28. Not All Identities Are Created Equal: Why Some Identities Crumble and Others Hold

Welcome back to 3D Authenticity! Today's episode is diving into one of the most foundational subjects related to Authenticity. We’re talking about Identity and why not all identities are created equal.

Most of us inherited our sense of self without realizing it. We absorbed it from our families, our culture, and our early experiences. But here's the thing: those structures may be costing you far more than you realize.

In this episode, Jennifer introduces four common identity types that most of us are living inside of without knowing it, and offers a more rooted, more loving, and ultimately, more empowering alternative: the Worthiness-Based Identity.

In this episode, Jennifer explores:

✅ What identity actually is and why most of us never consciously chose ours 

✅ The four Identity Crutches: The Doing Identity, The Narrative Identity, The Co-Dependent Identity, and The Merged Identity 

✅ Why identity crutches ultimately don't hold up and what they're really costing you

✅ The three qualities of a Worthiness-Based Identity and why they build on each other 

✅ How shifting your identity foundation is what actually loosens people-pleasing, perfectionism, and self-doubt for good

Reflection Prompt

Which of the four identity crutches resonates most with you? Not to judge it — but to get curious about it. What were you protecting when you built it? And what might it feel like to loosen your grip on it, even just slightly?

Ways to Connect

💜 Join the Waitlist for Jennifer's 3D Authenticity Group Coaching Program (Next cohort begins May 2026) 

💜 Email: 3dauthenticity@gmail.com 

💜 Download Jennifer's free guide: The High-Achiever's Identity Crisis: 10 Questions That Reveal Who You Actually Are Beneath the Achievements

Join the Journey 

If you're ready to stop building your identity on things that can be taken away and start building it on something that can't, this episode is your invitation to begin. Hit subscribe, share this episode with someone who needs to hear it, and know that you are always worth knowing, loving, and living as you are.

Know who you are.  Love who you are.  Live who you are.

Transcript

Jennifer 0:08

Hello and welcome. My name is Jennifer Wade, and this is 3D Authenticity, where we talk about all things related to building a life in the real world that authentically reflects your core being. No matter if you're a chronic people pleaser or you're knee-deep in a major identity crisis, or especially if you've given up believing you can have a deeply fulfilling life, it's time to learn how to love who you are and unapologetically live your one-of-a-kind life. Join me for a deep dive in how to do exactly that. Hello, my friends, and welcome back to another episode of 3D Authenticity. I am your host, Jennifer Wade, and as always, I am really glad that you are here with me. Thank you for your time. Today, we are going to talk about identity. And I know identity comes up fairly often on this podcast, but there's good reason for it. Identity is a fundamental aspect of authenticity, and frankly, it is a rich subject. It is just extremely unlikely that I am ever going to exhaust everything there is to say on the subject, so here we are.

Jennifer 1:20

But that said, I do acknowledge that identity is one of those words that is thrown around a lot, especially in personal development spaces. So I promise you, this is not just some sort of surface skimming. I always want to go deeper. And as the title suggests, it is a genuinely true thing that not all identities are created equal. And understanding the roots of different identity types is revealing and worth our time.

Jennifer 1:54

So, to get us started today, let's start with the most basic question. What is identity?

Jennifer 2:02

Here's how I think about it. Simply put, identity is the story we tell the world as well as the story we tell ourselves about who we are. It is the lens through which we interpret everything. Our choices and our relationships, and importantly, our sense of worth, all stem from a sense of identity. And here's the thing that most people don't realize. I think for most of us, our identity is, in a significant part, something that we absorbed and inherited. We didn't consciously choose all of it. So much of it was handed to us by our families and by our early experiences, by culture, and that includes other people's reactions to us as we were growing up.

Jennifer 2:55

So that part I talk about a lot. The fact that we absorb so much of our sense of self in our early years. And on a side note, I did take a deeper dive into this not too long ago. So if you're curious, I would recommend that you go back and listen to it's a previous episode, um, I think it's episode 24. Yep. So after you've listened to this one, be sure to check that out. It's called Off the Rack versus Custom Made, Rethinking the Fit of Identity. And I think it actually makes a great companion to what we're talking about here today.

Jennifer 3:33

Now, before we get too much further here, though, I want to point out something very important. You may at some point raise the question of identity and what it means to show up differently in different contexts. It makes sense that you are not the same person in a board meeting as you are with your closest friend, and you shouldn't be. So I want to drive the point home that that is not inauthenticity. That is not some sort of masked identity. That's just being human.

