How do I find confidence in identity?
October 6, 2016 8:41 PM Subscribe
This is a super deep question about identity and self-esteem and social anxiety but it's something that I can't stop thinking or understanding lately and I feel like the answer is what I need to achieve some sort of happiness or stability in my life.
Background: I've struggled with depression and anxiety for a long time. I had some difficulties growing up with my mom, whenever I would express myself she could be downright mean. I don't really want to get into it too much, but basically I felt I could never quite be myself around her and when I was ever honest about something it would turn explosive and result in me having panic attacks or feeling suicidal and her verbally attacking me.
I struggle with a lot of social anxiety. When I'm around people I feel like I repel them. Let me clarify: I have a lot of people that I know like me, and joke around with me and compliment me, but when it comes to having that real connection where I feel comfortable and they feel comfortable, I suck at that. We'll be in a group having fun, and then everyone will leave except me and another person and I feel like oh shit I have to talk to this person now. And I feel like I will try to be conversational but it gets awkward. Before I think I wanted to please everyone and now I'm trying to be more true to myself but I don't know what exactly that looks like. Sometimes I think that maybe I analyze things too much and feel uncomfortable around people unless we are in a group setting, then I am totally comfortable. I feel like I get walls or barrier feelings with people quite easily and start questioning if they are right for me, and I wonder if that is because I just feel so uncomfortable with myself.
Is Identity something that you create, that you tell yourself I am going to be like X, and then you try really hard to act like that all the time? Or do you find more securement in listening to your feelings and acting how you feel (unless it's harming someone else)? I feel like nothing I do feels right.
Another example, I've been trying online dating for the past few months, and often when I go on a first date, I will feel confident and conversational in the beginning but then slowly I feel this pressure build in my head and I feel like as they are talking to me, what they are saying is just words and they almost have no meaning to me. I feel like I go on autopilot of just saying generic "oh that's cool" or oh gross or lame things like that. I don't feel any emotional connection to what they are saying and can add pieces of conversation but don't feel emotionally there, I feel like I'm forcing every inch of my being to say things.
Why do I feel like this? I also think a lot about how I portray myself or how I want to portray myself and find myself torn between different identities. Like I could be super nice, or I could be more reserved and quiet but strong. Sometimes i want to be really goofy but then I hold back from that cause I don't know if that's how I want people to see me either. I really can't decide how I want to be and it's awful. I think maybe I should just never think about stuff like this anymore and just change my thoughts as soon as I start questioning about identity and stuff like this and just think about something else or something positive. Would that be helpful to me? I feel so weird for thinking about things like this. I just wish so badly to connect to someone and to feel comfortable with myself. Just don't know if the way to get there is to very strictly change my mindset, or to just go with the flow and let whatever comes out come out.
Background: I've struggled with depression and anxiety for a long time. I had some difficulties growing up with my mom, whenever I would express myself she could be downright mean. I don't really want to get into it too much, but basically I felt I could never quite be myself around her and when I was ever honest about something it would turn explosive and result in me having panic attacks or feeling suicidal and her verbally attacking me.
I struggle with a lot of social anxiety. When I'm around people I feel like I repel them. Let me clarify: I have a lot of people that I know like me, and joke around with me and compliment me, but when it comes to having that real connection where I feel comfortable and they feel comfortable, I suck at that. We'll be in a group having fun, and then everyone will leave except me and another person and I feel like oh shit I have to talk to this person now. And I feel like I will try to be conversational but it gets awkward. Before I think I wanted to please everyone and now I'm trying to be more true to myself but I don't know what exactly that looks like. Sometimes I think that maybe I analyze things too much and feel uncomfortable around people unless we are in a group setting, then I am totally comfortable. I feel like I get walls or barrier feelings with people quite easily and start questioning if they are right for me, and I wonder if that is because I just feel so uncomfortable with myself.
Is Identity something that you create, that you tell yourself I am going to be like X, and then you try really hard to act like that all the time? Or do you find more securement in listening to your feelings and acting how you feel (unless it's harming someone else)? I feel like nothing I do feels right.
Another example, I've been trying online dating for the past few months, and often when I go on a first date, I will feel confident and conversational in the beginning but then slowly I feel this pressure build in my head and I feel like as they are talking to me, what they are saying is just words and they almost have no meaning to me. I feel like I go on autopilot of just saying generic "oh that's cool" or oh gross or lame things like that. I don't feel any emotional connection to what they are saying and can add pieces of conversation but don't feel emotionally there, I feel like I'm forcing every inch of my being to say things.
Why do I feel like this? I also think a lot about how I portray myself or how I want to portray myself and find myself torn between different identities. Like I could be super nice, or I could be more reserved and quiet but strong. Sometimes i want to be really goofy but then I hold back from that cause I don't know if that's how I want people to see me either. I really can't decide how I want to be and it's awful. I think maybe I should just never think about stuff like this anymore and just change my thoughts as soon as I start questioning about identity and stuff like this and just think about something else or something positive. Would that be helpful to me? I feel so weird for thinking about things like this. I just wish so badly to connect to someone and to feel comfortable with myself. Just don't know if the way to get there is to very strictly change my mindset, or to just go with the flow and let whatever comes out come out.
Best answer: You're right, this is a really deep, and broad, question. But, some hints:
1. Feel good at something. Become competent and skilled. This can mean at your job, or at a hobby. This leads to being able to explain, coach, lead. This nearly always results in confidence and a sense of being needed and useful. Doesn't really matter what you're good at. Pick anything.
2. Be funny. People like funny people. Learn to tell funny stories from your life, pick up and memorize a few good jokes. Next time it's just you and a stranger in that awkward moment, try to make them laugh.
3. Be compassionate and giving. This is seriously exhausting and can be dangerous if you haven't learned to turn it on and off and set strong boundaries, BUT it definitely attracts people like flies to shit. There are so many needy people who will respond to kindness, lending a favor, giving them something. They'll definitely like you - but they may end up using you a bit. Nonetheless, this does work to give you an "in" and sometimes is reciprocated.
