Why We Spend Our Lives Trying to Be Someone We’re Not

Most of us, at some point, start pretending, not out of deceit but survival. We shape ourselves around expectations: what a parent needed, what culture rewarded, what faith or success demanded. Over time, the performance becomes so familiar that we can no longer tell where it ends and we begin.

We look in the mirror and feel good that we are living a story others seem to condone. Yet beneath that, urges stir, to travel, to work differently, to love differently, to express intimacy in ways that feel authentic. Still, we stop ourselves, afraid that revealing who we are might unsettle others or ourselves. So, we repress our true selves in relationships and in life.

I see this every day in therapy. Clients sit across from me exhausted, confused, and wondering why they feel so disconnected from themselves. They have built lives inside boxes designed by someone else’s fear or ambition. And the truth is, pretending works for a while. It keeps the peace. It earns approval. It gives us belonging.

But eventually, the body begins to wear down and revolt. The uneasy feeling we experience grows louder. Anxiety, depression, and anger whisper that something is not right. The nervous system carries the weight of the false self. Incongruence deepens, and resentment follows, resentment for lost time, lost vitality, lost moments of truth.

When we stop pretending, the first feeling is not relief, it is fear. What is real has been buried under layers of adaptation. But on the other side of that fear is clarity, not the kind that comes from fixing, but from facing our true selves.

The big question, then, is whether we can ever reach a space where we truly become ourselves or will we die living someone else’s life?

Therapy can serve as a safe space to begin that exploration. Nonjudgmental attention allows us to listen to the parts that have been silent. At its best, therapy is not about becoming someone new. It is about remembering who you already are when you stop performing for love.

Give it a try. Stop pretending. Begin again, not as the version “they” needed, but as the person you already are.