What is this
I’m 17, and I genuinely don’t know who I am or what I believe, and it changes completely from day to day. I feel like I can’t make decisions because I don’t have stable views to base them on. One day I strongly believe something, and the next day I believe the exact opposite , and both feel real in the moment, even when I’m alone. My beliefs, values, religion, and even how I judge people flip entirely, to the point where I sometimes hate the version of myself from the day before. When I sit by myself and try to figure out what I actually think or believe, my mind goes blank. With people, I give answers because I have to, not because I’m sure. It’s so confusing and I don’t know what it is , it’s like I don’t know myself at all what is this ? Is this normal ?
@littleMaple7883
You are at an age where you are exploring.
Discovering.
And where you don't have all the answers.
It's important to not rush into anything.
Always use trusted resources for your information and being sure something feels comfortable for you.
Don't be too hard on yourself!
You are learning 💚🤗
And feel free to come here and explore the teen forums or find a teen listener who you can trust and run things by them or just chat your worries through 🤗
@littleMaple7883
Hi, that's really relatable what you're describing of trying to find a foundation but feeling like anything that you could possibly point to is changing and unreliable. (But then at the same time, all of those changing things still feel important and real/vivid from moment to moment.)
Something I've personally found helpful is to view things in terms of multiple parts/selves/truths and just sort of map out all of the tendencies and shift my conceptual self-identification to the map (e.g. "I'm a multi-faceted person who moves back and forth between 4-5 different clusters of states, and that picture gives me some vocabulary to describe a lot of what I experience").
It takes some of the pressure off if there isn't the expectation of "I have to find the one single thing that will last forever and solve everything". Analogy: people oscillate back and forth between being awake and being asleep, but that doesn't feel like an identity crisis because we don't have self-identification around the idea of "I'm a person who must always be consistently awake".
I wish I'd come across IFS (Internal Family Systems) sooner. I'm not so much attached to the specific terminology or way of segmenting things (e.g. managers, protectors, firefighters), but I just love the general spirit of it: that all parts/perspectives have truth/value to them and the hope/ideal is to find some way of being that harmonizes or takes care of all of them without violently crushing/repressing any of them.
Ironically, I feel like when I give myself permission to exist as a multiplicity and I start defining the sides/parts, sometimes that creates the conditions for those parts to be able to communicate, find points of agreement, and gradually unify or dissolve back into a cohesive whole. (E.g. my creative side and my sensitive side both value emotional authenticity, my intellectual side and my sensitive side both value safety, etc.)
It's beautiful the honesty and integrity you're bringing to this process. 💜 I especially appreciate that you're able to recognize that the partial answers you're giving other people maybe have a practical function (i.e. give other people some kind of narrative they can latch onto and get them to stop annoying me) but they don't feel absolutely true.
I understand. Me too. And I'm 43.