How to Close Your Identity Gap
Who are you when no one’s looking?
It’s human to want to escape negative emotions.
We often attach emotions to past experiences.
As time goes on, we learn to predict the way we’ll feel in future experiences that are similar to those of our past.
This often leads to the suppression of negative emotions via external factors.
But in the long run, suppressing your negative emotions detaches you from the person you truly are.
This creates what is known as the Identity Gap.
What is the Identity Gap?
The identity gap is the space between who you really are and how you appear.
This concept was created by Dr. Joe Dispenza. If you’ve read my recent content, you may have heard me mention his fantastic book, Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself. If you’re ready for real change, I highly recommend this book.
Between who you really are and how you appear are the emotions that keep these two versions of yourself separated (aka the “gap” of the identity gap).
These emotions include unworthiness, anger, fear, shame, self-doubt and guilt.
When someone’s identity gap is wide, they struggle with negative emotions connected to past experiences. They use their environment to appear as someone they are not in an effort to silence that part of themselves they don’t want to deal with.
When someone’s identity gap is closed, they are transparent and don’t use externalities to define their identity. They experience the true freedom and joy that comes from operating out of your highest self.
So, let’s talk about the difference between the two ends of the identity gap.
How We Appear
The facade of our personality is how we appear.
We identify who we are based on our environment: The material possessions we own, the way we look, our job titles, and the people we associate with.
Teens are particularly prone to this end of the identity gap because they are searching for their identities and often use clothing as a way to identify with who they are and as a way to connect with others.
Another great example is someone experiencing a mid-life crisis.
You know the story: a man or woman reaches a certain age and experiences an emptiness inside as a result of displeasure with their life.
Those experiencing a mid-life crisis are known to splurge on a luxury car, have extramarital affairs or undergo plastic surgery.
They engage in extreme behavior to seek pleasure and find an identity through the external, keeping the negative emotions they don’t want to deal with buried beneath the surface.
Who We Really Are
Behind closed doors is who we really are and the negative emotions that keep us awake at night.
Staying busy or distracting ourselves with the external is what creates the gap between how we appear and who we really are.
The inability to deal with negative emotions is also the cause of addictions.
Initially, you start drinking, gambling, shopping, etc to seek pleasure and avoid the pain of your emotions.
But as you continue to seek your pleasure of choice, you need more to feel the “high” you experience.
As the addiction worsens, the feeling of emptiness increases and any chance at true freedom and joy diminishes.
Related: How to Stop Avoiding Hard Things
The Identity Gap and Relationships
You probably know the famous Jim Rohn quote, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”
Personal development speakers encourage you to be mindful of who you keep close for a reason:
Most relationships are formed based on emotional bonds.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing…depending on the nature of the emotional bond.
If you meet a new person and discover you have shared experiences and similar emotions attached to those experiences, you bond and it becomes a friendship.
The tricky part is when one person in the friendship wants to change and no longer shares that emotional bond.
This often causes friends to drift apart or have a falling-out.
For example, let’s say you build a friendship based on your shared negative mindset about money.
Both you and your new friend are barely making ends meet. You bond over the belief that these were just the cards you were dealt in life and nothing is ever going to change for either of you financially.
Also, you both have hostility against those with lots of money and believe all “rich people” are evil.
You can relate to each other and your identity is reaffirmed through your like-minded friend during your daily complaining sessions about never having enough money.
But then over time, little by little, you begin to have a change of heart.
You start to question why some people struggle financially and others don’t.
Questioning leads to introspection, and you come to the realization the capacity to make money and live an abundant life comes from within and is not determined by external circumstances.
You share this new idea with your friend and she asks if something is wrong with you.
She still holds the belief she will struggle financially forever and is freaking out because she can no longer affirm her identity through you if you’re no longer participating in the daily complaining sessions you used to have with her.
And just like that, the emotional bond begins to dissipate.
As you operate under your new mindset regarding financial abundance, you launch your own small business.
