WHEN WE BECAME “US” AND FORGOT “I”

There is something I have been thinking about deeply.

At what point did we stop trusting ourselves?

Not in an arrogant way.

Not in a “nobody can teach me anything” way.

But in the quiet ways.

The way we check comments before deciding if we like something.

The way we look for experts before listening inward.

The way social media tells us what to eat, how to heal, what to believe, who to vote for, what success looks like, how to parent, how to age, how to think.

The way algorithms slowly become identity.

Somewhere along the way we moved from:

I think.

I feel.

I wonder.

I notice.

To:

What are people saying?

What is everyone doing?

What should I believe?

Who agrees with me?

And slowly—

the “I” became “Us”.

Belonging is one of our deepest human needs.

Our brains evolved to survive in groups.

Acceptance meant safety.

Exclusion once meant danger.

So conformity itself is not weakness.

It is biology.

But modern life has created something unusual.

We are no longer influenced by twenty people in our village.

We are influenced by millions.

Ideas move faster than reflection.

Opinions arrive before experience.

Identity becomes performance.

And something subtle begins to happen.

We stop sensing.

We start consuming.

We stop observing.

We start repeating.

We stop listening.

We start performing.

And eventually—

we lose trust in our own intuition.

But intuition is not random.

It is often pattern recognition.

Embodied experience.

Internal awareness.

Information arriving through feeling before language.

When we disconnect from that relationship with ourselves, the body often begins speaking louder.

Stress.

Exhaustion.

Tension.

Burnout.

Hypervigilance.

Disconnection.

Not because the body is punishing us.

But because physiology and experience are constantly communicating.

Thought patterns influence emotion.

Emotion influences stress response.

Stress response influences hormones, sleep, inflammation, attention and behaviour.

The body keeps score of what the mind repeatedly rehearses.

This does not mean your thoughts create illness.

But it does invite the question:

What parts of myself became quiet because I learned belonging mattered more than truth?

Maybe becoming yourself is not becoming someone new.

Maybe it is remembering the voice that existed before everyone told you who to be.

What if healing is not asking—

Who should I become?

But asking—

Who was I before I forgot?

With Love

Julia Longin