The Silent Trauma of Self-Alienation: Why You Feel Like a Stranger in Your Own Skin

“I felt very still and empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo.” — Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

It’s the feeling of numbness as you gaze out the window. 

It’s the disconnection you feel inside when you’re around others. 

It’s the sense of being an eternal outsider and lone wolf.

It’s the low-grade chronic, empty, all-encompassing sense that you don’t belong anywhere.

What I’m describing is the phenomenon of self-alienation.

And it’s something I rarely hear discussed anywhere.

Yet feeling estranged from yourself impacts every corner of your life. It’s a type of trauma that is so pervasive, so silent, that it can go undetected sometimes for an entire lifetime. 

If you keep running in circles, feeling stuck, or struggling to know what path to take in life, you may be dealing with the impact of self-alienation.

(Big thanks to Mateo Sol for coming across this powerful term in his research.)

Why Self-Alienation is Inner Homelessness

Being estranged from your inner self is a form of inner homelessness because it is a disconnection from your inner truth and the light of your Soul.

It’s like being a vagabond, wandering in search of love, safety, and peace – desperately looking for these feelings everywhere but within yourself. 

When there’s no one home inside – when there’s little to no sense of who you actually, authentically are – you will be plagued with feelings of loneliness, emptiness, depression, and anxiety. 

The truth is that you are unconsciously yearning for your own Soul, but because of trauma, you’ve been estranged, cut off, and dissociated from that reality. 

How Does the Trauma of Self-Alienation Happen?

The main character of Albert Camus’ book, The Stranger, is a perfect example of the numbness and disconnection inherent in self-alienation. The book starts off with the following words,

“Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can’t be sure.” 

There is an eerie sense of dissociation here. And as the book progresses, his self-alienation becomes increasingly evident. 

The same theme of self-alienation is present in Franz Kafka’s book The Metamorphosis, where the main character, Gregor, wakes up one day to find he has been transformed into an insect. This strange event symbolizes his deep sense of self-estrangement, where he writes,

“I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.”

When we’re estranged from ourselves, the inevitable truth is that we’re cut off from our feelings, wants, needs, and inner reality.

How does this trauma occur? 

Typically, self-alienation happens due to:

• Childhood trauma – having toxic, absent, or emotionally immature parents who didn’t mirror your needs for safety and validation can result in a deep sense of shame and inner disconnection
• Relational trauma – other than parental bonds, romantic relationships can be another source of self-alienation, especially if you get involved with an abusive, chaotic, or narcissistic person
• Life crisis or dark night of the soul – existential and spiritual life crises can trigger feelings of self-alienation, especially if our sense of meaning, direction, or personal value disappears unexpectedly
• Aging and sickness – getting older and experiencing more illness, as well as cognitive changes, can lead to feelings of self-alienation, especially as modern society devalues the process of aging.
• Social media – constantly looking outside of yourself and caught in the unending cycle of pings, notifications, and doom scrolling can result in deep feelings of self-estrangement.

What do you think might be responsible for your sense of self-alienation? Let me know in the comments.  

Forms of Self-Alienation

When we experience the trauma of self-alienation, we become an ‘other’ to ourselves, a stranger – what Spanish philosopher Ortega Y. Gasset called “other-ated.” 

Otheration is a form of dehumanization. In other words, self-alienation strips us of our own humanity. It is then that we adopt a false self to try to fill the inner hole of self-absence.

Here are some common ways that self-alienation manifests in human relationships:

1. Playing a rigid role (achiever, mother, father, entrepreneur, boss, victim) with no room for nuance, expansion, or evolution
2. People-pleasing and trying to be who others want us to be
3. Self-martyrdom or sacrificing ourselves incessantly for others
4. Self-absorption and treating others as objects without seeing them as separate beings with their own inner lives
5. Not letting others in and pushing them away (self-isolation, self-sabotage, etc.)
6. Getting lost in cult-like movements, beliefs, or teachings
7. Codependency and enmeshment in relationships 

9 Signs of Self-Alienation Trauma

I fear me this—is Loneliness—

The Maker of the soul

Its Caverns and its Corridors

Illuminate—or seal—

— Emily Dickinson, The Loneliness One dare not sound

Self-alienation is a multi-faceted, deep-rooted experience. Here are some signs you may be experiencing it:

1. Feeling like a stranger to yourself.
2. Lacking meaning and purpose.
3. Experiencing inner emptiness.
4. Difficulty recognizing or communicating your true feelings.
5. Struggling to pinpoint who you are.
6. Chronic low-grade depression or anxiety.
7. Having a distorted, fragmented, or absent sense of self.
8. Deep feelings of loneliness and isolation.
9. Being the eternal outsider who doesn’t fit in.

