My therapy appointment isn’t for another little while so I just wanna get this out now, and plus asking will be nice.
But anyway…this is a really hard thing to describe. It’s not like autistic masking, I don’t feel like I’m faking social interaction or anything like that.
It’s also not a depersonalization issue, because, for the most part, I feel connected to my body…I think. Maybe…
But it’s more like I have different personalities and demeanors that, at the time, feel real. So like when I’m out or at Uni I’m just a normal person who’s boring and wears polo’s and dress pants every day. Quiet and just trying to get through the day.
But then other times I feel like this little boy who just wants to share all of his interests and have all these cool gadgets and make his own little library and likes games and literature and is really blushy and shy whenever the concept of sex comes up and just always wants to see the best in people.
But then sometimes I feel like a jaded woman who wants everyone to go away, and who needs nothing except the clothes on her back, and thinks everyone is repulsive and going to hurt her.
And before anyone says anything, I’m not trying to say I have DID. I don’t disassociate, I don’t have the amnesia associated with it, and I don’t say I’m not any of those at any one time.
But it’s like, I feel like certain behaviors are associated with those “characters.” Like I said, I feel like my standoffishness and anger is associated with the “woman” part of me, while the “boy” aspect of me actively hates that part and really likes people and wants to share things with them. And my “professional” aspect is sitting there trying to keep them from fighting each other so I can be normal.
I don’t think any part of these is the “real” me really. Theres not anything here where I say “that’s not me.” But they’re all “distinct.” So while other people might say “oh, I like sharing things with people.” Or “I don’t like people,” that is generally just one trait associated with themselves. Of course they can change or have conflicting feelings about things, but I feel like…idk, it feels like there are multiple people within me sometimes.
For instance, I was thinking of getting a statistics minor. And I think they were all in agreement about that. My professional self likes adding things to their resume, my boyish self likes learning, and my womanly self…honestly I don’t know. She’s not objecting at least.
Conversely, I finally shaved my body hair recently. At first everyone was in agreement for the most part. But then a family member laughed about it [not…at me…kinda. its complicated] and kinda just treated me like I was stupid or absurd, so now I feel like my “boyish” personality and my “womanly” personality are fighting about it. My “womanly” side says it’s fine and I made the right decision. But my “boyish” side feels like we did make a mistake now, and is anxious over whether I look stupid or whether we should’ve kept it because even though I didn’t want it, other people seemed to like it.
But also I’m not a psychologist so i have no clue if this is a normal thing to feel or not :p, and sorry for so much detail. I’ll talk about it to a therapist, I just didn’t want to be misunderstood because I know what it sounds like.
I 100% understand what you are talking about. I used to have this. My inner dialogue was split into different “voices” the cave man, the poet, the joker, the asshole, the wizard/scholar, the stoner, and a few other minor characters (mine were all male). I had this idea of round room where they were meeting in my head. It had a big table and chairs in the center but also with a bar and a couch and a shag rug off to one side and it was like equal parts a boardroom and a chill get together/party. Sometimes there would be a majority opinion on a course of action other times one voice would take the lead or even outright dominate.
I’m not sure if it was just my brain telling a story/understanding my inner motivations after the fact or if it was the actual thought processes driving me. sometimes I would chuckle at what they were getting up to while in the midst of things going on.
It faded away at some point but I don’t know when exactly or why. I kinda think it was a symptom of my loneliness. I had no community so I made one inside myself.
I can relate to this, although I’ve never thought about it in those terms before. I’ll have to think about my different selves some more.
There’s a whole ass therapy paradigm based on looking at people this way.
In my own experience, my parts seem less well defined. Kinda closer to Disco Elysium like aspects (though even less clear cut than those).
It’s possible that you’re just highly self-aware. Like you have a really vast personality and you’ve managed to define them into groups that react differently to certain stimuli. Your sense of none of the groups being your true self is likely you sensing the difference between the higher self and the lower self. Have you tried meditation or yoga?
Mm, good point. I have issues sitting still and relaxing so no, i haven’t tried those yet. But I should, Ill see what I can do.
Have you tried reading through Book 4 by Aleister Crowley? It has great meditation techniques for that kind of thing. You can find it online easy.
Folks who have a deep meditation practice or an appropriate about of hallucinogens in their system often experience just this
It takes some people a lifetime to build this awareness, so kudos to the revelation
Realizing the absence of an ego is only a negative thing in our western, ego and envy fueled culture. It’s actually a very calming perspective when you realize just how illusory all this is, at least outside of revolutionary praxis
The Questions of King Milinda (Milindapañha). The discussion begins with the King asking the apparently innocent question, “who are you?” Nāgasena replies coyly that he is really nobody; that he is called Nāgasena, but that this is just a name, a designation, and there is nothing to which it really refers. The name Nāgasena refers not to his body, his mind, his experiences, nor to anything apart from these.
https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/article/what-does-no-self-really-mean/
This is alien to me and I’ve never thought like that, but that’s okay.
I might act more “professional” at work but that doesn’t feel like a different me or different entity.
Are you on the autism spectrum or have ADHD? I don’t know that much about masking in detail, but I seem to recall that some people on the spectrum can experience something like this due to a lot of their socializing being a form of masking to hide their spectrum traits. And ADHD can have some variation of it as well.
I think I am the masks. There’s no one “under” the masks because I’m defined contextually, I’m a different person in different contexts (social, material, historical) and there’s no True Self that exists beyond the masks I use to present myself to the world.
I transitioned because I like my woman-mask better, but I still only feel like I’m just putting on a show - for myself and everyone else.
I was gonna say this, actually. We’re the sum of all those masks put together
Yes, I really started working on integration in the last couple of years and now it’s so peaceful, it’s almost boring. And that’s not a bad thing.
It’s also helpful for me to remember that imposters don’t have imposter syndrome
Heh. If you’ve learned it first hand, it was an expensive lesson.
For sure lol, though I’ve yet to really internalize it so that’s a work in progress.
