The hidden psychological pattern behind why strict belief systems can destroy careers and relationships

I was sitting with my morning coffee in Singapore, scrolling through Instagram DMs, when something stopped me cold. A few days earlier, I'd published an article about the research showing vegans have significantly higher rates of depression and anxiety. I expected pushback from the vegan community. What I didn't expect was what came next.

People who had nothing to do with veganism started reaching out. One person wrote: "I'm not even vegan, but your article made me realize why I've been so miserable since starting CrossFit. I can't admit to my gym friends that I'm burned out because being 'the fitness guy' is all I have left."

Another: "I've been calling myself a minimalist for three years, but I'm secretly drowning in anxiety about whether I own too much. I can't buy anything without feeling like I'm betraying who I am."

And then this one, which made me set my phone down entirely: "I left my corporate job to become a 'conscious entrepreneur' and now I'm more trapped than ever. I can't pivot my failing business because everyone knows me as the guy who escaped the rat race. What happens to my identity if I go back?"

Something clicked. This wasn't about veganism at all.

The messages kept coming—dozens of them—from people who'd never touched a plant-based diet but recognized something in my follow-up piece about the psychological cost of living by strict ethical codes. Christians questioning their faith but terrified to lose their community. People who disagreed with their political party's positions but couldn't voice dissent. Parents suffocating under the weight of parenting philosophies they'd adopted as gospel.

I realized I was looking at the hidden epidemic of our time: a generation of people who've confused temporary alignments with permanent essence, mistaking belief systems for identity itself. And it's quietly destroying us.

Through my work with The Vessel—the platform I co-created with Brazilian shaman Rudá Iandê to help people develop authentic self-knowledge—I'd seen glimpses of this pattern. But it took those Instagram messages to show me how universal it really is. We've become a society of ideological orphans, desperately adopting belief systems as surrogate families, then defending them with the fierce loyalty of abandoned children.

The mental health crisis among vegans isn't about B12 deficiencies or social pressure. It's about what happens when any beautiful choice becomes a psychological prison. And once you see this pattern, you can't unsee it everywhere.

The collapse of meaning-making structures

We're living through the collapse of traditional meaning-making structures—religion, extended family, stable communities, geographical rootedness. But instead of grieving this loss and building something new, we've been frantically grabbing onto ideologies like life rafts, then clinging to them so tightly we forget we know how to swim.

I've seen this play out countless times: someone makes a genuine, values-driven choice—going plant-based, embracing minimalism, launching a purpose-driven business—and within months, they aren't just someone who made that choice. They are that choice. When complications arise—health issues, practical constraints, changing circumstances—they can't adapt because adaptation feels like self-annihilation. "If I'm not this," they ask themselves, "then who am I?"

That question haunts me because I've asked variations of it myself. When I left my management consulting career to build Ideapod and pursue more purpose-driven work, I thought I was choosing freedom. But I'd just traded one identity prison for another. I became so invested in being the founder, the guy building something meaningful outside the traditional system, that I couldn't always honestly assess when things weren't working. Admitting failure felt like admitting I was a fraud.

Identity fusion: when beliefs become self

This is what psychologists call "identity fusion"—when the boundary between self and group dissolves, when challenging the belief feels like threatening the self. It creates a kind of anxious attachment where any flexibility feels like existential danger. You can't be wrong about anything significant because being wrong means you might not be who you think you are.

You can see this pattern everywhere once you start looking. The meditation teacher who can't admit she's depressed because spiritual people are supposed to be at peace. The zero-waste advocate who hoards glass jars in secret shame. The productivity guru whose life is chaos but who can't say so without destroying his brand—and his sense of self.

When I first began working with Rudá Iandê, he helped me understand something crucial: most suffering comes not from our circumstances, but from our rigid identification with temporary states. We think we need to be consistent, to have a solid sense of self. But what if that very solidity is what's strangling us?

Co-creating programs like "Out of the Box" with Rudá reinforced what I was seeing: the people who suffer most are often the ones with the strongest moral convictions. They care so much about doing right that they lose touch with what actually serves their wellbeing. They become more committed to the purity of their positions than to the effectiveness of their choices.

How identity fusion fractures our collective problem-solving

This pattern isn't just creating individual misery—it's fracturing our collective ability to solve problems. When your identity depends on being "the environmentalist" or "the conservative" or "the progressive," you become psychologically invested in being right rather than getting things right. You can't adapt your strategies based on evidence because your strategies have become you.

Look at our political discourse. People can't change their minds about anything significant without feeling like they're committing intellectual suicide. Climate activists can't acknowledge when certain approaches aren't working. Business leaders can't pivot failing strategies. Parents can't adjust philosophies that aren't serving their families. We've lost the capacity for independent thinking because we've confused intellectual positions with personal essence.

A different approach: fluid integrity

But there's another way.

I call it "fluid integrity"—the capacity to hold your values deeply enough that you're not blown around by every cultural wind, yet lightly enough that you can evolve them without losing yourself. It means understanding that you are the space in which beliefs arise and pass away, not the beliefs themselves.

Someone with fluid integrity might remain deeply committed to reducing animal suffering while being honest about personal health struggles. They might care passionately about environmental protection while being willing to question which specific approaches work best. They hold their convictions as tools for engaging with reality, not as monuments to their moral worth.

This isn't about becoming wishy-washy or abandoning your principles. It's about recognizing the difference between commitment and attachment. Commitment serves your values; attachment serves your ego's need for certainty. Commitment adapts to circumstances; attachment defends against them.

I think about the people who've reached out after reading my veganism pieces—the ones who found a way through. One person had been plant-based for five years and loved it, until they developed severe anemia that wasn't responding to supplementation. Instead of quietly adding animal products and suffering in shame, they posted honestly in their community about needing to temporarily include some fish for health reasons. "I'm still committed to minimizing animal suffering," they wrote, "and right now that includes not letting my own body fall apart."

Some people in that community were furious. But many more were relieved. Because they'd been suffering in silence too, afraid that honesty would cost them not just their community, but their sense of self.

Moving from identity to integrity

Here's what I've come to believe after years of building platforms like Ideapod and The Vessel, and after spending time in cities and cultures all over the world—from Melbourne to London to New York to Bangkok to Singapore: the healthiest people aren't the ones with the strongest identities. They're the ones with the lightest grip on identity itself.

They can be passionately committed to a cause without making it the load-bearing wall of their psyche. They can change their minds publicly without collapsing. They can hold paradox and nuance without needing the false comfort of rigid consistency.

The vegan depression research isn't really about veganism. It's about what happens when we demand that our belief systems carry the weight of our identity. No philosophy, no diet, no political position, no spiritual practice was ever designed to answer the question "Who am I?"

That question has to be answered from somewhere deeper—somewhere that doesn't shift every time the evidence changes or the community disapproves.

If you're reading this and recognizing yourself—if you've been quietly suffering because you can't reconcile your lived experience with the identity you've constructed—please know that letting go isn't betrayal. It's growth. The most courageous thing you can do isn't to hold your position more tightly. It's to hold yourself more gently.

You are not your beliefs. You are the one who believes. And that self—the curious, evolving, sometimes contradictory self—is worth protecting more than any ideology ever could be.