There’s this day that sneaks up on you, this raw, unexpected time when all that ground beneath everything you thought you knew just simply starts to shake. It doesn’t happen with a bang for an announcement, mostly subtle, quiet, and inescapable. You’re on your merry way, brushing your teeth, scrolling through social media, or merely sitting in silence when it hits you: I am not who I think I am.Or maybe it’s been building over years, a slow accretion of signs you’ve been studiously ignoring: your malcontent at work, your relationships slowly growing wider apart, the feeling that you’re acting out in some part you never wanted. Or perhaps it’s triggered by something sudden: some cataclysmic event, a lost job, a breakup, a move to a new city. Either way, it hits like a freight train: The person I’ve been for so long no longer feels like me.This is more than a life change; this is an identity crisis-the unraveling of the self you built and bred, the mask you’ve worn, the story you told yourself for years. And now you are faced with a question you should have asked a long time ago: Who am I, really, without all that?

The Slow Crumble: Recognizing the…