My Oh My

Photo by Sandra Seitamaa

A tiny, seemingly innocent word, “my”—yet it carries quite a meaning.
When I close my eyes and reflect on the ways I use this word, I notice the range of experience it offers. The most obvious, “my” often evokes a sense of mine — ownership, possession, attachment. But sometimes I notice a sense of identity, sometimes pride, sometimes love, and other times, neutral.

Notice the different feelings we experience with these examples: my house, my money, my phone, my family, my personality, my anxiety, my body, my career, my dreams, my country, my gender, my problem, my divorce, my cooking.

For a while now, I’ve been trying to be more mindful of when I use this word.
I’d sometimes ask myself:

• What do I feel by making this mine?
• Is it truly mine?
• Do I want it to be mine?
• Am I subconsciously reinforcing or attaching myself to it by prefixing it with “my”?
• How much do I want to attach myself to it?
• How much longer do I want to carry this?

And throughout this awareness, I let go of quite a few “my”-s.

I’ve observed that people often subconsciously identify with their circumstances, illnesses, or diagnoses. Especially long-term or chronic ones: my anxiety, my depression, my long COVID, my ADHD, my chronic fatigue. I was no exception. For a long time, I used the phrase my depression or my anxiety when I referred to them. The line between owning it as a healthy self-acceptance vs limiting over-identification can be blurry. Once I realized the relationship I was indirectly creating with them by using “my”, I decided that they were not mine and that I didn’t want to be identified by them.

So if I don’t want it, how can I stop owning it? I started creating distance by removing “my” or using “the” instead. It’s a small shift, swapping one tiny word with another, which gave me distance and objectivity from certain things. In some cases, it’s also a reminder that something isn’t who I am, and it’s just something I’m experiencing for a moment.

Of course, some “my”-s are dear to my heart.
My mother. My brothers. My dog. 😊
These are the “my”-s I gladly keep.

So I invite you to feel for yourself, as you move throughout your day, notice when you use the word “my”.

Which feelings come up?
How do you relate to that feeling and to the thing it’s connected to?
Are there maybe some of those “my”-s that you’d like to let go?
How would you create some distance and objectivity from it?