Why does work become so tangled with who we are?
I have experienced this more than once: someone criticizes my work and I feel it as criticism of me. They’ve “attacked” my work and so it feels like an “attack” on me, my value, and my worth as a human being.
We hear a lot about finding meaning, dignity, and purpose through work. There is a fine line between finding meaning in what you do and making it the thing that gives your life value. In my experience, that line is easy to cross. Way too easy to cross. And it’s also because work is set up to make it easy to cross.
Workplace systems can encourage that entanglement without anyone deliberately designing them to. Nobody is sitting around a board room table saying “I wonder how we can get our employees to forget who they are today…” but the outcome still happens. So we can still look at it with a critical eye, judge it, not like it, and try to not let it take over. I have also noticed differences across the regions of the U.S. where I have lived. In some places, meeting someone quickly becomes a conversation about what you do for a living… and suddenly your career becomes the explanation of who you are. Whereas other regions, I can meet someone for the first time and they’ll never ask about my career for a second.
So like everything else in the wonderful world of humans… context is critical.
Either way, for many of you, work eventually stops feeling like something you do and starts feeling like something you are.
Why can the same feedback affect people differently?
When work and identity are deeply intertwined, criticism of a deliverable can feel like criticism of your person. Research on contingent self-worth describes a related pattern: outcomes in an area where we stake our worth can take on meaning about our whole selves. There is this sort of chain reaction that occurs and the tighter knit that chain is, the faster that reaction ripples through our entire existence.
There are two things that I’ve noticed that tend to correlate with why feedback affects one person differently from another:
- How fused your identity is with your career
- Whether that feedback/criticism stepped on one of your core values.
Those human conditions are unique to every single person. It’s also why we can sometimes be left feeling “crazy” (or being told we’re overreacting) at work to feedback, because they don’t understand what your values are.
Another place this shows up behind feedback is during a layoff. Someone who has devoted their days to a job can be left asking, “Without this title, who am I?” Alongside the practical losses, there can be grief over losing something that felt like part of themselves.
That reaction deserves compassion, space, and gentleness. After all, a loss is still a loss. It also gives us a reason to examine how much of ourselves we have placed inside our careers.
How do I begin separating who I am from my work?
One of the things I tell people is:
It is okay for you to bring your whole self into your job, but it is not okay for you to bring your whole job into yourself.
You can work hard, care deeply, and give your best. You can bring your experiences, ideas, and values into the work. You can show up every day with your whole and complete self giving it 100% of your effort. But it’s a 1 way street. No matter what happens, we don’t reabsorb the work back into our identity. Your employer does not become the source of your worth.
You are a full, complete, unique, amazing, and wonderful person with a life of experiences that exists independently of your current company, title, promotion, or body of work. Past jobs can be part of that history without any employer owning the definition of who you are. If your profession disappeared tomorrow, you would still be here as a whole person.
You are a whole person.
The deeper work is rediscovering that person that maybe, along the way, work made us forget about: what matters to you, what you stand for, and where you want your life to go.
This is at the core of what I teach in the Identity course inside Innervates. If you want support rediscovering who you are beyond your career, you can join the Innervates waitlist.
Knowing yourself gives you more ground to stand on when work becomes chaotic. A rejected promotion or job application may tell you something about your work, or it may reflect decisions and circumstances outside your control. Neither determines your value as a human being.
And so when we know that, we can get a little bit of space between who we are and the criticism about our work. We can see it more objectively because we know, the criticism even if aimed at us, has nothing to do with who we are as humans.
And while yes there are toxic people who will aim those daggers straight at you… believe me when I say that says way more about them as a person than it ever does about you.
What can I do the next time feedback hurts?
Rediscovering yourself takes time. You didn’t get to this point overnight, and you’re not going to unwind it overnight either.
So, for something you can practice now, think about a recent piece of feedback you received that really stung. Grab a piece of paper and put down two columns.
Column one: What are the observable facts?
Write down what was actually said, what happened, and any specific, verifiable details about the work. For example: the reviewer said the recommendation needed stronger evidence, and the document contained no supporting sources.
Keep a distinction between the fact that someone said something and whether their assessment is accurate. “My manager called the work careless” records what happened; it does not establish that the work was careless. We’re not judging whether the feedback was right, wrong, good, or bad… we’re simply recording the factual observable evidence of what happened. This is something anyone should be able to see, as if you’re a private investigator.
If 10 people got the exact same feedback, Column 1 should be identical for every person.
Column two: What are my feelings and interpretations?
Write down your internal experience. Perhaps you feel hurt, embarrassed, or angry. Perhaps you believe the feedback is wrong, or you have concluded that you are bad at your job. Maybe you think the person doesn’t know what they’re talking about and they should stick their nose somewhere else.
If 10 people got the exact same feedback, Column 2 should be very different for every person.
The observable details of the same interaction give us a shared reference point and something we can take action against. The internal experience can differ considerably from person to person. Your feelings deserve attention, even when an interpretation needs examining.
Now you have two things you can address separately. You can clarify or respond to the work feedback. You can also acknowledge the hurt, consider what it touched in you, and give yourself room to process it. If the feedback was unfair or insulting, that deserves attention too.
We don’t dismiss anything just because it’s in one column or the other, it’s all important.
And this also does something very interesting, it gives you your first look at what it means to separate your Career from your Identity.
Column 1 is all about the work, Column 2 is all about you and your identity. They are separate even when in this moment, they feel entangled.
The more grounded you become in who you are… your values, your direction and the life you want… the more space you have to receive feedback without letting it define you. You can learn from your work while remaining the same full and complete person.
