Feeling Lost? Signs You’ve Lost Touch With Yourself - And How to Reconnect
You’re experiencing a sense of emptiness, lack of fulfillment, and life overall feels dull, lackluster, and uninspired. Maybe the world feels like it's lost its color, and the things that normally make you feel alive make you feel nothing at all. If this feeling is familiar to you, you might be feeling like you’ve lost touch with yourself. Why does this happen? How do our hearts pump blood and our lungs breathe air, yet we feel such a lack of vitality and aliveness in our lives? Sometimes we get stuck in survival mode, trapped in cycles of work, sleep, eat, repeat, or struggle with chronic stress, illness, burnout, and even depression. Sometimes we’ve spent so long meeting the needs of others, worrying about bills, comparing ourselves to people online, or trying to fit in with the status quo that we start to lose touch with who we really are and our sense of self and presence in the world. Whatever the reason, if you are feeling lost, you deserve to reconnect with your authentic and aligned self.
Here are some signs you’ve lost touch with yourself:
You've lost touch with the things that used to bring you joy, purpose, and meaning.
Maybe the things that used to excite you sound boring or dreadful. Maybe your goals no longer feel worth pursuing or feel too far away to reach. Hobbies that used to make you feel like yourself have fallen to the wayside and don’t elicit the same positive feelings.
You’re living on autopilot.
Every day just feels like getting through, and you're stuck in survival mode. You might feel like forward movement is impossible. The days go by, and you find yourself truly understanding the meaning of “Groundhog Day.”
You struggle to trust yourself.
You may question every choice, outsource your decision-making to others, and not trust your own feelings and observations. You’re looking outside of yourself for all the answers and doubt your own intuition, deny your own desires, and ignore your own needs.
You're regularly trying to turn off your mind and escape your reality.
Cannabis, alcohol, scrolling, TV, work... If you’re frequently engaging in activities just so that your mind can go numb, you might be seeking relief from your own thoughts. Sometimes even seemingly benign activities like working out or reading can become numbing tools if you’re using them to run away from life rather than ground into your reality.
You’ve become disconnected from your own limits.
You say yes when you mean no, put others' needs before your own, and feel disconnected from your own wants, needs, and desires. You may be forcing yourself to do things you don't want to do, say things you don't believe, or agree to things you don't want to based on a sense of obligation or fear of judgement.
If any of these sound like your current experience, you're not alone, and you can find your way back to yourself, whether it's the old you or a new version that has been waiting to emerge. Here are some ideas you can try to start the process of connecting with yourself:
Try doing one thing per week you used to enjoy, with or without motivation. Sometimes action precedes motivation, not the other way around. Give it a chance, and if it doesn’t feel good, that’s okay too. Allow yourself the freedom to try something else.
Schedule something you can look forward to. A workout class, a meditation class, a haircut, a spa day, a concert, etc. Break up the monotony, get out of the house, and create new stimulation. Extra points if that activity is self-care related.
Do something new, literally anything new. Try a new book genre, a new route to walk, a new coffee shop, a new workout, a new outfit, a new recipe…. Ask yourself, did I enjoy this? Did I hate it? Does any part of me want to do it again? Start getting curious about yourself and your internal experience of the world around you.
Experiment with protecting your energy. Imagine a bubble of energy around you at all times. Not every request needs a yes, not every opinion needs to be cosigned, and not every problem is yours to solve. You are allowed to prioritize you. Sit with what it feels like for that bubble to be your space and yours only. You can even visualize what it looks like. Maybe it's a wall of fire around you or a bubble of pearlescent light.
Try a social media cleanse. Sometimes it can be helpful to get offline and back into your own world. Take a break from observing how everyone else is living and try living in the ways that feel authentic to you.
Feeling lost to yourself is a normal experience in a world designed for production, maximization, and capitalization. Our society devalues our lived experience and highlights what we can do, sell, produce, sacrifice, and labor over. It's hard to live in the here-and-now when we're worried about finances, following social trends, and living up to everyone else’s expectations. If you feel lost, it's time to give yourself a chance to find yourself again.
A final note: if you believe you are experiencing symptoms of depression, it may be time to find a mental health professional to provide individualized, specialized care.
Author: Lizzy Maurno, LCPC, LPC
