perceive and comprehending the nature and significance of sound, forms, or any kind of expression by oneself or another. Understanding yourself is not a static destination; it is an active excavation. It is the radical act of turning down the world's noise to listen to the quiet, complex echoes living inside your own ribs.

We spend our whole lives trying to read everyone else, like human hieroglyphics. Translating the weather of a friend’s text, searching for fault lines in a lover's sigh, becoming fluent in the language of approval. And then we wonder why we are strangers in our own skin. – Poets.org

If a man has to become a nobody in order to survive, if he has to remain permanently invisible, he will have no identity, will never become socially integrated nor will he enjoy mental health. − Joseba Achotegui

You ask me my name. I shall tell you. My name is nobody and nobody is what everyone calls me (Odyssey, Song IX, 360).

Sometimes my clients report to me that they are nobody, or that they feel like nobody. As a child, their parents would say something like, "Who do you think you are? or "you're nobody." The people that have felt this way also experience many of the following symptoms: stress, depressed mood, anxiety, fear, tension, irritability and frustration, self-deprecating thoughts, ruminations of worthlessness, body aches and pains, and a confusing fatigue. They come to depth psychotherapy to discover their own identity, who they are in the world as a complete and whole individual such that they feel they are not missing any parts and aspects of themselves.

Conversely 

The poet Emily Dickinson describes an opposite point of view in her poem. She values her privacy. Her experience of being unrecognized, a nobody, gave her a spiritual and soulful quietude to contemplate and write. She did not want to be like a frog croaking about identity by always keeping a public profile that reminds everyone that one is somebody. To become somebody is to know who you are in and of yourself, and your place in the world.

I’m Nobody! Who are you?

Are you-Nobody-too?

Then there’s a pair of us!

Don’t tell they’d advertise- you know!

How dreary-to-be-Somebody!

How public- like a frog-

To tell one’s name-the livelong June-

To an admiring Bog! - Emily Dickinson

Finding Myself – A Poem About the Journey of Self Discovery

The search for truth keeps me
Trekking across uncharted lands
And diving under unventured seas
Where I find myself alone,
Without the comfort of familiarity.

I have walked out onto the plank too far
To not take the plunge -
Bound myself in the shackles of curiosity
And distanced myself from past experiences
And previous peers.
I was once a jolly pirate,
But am now the prisoner
They push overboard and feed to the sharks.

But I must listen to the call of my heart -
The call that won't let me live content
Following worn paths walked by countless others,
Taking the road society says leads to success.
I wish it wasn't so...
It would be much easier
If I could distract myself from meaning,
From searching for the answers to this string of thoughts
Unraveling in my mind, but I cannot.

I can't look upon the forest
In the midst of spring,
Watch the birds rest atop
The branches at the break of dawn,
Or feel the wind breathe across my face
Without the taste of some eternal truth
Lingering on the tip of my tongue,
Reminding me of a magic I felt
During days when I was young,
Some glorious mystery that awakens
My taste buds and makes them yearn for more.

I am a seeker,
Seeking beauty, seeking truth.
And to deny myself the journey of self discovery
For the sake of comfort
Is a travesty of my heart
And of the one who created it.

It's never easy to abandon the crowds,
Leave the pack,
And become a lone wolf,
But by keeping the status quo
You'll never find the piece of yourself
You've been missing all your life -
The piece of you that you've been afraid to acknowledge,
The piece of you that connects you to your destiny,
The piece of your puzzle that fits perfectly into place
Forming a beautiful portrait,
And the piece of you that makes you come alive.

It's time.
You're ready.
Share the real you
With the world.  -Poem Written by Justin Farley