Why You Feel Lost at the End of the Year: The Identity Confusion We Never Talk About
Every December, something shifts in the air. We turn our attention inward, and reflect on the year that’s almost passed.
And addint on to that, the days contract, the light disappears before we’ve even had a chance to finish what we were doing, and in that sudden stillness, people begin asking the same questions. Sometimes in conversations, but mostly internally, and almost always into the anonymous void of Google.
Why do I feel lost at the end of the year?
Am I having some sort of identity crisis?
Why does everything feel blurry, unsettled, or slightly off?
Do I need a career pivot?
Have I outgrown this chapter of my life?
It’s always framed as a problem. As if feeling disoriented is a sign that something has gone wrong.
But I’ve come to think the opposite is true: feeling lost at the end of the year may be the clearest sign that you are actually getting incrementally closer to feeling at home in yourself.
And that process, the honest, interior one where you stop pretending to just be fine and start listening… that rarely feels neat or affirming or externally rewarded. It feels like a kind of psychological shedding, where the roles you once held and the expectations you once lived under don’t quite fit, but the alternative, the truer thing, hasn’t fully taken shape yet.
What hits us every time the year comes to an end, is that it’s getting even more clear, that you’re becoming. Not someone new. But yourself.
It’s that you’re finally unable to keep being who the world wanted you to be.
And that moment, the one without external validation, without clarity, without applause, creates the exact sensation we often mistake for an identity crisis.
The Darkness Arrives. And Something Ancient Stirs Inside Us
Living in Copenhagen has taught me something about darkness I hadn’t fully understood before.
Here, the darkness isn’t just a backdrop; it’s a season with its own emotional weight, a presence that settles into your bones. It’s cold, it’s rough.
A few weeks ago I went to an event about what actually happens to us when it gets dark. Not metaphorically, but physiologically, psychologically, historically. And I was struck by how deeply wired we are for the rhythm that winter demands of us.
I was reminded, that long before electricity, darkness was a biological instruction. It told us to pause, to rest, to think, to gather close, to tell stories, to let the year sink into our system in a way that allowed us to understand ourselves again. It made introspection inevitable. It made being with ourselves unavoidable.
Now we’ve overridden that ancient mechanism with light: lamps, screens, overhead LEDs, everything that allows us to keep moving at the same pace even when the world around us is asking us to slow down. And I’m not against the modern world (I rely on it constantly), but I do think there’s something important about recognising what we’ve lost in the process:
the built-in moment where our interior life gets a chance to catch up.
When you keep going as if nothing has changed, ignoring the cues your body and psyche are sending, of course the end of the year feels like everything is collapsing into confusion.
Think about the overstimulation, we are exposed to.
It’s not strange, that your inner world finally breaks through the noise to say, “Wait. Something isn’t aligned here.”
The End of the Year Isn’t a Crisis. It’s a Reckoning
What makes this moment feel so intense isn’t that you’re lost. It’s that the pace finally slows enough for you to notice the truth you’ve been too busy to feel.
All year, you’ve been adjusting yourself, suppressing impulses, following expectations, performing competence, trying to meet the demands of your roles. You’ve been doing what the world expects you to do: your job, your relationships, your responsibilities.
Sometimes beautifully, sometimes just barely. And there comes a point where the version of you that is pushing itself and the version of you that is real start drifting apart.
That drift doesn’t announce itself dramatically. It shows up in small ways: the unexplained restlessness, the low-grade dissatisfaction, the sense that you’re slightly misaligned with your own life, the moment where you realise you’ve been making decisions out of habit more than desire.
When December comes, and everything gets more sombre, that drift becomes impossible to ignore.
It feels like an identity crisis only because it may be the first time all year you hear yourself think.
What Women Whisper When the Roles Fall Away
I’ve spent this last couple of months talking to women: leaders, creatives, founders, people who look “sorted” from the outside, and I can’t count the number of times the conversation has ended with a profound admission that sounds something like:
“I don’t feel like myself anymore, but I also don’t know who I’m supposed to be.”
“I feel like I’m in-between chapters.”
“I’m not burnt out, but I’m not… here either.”
“I’ve been performing a version of myself that isn’t quite me.”
What’s striking is that (to me) none of these women are actually falling apart. They’re waking up. They are noticing the discrepancy between the identity that brought them approval, belonging, and predictability, and the identity that feels true, alive, powerful, but much riskier to inhabit.
I don’t think this is about becoming a new person. I think it’s about the pain of finally outgrowing a version of yourself that once worked, sometimes beautifully, but no longer reflects the truth of who you are.
And that is painful. Not because you’re lost, but because letting go of external validation always is.
There is no applause for choosing yourself.
There is no standing ovation for telling the truth about what isn’t working.
There is no immediate reward for stepping into your inner authority.
It’s lonely at first. It feels fragile. And in the quiet of December, it becomes visible.
Are You Always Chasing Another Wave?
When I lived in the US, I met some people from California who said something that stuck with me:
“We never spend much time being worried or thinking of what could be — there’s always another wave to catch.”
I remember laughing, because it was both literal and metaphorical.
There is always another opportunity, another project, another idea, another hustle, another moment of reinvention. And in some ways, it’s so intoxicating: the endless possibility, the momentum, the light.
But m personal POV is, that we are not built to live without stepping into darkness. We are not wired for perpetual summer. We need the in-between… the spaces where nothing is happening outwardly but everything is shifting internally.
Without that, we stay in motion but lose direction.
Or become successful but disconnected.
We keep performing an identity that once made sense, but miss the opportunity to ask whether it still does.
That’s why the end of the year hits so hard.
It’s the one moment where the waves stop long enough for us to feel the truth:
I cannot keep being who I’ve been.
You’re Not Becoming Someone New. You’re Returning to Yourself
So if you feel lost right now? Maybe a bit foggy, stretched thin, strangely unsettled, I want you to please note this:
you’re not disappearing; you’re actually reappearing.
This isn’t you becoming a different person.
It’s you no longer being able to hide the person you actually are.\
This time of year reminds us, that the performance can get too heavy.
As we slow down, what pops up is the reckoning of an identity ending that once protected you.
Think of it as the beginning of a truer, more grounded, more internally-driven version of your life.
And of course there’s no external validation here.
There’s no applause for saying, “This isn’t me anymore.”
There’s no instant clarity. No map handed to you. No guaranteed outcome.
It is simply the part of the story where you walk in the dark for a while, learning to trust your own sight.
But know that the darkness is not the problem.
The darkness is the setting that makes your own truth visible again.
If you let it.
You’re Not Lost: You’ve Just Stopped Feeling Comfortable Performing
So when this year ends, and you feel the internal wobble, don’t mistake it for collapse.
Don’t rush to fill it.
Don’t force a plan.
Don’t chase the next wave just to avoid the feeling.
Sit with it.
Let the darkness do what it’s always done.
What it’s intended to do.
Allow the old identity to loosen its grip, even if you don’t yet know what comes after.
Because the end-of-year identity confusion isn’t a sign that something is wrong.
It’s a sign that something real is trying to surface.
If you want to understand what that “something” might be, you can take my Uncover Your Unspoken Script test, created for these exact in-between moments, the ones where you feel lost, but are actually coming closer to yourself than you’ve been in years.
But even if you do nothing at all, trust this:
You’re not lost.
You’re finally listening to what’s true within you.