Jennifer 4:09

What we are talking about today, however, is something different. It is what lives beneath all of those contexts. I want to talk about the sense of self that remains when the roles and the activities and all of the expectations are removed. I want to get to the heart of you, to that sense of self that is prior to the doing. That is the level of identity that I am interested in talking about today. And here's why it matters so much to me. Identity is the first pillar of 3D authenticity. It's at the heart of the framework. And I teach it first for a reason. To live authentically, you need to know who you are on the deepest levels, all parts of you. The parts of you that you are secretly proud of, and the parts of you that you've tried to lock away and ignore and not look at. You need to lay it all out there for yourself so that you can actively get to the hard work of loving all of you, so that then you can live a life that honors this being you love. You as you are.

Jennifer 5:21

So that is why we're starting at the foundation, identity. And let's kick it off with talking about the various types of identities. More specifically, let's talk about what I call identity crutches. Now, I want to be clear about something. The word crutch might sound a little harsh, and I don't mean it that way. A crutch is something you lean on when you need support. And that's exactly what these identity structures are. They are supports that have developed for a reason. They serve a purpose. At some point early on in your life, you learned that a certain way of being, a certain way of presenting yourself to the world, helped you feel safe and valued and loved. So you leaned on it. Fine, that's normal. And over time, these habits unified to become an identity, which in turn became the primary way that you understood yourself.

Jennifer 6:22

It isn't a problem that these structures, these ways of knowing ourselves exist. The problem is when these supports become the whole story, when they become the only answer to the question, who am I? Okay, now I know this may be sounding a little abstract right now, but bear with me. Let me walk you through four of the most common identity crutches that I see. And I have to say that my suspicion is very high that you will recognize yourself in at least one of these, maybe even more than one. And I have to say, I'm certainly not immune to this either. If you do recognize yourself here, take that information and apply a big dose of curiosity. This information is a way in to knowing yourself more deeply, and that is exciting.

Jennifer 7:15

Okay, the first identity crutch that I want to call out is the Doing Identity. This is the person who knows themselves primarily through action, through productivity, and through achievement. It doesn't have to be only big achievements, although that's certainly a huge part of it. But this identity, this sense of self and worth, is propped up and strengthened through the constant motion of doing. The routines, the tasks, the projects, the goals, all the forward momentum. And the person who wears this kind of identity just feels most like themselves when they are actively producing something. And here's the tricky part: when the doing stops, things get uncomfortable very quickly. You might recognize this person. Maybe there's someone like this in your life. And this person genuinely doesn't know how to rest. This person tends to feel anxious or lost or restless on a slow day. And if you ask the person, who are you? Like I'm an entrepreneur and a mom, and I won this award and I run marathons and I volunteer on the weekends. And there's nothing wrong with being a person who does things, lots of things, even. Doing is part of life. Achieving is worthwhile, but when your entire sense of self depends on it, when the doing is the only thing standing between you and a frightening sense of emptiness, that is the crutch.

Jennifer 9:02

Okay, you still with me? Let's go on. The second crutch is the Narrative Identity. And this one is fascinating to me. And it may not be entirely obvious just from the name alone what it means. The narrative identity describes the kind of person who knows themselves primarily through their story. Either the story of who they once were, kind of looking back on their glory days, or the story of who they are going to become. It's this perception that their value rests sometime in the future, in the future story of what is yet to come. Now, the backward-looking version of this sounds like I'm the person who built a company from nothing, and I survived a devastating loss, and I traveled the world alone at 25. The story is rich and real and hard won, but it lives in the past. And the person telling the story has lost touch with who they are right now, in this moment beyond that story. There's almost this unspoken sense that they need to prove their worth in this moment, but have to refer to their past to demonstrate that worth. And the forward version of this, the forward-looking version, says, I am the person who's going to write the book. I'm going to start the nonprofit. I'm going to move to Italy and build the life. The future story is vivid and exciting and full of possibility, but it also lives somewhere other than here. It's as if the telling of this story is the reassurance that you will prove your value. So please just accept me here and now as I work toward that value. In both cases, the story is more present and more valuable than the person living the story. And there's something heartbreaking about that, I think. I wonder how it strikes you.

