A few days ago, in one of my coaching sessions, a client sat across from me, looking tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep. She came in describing what so many of us quietly carry: the overwhelm, the pressure to hold everything together, the sense that life keeps asking for more while giving very little room to breathe.
She didn’t say she’d lost herself. Most clients don’t.
They come in naming the symptoms, the exhaustion, the resentment, the constant bracing for the next thing. And somewhere along the way, without meaning to, they start mistaking the heaviness for their identity. Not because they’ve forgotten who they are, but because they’ve been reacting to life for so long that their inner voice has gone quiet beneath the noise.
So I asked her the one question that always shifts the room:
“Who were you before all of this?”
Not to send her backward, but to bring her inward. To reconnect her with the version of herself that existed before the burnout, before the pressure, before she molded herself around everyone else’s needs.
There’s always a pause after I ask that question. A long, searching kind of silence.
People look inward, not outward. They swallow hard. Their eyes move as though scanning an emotional horizon they haven’t looked at in years.
And then, almost always, I see it….that quiet, unmistakable change in their expression.
Her eyes softened first, like a door inside her had opened just a little. Her shoulders let go of something they’d been holding. And there was this almost-invisible upward pull at the corner of her mouth, not quite a smile, but the first flicker of remembering a version of herself that once felt light, hopeful, and alive.
She wasn’t just recalling who she used to be. She was realizing she wasn’t gone, only buried.
Moments like that move me every time. Because I always see their potential before they remember it. All I do is guide them back toward a self they drifted away from, a self that’s still here, still reachable, still theirs.
And after witnessing this so many times, I’ve realized something important: clarity doesn’t crash in like revelation. It arrives the way truth usually does: quietly, steadily, unmistakably.
Clarity rarely feels like thunder. It feels like morning light. Patient. Steady. Almost shy at first.
Rolf Dobelli once wrote that the mind often confuses noise with insight, that we mistake stimulation for understanding. And the longer I coach, the truer that feels. Most people don’t lose themselves because they lack inner wisdom. They lose themselves because they’ve been drowning in noise so familiar, they no longer recognize it as noise.
And noise doesn’t always look chaotic.
Sometimes it’s disguised as responsibility.
As productivity.
As staying informed.
As being available.
As “just trying to keep up.”
It seeps in through a thousand tiny openings:
the messages you answer before you answer yourself,
the thoughts that rehearse themselves at midnight,
the mental checklists that never stop renewing,
the self-doubt humming in the background like a broken AC you’ve learned to tolerate.
Noise pressures us to respond, to perform, to be endlessly useful. And without noticing, it crowds out the quieter truths, the ones that only emerge when we finally pause long enough to listen.
That’s why when someone stops, even for a brief breath, something inside them shifts. Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just a small, steadying warmth that says:
There you are.
Clarity doesn’t shout; it simply becomes easier to hear once the world stops shouting at us, And that’s when remembering begins, not with breakthroughs, but with tiny, almost invisible shifts:
a posture softening, a spark returning, a shy smile whispering, “I miss her.”
These moments are not dramatic, but they are sacred, because they mark the moment a person moves from “I’m overwhelmed” to “Wait… I remember who I was.”
And that soft remembering naturally leads to something deeper: unclenching.
Brigid Delaney writes in Reasons Not to Worry that we spend much of our lives bracing for impact. Holding tension as if it were armor. And I see that tension every day. Clients aren’t lost; they’re clenched. Their identity isn’t gone; it’s tucked tightly under years of coping and surviving.
Unclenching sounds simple. Emotionally, it’s one of the bravest things a person can do.
It means letting our shoulders drop, letting our guard rest, letting ourselves soften in a world that taught us to stay sharp. It means trusting a quiet moment without scanning it for danger. It means letting a breath go all the way in without fearing what might surface.
Unclenching always starts subtly: a gentler expression, a deeper breath, a voice that stops apologizing for its own existence.
We often expect change to roar, but unclenching teaches a different truth: we move forward not by pushing harder, but by allowing ease to return.
Self-return rarely feels like awakening. It feels like releasing a muscle you didn’t realize had been tight for years. It feels like belonging to yourself again. It feels like the body saying: You’re safe now. Come back.
So if any of this feels familiar, if you’ve been moving through life feeling blurred around the edges, a little disconnected from the person you used to be, maybe this is your moment to pause.
Not to fix yourself. Not to reinvent your identity. Just to remember.
Remember who you were before life asked you to be strong every second of every day. Before responsibilities hardened your softness. Before you forgot that your voice mattered too.
Take a small moment, even the tiniest one, and ask gently:
“Who was I before all of this?”
Not because you must return to the past, but because the truest parts of you are still here, waiting for you to turn toward them again.
Maybe you don’t need a new version of yourself. Maybe you just need to come home to the one you left behind, slowly, softly, one honest moment at a time.
And if you’ve ever watched Anne Elliot in Persuasion, quietly find her footing again, you know the softest returns are often the truest ones.
Before I close each session, I ask my clients to choose one small, realistic ritual for the next seven days, something meant only for them.
A slow walk without their phone.
Ten minutes with a book they love.
A cup of coffee is enjoyed without multitasking.
A breath that belongs only to them.
Not because it changes everything overnight, but because it gently reminds them they are worth tending to.
And when you’re ready,, even if it’s just for one small breath, invite that earlier self to sit beside you again.
She hasn’t forgotten you. She’s simply been waiting for you to remember her.
Love,
Kirana
