In this reflection Alessandra Sorrentino-Lawrence, Psychologist at Teladoc Health UK, explores self-identity from a psychological perspective, drawing on both clinical work and lived experience.
It’s a question that rarely arrives all at once. More often, it slips in quietly – in the middle of an ordinary day, during a life transition, or at a point where everything seems ‘fine’ from the outside, yet something internally feels off.
You might be doing all the right things. Building a career, maintaining relationships, meeting expectations. And still, there’s a sense of disconnection — as though the life you’re living doesn’t fully belong to you.
I recognise this feeling, not just from my work as a Clinical Psychologist, but from my own life. In my mid-20s, I found myself on a path that made perfect sense on paper, yet internally I felt fragmented, unsure of who I really was beneath the roles I was performing. It was confusing, and at times unsettling. But looking back, it was also an important turning point.
Now, travelling alongside people for a fragment of their lives – because therapy, in many ways, is a shared journey – I often hear a version of the same experience: ‘I feel lost,’ ‘I don’t know who I am anymore,’ ‘Something just doesn’t fit.’ And one of the first things I tend to say is that this is far more common than we think. Feeling lost is not a sign that something is wrong with you – it is often a sign that something within you is asking to be understood.
Part of the difficulty lies in how we think about identity. We are often taught, implicitly or explicitly, that identity is something singular and fixed – something we should eventually ‘figure out.’ But in reality, identity is much more layered than that. We are not one thing. We are made up of multiple parts: our professional roles, our relationships, our cultural backgrounds, our personal histories, our values, our interests, and even the aspects of ourselves that are still unfolding.
I sometimes think of identity as being like a Rubik’s Cube. Each side represents a different aspect of who we are, with its own colour, its own meaning. No single side defines the whole. The complexity is part of what makes it coherent. But when the cube feels scrambled – when the colours no longer align in a way that makes sense to us – that’s when we begin to feel disorganised internally, disconnected, or lost.
In both my personal journey and my clinical work, that sense of disconnection often emerges when we are living in ways that are not aligned with our values. We might be pursuing paths that were chosen for us, or that once made sense but no longer do. We might be staying in relationships that don’t quite reflect who we are. Or we might be making decisions based on expectations rather than intention. Over time, this creates a kind of internal tension – different parts of us pulling in different directions.
Years ago, I came across the novel One, No One and One Hundred Thousand by Luigi Pirandello, which explores the idea that we are not a single, stable self, but many different versions of ourselves, shaped by how we see ourselves and how others see us. The protagonist becomes increasingly aware that he is one person to himself, yet many different people to others – and in trying to grasp a single, fixed identity, he ends up feeling like no one at all. It’s an unsettling idea, but also a deeply human one. Identity is not something rigid; it is fluid, relational, and constantly evolving.
Because of this, the question people often bring – ‘Who am I?’ – can sometimes keep them stuck. It suggests there is a final answer, something definitive to discover. But in therapy, a different question often proves more helpful: ‘Who do I want to be?’.
This shift moves us away from searching for a fixed definition and towards living with intention. And this is where values become central. Values are not the same as goals. Goals can be achieved and completed — they can be ticked off a list. Values, on the other hand, are ongoing. They are directions rather than destinations. You don’t ‘complete’ a value like honesty, connection, or growth. You return to it, again and again, through the way you live your life.
When we lose touch with our values, it’s easy for the different parts of our identity to feel scattered, like that scrambled cube. But when we begin to reconnect with what truly matters to us – even in small, imperfect ways – something starts to shift. There is a gradual sense of coherence, not because everything is perfectly aligned, but because there is a direction, a thread that begins to hold things together.
This process is rarely quick or straightforward. It requires patience, curiosity, and often a willingness to sit with uncertainty rather than rushing to define ourselves too quickly. It also involves accepting that we can hold contradictions – that we can be many things at once without needing to reduce ourselves to a single, neat answer.
From both my own experience and the many people I’ve had the privilege to work with, one thing becomes clear: feeling lost is not the problem we often think it is. It can be the beginning of a deeper kind of awareness – an invitation to pause, reflect, and begin to realign.
Perhaps the aim is not to arrive at a final answer to ‘Who am I?’
But to keep returning to a quieter, more guiding question:
Am I living in a way that feels true to me?
Because identity is not something we find once and for all. It is something we continuously shape – through our choices, our values, and the way we show up in our own lives.
If questions around identity, values or feeling lost are resonating with you, therapy can offer a space to explore these experiences safely and thoughtfully. Working with a psychologist can help you reconnect with what matters most and begin living in a way that feels more aligned.
Teladoc Health UK offers Virtual Mental Health services to employers, insurance providers & brokers and banks. Our virtual medical care offering spans Virtual GP, Second Medical Opinion, Virtual Physiotherapy, Virtual Nutrition and more. To get in touch about how our team can assist in offering virtual healthcare services to your team, click here to book a chat.
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