Quotes About Identity

Infant (hope)—trust versus mistrust Toddler (will)—autonomy versus shame Preschooler (purpose)—initiative versus guilt School-age child (competence)—industry versus inferiority Adolescent (fidelity)—identity versus role confusion Young adult (love)—intimacy versus isolation Middle-aged adult (care)—generativity versus stagnation Older adult (wisdom)—integrity versus despair

What we fear isn't just dying in the literal sense but in the sense of being extinguished, the loss of our very identities, of our younger and more vibrant selves. How do we defend against this fear? Sometimes we refuse to grow up. Sometimes we self-sabotage. And sometimes we flat-out deny our impending deaths.

Before having a baby, I'd relished the freedom of a non-office job. But now I longed to get dressed every day and be in the company of verbal grownups. It was during this perfect storm of isolation and plummeting estrogen that I started to wonder if I'd made a mistake by leaving medical school.

Sometimes people can't identify their feelings because they were talked out of them as children.

ultimate concerns are death, isolation, freedom, and meaninglessness

If you ever want proof that what people present online is a prettier version of their lives, become a therapist and Google your patients.

early experiences inform who they are as adults so that they can separate the past from the present

Being the cool girl feels like shit.

While women feel cultural pressure to keep up their physical appearance, men feel that pressure to keep up their emotional appearance

The people who are watching us--the people who really see us--don't care about the false self, about the show we're putting on.

But part of getting to know yourself is to unknow yourself—to let go of the limiting stories you've told yourself about who you are so that you aren't trapped by them, so you can live your life and not the story you've been telling yourself about your life. But

Why are we essentially outsourcing the thing that defines us as people?" Turkle asked in the video. Her question made me wonder: Was it that people couldn't tolerate being alone or that they couldn't tolerate being with other people?

Every person you've been close to lives on somewhere inside you.

If you don't like something about yourself, change it. If you're okay with it, you gotta own it. There's nothing in between.

I wondered who would teach me, or if a boy could learn on his won, what it means to be a man.

I felt the weight of my father's failures and the absence of my mother and I wondered who would teach me, or if a guy could learn on his own, what it means to be a man.

You don't know if you ruined your kids or if they were born that way.

you don't like something about yourself, change it. If you're okay with it, you gotta own it. There's nothing in between.

If you don't like something about yourself, change it. If you're OK with it, you gotta own it. There's nothing in between.

I hum some secret place into being, thinking of this other me, the one that only I can see, a girl called She, who is not We, a girl who I will never be.

Every fellow is really two men -- what he is and what he might be; and you're never absolutely sure which you're going to bury till he's dead.

Clothes don't make the man, but they make all of him except his hands and face during business hours, and that's a pretty considerable area of the human animal.

Culture is not a matter of a change of climate.

A man's whole life / may be a metaphor - but a woman's lot / is symbol.