The Cost of Living Crisis Is Also an Identity Crisis — an article by Carl Argent

We are living through what is commonly called a cost of living crisis.

Food costs more. Energy costs more. Housing costs more. Interest rates rise. Wages struggle to keep pace. Everywhere we look there seems to be another reminder that life has become more expensive.

Yet I often wonder whether the real crisis runs deeper than money.

As a therapist and coach, what I hear from people is rarely concern about money alone. Money is simply the language through which something much more personal is expressed.

Underneath financial worries I often hear questions about value.

Am I doing enough? Am I successful enough? Am I providing enough? Am I falling behind? Am I still somebody if I cannot keep up?

These are not economic questions.

They are questions of identity.

What Does Success Mean to You?

Take a moment and consider what success means to you.

Many people immediately think about a better salary, a larger house, a newer car or greater financial security.

Even in the workplace, success is usually measured through income, seniority and responsibility.

We tell ourselves:

“I work hard.”

“I deserve this.”

“My salary reflects my value.”

“I’ve earned my position.”

There is nothing inherently wrong with achievement. The problem begins when achievement becomes the primary way we measure our worth. Over time, many people unconsciously develop a simple equation:

My value = what I produce.

The more successful I become, the more valuable I am.

The more money I earn, the more important I am.

The more responsibility I carry, the more I matter.

Yet beneath this equation sits a dangerous assumption:

If my value comes from what I do, what happens when I can no longer do it?

The Hidden Meaning of Money

I suspect that for most people, money is not actually what they are pursuing.

Money is simply how success gets measured.

What people are often seeking is something much deeper.

• Security.
• Freedom.
• Respect.
• Belonging.
• Recognition.
• The ability to care for those they love.

For many men in particular, earning money can become intertwined with the need to provide, protect and fix.

If you are single, perhaps you are providing for yourself.

If you have a partner or family, perhaps you are trying to provide opportunities that you never had.

Perhaps you are determined to protect your children from the struggles you experienced growing up.

Perhaps your income has become a way of demonstrating your value to your family.

Perhaps earning is not about money at all. Perhaps it is about love.

Yet this is where things become complicated.

Because while money may help us provide, it cannot tell us who we are.

The Question Most People Avoid

As I write this, a question keeps returning to me.

How much of your life is actually the product of your own needs, values and desires?

Not the expectations of your parents. Not the expectations of your employer. Not the expectations of society. Not the expectations of your partner. Yours. Many people feel uncomfortable when faced with this question because it appears selfish.

Immediately we think about our responsibilities like our children, our partners, our parents, our colleagues, our commitments. And these things matter. But the question remains.

If nobody depended on you, how would you choose to live? What would matter to you? What would engage you? What would give your life meaning? Many people struggle to answer these things, not because they lack intelligence, and not because they lack ambition, but because they have spent so much of their lives becoming what others need. them to be that they have never fully explored who they are.

The Problem With Being Needed

Society tends to reward usefulness so from childhood we are encouraged to perform. We chase good grades, choose the right subjects, go to university, get a good job, build a career, buy a house, start a family, work harder, earn more, achieve more. Wow! It’s heavy but it’s there, the message is rarely malicious. Most parents want the best for their children. Most teachers want their students to succeed. Most employers want people to thrive. Yet hidden within these messages is an assumption that life is primarily about becoming useful… Useful to employers, useful to customers, useful to family, useful to society, useful to everyone except ourselves.

Over time we become experts at responding to the needs of others. Yet we remain strangers to ourselves.

The Cost of Losing Yourself

This is why certain life events like redundancy, retirement, divorce, relationship breakdown, children leaving home, menopause and bereavement, can be so devastating.

These experiences often remove the roles around which people have organised their identity. The provider loses someone to provide for. The protector loses someone to protect. The fixer loses problems to fix. The nurturer sees their nest as empty.

When that happens, people are often left facing questions they have spent decades avoiding. Who am I? What do I want? What gives my life meaning now? And the tragedy is that many people reach this point without having developed answers. Not because they failed, but because they were too busy serving everyone else. The result can be anxiety, depression, chronic stress, emotional numbness and profound loneliness. In some cases, despair becomes so overwhelming that people take their own lives. It’s not because they lacked value. It’s because they no longer knew where their value came from because they had never discovered it for themselves in the first place.

The Rule of the Other

The French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan used the term the Other to describe the symbolic world that shapes us. For the purposes of this article, I would define the Other more simply: the Other is everything that is not You. That can be your parents, your partner, your children, your employer, your customers, or your community. Even society itself.

From an early age, the Other teaches us what is acceptable, how to behave, how to think, what success looks like, what failure looks like, and what we should become.

Gradually, many people learn to organise their lives around the expectations of the Other, and the authentic self retreats into the background. It doesn’t disappear but becomes buried beneath obligation, responsibility and conformity.

We become who we should be, and slowly forget who we are.

The Cost of Living Crisis Is Also an Identity Crisis

This is why I believe the cost of living crisis is exposing something much deeper. It is forcing people to confront the fragility of identities built around achievement, provision and productivity. When life becomes more expensive, people do not simply worry about paying bills, they worry about whether they are succeeding, whether they are coping, whether they are still good enough, whether they are still valuable.

The financial pressure is real, but the psychological wound often lies in what that pressure means. Because when self-worth depends on performance, every economic challenge becomes a personal judgement made by you against yourself.

Life Cannot Tell You Who You Are

I make no apologies for enjoying science fiction when I say this! Like The Matrix, life can give us something to do, it can keep us occupied, provide goals, distractions, responsibilities and obligation but it cannot tell us who we are.

Only we can discover that. The purpose of life is not merely to survive it, nor is it to endlessly serve the expectations of others. It is to become increasingly aware of who we are, what matters to us and how we wish to live. That doesn’t have to be at the expense of other people, but it shouldn’t be at the expense of ourselves either. If you do not know yourself, how can you truly love another? If you do not understand your own needs, how can you fully care for someone else’s? And if you have never asked what gives your life meaning, how will you respond when the roles that once defined you disappear?

These are not questions for retirement. They are questions for today.

A Final Thought

Perhaps the most important question in this article is also the simplest. If nobody was judging you, what kind of life would you choose? The answer may reveal more about who you are than any payslip ever could.

If this article resonated with you, and you would like space to explore questions about identity, purpose, meaning and wellbeing, visit Carl Argent Counselling & Coaching to learn more about how we can work together.

How I can help

If changes in work or money have shaken your sense of who you are, counselling with me gives you space for the loss, uncertainty and pressure that can sit beneath practical decisions. You do not have to present a positive version of what is happening.

We can explore how income, achievement or providing for others became connected with your worth, while recognising that financial pressures are real. I can help you hear your own needs and values within those expectations. The work can support a steadier sense of yourself as you consider the choices available to you.

If a change in work or money has left you wondering who you are now, counselling offers room to talk about more than the practical decision. I would want to hear what that role meant to you and what feels uncertain without it. You can arrive with questions rather than a clear direction. You can book a free introductory conversation with no obligation to book sessions, or read more about counselling with me.

Sources

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Frankl, V. E. (2006). Man’s search for meaning (Beacon Press ed.). Beacon Press. (Original work published 1946)

Kasser, T., & Ryan, R. M. (1993). A dark side of the American dream: Correlates of financial success as a central life aspiration. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65(2), 410–422.

Ryff, C. D. (1989). Happiness is everything, or is it? Explorations on the meaning of psychological well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57(6), 1069–1081.

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Steger, M. F. (2012). Making meaning in life. Psychological Inquiry, 23(4), 381–385.