I’m fourteen, sitting on my bed, writing a song. 

It was a time when thin meant beautiful and Photoshop had just been exposed. I watched friends fake confidence and adults fake their smiles. I was both curious and confused, wondering why we were all pretending. I couldn’t help questioning humanity and resisted conformity.

Something in me wanted to see who we really were beneath the expectations we bend ourselves to meet. So I wrote: I want to know who you really are.

I didn’t know it then, but it was the beginning of my Identity Project.

 

Months before, doctors couldn’t explain my fatigue. The tests pointed to Pfeiffer’s disease. Not all symptoms matched, but blood tests don’t lie, they said.

I took the diagnosis gratefully, it meant something was wrong, and sleep would fix it. But I didn’t want to sleep. I needed to run.

That school run helped me shed my first kilos, but it still wasn’t enough. I starved myself. Took detours on my bike. Avoided friends. The skin along my spine bruised from endless sit-ups. Fine hair started growing where it shouldn’t. I was cold, always. But I didn’t care. I called it discipline. Really, I was just doing everything to shut her up.

One evening, my mum insisted I eat a cracker. The tantrum, the tears, the begging not to, it gave me away. Anorexia. I couldn’t hide it anymore. But I was addicted. Addicted to losing weight. To the illusion of control. To not eating. Because being thin was the only way I thought I’d fit in.

I’d long believed I didn’t belong. I played the violin, was a girl scout, wore glasses, and couldn’t stand my awkward body. Of course no one would want me: fat, nerdy, and boring.

Doctors, nutritionists, therapists, they taught me how to eat again. But nobody taught me why I actually stopped.

 

After recovery, I began travelling. I explored countries, climates, and ways of life. Travelling became a way to be someone else. No one knew my past, or had seen me in the deep end. Abroad, I wasn’t the anorexic girl. I became Annie. Adventurous. Free. Fun.

I was captivated by our cultural differences, intrigued by how upbringing shapes belief, and astonished by how differently we live, connect, create, and belong. 

In every country, I saw a different version of normal. In some, rest was respect. In others, ambition was survival. It made me wonder how much of who we are is chosen, and how much is learned, rehearsed so often it becomes autopilot.

I developed countless interests, from languages and psychology to systems that explore human nature: personality theory, Human Design, the DISC model, even astrology. I became fascinated by what makes us tick, why we act the way we do, and how identity shapes through both science and story. 

Some became careers. Others became stories. And some I kept to myself, waiting for a different time.

 

When I built an online school for language and teacher training, I thought I’d found my calling. Teaching made me feel alive. Learning from others fuelled me. The diversity of cultures and perspectives coming together energised me.

I imagined stability. The end of my itchy feet. And a long, creative life doing work that mattered. For five years, I thrived.

Doing everything myself felt empowering. I built the website, wrote the copy, created courses, nurtured the community, handled social media, newsletters, and yet more content. I enrolled in every business course I could find, applying every strategy as if it were a lifeline.

When a business coach invited me to coach on her programmes, it felt like validation. As if someone finally recognised the work behind it all.

But after a few years, the satisfaction faded. The more I succeeded, the smaller my world became. The same traits that once helped me reach my goals with obsessive focus were now running me into the ground.

 

Fast forward to twenty-seven. I felt empty. Detached. A machine out of fuel. Exhaustion that sleep couldn’t fix. A hazy stare that blurred words on the screen. My heart raced. My mind sprinted. I’d panic or shut down completely.

I couldn’t ignore it anymore. I wanted to understand why I’d built a life that kept me running. Why I betrayed myself. Why I’d keep sabotaging my own needs.

I started therapy again, not to repair the damage but to uncover the wiring beneath it: the beliefs, habits, and childhood rules that shaped how I functioned. It was the first time I felt like I was actually cleaning up the mess.

I came to realise how I’d always defined myself by labels. Songwriter. Traveller. Teacher. Business owner. Each role came with a script. I knew my lines, but not myself.

