Internal and External Identities

I just saw a few images of myself and realized that who I am in my head, (my internal mannerisms and thought processes), are nothing like what I'm like externally, or how I'm expected to act. I can't see the person in the picture acting like how I think. It's like they're a different person. How do I deal with this? It's taking a toll on me. I am unable to express myself because who I am externally is not compatible with who I am externally.

>>68533 You have to realize there are no two selves, their is you, the mind and soul, and you have a body.

>>68534 Indeed. It's like a snail being distraught because its inner self doesn't look like its shell. Like yeah man, it's just a shell that you happen to be controlling.

>>68533 Your description does check some marks for a dissociative disorder, possibly mild depersonalization. Just don't take this as diagnosis, I'm not qualified to dish those out. That said, it's what I'm dealing with (diagnosed) and there are ways to reattach yourself to the person in the mirror. It's a journey though and takes time, so consider talking to a professional.

you judge other people to a different standard than you judge yourself to, because of the ego. Over time your attachment to your previous self fades and you’re able to judge your past self to the same standard that you judged others to.

>>68537 OP here. I actually went through a period where, looking back, I think I did show signs of DPDR, and I think I've had symptoms of dissociation for a long time. Ever since I was about 12. I didn't want to be one of those people that self-diagnose based on the internet though, so I've kept quiet. It's nice to hear someone else suspects the same though. Like my concerns are validated. As for talking to a professional, I would like to get a diagnosis, but for the selective job I want to get, it might not be a good idea. It's one of those careers where everyone keeps quiet about their mental health to get hired, so if I get diagnosed I would have a much harder time getting a job. Competition is strong. It shouldn't be that big of an issue though, if I do have those disorders, I seem to be faring well with them. One thing that helps is feeling my feet on the ground though. Idk if that will help you or not, but it helped me. Especially when episodes are strongest.

>>68533 OP should read R. D. Laing's "The Divided Self." It describes dissociative and schizoid symptoms/problems from many angles, and was actually instrumental in helping me to realize I had such problems (albeit of a far more minor effect than I'm sure some other lains here deal with). Unfortunately, this book on its own doesn't provide a whole lot in terms of specific, actionable approaches to solving such problems, but it's still worth a read if you want to give this class of issues more thought. As others have suggested, the one way to get a real diagnosis is to see a doctor, but obviously, many can't readily afford such help (like myself) hence why utilizing written resources can do a lot of good. As for methodology to help solve your problems on your own, what's helped me a lot is that every once in a while, I'll make an itemized list of what I believe are my most important character-defining traits, then I'll spend the next few days trying to live in a way that reflects these traits for others to observe. Essentially, I've learned to 'act' as though I am who I am, until the 'act' is so seamless, I am certain in who I am after all.

>>68533 It's the same for everyone. You are a brain inside a skeleton inside meat. Everyone is. You want to be something, like tall, awsome and likable and you are not. Like pretty much everyone. If you don't want to be a social outcast, invest a bit of energy in showers, clothes and haircuts so others would not have a problem with your presence and work on your social skills to develop the capacity to interact with others. Or just be a recluse, but as someone who is I warn you, there is no journey back. There is a thousands of social conventions to master to just have a normal conersation with normal people, if you didn't learnt them while you were a kid it's gonna be hard to socilise.

It has nothing to do with wanting to be a cool guy or whwtever. I fundamentally don't think I'm me. Ilnot even my thoughts feel like me. I feel constantly disjointed. I don't act in th me way I think.

>>68606 The the idea that you have of who you are is incorrect. You are your body, souls don't exist. Consciousness is an illusion created by the brain. >I don't act in th me way I think. Neither do I and I have come to think no one does. Perhaps letting our mind wander through wild territories is best to unconsciously figure what is and what isn't a good solution to our practical, everyday problems.

>>68627 yep that's enough lainchan for the day. this place is literally worse than browsing reddit's relationship advice board.

>>68627 >souls don't exist Could you elaborate on this further? I'm one of those obnoxious "intellectuals" that enjoy toying with different concepts at different angles and I'd like to hear why you think souls do not exist. >I don't act in th me way I think >Neither do I and I have come to think no one does I do. More than that, I think it destroys someone to not be true to themselves. >>68635 You should elaborate further, because he won't understand what you meant and will, probably, just lash out. Although, now that I said he might lash out, he probably won't. Who knows? By mentioning both, I created a chaotic element. People are insufferable, but their minds are hilarious.