Jennifer 11:04

Okay, moving right along here. The third crutch is the Codependent Identity. This is the person whose sense of self is constructed almost entirely around their relationships or their roles. I am my child's mother. I am my partner's other half. I'm a caretaker or a fixer. I exist in relation to other people. And without those relationships, without someone to love or someone to take care of or someone who needs me, I'm not entirely sure who I am. I think this one can be particularly tricky because so much of what drives it looks like love and devotion. And often it is genuinely love and devotion. But underneath that, somewhere along the way, that person's sense of self has been set aside. That person's sense of value has been poured entirely into their service to someone else. And very often, people who take on an identity in this way just stop asking themselves what they need or what they want or what they value for themselves apart from that other person's needs or wants. Do you know anyone like this? Are you even possibly that person?

Jennifer 12:25

All right. One more crutch to go, and I call this the Merged Identity. This is similar to the codependent identity, but it's about merging with something that isn't a person. Someone who carries this kind of identity has merged with something outside of themselves so completely that the boundary between who they are and the thing they are identifying with has essentially dissolved. It could be a career, a title. And in my circles, it is very common to merge one sense of self with your instrument or your artistic voice. You might merge your value with the success of the company you're trying to build. Its success or failure determines whether you are a success or a failure. People who lean into this kind of identity don't just do the thing, they are the thing. I mean, you may know someone like this, or certainly you know the type. It's the executive who retires and loses all sense of purpose overnight. Or the artist whose entire sense of worth lives and dies with the reception of their work. Or the athlete, whose identity shatters the moment an injury takes the sport away. I think it's really beautiful that the merged identity is often born of deep passion and dedication. But passion and dedication without a stable sense of self underneath it will swallow you whole.

Jennifer 13:58

So there we have it. Those are the four identity crutches: the doing identity, the narrative identity, the codependent identity, and the merged identity. So now I want to ask you something. Did you recognize yourself anywhere in there? Maybe one of them jumped out at you, or maybe even you see traces of yourself in multiple examples. So just let that sit for a moment. Let that awareness be there without judging it or trying to fix it or change it. Turns out this is just part of being human.

Jennifer 15:04

Why ultimately they're crutches and not foundations. Here's the fundamental issue. Every single one of those identity types relies on something outside of yourself to tell you who you are. The doing identity needs the doing, the narrative identity needs the story. The codependent identity needs the relationship, and the merged identity needs the thing it's merged with. This means, and I really want you to hear this, this means that in these cases, your sense of self is only as stable and secure as whatever you're leaning on. And don't we all know that the world has a way of taking things away? Careers end and relationships change. Achievements will fade, meaning you have to achieve again. Bodies get injured and children grow up and leave, companies fail. When the external thing that was holding your identity together shifts or disappears, you're left with a very disorienting question. Who am I now?

Jennifer 16:20

I've sat with people in that exact place. I have sat with people who have achieved extraordinary things, people who have loved deeply, who have built something real, and when the thing they built their identity around changed or was taken away from them, they were lost. Nobody had ever taught them how to build a sense of self that didn't depend on anything outside of themselves. This happens a lot. These identity stories are commonplace and they aren't pointing to some failure in any of us. In some ways, these crutches are actually brilliant mechanisms that support our own human development. You absorbed key truths about how to succeed in your early environment, and these mechanisms are evidence of you doing incredible things, doing what you could with what you had. But at some point, and I'd argue that now is a good time for this, it becomes worth asking: does my sense of value live with me or something outside of me? Is this identity even truly mine, or is it just what I've built to survive?

Jennifer 17:36

The truth is that living inside an identity crutch actually costs you. It costs you the constant energy of maintaining it, of keeping the doing going, or keeping the story compelling, and making sure that the relationships stay intact, or that the thing you've merged with is successful. It is exhausting in a way that's hard to recognize because it is so constant, it just feels like life. But there are a lot of recognizable things feeding that exhaustion. Things like people pleasing, perfectionism, permission seeking, overfunctioning. These really aren't personality traits, they're actually symptoms of a sense of self without a stable internal foundation. It's the vulnerability of trying to protect yourself from being found out or abandoned or not being enough in some way. That's what's actually going on. And once you see it that way, it becomes a strong motivation to ground your sense of self and to ground your sense of value in something far more solid.

Jennifer 18:48

So, what is that more solid alternative? What does it actually look like to build an identity that doesn't depend on things outside of yourself? This is what I call a worthiness-based identity. And I want to be clear that this is not some lofty ideal that only a few enlightened people are ever capable of achieving. It is truly, simply, a more loving and aware orientation toward yourself. It's also a more empowered orientation because you're just not as susceptible to the unpredictability of the world outside of you.