4. Be interested. Make them feel really special and good. Ask them questions. Talk about them. Pretend you're a psychologist, journalist, or writer. Fake it.
People who ask this question almost always want the answer to be something like "be smart" or "be cool" or "just click" but all of those answers are a total crap pipe dream and the sooner you give up your mental fantasy of walking in like the Fonz and being liked by all, the better. Won't happen. Shit takes work and energy. Might happen if you were in the 1% of people who are extraordinarily beautiful or something, but otherwise- nope, you gotta work for it like the rest of us. Sorry this answer is not fun or easy.
Identity is kind of a worthless concept, IMO. It changes all the time. It is both acting and "just being natural" and encompasses both of those things.
Making friends takes effort, regardless of "identity."
posted by stockpuppet at 9:25 PM on October 6, 2016 [24 favorites]
1. Feel good at something. Become competent and skilled. This can mean at your job, or at a hobby. This leads to being able to explain, coach, lead. This nearly always results in confidence and a sense of being needed and useful. Doesn't really matter what you're good at. Pick anything.
2. Be funny. People like funny people. Learn to tell funny stories from your life, pick up and memorize a few good jokes. Next time it's just you and a stranger in that awkward moment, try to make them laugh.
3. Be compassionate and giving. This is seriously exhausting and can be dangerous if you haven't learned to turn it on and off and set strong boundaries, BUT it definitely attracts people like flies to shit. There are so many needy people who will respond to kindness, lending a favor, giving them something. They'll definitely like you - but they may end up using you a bit. Nonetheless, this does work to give you an "in" and sometimes is reciprocated.
4. Be interested. Make them feel really special and good. Ask them questions. Talk about them. Pretend you're a psychologist, journalist, or writer. Fake it.
People who ask this question almost always want the answer to be something like "be smart" or "be cool" or "just click" but all of those answers are a total crap pipe dream and the sooner you give up your mental fantasy of walking in like the Fonz and being liked by all, the better. Won't happen. Shit takes work and energy. Might happen if you were in the 1% of people who are extraordinarily beautiful or something, but otherwise- nope, you gotta work for it like the rest of us. Sorry this answer is not fun or easy.
Identity is kind of a worthless concept, IMO. It changes all the time. It is both acting and "just being natural" and encompasses both of those things.
Making friends takes effort, regardless of "identity."
posted by stockpuppet at 9:25 PM on October 6, 2016 [24 favorites]
Oh and also? Number one hint, I can't believe I left this out. Stop thinking about yourself. Really think about the other person, or some external topic.
posted by stockpuppet at 9:27 PM on October 6, 2016 [10 favorites]
posted by stockpuppet at 9:27 PM on October 6, 2016 [10 favorites]
Best answer: I have found a curious paradox around questions about identity, particularly self-identity: the more you think about it, the less you know what it is.
Your whole question is full of (good) abstract, deep, questions, but though I spent an ungodly number of years agonising over these kinds of exact questions, I never felt they really helped me figure out me. The only thing that has done that is doing things, observing myself non-judgmentally while doing them -- do I like this? do I seem to be good at this? and most importantly how does this make me feel? -- and then adjusting.
I suspect from your question that you struggle with is the non-judgmental part, but you seriously won't be able to figure out who you are (much less have confidence in who that is!) if you are second-guessing and judging yourself for every action you take and every thought you have. You're letting "should" get in the way of "is."
I know this is all easy to say and hard to do, particularly for those of us who are prone to overanalysis and self-judgment. But you really can't think yourself into an answer to this one.
posted by forza at 10:47 PM on October 6, 2016 [10 favorites]
Your whole question is full of (good) abstract, deep, questions, but though I spent an ungodly number of years agonising over these kinds of exact questions, I never felt they really helped me figure out me. The only thing that has done that is doing things, observing myself non-judgmentally while doing them -- do I like this? do I seem to be good at this? and most importantly how does this make me feel? -- and then adjusting.
I suspect from your question that you struggle with is the non-judgmental part, but you seriously won't be able to figure out who you are (much less have confidence in who that is!) if you are second-guessing and judging yourself for every action you take and every thought you have. You're letting "should" get in the way of "is."
I know this is all easy to say and hard to do, particularly for those of us who are prone to overanalysis and self-judgment. But you really can't think yourself into an answer to this one.
posted by forza at 10:47 PM on October 6, 2016 [10 favorites]
There are two questions here. One is, if you'll permit me to rephrase, how can you accept your own natural way of being in the world even when it doesn't gibe with what other people expect? The second question is, how can you fake it with people that you don't really like but must get along with for some reason? I would sit down and carefully decide which one of these questions you are going to try to answer first, because one is very hard and one is relatively easy.
posted by deathpanels at 5:34 AM on October 7, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by deathpanels at 5:34 AM on October 7, 2016 [1 favorite]
Best answer: I know you don't want to get into how your mother's behaviour has effected you, but the truth is that her behavoir might have effected EVERYTHING about how you see yourself.
I am NOT IN ANY WAY diagnosing your mother — I am speaking about my own experiences right now. But people who grow up with personality disordered parents (and I did — Borderline, in case you're wondering) grow up in a situation in which their parents see the child as an extension of the parent's own personality. PD parents and kids start to experience a rift once the kid gets old enough to start expressing their own personality, usually around the early teenage years. People who grow up with PD parents also tend to have a lot of social anxiety because we were always walking on eggshells trying to predict of avoid an explosive reaction from our parents.
I suspect that having your mother continuously shut down your self-expression means you had no way of "trying on" different identities as a kid to see which one resonates with you the most.
In some ways I think personality is pretty set. Like, I'm a pretty naturally gregarious, loud and outspoken person. This is not a culturally desirable trait in women, and as a kid I had a lot of adults try to shut down that aspect of my personality. I remember wishing, as a young girl, that I was more quiet and mysterious because I had people telling me ALL THE TIME that that was what women should be like. When I tried to emulate this kind of passive personality I would become profoundly depressed. Not just depressed, by REPRESSED. Even as an adult, I went through an educational program not all that dissimular from bootcamp where we were stripped down to our essence in an effort to be "rebuilt" into what your instructors wanted. This was one of the most anxiety-ridden and depressing periods of my life. And, I came out of that period 100% certain that my true self-expression is smartassy, opnionated, outgoing and open, regardless of what my teachers wanted me to act like. I was not happy being anything else. And you know what? My personality is really not a lot of people's cup of tea. But I don't care, because to try to be anything other that who I am makes me profoundly unhappy.
