On Track to a Positive Identity

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Nothing is more fundamental than our sense of identity.  And identity depends upon perceiving a continuity of self.   When we do not behave consistently with our sense of self, we feel self-alienated and try to remedy the self-continuity dissonance.  Self-continuity is an internal compass that guides our actions, thoughts, and feelings.  Moreover, when our sense of self is unstable, the instability powerfully influences how others regard and relate to us.

Given the centrality of self-continuity, psychologists carefully study the concept and its implications for our well-being.  One such study focused on college student “derailment,” meaning the discrepancy between how they had seen themselves in the past and how they currently see themselves.  Kaylin Ratner and her colleagues (2019) sought to determine the derailment-depression relationship within a sample of 939 undergraduates.  The investigators were especially interested in whether derailment could cause depression or be a consequence of it.

Each quarter of the school year, the students completed measures of derailment and depression.  Over that period, scores on both were relatively consistent within individual students.  In general and overall, the two scores tended to correlate intra-individually – for each person, high or low scores on one predicted a similar level on the other.  However, the Ratner group discovered, to their surprise, that higher derailment scores earlier in the year sometimes preceded lower depression scores at year’s end.  To explain the surprising result, the investigators speculated that the discomfort of derailment probably caused some students proactively to reassess and/or change their behavior.  For instance, those whose depression decreased might have perceived their early-year derailment discomfort and responded by initiating salutary lifestyle changes later in the year.  Presumably that meant that they either tweaked their sense of identity, or found a way to incorporate the new salutary lifestyle changes into it.

The study can alert us to the value of introspection.  We always can find some external reason why we feel down.  We can blame Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, Mark Zuckerberg, our spouse, or our boss for our discontent, but there probably is little, or nothing, we can do to change them.  By focusing on oneself, we can determine what we are doing, thinking, and feeling.  Then we can begin to make the behavioral, thought, and emotional changes necessary to turn our lives around, and restore a positive personal identity.  More than anything else, we must focus on what we can control and avoid dwelling on that which is beyond our control.  Of course, that presumes that we are willing to initiate salutary changes for the controllables.   Do your best to recognize when your sense of self is derailed, and get back on track to reclaiming your identity!

Reference

Ratner, Kaylin; Mendle, Jane; Burrow, Anthony L.; & Thoemmes, Felix (2019).  Depression and derailment:  A cyclical model of mental illness and perceived identity change. Clinical Psychological Science, Vol 7(4), 735-753.      http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2167702619829748

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