>>68637 > I'd like to hear why you think souls do not exist. Materialism. Our intelligence and memory is only created by our synapses. The entire balance of our psyche will change if we get injected a chemical or another. If what we were were immaterial, it would not be true. If we had a soul, we would keep our memory, intelligence and personality even when suffering brain damage, and we don't. If we were an immaterial sparkle, our personality and reaction time would not change just because our body drank alcohol. >I do. What? You never think about telling the cold truth to your coworkers, or leaving your job? You never think that if you were in this or that situation, sometime a situation you have been in the past you would do things that you know you wouldn't do?

>>68640 >If we had a soul, we would keep our memory, intelligence and personality even when suffering brain damage, and we don't. This is a fair argument. I wonder if I can toy with this concept. I have too much to do at the moment, but I wonder if concept of a "soul" is not a widely agreed upon thing and may be more of an influencer rather than a direct controller, if you understand what I mean. >If we were an immaterial sparkle, our personality and reaction time would not change just because our body drank alcohol Interestingly, my personality does not change when I drink alcohol. Probably because I don't hide who I am. >You never think about telling the cold truth to your coworkers I do. >leaving your job? Ah, I see what you are talking about. I mean, I did that, too, but I took what you meant as something different. Although... This could have, and should have, been inferred by my response, though. Don't worry about this branch of the discussion anymore. If I were that way, I'd be simply existing and reacting to stimuli. That's not to say that many people like that do not exist, of course, but I am not one of them.

>>68627 Ha! What a miserable poster

This could be a lot of things... schizoid, dissociation and depersonalization, lacking theory of mind, lacking self-awareness, etc. In my case the pattern and behavior actually revealed itself as a complex multi-conscious phenomenon. I spoken about it elsewhere on this board so don't ask, but it's pretty interesting how often this sort of thing comes up. I don't remember seeing this soykaf come up on forums 10 years ago but here somebody chimes in at least every couple months about it. To further soykafpost, what does any of this have to do with a soul? If it pleases you just take these things phenomenologically. No need to get tangled up in what cannot be reliably proven. I'll admit it's an interesting discussion but it should probably have it's own thread.

>>68637 OP again... What have I started lol...

>>68563 >It shouldn't be that big of an issue though, if I do have those disorders, I seem to be faring well with them. Just keep an eye on it, take note of things that might make it worse, like being exposed to extreme stress or specific situations. Speaking of taking notes, one of the things I kept in my routine from my therapy days is daily journaling. By keeping track of yourself and your thoughts in writing you sort of force an integration of your parts. It's a powerful habit and I'm pretty sure it has helped me with pretty much every facet of my life.

Mirror work could help (google it). Or it might be gender dysphoria

I'll just go and say multiplicity is a natural consequence of the mind. It's like nature itself is still trying to figure out how to best organize intellect. Obviously this is not a conclusion you would ever find from a clinical person, but maybe rather you would from a mystic. Know how people talk about simulation theory, and that's how that's kind of a secular modernized analog of creation theory? Well think about that and flip it around for the concept of a soul. Now instead of soul or spirits, we have autonomous identities that we can speak of in a strictly phenomenological basis. Secular thought abhors the concept of souls, but maybe it threw out the baby with the bathwater. Personally, if I know a person well enough, the multiplicative nature of the psyche becomes obvious. There's secular terms for this as well: personas, constructs, etc. And those things are well developed enough to have their own contradicting behavior, motivations, and habits which conflict with whatever base persona the person carries themselves as. It's only when that conflict becomes too intense you get the classification of dissociative or psychotic disorder. The body moves on its own. Phantom symptoms such as pain could appear. 'Persona' switching becomes so intense that it dominates whichever was there prior. Visions, delusions, and so on. It truly is a war against the self. Or maybe a persona just plays God, because that's a nice clear way to get your wishes respected. Or whatever, I mean you know how clever you can get. You can probably guess from here it's far from limited to the prior mentioned disorders. But I'm sure you as a healthy person would not get a response back if you ask if anybody is there. Ha... ha! It's just you as you predicted. Sorry, I can be a bit of a joker. Present day present time. :)

>>68533 You deal with this by accepting it and then either working on it or moving on. There's not really any other options. Just know that you are, like most others, overthinking things. Overthinking leads to a lot of problems, like paralysis/inaction, it's a bit ironic really, isn't it? Well, good luck, lainon, with whatever you do. >>74647 Stop pushing this nonsense.

