Shake off this Sadness and Recover Your Spirit
On the perils and cures of Over-identification
Being healthy, vibrant and alive is to be creative. Creativity, requires coloring outside of the lines that someone (be it a parent, a doctor, or a teacher) once drew for you. These boundaries - that ‘box’ - we’re all trying to think outside of, was once necessary for survival. Creativity requires a willingness —a gumption— to grow beyond it.
Today’s topic, ‘Over-identification’, is about how we keep ourselves stuck in loops of poor health and low creativity, because of these boundaries that we’ve either inherited or drew around our own selves once upon a time.
Over-identification sounds like:
“I am not a creative person”
“I have no time for exercise” or “I don’t need sleep”
“I am a liberal, or I am pro-Palestinian, or a Zionist or an American.”
“ I am an ADHD, or a depressed person, or I am not good enough”
All of these statements may be true for someone, but they are never the whole truth of a human being.
They are just boxes…Over-identification is when we stereotype our own selves, and get stuck in cycles of depression, anxiety and sadness because of it.
Just like stereotyping others, this impacts our relationships.
However — Most of us are rewarded for living in ‘the box’ and for staying withIN the village. To create and live a healthy life requires leaving the village and walking up the cold snowy mountain on your own. It is a dangerous act, and society only rewards you if and when you get to the top. Many never make it, and their stories become reasons to not innovate, not create, not try out something new.
But that is not for you my dear gumptioneer, you have not come this far to remain stuck in old identities.
You are here because you want to color outside of the lines.
So let’s get this party started!
Today we’ll cover Over-identification
What is it?
The perils of it for our mental health
How to measure it
How we can get over it.
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Welcome to another edition of The Human Recovery Lab where we discuss how to stay sane and healthy in a world geared towards dis-ease. I am your writer, Omar Shaker — a trained medical doctor, experienced trauma work using Internal Family Systems and skilled in clinical data analytics.
I offer 1-on-1 & group support using these modalities through The Human Dash™
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I - WTF is Over-identification?
If our mad need for Validation is a snake that whispers insecurities into our ears, then over-identificaiton is the venom it releases into our veins.
i.e. Our need forValidation is Why we fall into anxiety and depression, while over-identificaiton is the How.
Over-identification is a form of sluggishness as the poet Miguel Di Unamuno once said in his poem “Throw yourself like seed”
“Shake off this sadness, and recover your spirit;
sluggish you will never see the wheel of fate
that brushes your heel as it turns going by,
the man who wants to live is the man in whom life is abundant.”
If you’ve been here with me for a while, you’ve seen me shift and mould my identity from a doctor to a fiction writer and podcast host, to a health coach and entrepreneur. Less gloriously, you’ve seen me go through a divorce, fight off bankruptcy, become a dog sitter, an uber driver and a farmer as I worked through my shit to be the person I am today.
I am all of these, and none of them!
Today I look back on the last four years of writing here, and see how one key tool has allowed me to survive thus far and stay on my path: a fluid sense of identity mixed in with a solid sense of purpose.
Four examples of Over-identification
#1 My depression in medical school
In medical school, I felt so isolated and depressed. My girlfriend at the time would try to bring me out of my slumber but it was so hard for me to get out of it. I would tell her:
“I just have chronic clinical depression — I am not meant to be social.”
or “I am an introvert, I just need my alone time.”
The result was that I spent a good two years in an isolated state of mind that lead to a stickier depression and was only able to get out of it once I decided to “Shake off the sadness and recover my spirit”!
#2 My ADHD friend who doesn’t want to read about dealing with ADHD because he is ADHD
I was catching up with a dear friend of mine last night over dinner, and one of his updates was that he recently realized that he has ADHD.
I pointed him towards resources such as Gabor Mate’s Scattered Minds, Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation, Dopamine Nation by Anne Lembke, and Driven to Distraction by Edward Hallowell.
“You see, the problem with ADHD is that it’s hard to read books...” he said as we dug into our Middle Eastern dinner.
