.png)
Coming Home to Yourself: A Journey Back to Your Inner Humanity
- CJ Jackson
- May 4
- 4 min read
Our world often values productivity over presence, competition over compassion, and noise over nuance, many of us find ourselves slowly drifting away from the essence of who we truly are. We wear masks for approval, armor for survival, and costumes for roles we never auditioned for. And somewhere along the way, we forget what our own voice sounds like when it isn’t trying to echo someone else’s expectations.
But there is a way back—a return to the self that is about remembrance. It’s about finding something new and uncovering what has always been there: your inner humanity.
Let’s take a journey through the sociological, psychological, and spiritual landscapes that shape us—and how we can find our way home.
The Sociological Disconnection: How Society Pulls Us Away From Ourselves
From birth, we are socialized into roles, norms, and systems. Sociologists like Erving Goffman taught us that life is a performance, and we play many parts—child, student, worker, parent, citizen—each with its own script. These roles provide order, but they can also bury our authentic selves under layers of expectation.
Modern society reinforces this detachment through:
Capitalist Individualism: We’re taught that worth is measured by productivity, which turns people into products. Rest, softness, and vulnerability are deemed weaknesses.
Digital Culture: We perform our lives online, filtering not only our photos but also our identities. The constant comparison erodes self-worth.
Cultural Conformity: Whether it’s gender norms, racial expectations, religious dogma, or class-based stereotypes, societal pressures often dictate how we should behave, love, express ourselves, or even dream.
This creates what sociologists call anomie—a sense of normlessness, disconnection, and internal dissonance. We begin to feel like strangers in our own lives.
The Psychological Fracture: The Split Within Ourselves
Psychologically, the journey away from the self often begins with survival. As children, we adapt to our environments, sometimes by suppressing parts of ourselves that weren’t welcomed or safe to express. Carl Jung called this the development of the persona—the mask we wear in public—and the repression of the shadow—the parts of us deemed unacceptable.
Over time, these coping mechanisms can become cages:
Inner Critic and Perfectionism: Stemming from shame, these voices tell us we are not enough unless we meet impossible standards.
People-Pleasing: A trauma-informed response that sacrifices authenticity for approval and attachment.
Identity Confusion: When we are never allowed to fully develop into ourselves—due to abuse, religious trauma, societal pressure—we may not even know what “authentic self” means.
Healing begins with integration—gathering the lost parts of ourselves with curiosity, not condemnation. It’s asking: Who was I before the world told me who I had to be?
The Spiritual Truth: You Were Never Lost—Only Hidden
Spiritually, many traditions agree on one core truth: the soul is whole, sacred, and deeply interconnected with all things. In Buddhism, the true self is found through mindful presence. In indigenous wisdom, identity is woven into nature, ancestry, and story. In Christianity, the divine spark resides within.
Your soul, your humanity, your essence—it has never abandoned you. It’s just been waiting for the noise to quiet.
Returning to the self is a sacred act of remembrance:
Silence is Sanctuary: In stillness, we can finally hear ourselves again.
Nature is Mirror: Forests, oceans, and skies don’t perform. They just are. So can you.
Ritual Reconnects: Whether it’s lighting a candle, making food with intention, or journaling at dawn, small sacred acts can call your spirit home.
This is soul retrieval.
How to Begin the Journey Back to Your Inner Humanity
You don’t have to disappear into the woods, quit your job, or renounce your roles. You only have to commit to remembering yourself.
Here’s how:
Unplug and Observe
Spend one full day without social media. Just observe your thoughts, your surroundings, and your reactions. What makes you feel alive? What feels like a performance?
Ask Old Questions
Not “What do I do?” but “What do I love?”
Not “How do I appear?” but “How do I feel?”
Not “Who should I be?” but “Who have I always been?”
Return to the Body
Your body is the oldest home you’ve ever had. Practice breathwork, gentle movement, or simply place a hand on your heart and say, “I’m listening.”
Create, Don’t Perform
Write a poem. Sing badly. Paint something wild. Create not to impress, but to express. This is the language of the soul.
Forgive the Detour
There is no shame in forgetting who you are. Survival is sacred. And so is the return.
The Truth Beneath It All
You are not broken—you are buried beneath layers of noise and necessity. Your inner humanity is a goal to achieve and a truth to remember. You are worthy without the mask. You are sacred without the script.
Coming back to yourself is not a one-time act. It’s a lifelong romance.
So light the lantern. Begin the walk. And when you find that quiet clearing in your spirit, sit down and whisper to your soul:
I never really left. I was just waiting for you to come home.
Cited and Supporting Sources
1. Sociological Frameworks
• Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Anchor Books, 1959.
• Durkheim, Émile. Suicide: A Study in Sociology. Free Press, 1897.
(Introduced the concept of anomie)
• Turkle, Sherry. Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. Basic Books, 2011.
2. Psychological Insights
• Jung, Carl. The Archetypes and The Collective Unconscious. Princeton University Press, 1968.
• Brown, Brené. The Gifts of Imperfection. Hazelden Publishing, 2010.
• van der Kolk, Bessel. The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Penguin, 2014.
• Firestone, Lisa. “Why We Try So Hard to Be Perfect.” Psychology Today, 2014.
3. Spiritual Wisdom
• Tolle, Eckhart. The Power of Now. New World Library, 1997.
• Black Elk, as told to John G. Neihardt. Black Elk Speaks. University of Nebraska Press, 1932.
• Rohr, Richard. Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life. Jossey-Bass, 2011.
• Hanh, Thich Nhat. True Self, False Self. Excerpted from various teachings.
• Estes, Clarissa Pinkola. Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype. Ballantine Books, 1992.
Comments