If all the world is a stage, then we are playing different roles!

There are so many roles that we are expected to play in our lives; from business woman, to wife/partner, mum, carer, cleaner, friend, sibling etc …. The list goes on an on and will vary for each one of us. And it is easy to get caught up in those roles – especially the ones that consume a lot of our time and effort, such as mum or those that are career related.

Sociologists refer to each of these as a social status and each carries with it a certain social role within society – a set of expected behaviours that go along with the status. We learn what is expected of us within each status, and hence the roles we should adopt, as we grow.

For nearly 30 years I was a pharmacist, and for even longer I had worked in, and studied for pharmacy; I understood this social role and how it worked. It was comfortable and easy – it felt like it WAS me – and so when I left academia in 2021 and moved to being a therapist for the majority of my working week, it was hard to leave behind the identity of being a pharmacist. When people asked me what I did, I would hesitate….. I had built my career into a big part of who I was. I was a pharmacist, but now I was a therapist – wasn’t I? It all felt so odd not to just answer with ease – and I didn’t feel like I owned the presence of being a therapist.

This is because the change in my social status, from pharmacist to therapist, made me question what is known as my social identity – I has a strong sense of who I was based on being a health professional, a pharmacist. There were social roles that I understood with being in that status and when I changed my career, I changed my social status and this challenged my inner social identity.

It took some time and soul searching to realise that not being a pharmacist hadn’t changed me, just given me a different focus. But what it did, is make me think about how much we tangle up the roles that we adopt in our lives, some voluntarily and some not, with who we are. Yet the truth is, they are just different social statuses – with characters and behaviours that we shrug on as needed and we can as easily change them.

These roles are not what makes us who we are – who we really are is what we find, deep inside, when we are quiet and listen. It is the personal identity we hold about ourselves that is key – the sense of who you are at your core; your values, beliefs and traits that form how you see and think about yourself and the world.

It is the person who is still as much the child they once were, as the adult they have become… it is the inner me that is as fascinated by the woo-woo spiritual aspects of life as the science that I also love, and it’s the person who you can return to, time and again, and know that it is you, devoid of roles and statuses.

Understanding that a change in our social statuses doesn’t change us, but allows us to adopt a different status, with different roles expected with it, that allows us to be more accepting of change within our lives.

Perhaps it makes a mum worrying about being left with an empty nest when their child goes away to work or Uni, realise that they can now adopt a different status; it’s a chance to engage with a different role and enjoy exploring it.

Maybe we can understand that a change in career is not a change in us, but simply in the external perception of how we take our place in the world.

And sometimes, we might need to assess the statuses we are involved in and ask if these are really what we want – do they really align with your personal identity; your values, beliefs and traits? And if not, how can you remedy that?

Saying goodbye to one role, and moving onto another, offers that chance to be different, to allow another part of your personal identity to come through… to be you, in another way. Changing our roles as we move through life is natural and may be less threatening if we can recognise them as exactly that – roles that we have adopted and roles that can be replaced, all without threatening our true personal identities.

Remember that you can be whomever you choose, and it is never too late to change and adapt your roles to better meet who you feel you are, or wish to be, today!!