Do you have any more signs to add to this list? If so, let me know in the comments.

Healing Self-Alienation – 3 Deep Paths to Wholeness

Self-alienation is one of the biggest issues I’ve dealt with, and continue dealing with, in my life. 

As a child who grew up in an abusive fundamentalist religious belief system, with two emotionally immature (and wounded) parents, I often felt alone and alienated from myself and life itself.

I learned early on that playing a role and adopting a false self were essential for my emotional and psychological survival. To this day, I’m still healing and learning how to come back home to myself. In fact, earlier today, I realized that in the process of becoming a mother, I have again lost myself. How? Through letting my old self-care and inner work routines slip. Now I’m back on the road of self-reclamation, which is why I’ve decided to write this article.

If you suffer from self-alienation, I want you to know that the path of healing doesn’t have to be complicated. But it does require commitment. It requires work. That may not sound sexy or fun, but it’s the truth.

So please, choose one of the practices below, and schedule it into your daily calendar. Don’t delay. Act. Set a time each day to do one of the following actions – and stick to them without making excuses. Healing is a gentle process, but it also needs inner fortitude and ‘toughness’ to stick.

1. Words, reflection, and inner gazing

Journal daily as if your life depends on it. I’ve recently started the guided Journaling Like a Stoic workbook by Brittany Polat to help equip me with skills to deal with the stress of parenting and juggling life. You may like to do open-ended and unstructured journaling, or go the guided route like me.

If you like the ‘hand-holding’ route, I recommend starting with one of these guided journals:

• Self-Love Journal (recommended)
• Inner Child Journal (great for emotional healing)
• Shadow Work Journal (advanced, but good if you’ve done lots of healing already)

These are foundational, deeply transformative, and proven ways to come back home to yourself.

If you want more niche journals, I recommend the Mother Wound Journal (if you have a difficult relationship with your mother figure) or the Moon Alchemy Journal (follows the phases of the moon and aligns that with inner work). All of these journals have been lovingly written, researched, designed, and created by the lonerwolf team – and all are highly rated by our beloved community here. 

2. Silence, stillness, and solitude

Stop filling every second of your day with noise. Turn off the phone. Go outside. Or sit inside in silence. If you want to make the experience more enjoyable, play some soft music and light a candle.

To connect with yourself again, you need to let yourself be with the boredom and discomfort of emptiness. If you need a meditation instructor, fine. Just make sure they’re not filling the space with incessant words. The best meditation guides, in my experience, allow room for a lot of silence. 

How can you come home to yourself if you’re constantly being hyper-stimulated and distracted? This is where the three S’s come into play (silence, stillness, solitude). 

3. Go to the core of yourself

We all have four essential reference points within us, forming the compass by which we navigate:

• Your core wound – the root of your trauma and pain
• Your core beliefs – the unconscious forces that drive your behavior
• Your core needs – the non-negotiables required for living a fulfilling life
• Your core values – the building blocks of your authentic purpose 

Doing personality tests and reading lots of self-help books is great. These types of resources give you an idea of who you are, typically on a superficial level.

But don’t forget about these deeper parts of you. No one can give you a test or tell you what these core aspects of you are. You’ve got to do the work yourself, which is probably why they’re less marketable or sexy than 3-minute quizzes.

You can read my article on finding your core wound and core beliefs to get started. These free guides have some wonderful exercises and provide some high-quality guidance.

But if you want a simpler, more direct, and in-depth way of finding these four core parts of yourself, see my Soul Work Compass Course. It will help you find your core wounds, core beliefs, core needs, and core values with ease. You can sign up here straight away.

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Self-alienation is becoming an ever-increasing phenomenon with the rise in artificial intelligence, the omnipresence of social media, and the toxic individualism of modernity.

Our society seems to be built on isolating us from our inner truth and reality. But we don’t have to be suckers. We don’t have to stay as eternal victims of our childhood traumas either. With fierce commitment (aka, set a habit, stick to it!), we can come back home to ourselves.

Tell me, what does self-alienation look or feel like to you? What has helped? I’d love to hear in the comments.