That is not to say that you can't change aspects of yourself. The same program I mention above also taught me that it was possible to become a person who responds instead of reacts. That it's possible to let silence fill a room, even if that's awkward, instead of needing to fill the awkwardness with the sound of my own voice. That it's possible for me to be who I am while still making space for others to be who they are, even if that looks completely different from me.
I feel like teenagers try on a lot of roles and personalities as a way of uncovering the likes and ways of expression that really resonate with them. It's a trail-and-error process. It sounds like you missed out on that, so maybe it's time to start doing it now. You do that by putting yourself out there, by trying new things to see what you like and don't like about yourself. By stepping outside of your comfort zone and seeing how you respond. Practice really defining how you feel in certain situations (since you weren't allowed to express opinions as a kid). You might say something like — this makes me feel uncomfortable. Or, I'm nervous about this event but also curious. Try to get REALLY GOOD at naming how you feel.
If you aren't ready for therapy yet, you might consider journaling about your experiences as a way to distill how you feel. That's how you determine what kinds of things you value as a person, and thus, what kind of person you want to be.
posted by Brittanie at 6:25 AM on October 7, 2016 [10 favorites]
I am NOT IN ANY WAY diagnosing your mother — I am speaking about my own experiences right now. But people who grow up with personality disordered parents (and I did — Borderline, in case you're wondering) grow up in a situation in which their parents see the child as an extension of the parent's own personality. PD parents and kids start to experience a rift once the kid gets old enough to start expressing their own personality, usually around the early teenage years. People who grow up with PD parents also tend to have a lot of social anxiety because we were always walking on eggshells trying to predict of avoid an explosive reaction from our parents.
I suspect that having your mother continuously shut down your self-expression means you had no way of "trying on" different identities as a kid to see which one resonates with you the most.
In some ways I think personality is pretty set. Like, I'm a pretty naturally gregarious, loud and outspoken person. This is not a culturally desirable trait in women, and as a kid I had a lot of adults try to shut down that aspect of my personality. I remember wishing, as a young girl, that I was more quiet and mysterious because I had people telling me ALL THE TIME that that was what women should be like. When I tried to emulate this kind of passive personality I would become profoundly depressed. Not just depressed, by REPRESSED. Even as an adult, I went through an educational program not all that dissimular from bootcamp where we were stripped down to our essence in an effort to be "rebuilt" into what your instructors wanted. This was one of the most anxiety-ridden and depressing periods of my life. And, I came out of that period 100% certain that my true self-expression is smartassy, opnionated, outgoing and open, regardless of what my teachers wanted me to act like. I was not happy being anything else. And you know what? My personality is really not a lot of people's cup of tea. But I don't care, because to try to be anything other that who I am makes me profoundly unhappy.
That is not to say that you can't change aspects of yourself. The same program I mention above also taught me that it was possible to become a person who responds instead of reacts. That it's possible to let silence fill a room, even if that's awkward, instead of needing to fill the awkwardness with the sound of my own voice. That it's possible for me to be who I am while still making space for others to be who they are, even if that looks completely different from me.
I feel like teenagers try on a lot of roles and personalities as a way of uncovering the likes and ways of expression that really resonate with them. It's a trail-and-error process. It sounds like you missed out on that, so maybe it's time to start doing it now. You do that by putting yourself out there, by trying new things to see what you like and don't like about yourself. By stepping outside of your comfort zone and seeing how you respond. Practice really defining how you feel in certain situations (since you weren't allowed to express opinions as a kid). You might say something like — this makes me feel uncomfortable. Or, I'm nervous about this event but also curious. Try to get REALLY GOOD at naming how you feel.
If you aren't ready for therapy yet, you might consider journaling about your experiences as a way to distill how you feel. That's how you determine what kinds of things you value as a person, and thus, what kind of person you want to be.
posted by Brittanie at 6:25 AM on October 7, 2016 [10 favorites]
I'll just speak to one small part of your question in case it helps.
often when I go on a first date, I will feel confident and conversational in the beginning but then slowly I feel this pressure build in my head and I feel like as they are talking to me, what they are saying is just words and they almost have no meaning to me. I feel like I go on autopilot of just saying generic "oh that's cool" or oh gross or lame things like that. I don't feel any emotional connection to what they are saying and can add pieces of conversation but don't feel emotionally there, I feel like I'm forcing every inch of my being to say things.
FWIW, I'm someone who generally feels reasonably socially at ease (or if I don't can bluff my way through), but this describes almost every single first date I've been on while internet dating. Meeting a complete stranger and expecting yourselves to talk one-to-one for a couple of hours is difficult. So I suggest you ring-fence these particular experiences and don't use them as a metric of your more general social abilities.
Oh, and saying "oh that's cool" and "oh gross" isn't lame at all. It's normal conversation. Give yourself a break.
posted by penguin pie at 6:54 AM on October 7, 2016 [3 favorites]
often when I go on a first date, I will feel confident and conversational in the beginning but then slowly I feel this pressure build in my head and I feel like as they are talking to me, what they are saying is just words and they almost have no meaning to me. I feel like I go on autopilot of just saying generic "oh that's cool" or oh gross or lame things like that. I don't feel any emotional connection to what they are saying and can add pieces of conversation but don't feel emotionally there, I feel like I'm forcing every inch of my being to say things.
FWIW, I'm someone who generally feels reasonably socially at ease (or if I don't can bluff my way through), but this describes almost every single first date I've been on while internet dating. Meeting a complete stranger and expecting yourselves to talk one-to-one for a couple of hours is difficult. So I suggest you ring-fence these particular experiences and don't use them as a metric of your more general social abilities.
