Quotes & Sayings About Losing One's Identity

Real confidence has a realistic view of itself. It knows what it is capable of and not capable of. Real confidence does not need to overcompensate for anything, it doesn't have to try harder to be more than what it already is. Real confidence does not beat itself up when it makes a mistake. Real confidence is secure enough to let someone else take the credit for something, without losing its own identity. Real confidence is humble. Real confidence recognizes its weaknesses and limitations, and is secure enough to admit when it is wrong.
'Living With Confidence: From Fear To Love — Dan P

All bands are in danger of losing their identity. Constantly. — Alex Scally

Women are beginning to lose their identity. They have jumped with teeth clenched, fists braced and eyes aglow, into the competitive man's world. They're losing the vibrant quality of femininity, the aura of mystery. — Tony Curtis

At first I was afraid that I would be left defenseless, that I would babble aloud the things I've always been terrified of saying. Instead, opium made me realize that I could say anything I liked without losing my identity. — Jerzy Kosinski

If the individuals who make up a group have personal egos, and their identities lie in these egos, then their egoic identities will shift to the group. It might look as if they are losing their personal egos, but the ego simply shifts to the group. — Eckhart Tolle

He was part of this river of cars, aiding its sluggish tide and in turn aided by it. Without losing his identity, free to turn out of the tide when he chose, he still belonged to something. — Jim Thompson

Although healing brings a better life, it also threatens to permanently alter life as you've known it. Your relationships, your position in the world, even your sense of identity may change. Coping patterns that have served you for a lifetime will be called into question. When you make the commitment to heal, you risk losing much of what is familiar. As a result one part of you may want to heal while another resists change.
Courage to Heal Workbook by Laura Davis — Laura Davis

Henry laughed and said, "Honey, the sun rises and sets with that Bill of hers. Everything he says is Gospel. She loves her man." "Is that what loving your man is?" "Has a lot to do with it." Jean Louise said, "You mean losing your own identity, don't you?" "In a way, yes," said Henry. "Then I doubt if I shall ever marry. I never met a man - " "You're gonna marry me, remember?" "Hank, I may as well tell you now and get it over with: I'm not going to marry you. Period and that's that. — Harper Lee

I, who so love a hermit life for a good part of the day, find myself living in public, and almost losing my identity. — Elizabeth Blackwell

I've wanted to win at everything, every day, since I was a kid. And time doesn't change a person, it just helps you get a handle on who you are. Even at age 41, I still hate losing
I'm just more gracious about it. I'm also aware that setbacks have an upside; they fuel new dreams. — Dara Torres

The most powerful natural species are those that adapt to environmental change without losing their fundamental identity which gives them their competitive advantage. — Charles Darwin

Too many women throw themselves into romance because they're afraid of being single, then start making compromises and losing their identity. I won't do that. — Julie Delpy

I'm most afraid of losing my mind. You lose your identity, your sense of who you are, where you are. — Stephen King

Whether or not the abuser's hand has actually pressed against our labia--or slammed into our face--our identity as women is constituted by the threat of violence. From childhood we are made to understand that other people will try to control our bodies, and that many will succeed. Unlike boys, we are never taught to fight back when our physical self-sovereignty is threatened. That is why our identity is an identity of incoherence, and why it's so hard to give it up to the other's mouth or her hand or just the universe watching as you lose control by yourself. Losing control of our sexual feelings can be so devastating that we fear we'll lose something even more central to us: our moral integrity. — Donna Minkowitz

I wear makeup and I don dramatic attire because I like control. I'm not interested in controlling others but I'm invested in strict self-governance. This is why I don't do many face-to-face interviews. I don't like being caught off-guard. It all goes back to that attempt to create order amidst disorder. One of the most frightening things about losing your mind is that you feel like your body, your brain, every part of your essence is being invaded. There is such a palpable helplessness to that narrative and I hate the sense of victimhood that it implies. Certainly, this is how I felt during my moments of psychological disquiet. I felt like my personhood was under attack. Performativity is important to me because I'm the teller of my own stories. I have been performing these multiple roles for so long that they have bled into my identity. I have become the man that I always wanted to be. — Diriye Osman

