How to Actually Become Your Own Person

Someone asks what you do for fun, what music you listen to, or where you want to go to dinner, and your mind goes blank. Or you answer quickly with whatever you think the other person wants to hear, and then you drive home wondering if any of it was true.

I hear this constantly in our Calling Home groups. People can tell me in detail what their mother likes, what sets their father off, and what each sibling needs to stay calm. When I ask what they like, they often laugh and say they have no idea. Many people who grew up in dysfunctional families do not know what they like.

Over the last three weeks, this series has covered what differentiation is, what it looks like in families where disagreeing feels like leaving, and why nobody has to be the villain for difference to hurt. This final piece is about building a self: figuring out what you like, learning to tolerate disagreement and criticism, and deciding whose opinions matter.

Do You Know Who You Are?

If your family punished authenticity, hiding was a reasonable response. When your interests were mocked, dismissed, or met with indifference, you learned to keep them to yourself. Over time, many people stop noticing their interests at all.

Researchers in Finland collected written accounts from adult daughters of narcissistic mothers. One of the patterns that came up again and again was mothers dismissing their daughters' hobbies, schoolwork, and appearance until the daughters gave those things up (Määttä & Uusiautti, 2018). One woman wrote about loving to sing as a child. Her mother told her singing was not a real job and she should quit. She cried for days and decided she would never sing again. Many of the women in the study described difficulty defining who they were as adults.

This does not only happen in families with a narcissistic parent. It can happen in any family where a child learns that being agreeable is safer than being known. Your family relationships in childhood and adolescence largely determine how much self you develop, and that level rarely changes without a structured, long term effort. It can change. It just takes effort, and it takes quite a bit of time.

Carl Jung: Individuation

Carl Jung used the word individuation to describe the lifelong process of becoming a whole, distinct person. Bowen's differentiation is mostly about holding onto yourself inside your relationships. Jung's individuation is about getting to know the parts of yourself you hid or weren’t allowed to express.

Jung described several parts of the personality that people encounter along the way. They are often taught as stages, but Jung saw them as overlapping and ongoing rather than a checklist you finish.

The Persona: This is the mask you wear to function in the world: the roles you play and the image you present. The persona isn’t the problem. Everyone needs one. It becomes a problem when you falsely believe the mask is your whole self. In many families, the persona was assigned early. You were the easy one, the funny one, the achiever, the one who never needed anything. If you have played that role long enough, it can feel like it is the only part of you.

The Shadow: The shadow is the parts of you that were rejected, denied, or pushed out of awareness. Jung saw meeting the shadow as the first real task of individuation. People often assume the shadow is full of dark or shameful things. But for many people who grew up in a dysfunctional family, it is full of ordinary stuff that wasn’t welcome at home, like anger, ambition, sadness, silliness, wanting attention, or loving a kind of music your dad made fun of. The shadow is where a lot of your missing interests went.

The Anima and Animus. Jung described these in gendered terms, as the feminine side of a man and the masculine side of a woman. You can think of these as the qualities you learned belonged to a different kind of person than you. Like the son who was told sensitivity was weak or the daughter who was told ambition made her unlikable. Reclaiming those qualities widens the range of who you are allowed to be.

The Self. Jung used this word for the whole personality. In his view, you do not arrive at the Self and stay there. You keep moving toward it for the rest of your life.

Jung treated this as the work of an entire lifetime. Not knowing who you are at 25, 40, or 60 does not mean you missed your window. You are just in the middle of the process.

A Map To Figure Out What You Like

When you have no idea where to start, "just do what makes you happy" is not helpful. You need something more concrete.

Start with what you loved before someone told you not to. Think back to what you did as a kid when nobody was watching or grading you. What did you draw, build, collect, or read? What did you get teased about? What did you give up because someone made a comment? These are clues.

Pay attention to envy and curiosity. Envy has a bad reputation, but it is useful information. Curiosity works in a similar way. Notice what you read about, what makes you stop scrolling, and what you find yourself asking people about.

Try things in small, low stakes ways. You do not need to sign up for a year of lessons. Go to one class. Borrow the equipment. Watch a video and try it in your kitchen. Identity researchers describe two kinds of exploration: exploring in breadth, where you sample many options, and exploring in depth, where you look more closely at something you have already chosen. If you do not know what you like, your job right now is to sample, not to commit.

Check your reasons. After you try something, ask yourself a few questions. Did I like doing this, or did I like the idea of being someone who does this? Did I like it, or did I like how people reacted when I told them? Am I drawn to it because it is mine, or because my family would hate it?

Write it down. Keep a simple running note of what you tried, how it felt while you were doing it, and how you felt afterward. If you spent years ignoring your own reactions, you may not trust your memory of them yet.

Let Your Values Lead

Interests are what you do. Values are why you do it. Picture someone who spent her twenties doing community theater, her thirties hosting big dinner parties, and her forties running a book club. On the surface, those are three different interests. Underneath, the value might be the same: bringing people together, making something, or creating a space where people are welcome.