Oh, and saying "oh that's cool" and "oh gross" isn't lame at all. It's normal conversation. Give yourself a break.
posted by penguin pie at 6:54 AM on October 7, 2016 [3 favorites]
Best answer: Aw. I totally relate to this question, and I'm here to tell you that it gets better! I had a lot of similar thoughts throughout my early/mid twenties (I'm 29 now), and oddly, lately, just as everyone on Ask Metafilter said they would, the thoughts just sort of... quieted down in the last year or so. To the point where I figured it must be something I did, because you don't just get free peace of mind for nothing, right? But so many people report it that I think they must be right, and this stuff just magically starts to bug you less as you approach 30.
But that doesn't help you right now. So let me respond to a few things from your question:
Is Identity something that you create, that you tell yourself I am going to be like X, and then you try really hard to act like that all the time?
Nooooooo!
Or do you find more securement in listening to your feelings and acting how you feel (unless it's harming someone else)?
Yup, this is it. But the problem is learning how to listen to your feelings, which isn't necessarily easy!
I feel like nothing I do feels right.
I'm going to venture a guess as to why this is: You're still figuring out who you are, and there are a lot of possibilities. You might enjoy being goofy in the moment, but then you think, wait, what if I want to be the serious person? And then you feel weird and like you have to make a big decision. And if you're having this thought process for everything you do and every social interaction you have, man is that exhausting! I think maybe why it gets easier around 30 is that you have the entire previous decade to look back on and say, okay, maybe I thought I was going to be the super compassionate wonderful person and so I volunteer a lot and have been doing it long enough that that's part of my identity, but I also almost always choose to make the sarcastic comment so I am also the sarcastic person, and you know, that's okay. You have past evidence to go on, and there might still be things you want for yourself (I want to be more patient, for example) but being the sarcastic food bank volunteer has got you to an okay place so it's like, why fight it? In other words: Eventually, you'll be able to look at yourself and a pattern will emerge. You're not choosing your identity with each and every action you take, so hopefully you can take some of that pressure off!
Also: For figuring this out I recommend doing instead of thinking. If you're like me you'll still overthink everything, but it's a lot harder to overthink when you're learning a new language or hiking or teaching yourself to knit socks. Try to concentrate on action. I'm not recommending this, but in case it helps to hear how someone else did it, I think the very beginning of when I started to learn about myself and who I was was when I moved to Japan when I was 23. Being in a completely new setting and culture, meeting new people, being newly broken up with my college boyfriend, learning a new language, and simple things like learning to deal with a real winter for the first time didn't leave a lot of time for ruminating (although I still managed, because I'm an overthinker), and after a couple of years I realized that I felt self-reliant and strong. (Ditto when I returned from Japan and learned to stick with a job that was sometimes boring and to be patient about life, which was a very different type of adventure that's a lot less impressive to other people, but I still learned a lot about myself.) Call it the Calvin's Dad principle: difficult things build character.
I also recommend journaling, although it's important to know that journaling is just processing all the knowledge you've gained about yourself by doing other stuff. You still have to do the stuff to have anything to process. But it's a nice way to reflect that doesn't tend to lead to anxiety spirals the way just thinking about stuff does. It helps to have it out on the page.
I have a lot of people that I know like me, and joke around with me and compliment me, but when it comes to having that real connection where I feel comfortable and they feel comfortable, I suck at that. We'll be in a group having fun, and then everyone will leave except me and another person and I feel like oh shit I have to talk to this person now. And I feel like I will try to be conversational but it gets awkward.
Man if this is a bad thing then I am in serious trouble. More seriously: After 7-8 years of trying to make post-college friendships (which is notoriously tough), I've learned that not only will not everyone like you, but having that real, deep connection with someone is really incredibly rare. People are fucking weird, and if you're able to stop worrying what they think of you, you might realize that you don't actually like very many of them. That sounds really cynical and I don't mean it to be; people can also be lovely! But it's totally fine if you don't get along with everyone you meet, or even 25 percent of them. Be kind and polite, of course, but the kind of thing you're describing, the easy conversation, deep connection, never run out of things to talk about kind of relationship - that's really quite special and doesn't come along every day.
Anyway, just adding to the chorus of people saying: you're perfectly normal!
posted by sunset in snow country at 7:48 AM on October 7, 2016 [6 favorites]
But that doesn't help you right now. So let me respond to a few things from your question:
Is Identity something that you create, that you tell yourself I am going to be like X, and then you try really hard to act like that all the time?
Nooooooo!
Or do you find more securement in listening to your feelings and acting how you feel (unless it's harming someone else)?
Yup, this is it. But the problem is learning how to listen to your feelings, which isn't necessarily easy!
I feel like nothing I do feels right.
I'm going to venture a guess as to why this is: You're still figuring out who you are, and there are a lot of possibilities. You might enjoy being goofy in the moment, but then you think, wait, what if I want to be the serious person? And then you feel weird and like you have to make a big decision. And if you're having this thought process for everything you do and every social interaction you have, man is that exhausting! I think maybe why it gets easier around 30 is that you have the entire previous decade to look back on and say, okay, maybe I thought I was going to be the super compassionate wonderful person and so I volunteer a lot and have been doing it long enough that that's part of my identity, but I also almost always choose to make the sarcastic comment so I am also the sarcastic person, and you know, that's okay. You have past evidence to go on, and there might still be things you want for yourself (I want to be more patient, for example) but being the sarcastic food bank volunteer has got you to an okay place so it's like, why fight it? In other words: Eventually, you'll be able to look at yourself and a pattern will emerge. You're not choosing your identity with each and every action you take, so hopefully you can take some of that pressure off!