This friend is a really smart one and I am sure he’ll figure out his way, but such is the case with many ADHD people who create a whole identity and self or overmedicate rather than deal with the underlying issues of this condition.
A condition, by definition, is a temporary state of being, not a whole person’s identity.
Instead of reading about how to get out of it, he tried to convince me that I myself am ADHD and that most of our close friends are as well. For the record, he is probably right. However, we are ultimately not defined by the diagnosis, but by how we address it.
#3 The American friend who got too far down the Palestine rabbit hole without talking to Jews
Another dear friend of mine called me in a panic recently. “I feel like my whole life is a lie — I need to talk to you about my relationship to the Palestine Israel situation.”
This friend had built a whole persona that was pro Palestinian, having learned about the horrors of Gaza and the West Bank, of the Israeli occupation, and she had become a vociferous activist. Let’s just say her activism puts me to shame as an Arab myself.
Recently, she spoke to an American Jewish person, who shocked her system with the idea of how Jewish people have been brutally murdered, about how the Palestinians rejected peace terms over the years, and all the other stories that Jewish people grow up with.
“I am so confused, I feel like my whole life is a lie. I feel like I might have hurt a lot of people by shutting down one side of the narrative. I feel ashamed.”
That shame is a hallmark of overidentification starting to be cured.
All I told her was “Welcome to the Middle East, sister.”
#4 A client of mine who can’t see beyond her previous marriage
I got a text message two weeks ago from one of The Human Dash Members — “I need help!”. I called her immediately and she told me about how she visited her ex-husband and that drove her over the edge into a dark place. “I have been contemplating suicide for the past 2 hours. I don’t know what to do.”
We call that in the Internal Family Systems world a “Firefighter”, it happens when we have ignored a part of our psyche for so long (sure to over-identification with another) and suddenly that old part comes online.
All I could do was listen patiently, and help her start realizing the incredible amount of strength I know she has, but was nto accessible to her in that moment.
She is thankfully in a much better place now.
II - The Perils of Over-identification
Let’s be clear, without a sense identity we have no anchor, no roots in the earth, no string that ties us to the heavens. Without identity, we float adrift in the dark winds. Sometimes we need a diagnosis to help us wake up to who we are, but if our whole identity is stuck in a single box, then we may also not be able to overcome it.
That is why it is critical to understand this: To over-identify is to blend with something. When two colors blend with each other, they lose their original identities, and that is what happens when we are depressed or anxious.
Both anxiety and depression are a state of over-identification with parts of who we are. We end up thinking of ourselves as “a failure” or “a depressed person” or “a diabetic” or even “an artist" or “a doctor” or “a mother”…but the truth is that those are parts of us, and embracing them as such is the path towards a peaceful life.
Understanding The Default Mode Network
Remember how counting sheep helped you sleep when you felt anxious as a kid?
The reason why this works is because that focus helps you pop out of what we call the Default Mode Network (DMN). It is also why meditation, mindfulness and psychedelics all help with depression and anxiety.
The DMN is one of the greatest discoveries in neuroscience over the past two decades, helping us understand 1 depression, PTSD and ADHD on a much deeper level. It is a group of brain areas that together keep us in a reflective, daydreamy, and ruminative state.
While this state is helpful for our evolution, an increased function of DMN activity has been clearly shown to correlate with depression.
Self Reflection is a beautiful thing, until it is a closed loop short circuit of your brain!
Boundaries are important, until they isolate you from anyone that is different from you!
We need identity, we need our egos to protect us from harms way. We need our default mode network to remind us of the past, keep us moving forward without overthinking, but this is only to the extent by which it helps us to survive.
If you are interested in thriving, and going beyond the survival brain, then you need to challenge yourself to go beyond that.
The point is not to destroy the ego, but to give the rest of your psyche a chance to be expressed alongside it.
When we mistake a single aspect of our identity with our whole being, when we are entangled with an aspect of who we are , in a way that consumes us and makes us co-ruminate with others (because of our mad need for validation) then we then over-identify and we become more prone to:
Worsening mental health issues
Self-harm
Entrenched trauma
Unsatisfying Relationships
Being manipulated by identity politics & the news.
