When Your Job Becomes Your Identity
The day she lost her job and found herself
Hi friends,
Lisa got laid off on a Tuesday. After eight years with the same company, working her way up from entry-level to senior manager, constantly available, always the first one in and last one out. Tuesday afternoon, she was called into a conference room and told her position was being eliminated.
She came to our video session the following week, and the first thing she said was: "I don't know who I am anymore."
Not "I don't know what I'm going to do for work." Not "I'm worried about money." But "I don't know who I am."
That's when I realized how completely Lisa's sense of self had become tied to her job title.
When work becomes everything
Lisa had been what I call a "work maximizer." She didn't just have a job—she embodied it. She checked emails at 6 AM and 10 PM. She worked weekends. She took calls during vacations. Her friends knew not to make plans with her during busy season, which seemed to be most of the year.
"I was good at my job," she told me. "Really good. People relied on me. I solved problems. I was... important."
And she was important. Her work mattered, her contributions were valuable, her dedication was noticed. But somewhere along the way, she'd stopped being Lisa who happened to work in marketing and became Marketing Manager Lisa who happened to exist outside the office sometimes.
"I haven't read a book that wasn't for work in three years," she realized. "I can't remember the last time I had a conversation that wasn't about projects or deadlines. I don't even know what I like to do for fun anymore."
The identity crisis nobody talks about
What Lisa was experiencing is something I see more and more, especially with high-achieving women. When your job becomes your primary source of identity, losing it feels like losing yourself.
We live in a culture that asks "What do you do?" as a way of asking "Who are you?" We've conflated productivity with worth, achievement with identity, professional success with personal value.
Lisa had been so focused on being excellent at her job that she'd forgotten she was a whole person with interests, relationships, and parts of herself that existed independently of her work performance.
"I feel like I was a really successful employee," she said, "but I forgot how to be a human being."
The question that started everything
I asked Lisa something that felt impossible for her to answer: "If you couldn't define yourself by your job, how would you describe who you are?"
She stared at me for a long time. "I... I have no idea."
So we started smaller. What did she used to enjoy before work took over her life? What made her feel alive when she wasn't thinking about productivity? When she was a kid, what did she love to do just because it was fun?
Slowly, pieces of Lisa started emerging from underneath Marketing Manager Lisa. She used to paint. She loved hiking. She was funny—actually hilarious—when she wasn't stressed about deadlines. She cared about environmental issues. She made incredible homemade bread.
"I forgot I was a person with thoughts and interests that had nothing to do with quarterly targets," she said.
The unexpected gift of losing everything
Lisa spent the first month after her layoff in what she called "aggressive job searching mode." Applications, networking events, interviews. Trying to recreate her old life as quickly as possible.
But something interesting happened. The more time she spent away from the 70-hour weeks, the more she remembered what it felt like to just... exist without constantly performing.
She started baking again. She went on weekend hikes. She read novels. She had long conversations with friends about things other than work stress.
"I realized I'd been living like work was the most important thing in my life," she told me. "But actually, it was just the thing that took up the most time."
The balance she never knew she needed
When Lisa finally found a new job, she did something that would have been unthinkable before: she negotiated for boundaries.
She asked about work-life balance in the interview. She clarified expectations about after-hours availability. She requested a clear understanding of what "urgent" actually meant.
"My old job trained me to think that being constantly available made me valuable," she said. "But I was so burned out that I wasn't actually valuable anymore. I was just... present."
Lisa is six months into her new role now, and she's discovering something revolutionary: she can be excellent at her job without her job being everything she is.
She leaves work at work. She has hobbies that have nothing to do with professional development. She has conversations about books and hiking trails and bread recipes. She's still driven and capable and successful—but she's also a whole person.
If you've been struggling with similar patterns of work consuming your identity, you might find my newsletter about breaking free from abandonment fears relevant—sometimes our fear of not being "enough" drives us to prove our worth through constant productivity.
What I'm wondering about
How much of your identity is tied to what you do for work? If you couldn't introduce yourself by your job title, how would you describe who you are?
Maybe you're reading this thinking "But I love my job!" And that's wonderful. Loving your work is a gift. But even work you love can become too central to who you are.
Hit reply and tell me: what parts of yourself exist completely independently of your professional life? What do you do just because you enjoy it, not because it serves any career purpose?
What would change if you were as committed to being a full human as you are to being a successful professional?
Lisa learned that losing her job wasn't actually losing herself—it was finding herself underneath all the productivity and performance. She discovered that she's not less valuable as a person when she's not constantly working; she's actually more present for everything else that matters.
You are not your job title. Your worth isn't measured by your productivity. You're allowed to exist for reasons that have nothing to do with your professional achievements.
Talk to you soon,
Mary
I went to an event once and a woman introduced herself to me and asked, “What is your gift?”
It was so refreshing to be asked a question that incorporated all parts of me.
Unfortunately our job titles decide our social circle, respect and status. Social media platforms ( read, disguised as professional platforms) demands performances which are in line with those titles. We have to really dig deeper within ourselves to think differently in this regard.