some really big feelings. I know I said five minutes, you're right. I made a promise. I'm sorry. Let's try that again. when I forgot she was hungry because of my own time blindness, I didn't decide she was being dramatic. I set alarm clocks. I created routines. I used a timer. So when I said five minutes, I actually met five minutes. I realized something that changed everything for us. Many of the behaviors I had been labeled for as a child weren't character flaws. they were predictable responses to inconsistent structures, unmet needs, and a nervous system that never felt safe. That realization was both freeing and painful because I understand now that parenting is hard. It's hard when you're exhausted, it's hard when your health is failing, it's hard. When you're raising children while navigating your own trauma. I have compassion for that, but compassion doesn't erase impact. no matter how much I matured, no matter how clearly I communicated, no matter how hard I tried, the story had already been written for me. Kimberly has always been the difficult child. Once someone believes that's who you are, everything you do gets filtered through that story. I saw how easily I could have repeated that with my own daughter. I refused. I chose different. Did I lose my temper sometimes? Absolutely. Did I make mistakes? Every parent does. The difference is that I refuse to make my mistakes into her identity. I repaired. I apologize, I changed because she didn't give me my wounds. She shouldn't have to inherit them. And I realized that neither should I have been put in the role of caring someone else's pain. Maybe that's why I've become so careful with labels. Not only the painful ones, the flattering ones, too. Because even labels like good girl, nice guy. The responsible one quietly teaches us that love belongs to a role we perform, not the person we are. That's where I think so many of us lost ourselves. I remember every time I struggled with my own self-image. Whenever I repeated the things that had been said to me, maybe I am lazy. Maybe I am really difficult. Maybe I am being too sensitive. Maybe something is wrong with me. The same people who had planted those ideas seemed confused about why I believed them. Instead, I would hear, but Kimberly, you're such a good girl. You always helped me around the house. You watched your niece and your nephews. You always did the dishes. You are my little buddy. You were so mature for your age. You're so responsible. You're the helper. You're so selfless. You're low maintenance. You're easygoing. On the surface, those sound like compliments. Over time, they became a checklist. A good person helps everyone else. A good person doesn't complain. A good person sacrifices. A good person is grateful. A good person is responsible. A good person keeps the peace. A good person doesn't have needs. No one ever said the last part out loud. It's what I learned. I became really good at taking care of everyone else. I could clean someone else's house. I could babysit. I could show up whenever someone needed me. when it came to taking care of myself, I had nothing left. The irony is that I wasn't doing those things because they genuinely brought me joy half the time. I was doing them because somewhere along the way I started believing they were proof that this is how I earned love. When your worth depends on performance. Rest starts to feel like a failure. If I couldn't wash every dish, why start? If I couldn't clean the whole house, I must be lazy. If I couldn't lose weight quickly, maybe I wasn't even trying hard enough. Everything became all or nothing because labels don't only describe us, they create rules, rules who we're allowed to be, rules for what makes us worthy, rules for when we've earned rest, love, rest. or belonging. That's why labels can become cages. It took years of therapy, friendships built on genuine acceptance, a husband who consistently reminds me that I didn't have to earn my place. and creating distance from old narratives before those noises could finally start quieting down. Because here's what I've learned. You can't simply decide to believe in yourself when your mind has spent years rehearsing someone else's story about who you are. Healing wasn't about forcing positive thoughts. It's about slowly separating my own voice from all of the voices that have been speaking over it for years. How do we even begin filtering out the noise? Looking back, I realized I had already started doing it before I even had words for what it was I was doing. I started with creating separation, not distance from everyone, not at first, simply healthy separation. My entire life had been enmeshed. Amesh is when the lines between people become blurry. Their opinions feel like reality. Their approval feels necessary for your decision. Their emotions become your responsibility. I didn't realize how much that shaped my relationships. I thought my family had to approve of my friends. I thought my friends had to love my family. I thought every birthday. Day celebration gathering had to include everyone. It never occurred to me that relationships could exist independently of one another. Now I realize something that feels incredibly freeing. My work friends don't have to know my childhood friends, my podcast friends don't have to become friends with my neighbors. My husband doesn't have to have the same relationships with someone that I do. Some friendships belong in one season. Or one part of your life that doesn't make them less meaningful. It means they don't have to overlap. Privacy isn't dishonesty. Boundaries aren't rejection. Keeping relationships separate isn't hiding. Sometimes it's simply respecting that not every relationship needs access to every part of your life. I also realized I don't need to know everyone's business. And I don't need everyone to know mine. I thought transparency meant sharing everything. Now I think being transparent means being honest about what I choose to share. Not feeling obligated to share everything with everyone. I've also realized that not every story belongs to me. Sometimes people tell me things that are deeply unfair or unhealthy because of my work, it's hard not to notice patterns. I can recognize emotional abuse, manipulation, and unhealthy dynamics. Rather, recognizing them doesn't mean my job is to tell someone what to do. I understand this. Sometimes though people hear this behavior is harmful and translate that into you should leave. Those aren't the same conversations. So my goal isn't to decide someone else's relationship. It's to help people see what's happening so they can make informed decisions for themselves because we all have to live with our own choices. Another lesson I've had to learn is this. what other people think about me is none of my business. People are allowed to misunderstand me, they're allowed to gossip, they're allowed to believe stories that aren't true. None of that changes who I am. The only time it really becomes my responsibility is when someone comes directly to me and says, Hey, I heard this. Is this true what you said about me? Hey, I heard this. Is this true? Then I have a chance to own what I actually did. Apologize if I caused harm or clear up a misunderstanding. I've also realized there is a huge difference between describing