Also: For figuring this out I recommend doing instead of thinking. If you're like me you'll still overthink everything, but it's a lot harder to overthink when you're learning a new language or hiking or teaching yourself to knit socks. Try to concentrate on action. I'm not recommending this, but in case it helps to hear how someone else did it, I think the very beginning of when I started to learn about myself and who I was was when I moved to Japan when I was 23. Being in a completely new setting and culture, meeting new people, being newly broken up with my college boyfriend, learning a new language, and simple things like learning to deal with a real winter for the first time didn't leave a lot of time for ruminating (although I still managed, because I'm an overthinker), and after a couple of years I realized that I felt self-reliant and strong. (Ditto when I returned from Japan and learned to stick with a job that was sometimes boring and to be patient about life, which was a very different type of adventure that's a lot less impressive to other people, but I still learned a lot about myself.) Call it the Calvin's Dad principle: difficult things build character.
I also recommend journaling, although it's important to know that journaling is just processing all the knowledge you've gained about yourself by doing other stuff. You still have to do the stuff to have anything to process. But it's a nice way to reflect that doesn't tend to lead to anxiety spirals the way just thinking about stuff does. It helps to have it out on the page.
I have a lot of people that I know like me, and joke around with me and compliment me, but when it comes to having that real connection where I feel comfortable and they feel comfortable, I suck at that. We'll be in a group having fun, and then everyone will leave except me and another person and I feel like oh shit I have to talk to this person now. And I feel like I will try to be conversational but it gets awkward.
Man if this is a bad thing then I am in serious trouble. More seriously: After 7-8 years of trying to make post-college friendships (which is notoriously tough), I've learned that not only will not everyone like you, but having that real, deep connection with someone is really incredibly rare. People are fucking weird, and if you're able to stop worrying what they think of you, you might realize that you don't actually like very many of them. That sounds really cynical and I don't mean it to be; people can also be lovely! But it's totally fine if you don't get along with everyone you meet, or even 25 percent of them. Be kind and polite, of course, but the kind of thing you're describing, the easy conversation, deep connection, never run out of things to talk about kind of relationship - that's really quite special and doesn't come along every day.
Anyway, just adding to the chorus of people saying: you're perfectly normal!
posted by sunset in snow country at 7:48 AM on October 7, 2016 [6 favorites]
Somewhat similarly, I used to be deeply troubled by the "realization" that I had no personality. That I would just do what other people wanted to do, I had no real opinions or default behaviors.
Now I see this was all part and parcel with my anxiety and depression and not knowing my own self. Living my own life (muddling forward with career, etc) helped, journaling helped, but the single thing that helped the most was therapy. I learned that of Course I have a personality (one that tends toward people-pleasing, like you, but which also has other traits). I started identifying things I wanted (a romantic partnership, to own my own home, a better job), and working toward them. My therapist and I would talk about what caused me pain in ongoing relationships with family and friends. And throughout it all, I started to learn that knowing what I needed and wanted actually made things Less awkward most of the time, because I could be secure in that knowledge and interested in others.
I'm not magically un-awkward all of the time now, or never anxious. But therapy helped me to better cope, to shrug off the awkward moments, and to get to the point where I'm living my life, not ruminating about who I am. There are a lot of therapists out there, if you've had bad luck in the past I encourage you to try to find someone new. It took me more than one try to find a good fit, but it's made all of the difference.
posted by ldthomps at 8:05 AM on October 7, 2016 [2 favorites]
Now I see this was all part and parcel with my anxiety and depression and not knowing my own self. Living my own life (muddling forward with career, etc) helped, journaling helped, but the single thing that helped the most was therapy. I learned that of Course I have a personality (one that tends toward people-pleasing, like you, but which also has other traits). I started identifying things I wanted (a romantic partnership, to own my own home, a better job), and working toward them. My therapist and I would talk about what caused me pain in ongoing relationships with family and friends. And throughout it all, I started to learn that knowing what I needed and wanted actually made things Less awkward most of the time, because I could be secure in that knowledge and interested in others.
I'm not magically un-awkward all of the time now, or never anxious. But therapy helped me to better cope, to shrug off the awkward moments, and to get to the point where I'm living my life, not ruminating about who I am. There are a lot of therapists out there, if you've had bad luck in the past I encourage you to try to find someone new. It took me more than one try to find a good fit, but it's made all of the difference.
posted by ldthomps at 8:05 AM on October 7, 2016 [2 favorites]
Also, (and I'm cringing at my typos above) most people are not only one thing all the time. It's possible to be both goofy and reserved at different times, and have both of those things be accurate representations of who you truly are.
posted by Brittanie at 9:15 AM on October 7, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Brittanie at 9:15 AM on October 7, 2016 [1 favorite]
While I cannot answer any of the overarching questions, I can say that I have a similar background and I really relate.
For a while I kept a notebook and I wrote things down--things I like, things I think, things I am--whenever they occurred to me/seemed true. Even as trite as "I love the first day of vacation," "I am good at painting my nails," etc. Something to hold onto. So that when I started to feel like I wasn't a person, like I had no Self, I could open the book and see that I did have, at least, opinions, characteristics, character.
posted by kapers at 10:35 AM on October 7, 2016 [4 favorites]
For a while I kept a notebook and I wrote things down--things I like, things I think, things I am--whenever they occurred to me/seemed true. Even as trite as "I love the first day of vacation," "I am good at painting my nails," etc. Something to hold onto. So that when I started to feel like I wasn't a person, like I had no Self, I could open the book and see that I did have, at least, opinions, characteristics, character.
posted by kapers at 10:35 AM on October 7, 2016 [4 favorites]
Best answer: Is Identity something that you create, that you tell yourself I am going to be like X, and then you try really hard to act like that all the time? Or do you find more securement in listening to your feelings and acting how you feel (unless it's harming someone else)? I feel like nothing I do feels right.
I'll have a crack at unpacking that a little.
Is Identity something that you create, that you tell yourself I am going to be like X, and then you try really hard to act like that all the time?
No. Identity is just you. "What am I" has no answer beyond "I am this". You get a unique identity just by existing. At its root, your identity doesn't depend on any attribute or behaviour or experience or choice or policy. It just is, and as long as you're alive it cannot be taken away from you.
There's a related but not equivalent question: "What am I like? Describe me."
