When You’ve Forgotten Who You Are
Identity, belonging and the stories we come to believe about ourselves.
“I wonder who I am.”
— Mick Inkpen, Nothing, reproduced in The Mick Inkpen Treasury (see reference below)
There’s a children’s story by Mick Inkpen called Nothing that I’ve always found particularly poignant.
It’s about a small, forgotten toy, left beneath years of accumulated belongings in an attic. He’s been there for so long that he’s forgotten his own name and much of who he once was.
When somebody discovers him and dismisses him as nothing, he assumes that must be his name.
And I wonder how often something similar happens to us.
Not necessarily in such an obvious way. Sometimes it’s the accumulation of small experiences, comments, expectations and misunderstandings that gradually shapes the way we see ourselves.
Being told we’re too sensitive. Too intense. Too quiet. Too difficult. Too emotional. Too much.
Or perhaps never quite enough.
We might learn to accommodate other people’s needs while overlooking our own. To suppress our feelings, hide our differences, question our perceptions or become exceptionally good at appearing to cope.
Eventually, it can become difficult to distinguish who we are from who we’ve learnt to be.
When belonging means becoming somebody else
For some neurodivergent people, particularly those identified as autistic or ADHD later in life, discovering their neurotype can prompt a profound reconsideration of their identity.
Experiences once understood as personal failings may begin to make sense in an entirely different way.
For those who are adopted or care-experienced, questions of identity, connection and belonging may have been present for much longer. There may be gaps in personal history, complicated feelings about family relationships, or questions that have never been fully answered.
And for people who have experienced trauma, rejection or conditional acceptance, adapting to others may have become a means of feeling safe.
These experiences aren’t interchangeable, and no two people will make sense of them in quite the same way.
But they can sometimes leave us asking a remarkably similar question.
Who am I, when I’m not trying to be who somebody else needs me to be?
The stories we inherit about ourselves
In Nothing, the little creature doesn’t decide he’s worthless. He hears how somebody else describes him and accepts it as his identity.
I think that’s an important distinction.
We aren’t born believing we’re inadequate, difficult or undeserving of understanding. Those beliefs can develop through our experiences and relationships, sometimes so gradually that we stop recognising them as beliefs at all.
They simply become the things we think we know about ourselves.
And challenging them can be uncomfortable.
There may be grief for the years spent misunderstanding ourselves. Anger about the support we didn’t receive. Sadness for the child who learnt to hide. Relief at finally having an explanation. Or a mixture of feelings that don’t fit neatly into any category.
There isn’t a correct way to experience that process.
Rediscovering, rather than reinventing
What I find particularly moving about Nothing is that the little toy eventually discovers he has a history and a name. He is Little Toby.
He hasn’t suddenly become valuable because somebody recognises him.
His value was never dependent on that recognition.
Of course, real lives are more complicated than children’s stories. We can’t always recover everything that was lost, return to the people we once were, or find the answers we’re looking for.
And sometimes the person we become is not somebody who was simply waiting to be rediscovered. Our identities can change and develop as we learn, grow and experience life.
But we can begin to question the labels we’ve absorbed, recognise the adaptations we’ve made, and consider what genuinely matters to us.
Making room for yourself
Counselling doesn’t have to be about fixing yourself or becoming a better version of somebody else’s idea of who you should be.
It can be somewhere to explore your experiences without having to justify them, explain away your differences or arrive with a clear understanding of what you need.
Somewhere to be uncertain.
Somewhere to reconsider the stories you’ve been told about yourself.
And perhaps somewhere to begin writing a few of your own.
You don’t have to know exactly who you are to deserve acceptance, understanding and care.
Source: Inkpen, M. Nothing, in The Mick Inkpen Treasury (Hodder Children’s Books). Quotation appears on page 38 of the supplied scanned edition (PDF page number). The reflections in this article are my own, not statements attributed to the author.