Who Am I? The Struggle to Find an Authentic Identity

Adayah Asha
7 min readSep 22, 2022

One’s genuine identity is a multifaceted phenomena. So what does it mean to be you, exactly?

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

We’ve all been there before. We’re going about our lives, minding our own business, when suddenly we’re hit with the age-old question: “who am I?”

It’s a question that plagues us from the time we’re young until the day we die. And it’s not an easy question to answer. In fact, most of us never really find a satisfying answer. We just kind of muddle through and hope for the best.

The truth is, our identities are largely imposed on us by outside forces.

Our parents, our friends, our teachers, our co-workers… they all have a hand in shaping who we are. And while there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that, it can lead to a lot of stress and anxiety. That’s because we often find ourselves in roles that don’t feel natural or authentic.

We are constantly bombarded with messages about who we are supposed to be.

We are told that we need to be thin, beautiful, and perfect.

We are told that our worth is based on our appearance and our ability to please others. And unfortunately, much of this is true. Why? Because we know that these…

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Adayah Asha
Adayah Asha

Written by Adayah Asha

Researcher, Writer, Creator, Educator . Love reading my work, Lets Connect: https://dash.popl.co/profile/2460744

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