Many, many people make a fundamental error in mistaking some partial answer to this question for their identity. This is a conceptual trap, because it creates a completely spurious pressure to preserve some basically consistent self-description over time. But that can't be done, because spending time alive causes experience, and experience causes change. If you allow something as central as your idea of who you are to depend on being able to recognize some stable description of yourself, then any forced alteration of that description can feel akin to personal destruction.
Far, far better simply to accept that how you are will naturally change over time, sometimes in quite profound ways, and that this is perfectly OK because it's no threat to who you are - which depends solely on simple continued existence.
I don't accept that we can actually have identities as things. The idea that I have an identity as a man, or as a husband, or as a father, or as an IT worker, or as fat or as white or as a human being, is in my opinion a conceptual dead end that I'm better off not taking seriously. Those attributes accurately describe me, but none of them defines me, so they don't rate as identity.
The language doesn't help much here. "I resemble other men to an extent that would cause most people to label me that way as well" is too clumsy for day to day use, but that's all "I am a man" means to me. The "I am" part of that is attached to but does not depend on the "a man" part.
Or do you find more securement in listening to your feelings and acting how you feel (unless it's harming someone else)?
That's worth unpacking a bit as well.
It's important to acknowledge your feelings. Feelings are what they are, and attempting to deny them just causes trouble. Far better to be internally OK with the fact that feelings are not actually a matter of choice, that they arise and persist and change and subside on their own, and that their legitimate purpose is to be felt.
It's also worth noting that your feelings are almost entirely private to you. They don't and can't, in and of themselves, affect anybody else because they're not being felt by anybody else. What matters to other people is what you do about your feelings.
No! I hear you say. That can't be right! My feelings must matter, at least to people who care about me!
And so they do - but only because other people find out about them, which they can only do if you communicate them.
If you're happy as a clam but remain completely poker faced, nobody knows you're happy. They might suspect it if they know you well, but they can't know it. If you're bored out of your skull by somebody else's tedious attempts at conversation but you're nodding and smiling with tremendous skill, nobody knows you're bored out of your skull.
The degree to which it's appropriate to communicate our feelings depends on who we're interacting with. Power gaps call for staying closer to poker face, while a healthy friendship or intimate relationship calls for working without masks to a much greater extent.
Sometimes feelings are so intense as to shut down the reasoning parts of our brains, denying us the opportunity to choose what to do with them; that's why they're only almost entirely private. A large part of growing and maturing consists of training ourselves to operate in that overwhelmed state without doing things that make bad situations worse.
There are no real shortcuts to that. Most of it comes down to experience, in the end.
A regular meditative practice can help make our brains a bit more reliable. So does aiming to approach the whole project of being alive in a spirit of gentle kindness, both to ourselves and our surroundings, to the greatest extent our circumstances permit.
I feel like nothing I do feels right.
Yeah, that happens. When I was younger it used to happen to me quite a lot. It's pretty debilitating.
Probably the best that can be done about it is remind yourself that any opinion expressed using any of the words "nothing", "everything", "always" or "never" requires a truly extraordinary standard of evidence before it's worth believing.
I will feel confident and conversational in the beginning but then slowly I feel this pressure build in my head and I feel like as they are talking to me, what they are saying is just words and they almost have no meaning to me. I feel like I go on autopilot of just saying generic "oh that's cool" or oh gross or lame things like that. I don't feel any emotional connection to what they are saying and can add pieces of conversation but don't feel emotionally there, I feel like I'm forcing every inch of my being to say things.
That's called "forcing yourself to keep talking to somebody you don't click with". The older you get, the more likely you will be to file this under "professional courtesy" rather than "personal failing". If it's happening on a date, that's a clue that a second date should probably be taken off the table.
Why do I feel like this?
In large part, it will actually be because
I also think a lot about how I portray myself or how I want to portray myself
I recommend taking your focus off how you portray yourself, and putting it more on how you react to other people. Work the thing from the audience side for a while. It will make you a more effective actor.
Feelings aren't the only thing that's private to our own skulls. Perceptions are too. None of us can actually control what other people feel or think about us; that's totally up to them.
For people with social anxiety, that's a horrendously difficult thing to accept but it's true all the same. And once you have accepted it, I would expect that acceptance to take the chronic anxiety down a few notches.
Consider: you spent quite a lot of your childhood learning to read your mother's behaviour, and learning to try to moderate your own in ways that minimized the amount of shit you copped from her. You will have ended up with considerable skill at navigating your life without running aground on the reefs and shoals of My Angry Mother.
But here's a thing: your angry mother is not strongly representative of humanity at large. Most of us are rather better at being kind to each other, and especially to children, than she was/is. And here's another: you're not a tiny child any more, so the power gap between you and the people you spend most of your time around is going to be much smaller than the dominant one you grew up with. You're actually far safer in most people's company than I would expect your early training to have led you to assume.
So you don't actually need to be as hypervigilant and self-controlling around most people as you did around your mother in order to stay safe, and that's a fact that it's just going to take you some time to get used to, and some time to practise exploring the consequences of.
You're an adult now, and it's actually OK for some of the people you meet not to like you. Your identity no longer depends on staying in the good books of a huge and powerful adult who is the sole source of everything you need in your life.
Stick at it. It gets better.
posted by flabdablet at 11:26 AM on October 7, 2016 [8 favorites]
I'll have a crack at unpacking that a little.
Is Identity something that you create, that you tell yourself I am going to be like X, and then you try really hard to act like that all the time?
No. Identity is just you. "What am I" has no answer beyond "I am this". You get a unique identity just by existing. At its root, your identity doesn't depend on any attribute or behaviour or experience or choice or policy. It just is, and as long as you're alive it cannot be taken away from you.
There's a related but not equivalent question: "What am I like? Describe me."
Many, many people make a fundamental error in mistaking some partial answer to this question for their identity. This is a conceptual trap, because it creates a completely spurious pressure to preserve some basically consistent self-description over time. But that can't be done, because spending time alive causes experience, and experience causes change. If you allow something as central as your idea of who you are to depend on being able to recognize some stable description of yourself, then any forced alteration of that description can feel akin to personal destruction.