Honey, the sun rises and sets with that Bill of hers. Everything he says is Gospel. She loves her man."
"Is that what loving your man is?"
"Has a lot to do with it."
Jean Louise said, "You mean losing your own identity, don't you?"
"In a way, yes," said Henry.
"Then I doubt if I shall ever marry. — Harper Lee

Many of our brothers and sisters are 'baptized, but insufficiently evangelized.' In a number of cases, nations once rich in faith and in vocations are losing their identity under the influence of a secularized culture. The need for a new evangelization, so deeply felt by my venerable Predecessor, must be valiantly reaffirmed, in the certainty that God's word is effective. — Pope Benedict XVI

Every single time you make a merger, somebody is losing his identity. And saying something different is just rubbish. — Carlos Ghosn

Finally Exi spoke. "There are some important things to remember always, no matter how hard life presses at you. One of these things is that wherever you are, and no matter for how long, there must be a home to hold you. You cannot know who you are unless you are contained in some way that gives you shape. Otherwise you are like a small wind, or like water losing itself in sand." He paused thoughtfully, looking at us, who had all stopped to listen. "You see," he continued, "at any place or time we have no way of knowing if we will be there a day or a week. We must let our destiny come to us. In one sense this is always true. Therefore it is needful for each of us to be defined-to live, not just wait to live. Do you understand? — Sheila Moon

I had a book of Bible stories when I was a kid. There was a picture I'd look at twenty times every day: Jacob wrestles with the angel. I don't really remember the story, or why the wrestling
just the picture. Jacob is young and very strong. The angel is ... a beautiful man, with golden hair and wings, of course. I still dream about it. Many nights. I'm ... It's me. In that struggle. Fierce, and unfair. The angel is not human, and it holds nothing back, so how could anyone human win, what kind of a fight is that? It's not just. Losing means your soul thrown down in the dust, your heart torn out from God's. But you can't not lose. — Tony Kushner

Sometimes by holding onto what you love the most - you end up choking the very life from the thing you want to keep on living. It's possible to try too hard, to love something so deeply that you lose yourself. The danger is never in loving someone - but losing your identity in the process. Because what happens when tragedy strikes? You're left an empty shell. You're left with nothing. — Rachel Van Dyken

We parents are in the process of losing parts of ourselves, of waking up each morning to find ourselves changed by our children. We may fantasize that we are not really changed, that we can go back to poring over Wittgenstein, immersing ourselves in the latest movies, being beach bums- whatever it was that we were before the child or children came into our lives. But part of what we have lost is the part of our identity that is the person-without-children. The parent we are now has a life inextricably entwined not only without our past life and our private selves but also with the lives of our children. — Daniel Gottlieb

into art or music, how about that exhilarating moment when, during the 1982 Winter Olympics, the U.S. hockey team pulverized the Russians? Whether in front of the television, in the stands, or on the ice, we all became "one" in the euphoria of victory. My strong, he-man father once told me about a time he was standing on the edge of a cliff overlooking Yellowstone Falls - with tears in his eyes, he described how he became one with the deafening roar of the water. If you have experienced any of this, it's an inkling of the joy that will overtake us when we take just one glance at the Lord of joy. We will lose ourselves in Him. We will become one with Him. We will be "in Christ," we will have "put on Christ" at the deepest, most profound and exhilarating level. The Lord's wedding gift to us will be the joy of sharing totally in His nature without us losing our identity; no, we shall receive our identity. Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift! — Joni Eareckson Tada

I was happy being a journalist. I didn't realize losing my job, my identity went with it. — Maria Shriver

Winning or losing an argument, receiving an acceptance or rejection, is no proof of the validity or value of personal identity. One may be wrong, mistaken, or a poor craftsman, or just ignorant - but this is no indication of the true worth of one's total human identity: past, present and future! — Sylvia Plath

Anyway, there are two tentative solutions for getting rid of selfishness - both involving a stoic casting - off of the thin tenuous little identity which I love and cherish so dearly - and being confident that, once on the other side, I shall never miss my own little ambitions for my conceited self, but shall be content in serving the ambitions of my mate, or of a society, or cause. (Yet I will not, I cannot accept any of those solutions. Why? Stubborn selfish pride. I will not make what is inevitable easier for my-self by the blinding ignorance-is-bliss "losing-and-finding" theory. Oh, no! I will go, eyes open, into my torture, and remain fully cognizant, unwinking, while they cut and stitch and lop off my cherished malignant organs.) So much for selflove: I carry it with me like a dear cancerous relative - to be disposed of only when desperation sets in. — Sylvia Plath

