Reflections on Identity Collapse
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This
article was inspired by Episode 2 of The Men's Group Debate Series, held on
June 6, 2026, at Savelberg Retreat Center in Nairobi, under the theme "The
Men Nairobi Raised Are Not the Men Nairobi Needs." The debate,
moderated by Erick Opon and featuring contributions from Justus
Kirigua, Titus Lwanda, Steve Wasilwa, and Collins Munene, explored
five provocative questions on success, fatherhood, provision, emotional
health, and identity. What follows is not a transcript of the debate but a
reflection on the ideas, stories, and tensions that emerged as a room full of
men wrestled with what it means to become whole.
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A few years ago, I met a man who introduced himself three
times in five minutes. The first time, by his title. The second time, by his
business. The third time, by the number of people he managed.
It was impressive. Also slightly concerning. After listening
carefully, I realized something — I still had no idea who he was. I knew what
he did. I knew what he owned. I knew what he had achieved. I knew his role, his
status, and his accomplishments. But I did not know him. And if I am honest, I
am not sure he knew him either.
This is not unusual. Most of us spend years answering the
question "What do you do?" Far fewer spend time answering "Who
are you?" The distinction may seem small until life strips away the
role. Then it becomes everything, because sooner or later, something happens.
The job ends—the business struggles. The marriage changes. The children leave
home. The title disappears. Retirement arrives. Health shifts. A season ends.
And suddenly, a terrifying question emerges from the shadows: Who am I now?
As I listened to the final motion in The Men's Group Debate
Series, I realized we had finally arrived at the question hidden beneath every
previous debate motion. Not success. Not provision. Not silence. Not
fatherhood. Identity. The motion was not really about collapse. It was about
what remains when the thing you built your identity around can no longer carry
your weight.
The Roles We Mistake for Ourselves
The debate began with a fascinating tension. Every debater
seemed to wrestle with a slightly different version of the same problem — the
man who becomes his work, his title, his success, his marriage, his reputation,
his usefulness. And then one day, the role changes. Or disappears. And the man
discovers something unsettling: he spent years strengthening the role but
neglected the person beneath it.
Listening to the discussion, I found myself thinking about
masks. Not deceptive masks. Functional masks. The provider. The husband. The
leader. The entrepreneur. The pastor. The coach. The expert. The father. The
problem is not the role — roles are useful, even necessary. The problem begins
when we forget that the role is something we perform, not something we are.
Justus and the Labels We Carry
When Justus spoke, I found myself thinking about labels
because some identities are not chosen. They are assigned. Once assigned, they
have a remarkable ability to follow us around — the struggling student, the
dyslexic child, the underachiever, the difficult one, the smart one, the
responsible one, the black sheep, the gifted one, the failure, the success.
Human beings have an extraordinary talent for turning
experiences into identities. We fail once, and we become failures. We succeed
once, and we become successful. We struggle, and we become broken. We achieve,
and we become important. The label slowly becomes the lens. And before long, we
stop asking whether the label is true.
Listening to Justus reminded me how many men spend decades
either imprisoned by old labels or exhausted from trying to escape them. This
is where James Hollis becomes useful. In The Middle Passage, Hollis
argues that many adults eventually discover they have been living someone
else's script — a borrowed, socially approved, inherited, or survival identity.
The crisis arrives when that script stops working.
And perhaps that is why identity collapse feels so
frightening. It forces a question many of us have successfully avoided for
years: Who am I underneath the story?
Titus and the Collapse of the First Mountain
Titus approached the conversation differently. His
contribution felt less like a debate point and more like a warning — a warning
against building your entire identity on things that can disappear:
possessions, status, relationships, recognition, and success.
Listening to him, I found myself thinking about David
Brooks' distinction between the First Mountain and the Second Mountain. The
First Mountain is achievement — success, recognition, accomplishment, and
status. The Second Mountain is meaning — purpose, service, belonging, and
contribution. Many people spend their lives climbing the First Mountain. Some
reach the top, only to discover they are still hungry. Not because achievement
is bad, but because it was never designed to answer questions about identity.
