How To Deal With Individuality As An Over-Thinker

How It Feels To Think About Individuality

I feel like a big component of my personality for many years was conformity. To me, that really meant favoring the world around me instead of making an effort to discover the world inside me. I know there were times when I’d start to think about my own individuality, such as, what made me who I was, but I would often find myself feeling overwhelmed with such a big question to discover. What did make up who I was? 

I, of course, would think about it extensively, but it was almost in a way where I felt very obligated to find out what contributed to what I thought, what I really believed in, what my values were, what I liked, and what I didn’t like. I was chasing these things about myself trying to come up with the perfect answer of who I was. 

What Is Overthinking About Individuality Doing To My Life?

I found that when I was trying to come up with a perfect answer for who I was, I was really still considering and focusing on outside components that had nothing to do with my own self simultaneously. I was really still including what I thought people would think, I would gauge what I would assume people around me would also like and making it my own, and just making it an overall inauthentic process for myself. 

Long story short, this ended up putting me in a place where I would very blindly accept or entertain really big ideas that I did not believe in. Overtime I became easily influenced, I became somebody I didn’t know, and I became somebody that was constantly confused by who I was because it didn’t match up with what I was feeling in my soul. All of this confusion was from not having an idea of what was me and what was not, or maybe it was just from me neglecting my ideas first and taking on somebody else’s above my own. 

What Made Me Want To Change My View On Individuality

It’s a really daunting feeling to look at yourself one day and really just say what the fuck are you doing. And not in a shameful way but just a real question of why are you doing the things you’re doing? While at the same time realizing how far the things you are currently doing are from what you know you should or could be doing. 

Individuality may seem like such a broad idea, and it is. But believing, accepting, and living out peoples separate beliefs without having any roots to your own beliefs, what you accept, and your own truths first is dangerous. And I had to take responsibility that that’s what I had been doing for a long time, I had been removing the part of me that distinguished my own self from somebody else and completely merging with what they thought, believed, and accepted. 

What I Thought About To Make Changes To My Own Individuality

So in the midst of realizing how disconnected I was from myself, I made a decision to go on a solo trip. I felt so empty and disconnected from myself that I wanted to give myself very intentional time to see what I could hear from myself, and to see what thoughts or ideas were really truly me. I knew this wasn’t a quick fix, but it was one step in the direction I wanted to go in, which was to trust, listen to, and rely on myself before anyone.

I took myself on this trip to show myself that I can take care of myself, that I can be self reliant, that sometimes doing things without a plan can show myself things about myself that I didn’t know, it showed me that I am a problem solver, it showed me that I can be alone, it showed me that these things that make up who I am make me capable of doing what I set my mind out to do. In everything that you do, there is a little piece you can take from that experience that shows you who you are and what you’re capable of. 

Everything that you need is inside of you, but I do think you miss that so drastically when you’re conforming to what’s around you and neglecting your own self. The things around you, like what I saw on my trip are amazing reminders of how beautiful the world is and how things around us are supposed to inspire us not become us. They inspire ideas, they inspire change, they inspire a new path, but based on who we are and who we know we are is how we decide what to do with what we take in from the world and people around us. 

What I Chose To Do With What I Learned About Individuality

I read the Pivot Year by Brianna Wiest and my page from today talked about, “How Maybe you haven’t considered what it might do to your life if you became the object of your own affection, if you offered yourself your own love”(Wiest, 2023, p. 295). And I loved this take and even related it to individuality because so often I found myself in a state of chasing. Chasing answers, chasing other peoples opinions, and chasing anything but my own personal considerations. 

I love this idea of becoming the object of your own affection because instead of having this pressure to discover what makes you who you are and figuring everything out, you’re replacing the figuring out part with simply making yourself the center of your affection and seeing what grows from there. In other words, you aren’t chasing anymore, but you are simply re-centering yourself.

How I Carried Out What I Learned About My Own Individuality

The reason I think this idea works over chasing self discovery is because of the place this idea comes from, making yourself the object of your own affection is coming from a place of love and safety. The acceptance that was once so blindly given to everything around me, was replaced with listening to my own internal world first and making it a place that was clear, loving, and calm. And so many real, creative, and new parts of yourself can grow from that.

Re-centering is coming home to that part of you that distinguishes you from the world around you and the people around you. Re-centering is using your internal dialogue, intuition, and your own thoughts first before you go to the world around you. Re-centering is where your individuality has always been and can always be found again, your individuality isn’t something you have to find I think it’s more something that you meet over and over again when we lose touch. Your individuality is the desire to connect with yourself, and that’s what will continuously set you apart from anyone and anything in the most unique and wonderful way.

WIEST, B. (2023). The Pivot Year. edith.