A study of more than 19,000 people between the ages of 18 and 68, found that people at every age said they had changed a lot over the past ten years but predicted they would change very little over the next ten. People consistently underestimate how much they will change.

Values also tend to move more slowly than interests. An eight year study of young adults found that most people's ranking of what mattered most to them stayed substantially stable from their early twenties to their late twenties (Vecchione et al., 2016). A review of longitudinal studies found moderate to high stability in values across adulthood, even through major life transitions (Schuster, Pinkowski & Fischer, 2019). Values still shift over a lifetime, especially earlier in adulthood. But compared to your taste in music or your hobby of the year, they are much steadier. If you know you value creativity, independence, connection, adventure, or service, you can choose things to try that express that value. When something does not fit, you probably just need a different way to express it.

If you are not sure what your values are, start with these questions:

• What were you doing the last time you lost track of time?
• What bothers you most when you see it happen to someone else?
• What would you keep doing even if no one ever saw it or praised you for it?
• When you think about someone you admire, what exactly do you admire about them?

You Are Allowed to Fail, Hate It, and Change Completely

Many people from controlling families treat every new interest as a test they’re afraid to fail. So they either never start, or they force themselves to keep doing something they hate to prove the family wrong.

Trying something and hating it is not failure. It is just information. Quitting something that does not fit is part of the process. You are also allowed to become someone completely different, at 30, at 50, or at 75. If you spent your first few decades being who your family wanted you to be, it makes sense that the person you become looks very different. "That's not you" is one of the most common reactions people describe from their dysfunctional family when they start changing. It does not mean they know you better than you know yourself.

Learning to Tolerate Disagreement and Criticism

Becoming your own person means people will disagree with you, dislike what you choose, or criticize you.

Well differentiated people still feel the sting. And, they can listen to a different view without attacking or collapsing. They can hold their position calmly, and hear feedback without treating it as a verdict on their worth.

Expect disagreement and criticism. When you try something new or say something you have never said before, discomfort comes with that. The discomfort is not a sign you made a mistake.

Separate the feeling from the facts. Your body may react like you are in trouble. Ask yourself what is actually happening. Is this person pointing out a real problem with your choice, or are they uncomfortable that you made a choice at all?

Notice the urge to over explain. Many people try to earn agreement by arguing their reasons or perspective. You can say what you think and stop.

Practice tolerating short term pain for long term growth. Each time you sit through someone's disappointment without changing, it gets a little easier.

Criticism is not always wrong. Sometimes someone is telling you something you need to hear. Tolerating criticism means you can take it in, think about it, and decide what to do with it, without rejecting it reflexively or giving in right away.

Deciding Whose Opinions to Listen to and When

Not every opinion deserves the same weight. You do not have to give every family member a vote on your life because you are related, and you also shouldn’t ignore every opinion. Refusing to hear anyone is also a type of reactivity and a sign of a lack of differentiation.

When someone gives you feedback, ask a few questions:

• Has this person consistently shown me they have my best interest in mind?
• Do they have real knowledge or experience in this area?
• Is their feedback about my values or about their comfort?
• Could this be about their fear, their regret, or how they will look to other people?

A new interest or a new part of yourself is fragile at the beginning. It is reasonable to keep something private while you figure out whether you even like it. Later, once you are more committed, you can go looking for people who know the subject well and who want you to succeed, and ask for their honest critique.

It also helps to build a wider circle of people whose opinions you trust. Friends, mentors, therapists, and communities of people doing the same work can offer perspective your family may not be able to give. This is a big part of why the Family Cyclebreakers Club exists. It gives you a place to discuss this with people who understand what you’re going through.

Pick one thing from your childhood you loved and one thing you have felt curious about recently. Try one of them in the smallest way you can this week. Afterward, write down how it felt. If you hated it, write that down too, and bring what you found to Wednesday's group.

Sources

Bowen Center for the Study of the Family. Introduction to the eight concepts. thebowencenter.org

Määttä, M., & Uusiautti, S. (2018). "My life felt like a cage without an exit": Narratives of childhood under the abuse of a narcissistic mother. Early Child Development and Care. https://doi.org/10.1080/03004430.2018.1513924

Quoidbach, J., Gilbert, D. T., & Wilson, T. D. (2013). The end of history illusion. Science, 339(6115), 96–98.

Schuster, C., Pinkowski, L., & Fischer, D. (2019). Intra-individual value change in adulthood: A systematic literature review of longitudinal studies assessing Schwartz's value orientations. Zeitschrift für Psychologie, 227(1), 42–52.

Tuason, M. T., & Friedlander, M. L. (2000). Do parents' differentiation levels predict those of their adult children? And other tests of Bowen theory in a Philippine sample. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 47(1), 27–35.

Vecchione, M., Schwartz, S. H., Alessandri, G., Döring, A. K., Castellani, V., & Caprara, M. G. (2016). Stability and change of basic personal values in early adulthood: An 8-year longitudinal study. Journal of Research in Personality, 63, 111–122.

Jung, C. G. Aion (Collected Works, Vol. 9ii) and The Development of Personality (Collected Works, Vol. 17). Princeton University Press.