Your home is part of who you are

That line points to a real psychological and social truth: the place you live is tightly woven into your identity, routines, memories, and sense of safety. When a home changes or is threatened, it often feels like part of the self is being rearranged too.comolakesideblog+2​

Home and identity

Environmental psychology and geography both treat “home” as a key part of personal identity, not just a roof and walls. Studies of place identity show that people build a sense of “who I am” partly from the locations where they live and the roles they play there—parent, grower, neighbor, caretaker, etc.ecologyandsociety+3​

Sense of place

Researchers talk about “sense of place” to describe the emotional and cognitive connection to particular locations. This includes:ebsco+1​

• Place identity: the way a place becomes part of your self-concept (“this is my home region; it’s who I am”).pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih+1​

• Place dependence: how well a setting supports your goals and needs—soil, water, light, quiet, community, access to work.ecologyandsociety​

Memory, objects, and routines

Homes become a “nest of identity” through memories, objects, and everyday patterns. The things you keep around you, how you arrange them, and the projects you run out of that space act as physical reminders of values, history, and aspirations.lifestyle.sustainability-directory+3​

Well-being and disruption

Empirical work links feeling “at home” to psychological well-being, security, and the ability to be fully oneself. Forced moves, disasters, or development that erases familiar landscapes often cause grief and disorientation because they damage those place-based identity anchors.ijsdr+3​

Beyond four walls

For many people “home” extends beyond the house to land, street, watershed, and community. In that broader sense, home as part of who you are includes the ecosystems you work with, the infrastructure you rely on, and the local histories you carry and contest.syracuse+3​

1. https://www.comolakesideblog.com/concept-home/home-as-the-nest-of-identity
2. https://ijsdr.org/papers/IJSDR2301093.pdf
3. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7078666/
4. https://ecologyandsociety.org/vol27/iss4/art9/
5. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08941920802178172
6. https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/geography-and-cartography/sense-place
7. https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002%2Fpan3.10112
8. https://lifestyle.sustainability-directory.com/term/home-and-identity/
9. https://www.psicothema.com/pdf/3814.pdf
10. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027249449690016X
11. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/07/youre-more-likely-to-enjoy-your-home-when-it-reflects-your-identity.html
12. https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/life-refracted/202111/the-meaning-of-home
13. https://www.syracuse.edu/stories/timur-hammond-identity-culture/
14. https://scispace.com/pdf/explaining-the-concept-of-identity-and-sense-of-place-in-531tvwixia.pdf
15. https://www.jdg.co.uk/blog-tips.html
16. https://assets.elder.org/app/uploads/2023/07/03110336/elder-sales-brochure-2023-compressed.pdf
17. https://that1painter.com/new-braunfels/
18. https://psychcentral.com/blog/the-psychology-behind-instilling-a-sense-of-home
19. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272494424000306