Identity in crisis

Is an identity crisis a confusion about the nature of one’s identity, or the nature of identity itself? A confusion over which characteristics that construct an identity are real or true, or the realisation that identity is a word to describe the collation of these characteristics: characteristics that would float otherwise unattached? In other words, a realisation that nothing but a word holds all these characteristics together?

Does an identity crisis happen upon the understanding that, rather like a tree falling silently if unobserved, without people around us to ascribe us certain characteristics – ‘you are this and you are that’ – we have nothing left with which to scrape an identity together? I suppose that everyone must realise at some point in their lives that we do not get to define ourselves.