Jennifer 19:28

Now, I will be honest, this is a lifelong practice. It is an intention and a choice that you make and will remake, sometimes moment by moment, day by day. But like anything you practice, you do become more skillful at it. So let's break it down.

Jennifer 19:50

A worthiness-based identity has three qualities that I want to walk you through. The first is self-awareness. A worthiness-based identity is mindfully attentive to what is happening inside of you at any given moment. That means that you are aware of your thoughts and your feelings, your needs and your desires. This absolutely requires a kind of honest, non-judgmental attention to your inner life that most of us were never really taught how to have. The ability to even understand that you are not your thoughts, you are not your feelings, but the observer of these things, that is learnable. You can't change what you don't know. So bringing your own internal experience into your awareness is where meaningful change begins.

Jennifer 20:44

The second quality is acceptance. And by that I do not mean some sort of passive resignation. I mean active, wholehearted acceptance of the entirety of who you are, the parts that you're proud of, and the parts that you would rather nobody knew about, your strengths and your shadows. Living from a worthiness-based identity does not require you to be a finished product or to be perfect or to have it all figured out, but it does ask you to be honest to yourself about yourself and to accept that your unique experience, the experience of this life that only you will ever have, all of it, is completely valid. Talk about another lifelong practice.

Jennifer 21:35

Okay, the third and final quality is responsibility. A worthiness based identity actively takes full responsibility for your own choices and for your own inner and outer well being. Now do not confuse this with blame. I am asking you to take responsibility, not assign blame. There is a meaningful difference. Blame Looks backward and assigns fault. Responsibility looks forward and claims agency. It says that regardless of what has happened to me, I am the author of what comes next.

Jennifer 22:16

Now, here's what I love about putting all three of these qualities together. Self-awareness, acceptance, and responsibility. All three of them build on each other. You can't truly accept what you haven't honestly seen. And you can't take real responsibility for a self you haven't yet accepted. They are sequential and they are interdependent. And when all three are present, something important shifts. A worthiness-based identity doesn't need external validation to feel at ease with itself. It doesn't need to be doing all the time. It doesn't need the story or the relationship to tell it who it is. It knows from a deeply confident, quiet place on the inside, it is just a much more peaceful place from which to live. That stable, rooted, loving knowledge of yourself is what makes authentic living not just possible, but natural.

Jennifer 23:23

This is how people pleasing or the perfectionism starts to loosen its grip. It doesn't happen from pushing your way out of it or disciplining yourself. It happens because the fear that was always in the background driving it, that fear of being found out, that fear of not being good enough. That fear no longer has the same power over you. You know who you are. You're choosing to love who you are, and you are not willing to abandon that person anymore. So here's what I want to leave you with today. Most of us were never taught the importance of building a sense of self, of building our identity from the inside out. We were taught to build it from the outside in, to earn our worth, to perform our value, to prove our right to take up space. And so we built these structures. We leaned on these crutches. These truly brilliant and understandable, but ultimately insufficient crutches. And we unconsciously wove them all together and called it a self. But you are not your achievements. You're more than your story. You're more than your relationships and the roles and the things to which you have tied your worth. You are the one who was there before all of those things. And you are the one who will remain when any of those things change. This is the self worth knowing. This is the self worthy of your own love. And this is the self worth building a unique life around.

Jennifer 25:09

And with that, my friends, I think it is about time to wrap this up. I truly hope that today's episode stirred something in you. I hope I was able to hold up a loving mirror for you if you needed it, or to touch a part of you that needed to be seen in order to be set free. And if you had a moment of recognition, that is not an accident. It is an invitation to look closer and maybe even allow it to become the start of something different and better for you. So you don't have to have all the answers right now, but just be willing be willing to open yourself up to new questions. That's enough to make a start.

Jennifer 25:59

And on that note, if you would like to go deeper with this work, I would love for you to come find me. You can reach me at 3dauthenticity.com or send me an email at 3dauthenticity at gmail.com. I genuinely do write back. And if you haven't already, I would love for you to download my free guide. It's called The High Achievers Identity Crisis, 10 Questions That Reveal Who You Actually Are Beneath the Achievements. And you can find that link in the show notes.

Jennifer 26:32

Of course, as always, if today's show resonated with you, please consider sharing it with someone who might need to hear it. And please hit subscribe so that you never miss an episode. And with that, my friends, we are done. Please know that I'm so grateful for you. Thank you.

Jennifer 26:52

Thank you for being here with me today. And until the next time, my friends, please take care of yourselves. Be well and bye for now.