psychological identity loss

The loss of the psychological identity 

Brad is a very happy and successful person. He earns a big salary, His wife loves him and he has accomplished most of what he wanted to achieve in life. Everything in Brad’s life was perfect and this was reflected in the way he walks,talks and in his confident attitude.
One day while he was happily driving back his way to home he received a phone call from his wife who told him “Brad, I don't want you in my life anymore. I know that this is a surprise for you but it's my final decision.”
Brad's wife hung up and he suddenly felt worthless. He felt that all of his confidence and happiness had been lost. Ever since that day Brad became an unhappy, desperate and a bad-tempered person.
What happened to Brad? What happened to his confident and strong character?
What happened is that his wife's call made him lose his psychological identity.

What is a psychological identity

Identity or psychological identity is your capacity for self-reflection and awareness. People usually acquire their identities through the tasks they do and the objects they identify themselves with. For example, if you asked someone “who are you?” and he replied saying “I am the restaurant’s chef“, then this person identities himself with his job and thinks of himself as the chef instead of Robin or Tom.
Here are some examples of people identifying with other objects or other people in life:

• Identity with a person: Children who try to imitate their parents and dress like them are doing so because they are attempting to identify with their parents.
• Identifying with a job: A person who proudly speaks of his profession and answers the question of “Who are you?” with his job’s title is a person who is identifying himself with his job.
• Identifying with an object: A person who proudly drives his big car may be identifying with his car. He is showing off just to show that he is rich but because he thinks of himself as the “Expensive Car Owner”. This is usually the same person whom you will find him walking with his head down when he suffers from financial crisis that forces him to replace his car with a smaller one. This happens because he identified himself with his car and so when the car was gone he found himself with no psychological identity. He used to be the "Expensive Car Owner", now he is nothing.