Being honest with yourself
13 Jun 2018, 10:25 am
As many of you may know, understanding myself has been one of my lifes biggest challenges due to trying so hard to fit in with the norm everything I do has been based on the observations of how other people do things and if i haven't seen anyone do something then i avoid doing it through either a, not knowing how its done correctly and not wanting to do it 'wrong' and/or b, if i haven't seen anyone else do it, then I must not do it/not a thing that people do.
This has been a hardcore suppression of who i really am. I have never been able to answer a question about myself truthfully. I don't even know what my favourite colour is. I remember in school when they did a class on our skills and qualities with questions like; "What are you good at?", "Are you an honest person?", "Are you trustworthy?" and I don't think I was ever able to answer them. I genuinely did not know. And it bugs me, even now.
So the past few years I have begun to recognise that I have never been honest with myself about how i behave, how i feel etc. And i have been trying to learn how to be honest with myself, trying to pull myself up on things that i do, just so i can be aware of it. Trying to notice when I instinctively hold myself back from something and why i do that, why i hide certain parts of myself, what it is exactly that i am hiding. And i am very slowly beginning to tell myself that it's ok to do what i want to do, act myself and not the way that fits with everyone else's flow. Because i don't need to fit with everyone else's flow.
Anyone else have or had this struggle?
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NorwichGeorge
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker
Joined: 27 May 2018
Age: 32
Gender: Male
Posts: 62
Location: Norwich, UK
13 Jun 2018, 2:25 pm
This has been a hardcore suppression of who i really am. I have never been able to answer a question about myself truthfully. I don't even know what my favourite colour is. I remember in school when they did a class on our skills and qualities with questions like; "What are you good at?", "Are you an honest person?", "Are you trustworthy?" and I don't think I was ever able to answer them. I genuinely did not know. And it bugs me, even now.
So the past few years I have begun to recognise that I have never been honest with myself about how i behave, how i feel etc. And i have been trying to learn how to be honest with myself, trying to pull myself up on things that i do, just so i can be aware of it. Trying to notice when I instinctively hold myself back from something and why i do that, why i hide certain parts of myself, what it is exactly that i am hiding. And i am very slowly beginning to tell myself that it's ok to do what i want to do, act myself and not the way that fits with everyone else's flow. Because i don't need to fit with everyone else's flow.
Anyone else have or had this struggle?
I think I've been going through a very similar thing at the moment. I realised due to some things that happened at the end of last year that I had a lot of feelings bottled up since I was a little kid that I'd never dealt with or really understood. I then realised that I really didn't understand myself or why I acted the way I did in certain situations.
I have also always struggled with questions about myself. Earlier this year I was at an event and as an icebreaker we had to say something interesting about ourselves to the person next to us. I couldn't think of anything. And I still struggle with answering questions about strengths and weaknesses unless someone has told me them in advance.
At the start of the year I decided that I needed to deal with my anxiety. As I started to unravel that I started to realise that there were more feelings underneath the anxiety that I was suppressing. Like you I feel like I'm learning to be honest with myself but also learning things that I had no idea I was suppressing. I think part of it is just growing up and I definitely feel that in the last six months I've grown up a ton. I'm always starting to feel like maybe it is ok to be me and I don't have to try hard to fit in all the time.
13 Jun 2018, 5:47 pm
The trouble (for me) would be that the questions are hard to answer because they're vague.
For example:
"What are you good at?" I don't know. Compared to someone else? Compared to other things I'm not as good at? How much better than 'ok' does it have to be to qualify as good?
Are you an honest person?" I've lied before. Does that make me dishonest? Or does it mean "well-intentioned"? I think I am. I don't mean to hurt anyone, but sometimes they get angry if I tell the truth. It seems like a contradiction.
For favorite colour, I might change my mind later... then it feels dishonest to say it's one thing that it may not be tomorrow.
14 Jun 2018, 7:55 pm
I never really "doubted" my personality because i was always existential enough to realise it's a complete social / biological construct and all i have to do is work with it. my approach to life is pretty simple: i have goals i want to reach. countries i want to see. experiences i want to have. i mean no harm. in terms of my personality it arises out of a mix of my specific interests, social conditioning, studies and experiences. i am not anyone, truly. i am just here - soaking up information and constructing an illusion of self for others to soak up as information.
perhaps this is why i struggle to relate to people. people think too much of themselves as selves and take their selves and life so seriously. any breach or questioning is unforgivable.
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Diagnosed with ADHD
Online Autism/ Asperger's Screening = 38 (Autism likely)
