When emotions start to move and stories begin to dissipate, it can be disorienting. You might think “wait, who am I?” This is not a problem — it’s progress. It’s a moment of growing past an identity into something larger.
Joe emphasizes this isn’t something to chase after — it happens naturally as emotional fluidity develops. The process looks like hopscotching from story to story, with each story becoming more diffuse and further apart, until eventually you land more frequently in the full experience of yourself without needing a story to organize it.
Brett’s experience trying to write about a friend’s death illustrates this beautifully. He went from story to story, feeling the emotion underneath each one, until eventually there was nothing to say. Then he had the meta-story “I should have something to say — my friend died!” And that dissolved too. The disorientation of not having a story is itself the opening.
This parallels childhood identity development — we naturally grow through micro-identities, shedding each one like a pair of shoes. The moment of shedding is always a moment in the unknown.
Related Concepts
- Grief is identity dissolution
- Be in the unknown during identity shifts
- Growth means shedding identities
- The stronger the story, the slower emotions move