Over the past couple of years, I’ve read countless books on self-improvement, self-sabotage, self-esteem and self-compassion, hoping to find a way to make my social experiences less stressful and more enjoyable overall. Putting their advice to practice, however, appeared impossible. Time and time again, I was too overwhelmed to remember, let alone implement, any of guidance provided. If anything, knowing what I did wrong made things worse, adding more stress rather than reducing it.
It was during a guided meditation session from Richard Lang that I learned about—or rather experienced—the concept of ‘identification.’ From further exploring this idea and a Vipassana 10-day silent retreat I realised that I, and maybe many others like me, have been fighting the wrong battle. While the symptoms resemble those associated with social anxiety, it was ‘overidentification’ that may have been the cause.
In this article, I will try my best to illustrate this notion of ‘overidentification,’ how it can cause excessive stress in social situations, and, perhaps most importantly, why common approaches to address social anxiety can be ineffective—even counterproductive instead.
To see whether you may be overidentifying, you can take a simple, 10-question overidentification test. It’s best to do the test before reading further to avoid an (unconscious) bias in your answers. The test takes about 5 minutes to complete and can be found here.
Overidentification constitutes the tendency to identify excessively. When we identify with a person, we mentally put ourselves in their shoes. In a way, we adopt their ‘being’ in order to see the world from their point-of-view.
Metaphysically, we can understand this as follows. Our own consciousness is the open space in which all our thoughts and sensations appear. We can refer to this open space as our selfconsciousness.
When we identify with someone, when we try to see the world from their point of view, we create some sort of pseudoconsciousness within our own. This pseudoconsciousness tries to hear what the other person hears (such as ourselves talking), see what the other person sees (such as ourselves moving) and think what the other person thinks (such as liking or disliking ourselves). We can refer to this pseudoconsciousness as the otherconsciousness.
Seeing yourself do something embarrassing, hearing yourself say something stupid, or thinking about how others perceive you all emanate from the otherconsciousness. However, since they appear within our selfconsciousness, they are equally potent in inducing a neurophysical response, such as fear or shame, to inform our actions and decisions.
This whole concept is difficult to grasp on an abstract level, but more easily perceivable through experience. Hence, you may find the following exercise useful.
Stand in front of a mirror and take a few deep breaths. Then look at the person in the mirror for about one minute.
If you are like most people, you probably see some things that you don’t like. Maybe your hair (if you happen to have any) is a bit off, or you think your nose is too big… Or you see things that you do like; the colour of your eyes, your smile, skin tone…
These observations make you feel a certain way. For example, when you don’t like your hair, you may feel unattractive. Equally, when you like what you’re seeing, it’s quite likely that you will experience feelings of a more pleasurable nature.
In this case you are identifying with your mirror-image. You are creating an otherconsciousness in your head that looks at you from the mirror, and you are experiencing what you think that otherconsciousness would experience (e.g. rejection or awe).
This might still sound vague and complicated, but now try something else:
Keep standing in front of the mirror, but now put all your attention towards the feeling in the soles of your feet. Try to feel exactly where they touch the ground, how the pressure of your weight is distributed, what the temperature of the ground is… Take about one minute to really experience your feet, but keep your eyes in front of you, facing the mirror.