The more capable I appeared, the less space there was to be confused, tired, or human. My self-worth wasn’t built on who I was, but on what I could prove.

Instead of trusting the flow, I’d say consistency would pay off.
Instead of taking breaks, I’d say exhaustion was the price of success.
Instead of changing course, I’d tell myself one more push and I’d be enough.

I wasn’t being forced into these pressures; they were self-imposed. I’d built them, brick by brick, under the illusion of freedom.

But I wasn’t working for freedom anymore, I was maintaining an image of it. Glued to my laptop. Fatigued by performance. Chasing trends I didn’t believe in. Teaching what I no longer felt connected to.

Drive, discipline, and determination build achievements. Qualities I once believed made me strong. But really, I was avoiding stillness, running from the fear of being seen as weak or incapable.

 

So I quit. Cancelled the plan. Closed the school.

I sacrificed my income, certainty, community, and sense of predictability. It felt like failure. Everything I’d built had fallen apart. I was heartbroken. Grieving. Mourning a version of myself I never meant to become. I spent months crying and raging until only one question remained: Who am I without all this?

I journalled obsessively, about my likes, dislikes and fears. My habits, values, and the parts of me I’d never allowed to be seen. Somewhere in those pages, I realised even my name wasn’t actually mine. Annie had been a version I built to survive: untethered, adaptable, endlessly capable.

Reclaiming my birth name, Annemiek, felt like coming home to the person who’d always been there beneath the roles.

And in the mess of those pages, the same logic kept repeating: the fear of not being enough, the rules that kept me over-functioning, the roles I’d mistaken for identities. That’s when I realised I was mapping my identity from the inside out.

At first, it was about making sense of my own contradictions. But the more I wrote, the clearer it became: this wasn’t just my story. It was how most of us learn to survive.

Because we’re trained to confuse pressure with purpose, to mistake coping for confidence, and to build lives around expectation, calling it identity.

 

That curiosity grew into study. I immersed myself in coaching psychology, studying Transactional Analysis, systemic coaching, cognitive behavioural therapy, Voice Dialogue, and identity development. I learned how our sense of self is shaped by the need to belong. How we adapt, please, and perform to stay safe. And, how those same strategies later become the traps we grow blind to.

I wanted to give people what I didn’t have then: a space to understand their patterns, name their conditioning, and remember who they were before achievement culture took over.

So I turned my notes into structure and began mapping the logic behind our patterns, grounding every discovery in psychology and evidence. The reflections became stories. The stories became questions. Together, they became chapters.

What started as recovery from burnout became the foundation of my work; The Identity Project.

The Pattern Trap, the Wheel of Capacity, and the Identity Inventory are now tools that turn self-awareness into something usable. A way to turn reflection into clarity, and chaos into direction. Structured. Practical. Real.

 

Today, The Identity Project is both work and mirror. It holds everything I once needed: honesty, language, and permission to begin again.

It’s about helping people unlearn the patterns that keep them performing, and the rules that promise safety but cost authenticity. We trace where those scripts began, how they show up now, and what it takes to choose differently.

My studies gave me the science. My burnout gave me the proof. My story gave me the reason. Because freedom isn’t found in becoming more. It’s found in reclaiming authorship over who you already are.

The Identity Project exists for the people who’ve done everything right and still feel wrong. For those tired of the rat race, ready to build a life that’s unmistakably theirs.

 

I started with one question: Who are you?
It’s shaped every step of this project, but it’s not about me. It’s a question I want to hear answered by you. Because we all have our own “before and after.” Our own masks, turning points, and stories to tell.

So what’s your identity story?
How did you become who you are today?

I want to honour the people behind the labels and encourage others to find the nerve to reset and redirect. Your story could help someone else choose differently.

If you’d like to be featured, email annemiek@identityproject.online and I’ll send you the details.