Summary

A sense of identity is important to our wellbeing. Our communities are healthier when individual members in the community are healthy. Teaching our children to be kind and helping our children have a sense of identity are ways to promote wellbeing in our children. Learning about our neighbours, learning about cultures, learning history, and learning languages help us to see how our identity is connected to the identity of people in our community. We have many opportunities to learn about people in our community. Wellbeing in our community is based on the wellbeing of the members in the community.

A Sense of Identity Affects Our Wellbeing

Our sense of identity affects our wellbeing and the wellbeing of our community. Let’s explore.

What Is Identity

A sense of identity is necessarily influenced by a sense of self. Let me make a distinction between sense of self and sense of identity.

Sense of Identity

A person’s sense of identity reflects a person’s self-awareness, a person’s self-concept, and a person’s self-esteem. Self-awareness includes awareness of my relation to others in the world; my awareness of internal functions in my body (interoception); my awareness of how others perceive me and how I perceive others. A person’s self-concept is a person’s perception of who they are. And, self-esteem is the regard, whether positive or negative, which a person integrates about themself.

Sense of Self

A sense of self, I posit, influences a person’s sense of identity but, in my opinion, is internally based in the brain and in the non-concrete mind. A sense of self is the composite of brain functions and value system, belief system, and goal directed behaviour. That is my distillation of what constitutes sense of self.

The brain creates a sense of self for each of us. Some people have difficulty recognizing a sense of self and this may be related to their mental health diagnoses. Treatments may help a person recognize their sense of self. Some diagnoses may be characterized by episodes during which a person experiences an altered sense of self.

Neuroscience has come a long way in its attempt to identify where in the brain we register a sense of self. There is more than one school of thought about the physiological basis for a sense of self.

The Cellular Republic podcast entitled Crafting Who We Are: Examining the Neuroscience of Self presents some of the research related to the neuroscience of self. Take a listen.

 

Anil Anansthaswamy discusses the sense of self from the perspective of created realities. In other words, our idea of ourselves is a construct of our brain.

 

An Impaired Sense of Identity Is Unhealthy

An impaired sense of identity may be unrelated to a mental health diagnosis. An impaired sense of identity may be related to upbringing and social movements. During our formative years, let’s say childhood and adolescence, our brains are developing and we are evolving as a person. We are impressionable, that is easily influenced by our environment which then may engender a troubled sense of self.

An impaired sense of identity is unhealthy.

Well, you say, that is obvious. Yes, Sherlock, it is obvious. And not everyone is like you, a true Sherlock who seeks and sees the evidence and the facts.

But, do you know what happens when a person has an impaired sense of identity? What is going awry in the brain of a person with an impaired sense of identity?

The person with an impaired sense of identity does not ally with people in the community, at least not with some people in the community. Some people are perceived as threats. Over time, “those” people become “the others”. Eventually, they are objectified and dehumanized.

Consider the literature, the facts in science, which Robert Sapolsky discusses with an interviewer in a podcast from Bard College. People who single out some people as being the other are responding from a primitive center in the brain, the insular cortex. The insula leads us to experience food disgust and moral disgust. The person, who deems some people to be “others” to be disliked or feared, have responded with a sense of disgust towards the “others”. There is another part of the brain, the anterior cingulate, which is engaged when we see someone or a part of their body and we either identify with them or do not identify with them.

Listen to Sapolsky being interviewed. It is fascinating to hear how thoughts and emotions tend not to be separable. Words are powerful.

 

Sense of Identity from Literature: More about Words

Many books have told fictional stories related to a person’s sense of identity. We can start anywhere to explore this topic. Perhaps, consider Peter Pan. Or the Wolf in Little Red Riding Hood. Or the monarch in The Emperor’s New Clothes. Or The Tortoise and The Hare. Or the story of Mary Magdelene.

Consider the characters in the books you have read, in the films you have seen, and even the characters in your life. I wager that you can explore sense of identity by learning about these characters.

I have a favourite character in a little book, The Bear That Wasn’t, written by Frank Tashlin and first published in 1946. The crux of the message is that important people cannot tell you who you are: only you have the ability to know who you are.

And, having a sense of identity allows each of us to engage genuinely and meaningfully with other people, recognizing that they are distinct from us, that they are different from us, and that they are not inherently a threat to us. A sense of identity is part of being well, being healthy, and experiencing the benefits of wellbeing in our lives.

Let’s Promote a Sense of Identity for Wellbeing

Be kind to your neighbours. Learn about them.

Be kind to children: they listen and they learn from people in their environment. Let our children learn kindness and experience kindness.

Accept yourself and accept others. Each of us has a right to be here.

Strive to embrace learning about cultures, languages, history, and the stories of people in your community. By learning about others, you will see how your identity actually intersects with the identity of others. That’s building social capital which is necessary for healthy communities.

Of course, music to guide us and inspire us:

I Am What I Am from “La Cage Aux Folles” performed by John Barrowman

Take-aways: Our Sense of Identity Affects Our Wellbeing

A sense of identity which is solid contributes not only to the wellbeing of the individual. The community benefits from individual members who have a stable sense of identity and who feel connected to the community. Social capital, as noted in previous posts, protects a community from internally developed attackers. A society experiences wellbeing and safety when it invests in connecting with its members.

I challenge everyone, myself included, to open up the closet, find the skeletons, those assumptions without basis, and throw them out. Find the gems and bangles and the clothes and accessories which make you feel fabulous and allow you to view the world from a different perspective. A different perspective allows us to exercise the empathy and kindness muscles, cajoling us to embrace our beautifully diverse world.

Isn’t that what makes life worth living? The challenges, the new experiences, the learning opportunities, the aha moments, the sudden sense of connection with another person, the harmonizing of two minds, and the melding of two souls. The stuff of magic in our world.

Be safe. Be kind. Be open to opportunity.

Embrace the Bear inside of you.

 

 

Disclaimer: This post is not meant to substitute for a consultation with your mental health professional team.

 

Selected References:

Ananthaswamy, A. (January 23, 2023). Where Does Your Sense of Self Come From? A Scientific Look. TED Talk. Accessed online on May 17, 2025, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBWXaO56KmU

Bard Center for the Study of Hate. (June 16, 2020). Robert Sapolsky: Hate and the Brain. Accessed online on May 17, 2025, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5g_LAoUYZQ

Cooper-Sansone, A., and Guthrie, T. (May 30, 2023). Crafting Who We Are: Examining the Neuroscience of Self. The Cellular Republic, Episode 18. Accessed online on May 17, 2025, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54jU_9MoAt8

Tashlin, F. (1995). The Beat That Wasn’t. Dover Publications, Inc: New York.

 

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