Achievement answers "What have I done?"
Identity asks, "Who am I?" Those are very different
conversations, and neither can permanently satisfy the other.
Steve and the Dignity of Responsibility
Steve brought another important perspective. Listening to
him, I found myself appreciating something modern discussions sometimes forget
— responsibility matters, purpose matters, contribution matters. Men need
meaningful burdens. Men need reasons to rise. Men need something larger than
themselves. The answer to identity collapse is neither the removal of
responsibility nor endless self-discovery.
Steve seemed to argue that meaningful responsibility helps
shape identity, and I agree. The danger is not responsibility. The danger is
reducing identity to responsibility. A man can be a provider without being only
a provider. A leader without being only a leader. A father without being only a
father. A businessman without being only a businessman. A role contributes to
identity. It should never consume it.
That distinction may be one of the most important lessons in
the entire debate, because sooner or later, every role changes. The question is
whether anything endures when it does.
Carl Jung and the Mask We Mistake for Ourselves
If Carl Jung had attended the debate, I suspect he would
have smiled quietly, then made everyone uncomfortable, because Jung spent much
of his life exploring the gap between who we are and who we appear to be. He
called the public version of ourselves the persona.
The persona is not fake — it is functional. It helps us
navigate the world. It is the teacher, the executive, the entrepreneur, the
husband, the pastor, the provider, the respected community leader. The problem
is not having a persona. The problem begins when we confuse the persona with
the Self, when the mask becomes the identity, when the role becomes the person,
when the performance becomes the reality.
This has worked surprisingly well for many years. Until life
removes the role. And then, suddenly, the man discovers something frightening —
he spent years strengthening the mask but neglected the person wearing it.
Jung would likely argue that many identity crises are not
failures. They are invitations — invitations to meet the parts of ourselves
that were left behind as we were busy becoming somebody. Perhaps that is why
identity collapse feels so disorienting. It is not merely the loss of a role.
It is the sudden realization that we do not know who we are without it.
Frankl and What Cannot Be Taken Away
At this point, Viktor Frankl quietly enters the
conversation. Frankl lost almost everything — his freedom, profession,
possessions, status, and certainty. Yet he discovered something remarkable.
Something remained. Meaning. Purpose. Choice. The ability to decide who he
would become in response to suffering.
As I listened to the debate, I kept returning to Frankl's
central insight: human beings can survive the loss of many things, but they
struggle to survive the loss of meaning. This is why retirement can be
difficult — not because people stop working, but because many lose a sense of
who they are. This is why divorce can be devastating — not simply because a
relationship ended, but because an identity often collapses with it. This is
why business failure feels personal — not because money disappeared, but because
identity was tied to the outcome.
Frankl reminds us that identity must be rooted deeper than
circumstances, because circumstances eventually change. Always. The question is
whether something deeper remains when they do.
David Hume and the Stories We Call Ourselves
Several years ago, I began reading David Hume and discovered
something fascinating. Hume questioned whether there is a permanent self at
all. He suggested that much of what we call identity is a collection of
experiences, memories, perceptions, and stories. At first, this feels
unsettling. Then, strangely, liberating.
If identity is partly a story, then many men are living
inside stories they no longer need — the failed businessman, the abandoned
husband, the overlooked son, the successful executive, the provider, the
achiever, the victim, the rescuer. The identity may feel permanent, but the
story often is not.
This is where Yuval Harari's observations become useful.
Human beings organize reality through narratives — we create meaning through
stories. This means many identity collapses are actually story collapses. A
story that worked for twenty years suddenly stops making sense. The challenge
then becomes writing a new one and not discarding the old story, but
integrating it, learning from it, and growing through it and refusing to be
imprisoned by it.
Gabor Maté and the Adaptations We Become
Gabor Maté offers another perspective I find deeply relevant
to coaching. Many identities begin as adaptations — the achiever, the pleaser,
the rescuer, the perfectionist, the strong one, the provider, the man who never
needs help. At some point, these identities were useful, even necessary,
helping us survive, gain approval, avoid rejection, and navigate difficulty.