After a year in operation, you’re making double what you make at your desk job and quit that job so you can work on your small business from home full-time.
You dealt with your negative emotions regarding finances and you have since evolved regarding this aspect of your life.
But now your friend sees you living in financial abundance and she can no longer relate. You no longer reaffirm her identity tied to financial lack. She feels betrayed you are no longer there to confirm her negative emotions regarding money.
Thus, you two start speaking less and less until eventually, you quit talking altogether.
(For more on this topic, check out 5 Reasons Toxic Friends are Holding You Back.)
How I Closed My Identity Gap
Before I get into how you close your identity gap, I’d like to share a personal example of a time in my life I had to close my identity gap.
I was on the verge of turning 30 years old and I’d reached a place in my life where I knew going out all the time needed to stop if I was ever going to move forward in my life.
There’s nothing wrong with going out to meet up with friends. College kids in particular enjoy frequenting bars as a way to socialize with their friends and meet new people.
However, for many adults, the habit of going out to the bar all the time continues well past college, into one’s 30’s and 40’s.
Even beyond that, sometimes.
I don’t want to stereotype everyone, but this is often the case for adults who are trying to fill a void in their life: they continue going to the bars like they just turned 21.
And at 29, I’d recently become single, so it was lonely and depressing staying home. But I reached a point where I was ready to move on from the bar scene.
At first, it was terribly uncomfortable.
Quite frankly, it sucked.
The reason I wanted to go out so much was because I needed a distraction from the negative emotions I was running from.
Forcing myself to stay home, I was left to deal with them.
For a while, it felt like I was missing out.
I’d see pictures on Facebook of people out and about and experience FOMO.
But I knew I didn’t want the bar scene to be part of my identity going into my 30’s.
As time went on, things got better.
I started rekindling old hobbies, as well as creating new ones.
My friends also started to step away from the bar scene, and we transitioned our hangouts to restaurants or someone’s house.
I became a Christian, made new friends, and took some pretty incredible vacations.
By the time I met my husband a few years later, I was spending most of my Friday nights doing laundry, reading in bed with pizza, accompanied by my rabbits.
I was completely comfortable disassociating with the bar scene at that point and my life drastically evolved.
Being out all the time kept me from dealing with the negative emotions I didn’t want to face, and once I did, I was set free.
The discomfort I experienced temporarily led me to a higher version of my self headed into a new decade of my life, and I closed my identity gap.
How to Close Your Identity Gap
As you can see from my personal example, using the bar scene to escape the negative emotions I didn’t want to deal with only hindered me from becoming a better version of myself.
But for other people, the identity gap could be contributed to something else.
There are various elements from one’s environment that can widen the identity gap.
Some people’s identities are tied up in the material possessions they own or the way they look.
Instagram is full of young women who only portray themselves in filtered and airbrushed photos, in just the right lighting.
Underneath those filtered photos are women insecure with their natural appearance.
Some men make extreme efforts to show off their luxury cars or boats so they appear wealthy and powerful.
Behind the expensive toys are men insecure with who they are.
Other people use addictions to avoid the pain of past experiences that they believe define who they are.
All efforts that widen the identity gap also further separate us from any real chance at joy and freedom.
So, how do you close the identity gap?
You must observe your thoughts, actions and feelings.
Then, you must question them.
I found myself with extra time on my hands when I quit the bar scene.
Being alone with those thoughts and feelings I’d suppressed for so long was uncomfortable.
But it was necessary for me to observe why I was so attached to the nightlife, in order to address and overcome my negative emotions.
When you allow the discomfort of your emotions and become transparent in who you really are, without the distraction from your environment, that’s where real change and freedom are found.
Releasing those negative emotions frees up energy for creation-for inspired and mindful living, paving the way for a better future.
Before You Go
Who are you when no one’s looking?
Take a few minutes to consider how you appear versus who you really are.
Do you have an identity gap?
Let me know in the comments below.
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