What If Your “Self” Isn’t Yours At All?

How cultural psychology helps us stop chasing authenticity and start creating meaning instead

I remember sitting on the floor of my apartment a few years ago, surrounded by the kind of books you reach for when life stops making sense: Viktor Frankl, Brené Brown, James Clear… all circling this one question I couldn’t stop asking:

“Who am I really?”

Not in the Instagram-quote way. But in the 3 a.m., lying-awake-in-the-dark way. That gnawing sense that I was living someone else’s life. Living someone else’s values. Trying to make the pieces fit together in a puzzle I didn’t even choose.

I thought I was searching for some buried, authentic core—something fixed and solid I could finally claim as me. Something that would give all of it direction.

But what if that search was built on the wrong premise?

That’s the question that sat at the center of my recent conversation with Dr. Steven Heine, a cultural psychologist whose work quietly dismantles so many of our assumptions about identity, meaning, and the idea of a “true self.”

Because Steven said something during our interview that reframed my entire perspective:

“The self isn’t something you discover—it’s something you absorb.”

That shook me.

Because if it’s true, then the version of “you” you’ve been trying to find… may be more of a cultural echo than a personal truth.

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