>>68533 If that is worrying you, it is actually much "worse". There are as many "yous" as the number of people you interact with. Everyone has a different version of you in their minds. People who are closer to you have a more accurate version of you than people you don't know very well. But in the end, no one will ever be able to have the 100% accurate version of you in their head. Only you can have that. Realizing this actually got rid of my anxiety. Even simple interactions with cashiers and other people that I didn't know were hard for me and I would easily get anxious but once I realized this stuff I understood that the person who's interacting with the cashier is barely me, it's the version of me that the cashier has, which if very inaccurate because we never interact with each other outside the store so she doesn't know anything about me. So this cashier might as well be interacting with some other random person and not me, it's basically the same thing. She's not really talking to the real me so I don't care if "I" say something embarrassing.

internet addiction has lead me to feel alot of the same way, infact this is (what ithink) SEL is all about in the first place lol i genuinely dont feel real unless im online theres such a disconnect from my body at this point sometimes i forget its real and that i dont live in my pc...

>>68533 >>68563 Hi, OP, I don't usually mention this on chans, but I'm a second year psychiatry resident in the United States. I'm not sure where you're from, but here in the US a physician or other healthcare professional cannot disclose your health information to employers without your permission. It's pretty rare for them to ask unless there is some kind of claim of disability by an employee. There are some laws that provide exemption to this, but they most likely wouldn't apply in your case. So don't let this worry stop you from seeking help if you're based in the US.

>>68565 Thanks for the book share, seems like an interesting read. The idea that this turmoil comes from multiple self views conflicting makes a lot of sense. I get it myself and also align with op in some ways.

>>68627 i didnt rly read any of the convo above but i wanted to (respectfully) point out why this is a bad post :D idk wym by the 1st sentence so ill skip over it, but wrt: >"u are ur body" eh not rly. if u meant "ur mental and conscious properties are determinant of ur body" u might be closer to the truth, but theres a lot of problems with assuming "u" and ur body are synonymous. we can only extrapolate so much from someones body and even various types of brain scans can only tell us so much about a person. a clear demonstrator of this is smth like depression, which to this today we cant entirely explain neurologically and we only have rough chemical correlations to explain what it is and why ppl have it. it seems like these things exist as a sort of external, complex mental weight to someones psyche (or whatever u want to call it). the existence of imbalances demonstrates another phenomena: mental disorders effect something, but what do they effect? surely theres like a seperate subject thats not synonymous or reducible to the same thing that said disorders are >Consciousness is an illusion created by the brain. this is a pretty lazy metaphor i c a lot to be honest. lets say consciousness is an illusion from the brain projected onto something. ok. whats experiencing this illusion of consciousness? to experience an illusion u would need like, a unity of senses (touch sight hearing etc), as well as the mental faculties needed to actually process this information. naturally there would be choice involved with what to do with the data received from this "illusion". if uve been following u can prbly garner that by constructing a subject to be illuded, u have de facto just described a conscious person. ngl even the brightest philosophers who are a big fan of reducing everything to materialism dont deny consciousness exists, they just say its ontologically determinate of materials. i always find the ppl most confident in the neurobiological solution to the hard problem of consciousness the ppl who know the least abt neurobiology... >souls don't exist onto this. i wont confidently assert they exist, but i think deeper analysis of consciousness and psychology/philosophy has shown us that our mind is very very special: - we receive an insane amount of sense datum, and filter signal from noise with all of it (its theorised ppl that cant do this are prime schizophrenics, and considering how rare that is we're doing a pretty good job at it) - moreover on that, we can incorporate all of our experiences into a single, unified consciousness (ppl that cant do this are prime DID cases, or less intensely could be considered somewhat bpd) - said consciousness is plastic enough to learn skills in logical, social, memorisational faculties, as well as unlearn trauma and bad or no longer useful skills, but rigid enough to maintain a singular identity that all these facets orbit around. it can correct imbalances with coping mechanisms, which sometimes are overcorrections and have their own problems, but goes to show how cool of a system it is (ppl bad at the plasticity stuff are prime ptsd victims or have other trauma related stuff that) maybe all of these things seem like smth that are properly designed enough to warrant being called evidence for a soul. idk depends on ur epistemic criteria. but thats all i felt like typing for now