Regain your health, confidence, and creativity, with data on your side. Try out the Human Dash Assessment and see if the program is for you!
III- How to measure Overidentification
One of my identities is that of a data analyst. I help my clients measure their levels of self-compassion which is made up of Kristen Neff PhD’s well researched six measures of self-compassion which are: Mindfulness, Over-identification, isolation, common humanity, self-kindness and self -criticism.
The amount of research2 in this field is growing exponentially and I believe it is the next evolution of therapy and the reason I measure it is because it is the North Star of how I see whether the program is helping someone or not.
Rank your answer to the following from 1-5 being with 1 being Almost Never & 5 being Almost Always
When I’m feeling down I tend to obsess and fixate on everything that’s wrong
When I fail at something important to me I become consumed by feelings of inadequacy.
When something upsets me I get carried away with my feelings.
When something painful happens I tend to blow the incident out of proportion
Add all the numbers from your answers and divide by 4.
The higher the number, the more you over-identify.
Let me know in the comments — what was your score? What did you learn?
IV- Getting Over Over-identification
By relating to our ADHD, our depression or our anxieties in a new way, we can break free of the grip of over-identification on us.
They are not who we are, but visitors coming to show us the way. “Treat each guest honorably” as Rumi says — but also, don’t confuse a guest for your own self! That would drive you mad.
Things to try out:
1- Talk about the parts of you:
Instead of calling yourself a depressed person, try to start referring to it as “the depressed" part of you. Give it a funny emo name. Make it into a character. When I work with clients I create AI generated images of these parts alongside fully fleshed prompts to connect with these parts so that one can see how they are different from the part.
This is called unblending.
2- Get a diverse diet of news, media, and ideas that challenge you
Another way to intellectually un-blend is to talk to others who have different ideas that yours. Tread carefully here, just like my friend who felt like “her whole life was a lie”, you need to chosoe the people who can challenge you but with a common grounds. If the other person is over-identified as well, then you will not be able to have a productive conversation.
You need media, news, and people that have an intersection point which you can start relating to from. For example — I can relate to Jewish people through the experience of migration which is a big part of their story. Once connection is established, we can then push on each others narratives if both sides are willing to listen.
3- Mindfulness and Somatic Training
The answer lies in reducing the default mode network activity. When we focus on a certain task or the present moment (like counting sheep, working on a task, certain types of meditation, or with psychedelics), we engage the lateral part of our Prefrontal cortex which deactivates that default network, reducing the symptoms of depression.
A meditation teacher once taught me this in far simpler terms - she said “Meditation is when your mind and your body are doing the same thing.” So the next time you find your thoughts spiraling you into anxiety, driving you towards madness, direct your brain to feel your body’s sensations and you will start anchoring yourself the safety of your own body.
That is what my meditation teach meant by “body and mind doing the same thing”. If you find yourself spiraling in the abyss of the default mode network of your mind, then try one of the following techniques:
If you are driving, focus on the tactile sensations of your steering wheel.
If you are walking, focus your brain on the muscles of your feet and the texture of the ground.
If you are cooking, focus on the knife as it slices through the juicy tomato or the impact it makes with the cutting board.
This way your brain can realize that despite its thoughts, your body is actually safe and functional in these moments.
I teach many of these tools into a comprehensive 3 month program with skills building , trauma work, habit change and your own custom dashboard to measure all of your progress with labs and validated surveys.
Find out more about the program.
Join us on May 18th for Humans Being Together with Staci Haines and Adriana Cerundolo if you are in the Bay Area!
Hamilton JP, Farmer M, Fogelman P, Gotlib IH. Depressive Rumination, the Default-Mode Network, and the Dark Matter of Clinical Neuroscience. Biol Psychiatry. 2015 Aug 15;78(4):224-30. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2015.02.020. Epub 2015 Feb 24. PMID: 25861700; PMCID: PMC4524294.
https://self-compassion.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/PsychReviewInPress.pdf