a behavior and assigning someone's identity to it. Saying, They seemed upset today is very different than saying they're a terrible person. One describes a moment, the other defines a person. after spending much of my life trapped inside labels, I don't want to reduce another human being to one. But I'm also allowed self expression. Recently, one of the biggest changes in my life has been realizing that. Something that sounds so simple. I have preferences. I have likes and dislikes. I have standards. I have expectations, not only for myself, but for the people I allow into my life. For years I thought I was simply low maintenance. Now I realize I wasn't low maintenance. I simply didn't know I was allowed to have needs. I believed love meant accepting crumbs while pouring everything I had into everyone else. The heartbreaking part is that I became so good at it that I was disappearing. For a while I became better. Not because people were taking from me, because I never gave them the chance to give back. That was a painful realization. I thought I was being selfless. In reality, I wasn't allowing my friendships to become reciprocal. I wasn't letting people care for me. I wasn't letting them support me. And I wasn't giving them the opportunity to know me. Connection requires vulnerability from both people. I had only learned how to give. I never learned really how to receive in a way that I could trust, that it was out of goodwill. I also realized something else. I am not extroverted, no matter how many times people try to tell me I am. I am an introvert who genuinely loves people, someone who had been starving for real connection, Not constant interactions, real connection. And then came what I've been calling my first glow up. Ironically, it had almost had nothing to do with how I looked. This past week, I had panic attacks while thinking about it. Not because I didn't like what I saw in the mirror, because changing my appearance opened a door to memories I hadn't connected before. Why I stopped caring about my appearance for so long. I spent years believing I wasn't attractive. Not because I had decided that for myself, because I had heard it enough that I accepted it to be true. I have been called a boy when I was a little kid. I had been called lesbian. I have been called ugly. Why? I don't know. And honestly, as I said in the beginning, it's none of my business why. And it wasn't my business to accept the label. whenever I tried to express myself, there always felt like there was a consequence. I cut my hair or styled it, I was mocked. If I experiment with my appearance, I was labeled. If I treasured something I owned, it often disappeared or got stolen. It became unsafe to enjoy things that made me feel like me. Even money carried shame. If I got contacts, new clothes, Something that made me feel confident. I heard how expensive it was. how much had been spent on me, how lucky I should feel. Eventually I stopped experience gifts as gifts. They felt like debts. I also carried that label of being a spoiled brat. Looking back, I don't think I understood what that word really meant. I only knew that every time I wanted something, expressed excitement about something, or was hurt by losing something. I felt guilty for having even wanted it in the first place. That's what labels do. They don't just tell you how others see you. Eventually they become the lens which you see yourself. The most surprising realization came afterwards. I started wondering if what I have been calling spoiling myself as an adult wasn't spoiling myself at all. Maybe. I was simply discovering my preferences for the first time. Maybe buying clothes I genuinely liked wasn't vanity. Maybe learning makeup again wasn't insecurity. Maybe getting my hair done wasn't trying to become someone else, and maybe it was finally giving myself permission to ask a question I'd never been allowed to ask. What do I like? This week after getting my hair cut, a friend took me shopping for makeup. Something felt different. For the first time, I wasn't searching for my forever style. I wasn't trying to finally become the perfect version of myself. I was simply exploring, trying new things, laughing, changing my mind, realizing I don't have to decide who I am all at once. I'm allowed to have phases. I'm allowed to evolve and change. I'm allowed to experiment. Maybe that's what a real glow up is. not becoming someone new, finally giving yourself permission to meet the person you could have been all along. I think the hardest part of this journey hasn't been figuring out who I am, it's been learning to trust myself enough to believe the answer. For a long time, I assumed everyone else knew me better than I knew myself. If someone told me I was lazy, I believed them. If they said I was difficult, I searched for the proof for them. If they questioned my intentions, I question them too. I outsourced my identity. I treated everyone else like they had access to a manual about me that somehow I never received, but they didn't. They had opinions. Some were loving, some were protective, some were projections, and some came from their own pain. None of them were the final authority on who I was. I don't think healing is becoming someone new. I think healing is getting quiet enough to hear your own voice underneath everyone else. Lately I've been asking myself different questions. Instead of asking, am I a good person? I'm asking, is this aligned with my values? Instead of asking, well, everyone approve. I'm asking, can I live with this decision? Instead of asking, Who do people want me to be? I started asking, who am I becoming when no one is watching? Maybe knowing who you are isn't discovering one giant hidden truth. Maybe it's noticing a thousand tiny preferences you've ignored your whole life. I like this, I don't like that. This relationship feels safe, that one doesn't. This value matters to me, that expectation doesn't belong to me anymore. Back to the question why don't I know who I am anymore? I don't think I forgot who I was. I think I spent years listening to everyone else's description of me instead of introducing myself to myself. And maybe That's what I've been doing all along. Not finding myself, finally meeting her. Maybe the question isn't why don't I know who I am anymore? Maybe a better question is how much of who I think I was was actually chosen for me? Or maybe an even harder question is, if no one had told me who I was growing up, who would I have become? I'd love to hear your thoughts. What labels have you carried that no longer feel like they belong to you? What have you discovered about yourself once you started questioning them? Whether you leave a comment, send me a message, or simply sit with those questions yourself, I hope this conversation stays with you. Thank you for slowing down and thinking out loud with me. Until next time, take care of yourself and remember, you don't have to become someone new to find yourself. Sometimes healing isn't simply giving yourself permission to meet the person who was there all along, beneath the labels, beneath the expectation, and beneath all the noise. Sometimes the hardest part of becoming yourself isn't finding your voice. it's realizing how many other voices you've mistaken for your own. I'll see you in the next episode.