I don't feel like myself anymore

What this looks like

You can remember being a different person. Funnier. More alive. More yourself. The current version is doing the things life requires and isn’t producing whatever made the older version feel like you. You catch glimpses of the old you in old photos, old recordings, things you wrote, and the gap is uncomfortable. You don’t know where she or he went.

The old version isn’t gone. The system that’s been running has been suppressing what was there.

What you’ve already tried

• Going back to things you used to do
• Reconnecting with friends from before
• A therapist who asked when it changed
• A trip to a place where you used to be that version
• A new hobby designed to wake something up
• Telling yourself this is just adulthood
• Pretending you don’t notice

The current version is still running.

Why returning to old activities hasn’t worked

The activities aren’t what made you feel like yourself. The activities were the surface. What made you feel like yourself was a relationship to your own time, energy, and wanting that current life has been suppressing. Returning to the activity without changing the underlying conditions produces the activity without the feeling.

You very likely came up to a stretch of life that demanded something specific from you, kids, a career, caretaking, a relationship that needed managing, and you adapted accordingly. The adaptation was successful. The cost was the version of you that wasn’t compatible with the demands. The cost wasn’t necessarily wrong. It was the trade. The trade has now been long enough that you’ve started noticing what was traded away.

For the related patterns, see I don’t know what I want , I’m having a midlife crisis , or I don’t know who I am . For the broader framework, see I feel lost .

The version of you isn’t gone. The conditions that produced her or him have changed.

How we work with it

Strategic therapy doesn’t try to send you back to old activities, since the activity was never the thing that made you feel like you. We work on the daily relationship to your time, energy, and wanting that current life has been suppressing, and we change the specific conditions that have been requiring the current version to keep being load-bearing. What was traded away starts becoming reachable again because the trade stops being demanded every day.

You start recognizing yourself. The version of you who was there hasn’t died. She or he has been waiting for the room.