Far, far better simply to accept that how you are will naturally change over time, sometimes in quite profound ways, and that this is perfectly OK because it's no threat to who you are - which depends solely on simple continued existence.
I don't accept that we can actually have identities as things. The idea that I have an identity as a man, or as a husband, or as a father, or as an IT worker, or as fat or as white or as a human being, is in my opinion a conceptual dead end that I'm better off not taking seriously. Those attributes accurately describe me, but none of them defines me, so they don't rate as identity.
The language doesn't help much here. "I resemble other men to an extent that would cause most people to label me that way as well" is too clumsy for day to day use, but that's all "I am a man" means to me. The "I am" part of that is attached to but does not depend on the "a man" part.
Or do you find more securement in listening to your feelings and acting how you feel (unless it's harming someone else)?
That's worth unpacking a bit as well.
It's important to acknowledge your feelings. Feelings are what they are, and attempting to deny them just causes trouble. Far better to be internally OK with the fact that feelings are not actually a matter of choice, that they arise and persist and change and subside on their own, and that their legitimate purpose is to be felt.
It's also worth noting that your feelings are almost entirely private to you. They don't and can't, in and of themselves, affect anybody else because they're not being felt by anybody else. What matters to other people is what you do about your feelings.
No! I hear you say. That can't be right! My feelings must matter, at least to people who care about me!
And so they do - but only because other people find out about them, which they can only do if you communicate them.
If you're happy as a clam but remain completely poker faced, nobody knows you're happy. They might suspect it if they know you well, but they can't know it. If you're bored out of your skull by somebody else's tedious attempts at conversation but you're nodding and smiling with tremendous skill, nobody knows you're bored out of your skull.
The degree to which it's appropriate to communicate our feelings depends on who we're interacting with. Power gaps call for staying closer to poker face, while a healthy friendship or intimate relationship calls for working without masks to a much greater extent.
Sometimes feelings are so intense as to shut down the reasoning parts of our brains, denying us the opportunity to choose what to do with them; that's why they're only almost entirely private. A large part of growing and maturing consists of training ourselves to operate in that overwhelmed state without doing things that make bad situations worse.
There are no real shortcuts to that. Most of it comes down to experience, in the end.
A regular meditative practice can help make our brains a bit more reliable. So does aiming to approach the whole project of being alive in a spirit of gentle kindness, both to ourselves and our surroundings, to the greatest extent our circumstances permit.
I feel like nothing I do feels right.
Yeah, that happens. When I was younger it used to happen to me quite a lot. It's pretty debilitating.
Probably the best that can be done about it is remind yourself that any opinion expressed using any of the words "nothing", "everything", "always" or "never" requires a truly extraordinary standard of evidence before it's worth believing.
I will feel confident and conversational in the beginning but then slowly I feel this pressure build in my head and I feel like as they are talking to me, what they are saying is just words and they almost have no meaning to me. I feel like I go on autopilot of just saying generic "oh that's cool" or oh gross or lame things like that. I don't feel any emotional connection to what they are saying and can add pieces of conversation but don't feel emotionally there, I feel like I'm forcing every inch of my being to say things.
That's called "forcing yourself to keep talking to somebody you don't click with". The older you get, the more likely you will be to file this under "professional courtesy" rather than "personal failing". If it's happening on a date, that's a clue that a second date should probably be taken off the table.
Why do I feel like this?
In large part, it will actually be because
I also think a lot about how I portray myself or how I want to portray myself
I recommend taking your focus off how you portray yourself, and putting it more on how you react to other people. Work the thing from the audience side for a while. It will make you a more effective actor.
Feelings aren't the only thing that's private to our own skulls. Perceptions are too. None of us can actually control what other people feel or think about us; that's totally up to them.
For people with social anxiety, that's a horrendously difficult thing to accept but it's true all the same. And once you have accepted it, I would expect that acceptance to take the chronic anxiety down a few notches.
Consider: you spent quite a lot of your childhood learning to read your mother's behaviour, and learning to try to moderate your own in ways that minimized the amount of shit you copped from her. You will have ended up with considerable skill at navigating your life without running aground on the reefs and shoals of My Angry Mother.
But here's a thing: your angry mother is not strongly representative of humanity at large. Most of us are rather better at being kind to each other, and especially to children, than she was/is. And here's another: you're not a tiny child any more, so the power gap between you and the people you spend most of your time around is going to be much smaller than the dominant one you grew up with. You're actually far safer in most people's company than I would expect your early training to have led you to assume.
So you don't actually need to be as hypervigilant and self-controlling around most people as you did around your mother in order to stay safe, and that's a fact that it's just going to take you some time to get used to, and some time to practise exploring the consequences of.
You're an adult now, and it's actually OK for some of the people you meet not to like you. Your identity no longer depends on staying in the good books of a huge and powerful adult who is the sole source of everything you need in your life.
Stick at it. It gets better.
posted by flabdablet at 11:26 AM on October 7, 2016 [8 favorites]
I was in my thirties before I used the phrase "No, I disagree" to someone. I startled myself when that came out of my mouth!
Growing up with my father, disagreeing or acting in any way different from him was taboo. You would be treated with ridicule and contempt, and simply told you were WRONG. It became second nature to not express an opinion if it differed from that of the person I was with. It took me a very long time to understand that this was happening, and why.
As other people on this page have said, things get better as you get older. One day recently I looked in the mirror, and was pleasantly surprised to not only recognize myself, but to like myself. This sounds like a very odd thing to say, but it is true. Normally the person in the mirror is an enigma to me, almost a stranger, but on this one occasion I felt like I was looking at a friend. I don’t know if that will make sense to you.
As far as whether one’s identity is chosen or innate, I think it is a bit of both. It’s like trying on clothes; you figure out what suits you and what doesn’t.
posted by LauraJ at 3:15 PM on October 7, 2016 [2 favorites]
Growing up with my father, disagreeing or acting in any way different from him was taboo. You would be treated with ridicule and contempt, and simply told you were WRONG. It became second nature to not express an opinion if it differed from that of the person I was with. It took me a very long time to understand that this was happening, and why.
