{"id":26742,"date":"2019-01-23T02:49:48","date_gmt":"2019-01-23T08:49:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidmcelroy.org\/?p=26742"},"modified":"2019-01-23T02:49:48","modified_gmt":"2019-01-23T08:49:48","slug":"identity-crisis-may-be-long-coming-integration-of-warring-parts-of-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=26742","title":{"rendered":"Identity crisis may be long-coming integration of warring parts of me"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I’ve been having an identity crisis.<\/p>\n

For the last month or so — maybe longer — I’ve felt internal rumblings that left me uneasy. I turned inward and started reading a lot of psychology to help me understand what was going on.<\/p>\n

At first, I felt confused and disoriented. I found myself questioning some key assumptions I’ve had about myself\u00a0for many years. I felt very uncomfortable with the feeling that my internal narrative about who I am might be wrong.<\/p>\n

But in the last couple of days, something has suddenly cleared up. It’s as though my mind suddenly zoomed out to a far longer view of my life.<\/p>\n

I wasn’t just having an identity crisis for the last few weeks. I was experiencing the closure — integration<\/em> might even be a better word — for something that started many years ago. This isn’t a crisis. This appears to be a point at which I’m merging parts of myself — stages of my life? — that I had never quite been able to put together.<\/p>\n

I was 29 when I first realized I was having an identity crisis, but I still remember everything about that year.<\/p>\n

I had just suffered the most humiliating loss of my life. After my father’s embezzling came to light<\/a>, which cut off the investment he had promised for my newspaper company, I was far more broken than I let anybody know at the time.<\/p>\n

I was hurting because I had started a big project and it was moving in the right direction, but I was suddenly forced to tell a dozen or so people that they no longer had jobs. I had to shut down my company.<\/p>\n

I failed the people who had trusted me.<\/p>\n

I failed the people who had believed in me and loved what I was doing.<\/p>\n

And the worst part is that I couldn’t tell anybody the truth about what had happened. My ego was badly bruised.<\/p>\n

I spent almost a year moping and asking myself who I was. I had always felt as though I moved from one success to another. I had expected that to continue. But I was crushed this time, so I found myself asking, “Who I am … really?”<\/em><\/p>\n

I finally came to the uncomfortable and surprising conclusion that I was an artist. Of some sort. But I couldn’t really reconcile that with everything I’d been up until that point. It was a completely alien direction for me. And I’ve been struggling with that ever since then.<\/p>\n

I don’t know how much of this I’m ready to talk about publicly yet, because it’s still in gestation. But all of a sudden, it feels as though I’m finally experiencing the closure of that long year of introspection.<\/p>\n

If you knew me in high school or in the early part of my adult years, you would have probably seen me as a very rational and very ambitious person. Over and over for the last decade, I’ve asked myself where that person went. I was still rational and ambitious in my own way, but something had changed.<\/p>\n

The best way I know to describe it is to say that I had — metaphorically speaking — given up a business suit and turned into a pot-smoking hippie. (Don’t take the literally, of course. I don’t even drink alcohol, much less use weed.)<\/p>\n

Where did the driven and ambitious guy go? What about the guy who would launch crazy projects on sheer arrogance and chutzpah? Over and over, I’ve asked this question<\/a>, but the answer has never come.<\/p>\n

Until now. All of a sudden, I feel as though I’ve found him.<\/p>\n

He was never gone. He was just waiting for me to integrate this portion of me that I discovered during that year when I turned 30. That wasn’t the complete me I found. There was no reason to repudiate all that I’d been before.<\/p>\n

I had simply discovered another major part of myself — one which had been hidden from me — which needed to be integrated into the person I already was.<\/p>\n

Identity change and psychological integration can be very uncomfortable, because it requires us to question the roots of who we are. What I went through at 30 made me uncomfortable. What I started feeling a month or so ago also felt uncomfortable.<\/p>\n

But what I’m feeling now is relief.<\/em><\/p>\n

I need to talk about this. I want to talk about this. But I’m not ready to say too much about it to the world at large. I’m not sure when I ever will. It might be too personal — maybe even too vulnerable — to share beyond those I trust most.<\/p>\n

I’ve found myself tonight having a verse run through my head from a very old album by a Christian group called the 2nd Chapter of Acts which was inspired by “The Narnia Chronicles”:<\/p>\n

I feel like I’ve been here before
\nThis feeling, I can’t shake it
\nA tree of iron from the world before
\nWith a lantern on it<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Suddenly, it all makes sense. I was here many years ago. That’s why something feels so familiar. That’s why things are clicking into place. I’m discovering something from a lost part of my life — and there’s a lantern illuminating something important which I’ve desperately needed to see.<\/p>\n

Something is happening in me — and that might finally change everything.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been having an identity crisis. For the last month or so — maybe longer — I’ve felt internal rumblings that left me uneasy. I turned inward and started reading a lot of psychology to help me understand what was going on. At first, I felt confused and disoriented. I found myself questioning some key Keep Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[17,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-26742","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"tag-change","8":"tag-psychology","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1x9iR-6Xk","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26742"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26749,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26742\/revisions\/26749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}