Is freedom from labels, personality types, social personas, roles, and masks ever truly possible? And what does that look like if it is?
I’ve had a long journey throughout life, and I’ve reinvented myself many times. I have had the politician me, the customer service me, the YouTuber me, and today’s programmer me. I have played with other roles too: author, writer, blogger. All of them reveal different parts of me to the world—hidden intentions, goals, and values leaking out through my actions. Some of these roles might have been more authentic; others were experiments I tested while finding who I was.
The Trap of Self-Creation
Most of us go through a phase of trying to find out who we are, or even trying to create who we are. When we move to create, we think we are a blank piece of paper and that we are the sculptors drawing out our lives. Politician me thought he was polishing himself from a rock into a diamond, focusing completely on becoming the most charismatic, influential, and powerful leader possible.
The problem with self-creation is that it can undermine fundamental human needs. We have needs for connection, belonging, self-esteem, and authentic self-expression. When I was creating myself, I neglected who I actually was, which led to burnout by age 20. I thought I was filling my cup, but I was actually emptying it by rejecting my natural qualities—like my need for alone time or free-flow creative expression. I learned that changing yourself is really a process of rearranging yourself.
From One Box to Another
After my burnout, I decided I had boundaries like a box. I adopted labels: I was an introvert, an intuitive, a feeling type, and a judging type. I told myself I had to be alone, I had to have constant structure, and I had to live within set parameters. But these were just newly constructed limits rooted in stress and worry.
True freedom from your “type” arrives when you let go of these “shoulds” and pressures. If you treat your personality type like a guidebook or a checklist for how to act and who to date, you are going to miss out on living your entire life. You miss your own internal compass by getting lost in a map that doesn’t describe your complex reality.
Beyond the Map
While tools like MBTI can be useful for self-therapy and undoing layers of adaptation, they are just tools. In my 20s, I stopped asking, “Who do I need to be for the world?” and started asking, “Who do I want to be for myself?”
I eventually realized how stressful it is to feel like you have to prove your type to the world. For a long time, I felt I had to prove I was an INFJ every day on YouTube. But the more important questions are bigger:
Do I want to be a good person?
Do I want to be a brave, free, or curious person?
What is it like to be a loving partner or a present parent?
Growth requires letting go of ego defenses and rationalizations. You might say, “As an introvert, I don’t like to have to communicate or stand up on stage,” but if you want a healthy relationship or success in your career, you may need to sometimes do things that feel uncomfortable to you. You have to be willing to grow beyond your comfort zone. You may even discover that you come to enjoy it later.
The Practice of the Uncarved Block
In Taoism, there is the concept of the “uncarved block.” If you strip away all the adjectives—programmer, smart, kind, man, woman—who are you? If you remove the skills and traits you’ve developed, what energy do you give to the world?
The practice is to scale away the labels and start observing your reality daily: your thoughts, feelings, actions, and intuitions. Everything else is just a tool.
Ultimately, you are not a collection of parts or a static description on paper. You are the totality of all your experiences—your sensations, thoughts, and feelings. In 2025, my goal was to bring the programmer, the psychologist, and the YouTuber together into one unified whole. When you integrate all your sides, you stop being a “type” and start being a person.
Do you think we can ever fully escape our personality, or will we always have some form of it? Let me know your thoughts.