When are we left-wingers going to learn that we are losing the cultural and political battle with conservatives because we are fractured into narcissistic special-interest groups? Why should an antiwar protestor be so concerned about her dietary identity? The political opinions of vegetarians and meat-eaters are, after all, equally important. And what does it tell us about vegetarians that it would never occur to meat-eaters to carry a sign that reads "Pacifist Pork Chop Lover for Peace" or "Backyard Rib Barbecuer for International Nuclear Disarmament"? — Sherman Alexie

The simple truth of our finiteness is that we could, by whatever means, go on interminably only at the price of either losing the past and, therewith, our identity, or living only in the past and therefore without a real present. We cannot seriously wish either and thus not a physical enduring at that price. — Hans Jonas

At the same time that "self-made" entered the nation's lexicon, so did the notion of abject failure. Once reserved to describe a discrete financial episode - "I made a failure," a merchant would say after losing his shop - "failure" in antebellum America became a matter of identity, describing not an event but a person. As the historian Scott Sandage explains in Born Losers: A History of Failure in America, the phrase "I feel like a failure" comes to us so naturally today "that we forget it is a figure of speech: the language of business applied to the soul." It became conventional wisdom in the early nineteenth century, Sandage explains, that people who failed had a problem native to their constitution. They weren't just losers; they were "born losers. — Joshua Wolf Shenk

Democrats are losing loyal voters, but the Republicans aren't picking them up. Democrats are ideologically bankrupt. Republicans have a major brand-identity problem — Herman Cain

For a certain type of woman who risks losing her identity in a man, there are all those questions ... until you get to the point and know that you really are living a love story. — Anouk Aimee

Somewhere along the way I feel as though I lost my identity and its not like losing a passport it feels more like losing someone so dear to your heart that it pains you everyday to be so unsure if you'll ever see them again or not — Donal O'Callaghan

Vision connects you. But it also separates you. In my work, and my life, I feel a desire to merge. Not in terms of losing my own identity ... but there's a feeling that life is interconnected, that there's life in stones and rocks and trees and dirt, like there is in us. — Bill Viola

Too many girl rush into relationships because of the fear of being single, then start making compromises and losing their identity. Don't do that. — Katy Perry

School was more than academics; an education prepared you for the humdrum of real life: working with others, tempering one's personality to assimilate with the group but without losing your individual identity, understading the factors of logic, reasoning, and debate. For a person - vampire or human - to succeed in the world, unlocking the mysteries of the universe was insufficient. One would also need to grasp the mysteries of human nature. — Melissa De La Cruz

The melancholy comes over me, the dismal misery of not knowing where I am, or perhaps losing any sense of who I am, as if the mist is bringing about an evaporation of identity, all the certainties of the self leaching away into the cloud. — Simon Armitage

Genetically speaking, individuals and groups are like clouds in the sky or dust- storms in the desert. They are temporary aggregations or federations. They are not stable through evolutionary time. Populations may last a long while, but they are constantly blending with other populations and so losing their identity. — Richard Dawkins

Losing your job is like having your identity stolen, like having what defined you run through a paper shredder. After a while the despair gets you, and it gets you good. — Eric Jerome Dickey

Meditate but one hour upon the self's nonexistence and you will feel yourself to be another man, said a priest of the Japanese Kusha sect to a Western visitor.
Without having frequented the Buddhist monasteries, how many times have I not lingered over the world's unreality, and hence my own? I have not become another man for that, no, but there certainly has remained with me the feeling that my identity is entirely illusory, and that by losing it I have lost nothing, except something, except everything. — Emil Cioran

I feel very strongly that all Japanese at that time had the idea drilled into them of 1999 being the end of the world. Aum renunciates have already accepted, inside themselves, the end of the world, because when they become a renunciate, they discard themselves totally, thereby abandoning the world. In other words, Aum is a collection of people who have accepted the end. People who continue to hold out hope for the near future still have an attachment to the world. If you have attachments, you will not discard your Self, but for Renunciates it's as if they've leaped right off the cliff. And taking a giant leap like that feels good. They lose something - but gain something in return. — Haruki Murakami