The challenge is that survival strategies often outlast the
environments that shaped them. A child learns that achievement earns approval —
the adult can't stop achieving. A boy learns that vulnerability is unsafe — the
man becomes emotionally unavailable. A teenager learns that being useful
creates belonging — the adult becomes incapable of resting. The adaptation
becomes the identity. And then one day, the identity becomes the prison.
Which is why coaching often feels less like adding something
new and more like removing what no longer belongs.
Taleb and Antifragile Identity
This is where Nassim Taleb poses a fascinating question: Is
your identity fragile, resilient, or antifragile?
A fragile identity depends entirely on one thing — one role,
one achievement, one relationship, or one source of validation. Remove it, and
everything collapses. A resilient identity survives disruption. An antifragile
identity grows through disruption. It becomes stronger because of the
challenge.
Many men discover their identity is fragile only when life
tests it. The promotion disappears. The marriage changes. The children leave.
The company struggles. Health declines. And suddenly they realize they built
their entire sense of self on a single pillar. The collapse feels catastrophic
— not because the event was catastrophic, but because the identity structure
was too narrow.
And perhaps this is where the debate began, pointing us
toward something larger and not avoiding collapse, building identities capable
of surviving it.
David Hawkins and the Attachments We Mistake for Identity
David Hawkins would likely argue that much suffering stems
from attachment — not to people, but to identities. The successful man. The
respected man. The important man. The admired man. The strong man. The
intelligent man. The needed man. When identity becomes attached to these
labels, life becomes frightening because life has a habit of changing labels.
The challenge is learning to let roles come and go without
losing ourselves in the process. The role matters — it is not the self. The
achievement matters — it is not the self. The title matters — it is not the
self. This sounds simple until life asks us to practice it.
The Nine Dimensions and the Problem of Narrow Identity
This is one reason I find the Nine Pillar framework
so useful in coaching. Many people build their identity around a single
dimension — financial success, professional achievement, marriage, parenthood,
health, ministry, or business. They then collapse when that dimension changes.
The healthiest identities are broader, rooted across family,
health, social, financial, spiritual, legacy, adventure, human capital, and the
circle of genius. A setback in one of these pillars hurts, but it does not
destroy the self entirely because identity has roots in multiple places. The
tree bends. It does not fall.
And perhaps that is one of the hidden goals of coaching —
helping people build identities large enough to survive life's inevitable
transitions.
Self-Awareness, Self-Alignment, Self-Mastery
Over the years, I have noticed that transformation usually
follows three stages.
The first is self-awareness — the question Who am
I? Not who do people think I am? Not what role do I perform? Who am I,
underneath the performance, the titles, and the accumulated expectations? Most
men have never sat with this question long enough for an honest answer to
surface.
The second is self-alignment — the question What
matters? What values actually guide me? What kind of person am I becoming?
This is where many men discover the gap between the life they are living and
the life they actually want. The gap is often uncomfortable. It is also where
transformation becomes possible.
The third is self-mastery — the question How do I
consistently live in alignment with those values? How do I become the
person I claim to be — not in extraordinary moments, but in ordinary ones? Not
when life is convenient, but when it is difficult?
This journey is rarely dramatic. It is usually quiet,
gradual, and reflective. Yet it changes everything. Identity is not discovered
once. It is continuously refined.
The Name Beneath the Name
After the debate, one thought stayed with me. Throughout
life, we collect names — provider, husband, father, manager, director, pastor,
entrepreneur, coach, leader, success, failure, winner, loser. Some are given to
us. Some we earn. Some we impose on ourselves. The challenge is that none of
them is ultimately sufficient, because beneath every title sits a person. And
beneath every role sits a self.
The deepest question in the debate was never whether
identities collapse. Of course they do. Roles change. Seasons end. Life
evolves. The deeper question was: Who remains when the role disappears?
Sooner or later, every man will face that moment. The title
will fade. The position will change. The season will end. And in the silence
that follows, a question will linger.
Not "What did you do?" Not "What
did you own?" Not "What did people call you?"
But:
Who are you without the role?
And perhaps that is where the real work of becoming begins.
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