I don’t feel like myself anymore. But I’m not sure what’s actually wrong

Sometimes there isn’t a dramatic moment when you realise something isn’t quite right.

Nothing has necessarily happened. You’re still going to work, answering messages, remembering birthdays, sorting dinner and doing all the things that make your life look reasonably normal from the outside.

But somewhere in amongst it all, you’ve started to notice something.

You don’t quite feel like yourself.

It’s a surprisingly difficult feeling to explain because there may be nothing obvious to point to. You might not describe yourself as unhappy. You may have plenty in your life that you’re grateful for. And if somebody asked you what was wrong, you’d probably struggle to give them a neat answer.

You just know that the version of you who used to feel more interested, confident, spontaneous or simply more present seems to have gone a little quiet.

It doesn’t always happen because something went wrong

We often look for a reason when we don’t feel like ourselves.

Was it work? Hormones? A difficult relationship? Getting older? Stress? Am I just tired? Do I need a holiday?

Sometimes there is an identifiable cause. But often what I see is less dramatic than that.

Life has simply required a lot from you for quite a long time.

You’ve been responding to what needs doing. Making decisions. Looking after people. Keeping things moving. Being dependable. Adjusting when circumstances change.

None of those things is necessarily a problem on its own.

But when your attention is repeatedly directed towards what everybody and everything else needs from you, you can gradually become less aware of what is happening within you.

What do I actually want?

What do I enjoy now?

What feels important to me?

What am I tolerating because it’s easier than dealing with it?

When did I last do something because I genuinely wanted to rather than because it was useful, expected or needed?

Those questions can become surprisingly difficult to answer.

Not because there is something missing in you, but because you haven’t had much reason to ask them lately.

You can become very good at functioning

There’s an interesting thing that happens when we repeat something often enough: it becomes familiar.

If you regularly override tiredness because things need doing, you get used to carrying on tired.

If you regularly say yes because saying no feels uncomfortable, saying yes becomes automatic.

If you spend years considering everybody else in every decision, you become very skilled at knowing what other people need.

You can become so good at functioning within your life that you stop noticing how much of yourself has been edited out of it.

And because you’re still functioning, it’s easy to dismiss the feeling.

I’m fine really.

Other people have much more going on.

I’ve got nothing to complain about.

All of those things can be true and you can still recognise that you don’t feel quite right.

You don’t have to build a legal case for why you’re allowed to pay attention to that.

Perhaps the question isn’t “What’s wrong with me?”

When somebody tells me they don’t feel like themselves anymore, I’m less interested in finding a label for it than I am in becoming curious about what has changed.

What has life looked like recently?

What has been taking most of their energy?

What have they stopped doing?

Where are they constantly adapting?

What do they miss about themselves?

That last question can tell us quite a lot.

Perhaps you miss being more light-hearted. Maybe you used to feel capable and now question yourself constantly. Perhaps you miss having things to look forward to that actually belong to you. Maybe you were once somebody who would happily make plans and now even a nice invitation can feel like another demand on your time.

Or perhaps you can’t identify anything specific at all.

That’s okay too.

You don’t need to know exactly what has changed before you start paying attention to the fact that something has.

You don’t have to wait for a dramatic reason

There can be a temptation with this sort of feeling to wait.

Wait until life gets quieter. Wait until you understand it better. Wait and see whether it passes. Wait until there is something sufficiently concrete to justify doing something about it.

But sometimes nothing dramatic happens.

Another six months simply passes while you continue being incredibly efficient at getting through the week.

If you’ve been quietly thinking, I don’t really know what’s wrong, I just don’t feel like me anymore, that is enough of a starting point for a conversation.

You don’t need the right terminology. You don’t need to know whether it’s anxiety, confidence, overwhelm, stress or something else. And you certainly don’t need to arrive with a beautifully organised explanation of yourself.

Part of my work is helping you slow things down enough to understand what has been happening, what may have become your normal and what you would like to feel different.

Because sometimes the first sign that something needs your attention isn’t a crisis.

It’s simply noticing that you’ve been present for everybody else’s life for quite some time, while feeling increasingly absent from your own.

And that is worth paying attention to.

Jx