Identity is not a hidden essence waiting to be discovered; it’s something you create across contexts and time.

Recent research shows psychological flexibility tends to be associated with positive identity development.

Changing who you are across social setting is not being fake; it’s being adaptive.

My last article on sibling “niche picking” showed how identity often begins as a strategy. Children in family systems tend to differentiate to compete for parental attention and investment. If your sibling was already the smart one, you may have become the athlete, artist, or rebel, etc.

But the process doesn’t end there; it continues into adolescence and even adulthood.

There is a prevailing cultural mantra that you need to find your true self. That somewhere within you lies an authentic fixed essence waiting to be discovered, like Michelangelo’s statue of David hidden inside a giant block of marble. Psychological research today suggests that identity formation is far more dynamic. Identity is not something you uncover that’s set in stone; it’s an ongoing process shaped by constantly changing contexts. And the healthiest of identities are characterized by flexibility, not rigidity.

Identity Is a Process, Not a Discovery

Identity is much less likely to be the result of a single breakthrough "aha!" moment and more of a continuous cycle of exploration, commitment, and reevaluation. Even the foundational work on identity formation by Erik Erikson suggested that the final product is never fully realized. Subsequent research shows that who you become is an open-ended, multidimensional process that is actively shaped through personal, social, and environmental contexts. And psychological flexibility has been linked to mental health, well-being, and school engagement.

What the Research Shows

A recent large-scale longitudinal study published in the Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science followed a total of 885 adolescents across transitions in school. The study found that psychological flexibility (i.e., being able to stay focused on personal values and goals while simultaneously enduring uncomfortable feelings and thoughts) was associated with healthier patterns of identity development. Specifically, adolescents with higher psychological flexibility were less likely to engage in ruminative exploration, such as indecision, worry about identity direction, and brooding over alternatives.

Adolescents who reported higher psychological flexibility tended to demonstrate a consistent pattern of positive identity development. They expressed a greater willingness to actively explore different directions. They were able to stick with commitments when they found something they resonated with. And they felt a greater sense of confidence after having made their decisions. Perhaps the most meaningful takeaway was that they were far less likely to feel trapped by insecurities and anxieties that often plague many young people circling around the question of who they are supposed to become. In other words, flexibility didn’t sidetrack, confuse, or disorient them; it made them more behaviorally adaptive and psychologically resilient.

Flexibility enabled them to explore a broader array of possibilities without getting lost and allowed them to commit while still not feeling locked in. Identity, in this regard, was less about searching for their true self and more about learning how to cope with and navigate uncertainty, while still retaining an overriding sense of what matters most.

This finding alone should provide us with sufficient pause to our cultural obsession with “being your true self.” Sometimes, the healthiest thing a young mind can aspire to do is not cling too strongly to any one version of itself.

Identity Is Context-Dependent

I have observed parents worry when their child seems like a completely different person at home compared to when they are on TikTok or YouTube. Or how parents might notice how responsible their child is at home, while being oddly rebellious in the presence of friends.

These inconsistencies can feel inauthentic or even fake, but much of what’s happening here is just experimentation. Schools, social media platforms, and peer groups are like social psychology labs wherein young people get to test out different versions themselves.

The key question to ask is not whether these different selves are the same, but whether they are integrated. Psychological flexibility makes integration possible by anchoring these distinct context-dependent “selves” to an evolving set of values and goals. A fixed “take it or leave it” identity may seem authentic, but it can also narrow down the necessary exploration needed to create a well-developed identity.

Identity as Adaptive Construction

From the perspective of evolutionary psychology, identity has always been strategic. In families, children differentiate themselves to reduce competition. In adolescence, identity exploration widens, necessitating adaptation to a broader array of academic pressures, peer hierarchies, and future uncertainties. In adulthood, the cycle continues as we adjust to careers, relationships, parenthood, and loss. At every turn, you are not uncovering a hidden core of who you are, but rather updating a model of who you are becoming.

That shift matters in the pursuit of identity. When we tell young people that there is a single “true self” and that it is their job to find it, uncertainty and confusion can feel like failure. When we realize that identity is something we can create and refine over time, exploration becomes healthy and necessary.

There is an enormous pressure these days on being authentic (e.g., to just be yourself, to never change, to stay true, and never be fake, etc.). But taken too literally, those collective suggestions per se can backfire.

A more helpful message than asking people to find themselves is giving them permission to explore and create themselves. To allow them to experiment and change while assuring them that change doesn’t make them fake, it makes them adaptive. The marble was never hiding the finished statue, because you are the sculptor and your creative work remains ongoing.

Kukkola, A., Mäyry, A., Keinonen, K., Lappalainen, P., Tunkkari, M., & Kiuru, N. (2023). The role of psychological flexibility and socioeconomic status in adolescent identity development. Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science, 30, 112–120. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcbs.2023.09.005

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