Lack of identity?

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Tonight I was thinking about what exactly it is that forms my sense of identity, and I'm not sure I can answer with any certainty. In fact, I'm not sure I have a definite identity as such. I've spent most of my life trying to understand the way others work and then attempting to fit in with them, and I generally succeed in gaining social standing. However I have noticed that part of my technique to fit in with others is to mould myself a little in their likeness. It is, for want of a better word, 'faked' to a certain extent. This is not conscious, it's just the way I have learned which works for me, and it produces convincing results.

On the other hand, I know I am different, I know what my personality is like, and I know what things make me feel like me. Most of this, people see. However, I have this nagging doubt that not many people see everything about me, and I'm not entirely sure what it is they aren't seeing. In other words, I have spent so much time adjusting to other people that I wonder if I've lost sight of some of my own individualism. This extends further into which group I identify myself with. On the one hand I am an aspie. No doubt about it. If you know the signs, it should be blindingly obvious. On the other, I produce a convincing NT show, and am able to socialise with them, and there are some aspects of being aspie which I no longer identify with. Consequently I feel like I identify partially with both groups, but not wholly with either. It's a bit like finding a collection of jigsaw puzzles, where each one has a piece missing. Then you find a piece which is a bit flexible, and has enough colour and detail to be bent into the shape of the various holes and not spoil the overall pictures too much. It's definitely the wrong piece, but it completes the other puzzles well enough to get by. Does anyone else feel this way?

I feel even those closest to me don't really know me. How could they? I have this incessant internal dialogue going over things that either happened years ago or things that could have no significance to any other human being. I like to keep this partition between my public porsona and my private self, such as like yourself there are two indentities. Maybe I sealed up the inner me due to too many bad experiences.

I would have thought this was true for everyone, but I have no way of knowing. I do know that I don't identify with anyone at all, so that allthough I don't feel lonely in the sense of needing company, I feel lonely in that I'll always be an outsider.

Yes! I so identify with what you've both said. I've theorized that a large part of the depression and anxiety Aspies tend to suffer is over exactly this issue, this *nonpersonhood* we have to adhere to, to get along when our societal and cultural responsibilities require it of us. How long would you expect any normal person to do that without suffering ill effects? It's like living in a constant state of hyperawareness. Fight-or-flight, all the time.

How do we combat it? I think that's what the alone-time is about, too.

another dual-persona here, although i have hidden my 'true' self away for so long, and for such reasons, that i'm afraid to find out who i really am.

i have an agreement with my psycologist to carefully find out what's hiding under the layers of adaptations, but i'm not sure if it's a good idea still...

What's hiding under there? Probably a nerdy, interesting person, rather than a neurotic trying to fit in with the crowd.

I tried fitting in for a little while in the fifth grade. It didn't work, and if I'd have kept doing it, I'd have lost myself. Don't be scared of learning who you are; you might be odd--heck, you're autistic, so that's a given--but you're probably an interesting person to get to know. Of course you've got flaws, but if you don't know about them, how will you ever fix them, right?

I'm the opposite. I have a very strong identity.

I can relate to what you are saying, my real identity is something that I don’t think anybody sees. The identity that people do see is carefully constructed, not to fit in but as a means of protection. My real identity is defined by my obsessions, if it wasn’t for them I do not think that I would have any sense of identity. Nemorosa, I can relate to what you said especially.

This is by far the biggest aspect of myself that really confused me before I found out I had AS.

It started when I sort of became different people, to, as you said, sort of fit in. I don't recall that I really wanted to fit in necessarily (in fact, I remember doing certain things specifically to not fit in) but I'd always sort of discover myself through different groups.

It wasn't until I was in my late 20s that I realized that I actually didn't have much a true identity, as it were. It really confused me and it surely didn't seem like that was something other people experienced. I knew that I couldn't bring this up to anyone because I knew they wouldn't understand. They'd think that I meant I felt I didn't fit in or hadn't figured things out yet, when that wasn't really what was going on. So I just kept my mouth shut.

It was (and still is) my little secret that I'm not anyone, just an actor in a play with no director.

I can totally relate! I know that most of my personality is "fake", because the real me is not terribly social and that won't get me far in life in our current society, nor will it get me a girlfriend... I have also recently embarked on a quest to uncover the true me that has been hidden under the sands for far too long (trying to make it sound epic =P) and some of things I have found under there have been hard to come to terms with, and sometimes it even scares me, but that is ME, and that is what I want. My "fake" mind won't agree with who I really am so it's a bit of a constant struggle.

I recently told my sister that I felt like I had no identity, and she reacted with pure confusion. It was just such a strange and foreign concept for her. I don't think it's any coincidence that my two favorite writers are Philip K. Dick and Patricia Highsmith. Identity – the nature of it, the uncertainty of it, the malleability of it – is a central theme for them both. There's little I hate more than being asked to describe myself, because I never have any idea what to say, and I often feel like I’m putting on different personality masks when interacting with certain people to hide the fact that there's nothing underneath.

After I found out I was autistic, I found that I didn't really know who I was - that most of the things I had attached to my concept of "identity" were more about putting up a social front and presenting a mask to other people. Not a very good mask, at that. And I've never been very good at describing myself in general terms (say for a bio), and tend to focus on one aspect of my life at any given time.

I don't really feel any distress over it, and it doesn't really cross my mind much at this point. I do wonder if there's a certain level of abstraction involved in the concept of identity that makes it difficult to assemble the various elements of what might be one's identity into a complete whole.

One of the reasons why I'm so sick of this world...the only identity that people ever give me is that of "the quiet girl". I'm not even that quiet. They just have ridiculous ideas how much talking is required from people in order to be consider normal.

definite disconnect between inner self and what others see. Even here on WP I seem to be misunderstood with some regularity. Sometimes the harder I try the worse it gets.

Yes. Fortunately that doesn't ambush my thoughs too often, but when it does it certainly hurts.


Yes to the bolded part.

Subscribing because I can definitely relate. Maybe I'll share, most likely I wont. Either way, I need time to collect my thoughts.

I can relate to a lot of what others have said. I think also for me, having had an unusual adolescent life I couldn't share some of the experiences that others had and ironically that seems to be one of the ways in which people find out who they really are. I heard a quote by Jeanette Winterson the other day where she said "It's only through another person that you really discover who you are." This particularly rang true for me and something that I feel I have missed out on.

Yes on my more optimistic days I feel this is true but I also feel that society sometimes doesn't give you a chance if you don't fit the expected mould. Although gladly there are people who can see through all of that.

This is an interesting thread; I'm glad I am not the only one to feel this way.