The memories of our selves let us down

Shattering unhelpful narratives about how we self-identify as we dive deeper into the holiday season

As an introvert and a chronic self-reflector, I spend a lot of time overthinking my own behavior as well as my social interactions. I often find myself apologizing to my partner for being “weird” after I evaluated an interaction with friends or family as being awkward. Whenever I enter a new social situation, I remind myself to resist my natural urge to be extremely reserved out of fear of being misjudged. I still have memories during my teens/early twenties of many people telling me they were intimidated by me, or even put off, when they first met me. In hindsight, I wasn’t the most comfortable in my own skin and neither were they. A bunch of people in their early-twenties projecting their insecurities onto each other? Who can imagine such a thing! But why hold onto these projections forever?

Fast forward to a week ago when a friend of mine simply said “you’re an extremely likable person.” Initially, I had nothing to say (if you know me well, you know this is rare.) Why did this short-circuit my brain? For so long, I identified with my introversion, deep sensitivity and sometimes moodiness, yet none of my loved ones would describe me as such. Then I was looking back on recent moments in my life. When my name was announced at graduation, people screamed so loud that I jumped. The president of the school even commented as we greeted each other, “you’re pretty popular, aren’t you?” What a strange thing to hear. Especially as this was a period in my time where I was unhappy, and I was certainly lacking self-compassion. It was a cognitive dissonance in regards to how I viewed myself, versus how those on the outside viewed me.

What a weird humblebrag of a way to tell us that you’re likable, Alexa… It’s merely anecdotal as I am accepting that I have an outdated perception of myself. We all do at times. It brought me back to a theory that our identity is solely based off of our memories. Who are we without our memories? We don’t even have a name…Before we all spiral into an existential crisis, one of my takeaways is asking myself how I am helping myself by self-identifying myself as awkward and uncomfortable. Perhaps these ideas protected me at one time, but it is time to release these feelings. They are not the truth. In fact, loved ones were surprised to discover that this was how I viewed myself. I’ve been allowing a memory of a former identity to control my self-perception. What other aspects of our memories control and stifle our own happiness and success? We often focus on happy memories, nostalgic ones, sad ones, but what about the memories of our selves that let us down?

Do you have any stories where you realized your “negative” self-perception was untrue/outdated? Please share your thoughts in comments below.