For example, I used to hate going to school or kindergarten and preferred to spend time on my own since I was a baby. Over the years, I’ve developed a weird inferiority complex and have not been able to embrace this introverted side of me. Even now, if you put me into a remote place with little human contact, I can easily find many fascinating things to do without talking to almost anyone for days, if not weeks. And yet, when I am put in a social context, I become too self-conscious about whether others perceive me as a loner with no friends. Some people have even told me that this is an incorrect perception of me because I am usually very at ease socially and can even appear as “highly extroverted” on the surface. But I know that this is my fake social persona that I have learnt to put on to hide my sensitive, indrawn, and introverted side.
When left to my own choice, however, I would most of the time prefer time by myself to company with others. Do you think this is a weakness of mine? Should I learn to enjoy being with others and push myself to socialise more? If not, then how do I become comfortable with being perceived as a closed, self-centred, or lonely person?
What you experience and what others see of you is not fake versus truth. They are different aspects of your own personality. The way is not to cut off one declaring it as fake but to embrace and integrate the two. The first thing needed is to acknowledge and accept the different sides of your personality. It is possible if you see yourself as a detached observer, a witness, without judging and labeling. It means not to be concerned with or be influenced with what people think or feel about you. That leads to a warped and distorted identity like putting different pieces together, each of which is of a different make and meant to be elsewhere.
Then we should try to discover our own true self, the psychological centre around which we can integrate the different parts of our personality. That centre is the psychic being. Or else, if that is a difficult calling, organise your personality around the highest ideal you can conceive of or around one’s aim, if one has found it. All the rest such as seeking social acceptance and approval only twists and distorts our true personality especially when it is still in formation.
Affectionately,
Alok Da