As other people on this page have said, things get better as you get older. One day recently I looked in the mirror, and was pleasantly surprised to not only recognize myself, but to like myself. This sounds like a very odd thing to say, but it is true. Normally the person in the mirror is an enigma to me, almost a stranger, but on this one occasion I felt like I was looking at a friend. I don’t know if that will make sense to you.
As far as whether one’s identity is chosen or innate, I think it is a bit of both. It’s like trying on clothes; you figure out what suits you and what doesn’t.
posted by LauraJ at 3:15 PM on October 7, 2016 [2 favorites]
Is Identity something that you create, that you tell yourself I am going to be like X, and then you try really hard to act like that all the time?
Enough people have said No with such cheerful unfounded certainty that I think I should give you the equally true Yes answer, just in case it is helpful. If you are one kind of person, Yes is the answer of freedom and infinite possibility; if you are the other kind, Yes is the answer of crushing guilt and confining responsibility. so take or leave it as seems best for you:
You can actually decide that it is desirable to be a certain kind of person and then do your best to live up to this ideal. that is to say you can be an invention instead of a discovery. Realizing this was something of a revelation to me, since I knew deep down from an early age that my basic core identity was kind of a dick. mind you, I knew that I had free will and thus did not have to behave as a dick just because I was one, but because of all the here-demonstrated BE YOURSELF messaging that we get, I had this nebulous guilty feeling that whenever I chose to behave well, virtuously, kindly, that was all a smokescreen and a fake - that this personality I wished to have did not belong to me, and thus when I acted like a good person, I was acting, lying, and pretending. So for me, to discover that I can make myself up to be any kind of person I want -- that I don't have to be anything at all unless I like that thing, no matter how naturally it comes to me -- this was terrific. I still sometimes forget it but it comes to me as an epiphany every now and then. we are what we pretend to be, et cetera, as the quote goes. You can do this on purpose, yes.
You are an introspective person so you have probably already grasped the essential flaw here: if you don't know what you're fundamentally like, how do you find out what you want to be fundamentally like? Isn't that just pushing the question off to a further remove? (Who is it who wants to be like that?) the answer is yes, but if you can trick yourself into considering the more distanced question without as much anxiety, you can probably work out the other one too if you still need to.
posted by queenofbithynia at 5:16 PM on October 7, 2016 [5 favorites]
Enough people have said No with such cheerful unfounded certainty that I think I should give you the equally true Yes answer, just in case it is helpful. If you are one kind of person, Yes is the answer of freedom and infinite possibility; if you are the other kind, Yes is the answer of crushing guilt and confining responsibility. so take or leave it as seems best for you:
You can actually decide that it is desirable to be a certain kind of person and then do your best to live up to this ideal. that is to say you can be an invention instead of a discovery. Realizing this was something of a revelation to me, since I knew deep down from an early age that my basic core identity was kind of a dick. mind you, I knew that I had free will and thus did not have to behave as a dick just because I was one, but because of all the here-demonstrated BE YOURSELF messaging that we get, I had this nebulous guilty feeling that whenever I chose to behave well, virtuously, kindly, that was all a smokescreen and a fake - that this personality I wished to have did not belong to me, and thus when I acted like a good person, I was acting, lying, and pretending. So for me, to discover that I can make myself up to be any kind of person I want -- that I don't have to be anything at all unless I like that thing, no matter how naturally it comes to me -- this was terrific. I still sometimes forget it but it comes to me as an epiphany every now and then. we are what we pretend to be, et cetera, as the quote goes. You can do this on purpose, yes.
You are an introspective person so you have probably already grasped the essential flaw here: if you don't know what you're fundamentally like, how do you find out what you want to be fundamentally like? Isn't that just pushing the question off to a further remove? (Who is it who wants to be like that?) the answer is yes, but if you can trick yourself into considering the more distanced question without as much anxiety, you can probably work out the other one too if you still need to.
posted by queenofbithynia at 5:16 PM on October 7, 2016 [5 favorites]
You can actually decide that it is desirable to be a certain kind of person and then do your best to live up to this ideal. that is to say you can be an invention instead of a discovery.
I prefer to recast this in a way that clearly separates my habits from my identity.
The fact that my habits are malleable and capable of being shaped by sustained effort is not the same as the fact that my identity is unique and depends solely on my remaining alive.
In other words, the kind of person I am does not change the fact that I exist in a way that's usefully conceptually separable from everything else that exists. The sort of person I am is subject to all sorts of changes over time, some of them chosen and trained, others forced by circumstance or constrained by temperament; the only changes my identity is subject to are birth and death.
Having a firm grasp on that distinction gives me the freedom to change and explore (or relax and ossify!) without having to believe that the simple fact of doing so poses innate risks, in any existential sense, to who I am.
posted by flabdablet at 8:29 PM on October 7, 2016 [2 favorites]
I prefer to recast this in a way that clearly separates my habits from my identity.
The fact that my habits are malleable and capable of being shaped by sustained effort is not the same as the fact that my identity is unique and depends solely on my remaining alive.
In other words, the kind of person I am does not change the fact that I exist in a way that's usefully conceptually separable from everything else that exists. The sort of person I am is subject to all sorts of changes over time, some of them chosen and trained, others forced by circumstance or constrained by temperament; the only changes my identity is subject to are birth and death.
Having a firm grasp on that distinction gives me the freedom to change and explore (or relax and ossify!) without having to believe that the simple fact of doing so poses innate risks, in any existential sense, to who I am.
posted by flabdablet at 8:29 PM on October 7, 2016 [2 favorites]
This thread is closed to new comments.
That sort of summed up your question, for me at least.
The short answer is "be you". Be true to your beliefs, your ethics, your world view. Express your truth to others.
It feels like you're hinging your "self" on how people respond to you... your value, your likability, your worth is dependent on them. Some insecurity, perhaps?
Your truth will attract the people you want around you. Don't try, just be.
posted by HuronBob at 9:23 PM on October 6, 2016 [3 favorites]