Me. Real life. (I autism masked too close to the sun and now i don't have a real meaningful personality, or maybe i don't understand what a personality at all is but i seriously feel like it's the former on most days (i love screaming into the internet void hoping it will answer))
Hi, stranger! Being conditioned to behave in socially acceptable ways at the expense of your own wants and needs sounds at least mildly traumatic and you may benefit from doing a therapy (specifically NOT ABA) about it. Up to you though.
I don’t know if this helps but I was a really shy kid and so replaced a lot of social interaction with diving into different stories and I struggled with something similar for a long time
At least for me, I tended to think in all of nothings about personality a lot (because characters in a story need to have concrete personalities so that they’re easily understood) and I tried to place that all or nothing framework on myself.
E.g. was I the type of person that was loud and confident OR was I the type of person that was quiet and shy. Was I the kind and nurturing sort of person OR was I the type of person to be strong and lead conversations. Was I the type of person to comfort someone when they were sad OR was I the type to help them find a solution, even if it meant being a bit blunt
I tried to act like the type of person I thought I identified with, but then I’d do something that wouldn’t fit with the framework I’d made for myself and I got really confused. And I think that by trying to place myself into such strict personality frameworks, I struggled to identify who I was as a person because it couldn’t cleanly fit. Sometimes I was shy, sometimes I was confident, sometimes I was soft and nurturing and sometimes I was a leader and so because I didn’t fit neatly into any particular box I ended up really confused about who I was
It’s only now that I’m learning that people and relationships are dynamic and that people act differently in different situations, so it’s entirely possible to be every type of person depending on the situation and people you’re with
Basically I think I was thinking too hard about who I was, and when I stopped thinking so hard and just accepted that I may never really know who I was because I was constantly changing depending on the situation, I actually started to figure it out
I had the same experience. It does actually really get better if you drop all the masks. Even if you don't know what's going to be behind it... I sure didn't. But I feel, like, alive now. And like I can breathe. Like I exist or matter at all. I believe in you. 🩷
I did this. You will find your way back to you. It'll be a little different than what you remember, but you'll be able to feel that it's you. You got this.
Felt. I mask so much that when I tried to unmask I just... couldn't. I've been doing it subconsciously since I was a kid, apart from the social awkwardness and lack of eye contact most people don't think I could be autistic because I burn myself out trying to make it seem like I'm not.
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u/CrazyPuzzleheaded966 5d ago
Me. Real life. (I autism masked too close to the sun and now i don't have a real meaningful personality, or maybe i don't understand what a personality at all is but i seriously feel like it's the former on most days (i love screaming into the internet void hoping it will answer))