It’s not a phase if you keep choosing it.

Calling something a phase is a way of saying it will pass without your involvement. Some things do. Others turn out to be preferences you keep selecting, year after year, which makes them part of how you actually live rather than a temporary condition. The test is not how long it has lasted but whether you would choose it again today.

Take something people keep describing as temporary about you and ask whether you would pick it again. If the answer is yes, stop apologizing for it as a stage. If the answer is no, notice that too, and see what you are actually choosing instead.