Do i have a dual personality?!


Question:

Do i have a dual personality?

the thing is that since the longest of time i started to create a defensive shell around me.. kinda like to stop people from knowing how sad i usually am.. my problem is that i pretend to everyone.. family, freinds, and have created this fun loving party boy persona of myself which people genrelly accept you know.. so i just pretend to everyone.. is that like a dual personality thingy? there was this girlfreind and she was the only one i did not pretend too .. after she saw how insecure and sad i was she dumped me and that just made me realize that its better to pretend to be happy.
by the way im geminy.. i think that has to do something with it.

Additional Details

1 month ago
please guys dont tell me to go to the therepist or sh*t like that, i cant afford it. honest opinions about the situation will be appreciated.


Answers:

"I started to create a defensive shell around me.. kinda like to stop people from knowing how sad i usually am.. "

It's called a "False Self", and I did so much reading about it because I did the same thing. From the time I was young, I use to pretend that everything was okay when I was in front of other people. But deep down inside I felt like I was dying.

Here is a poem I came across some years ago, I could really relate to it. Maybe you can relate. It's called :

Please Hear What I'm Not Saying

Don't be fooled by me.
Don't be fooled by the face I wear
for I wear a mask, a thousand masks,
masks that I'm afraid to take off,
and none of them is me.

Pretending is an art that's second nature with me,
but don't be fooled,
for God's sake don't be fooled.
I give you the impression that I'm secure,
that all is sunny and unruffled with me, within as well
as without,
that confidence is my name and coolness my game,
that the water's calm and I'm in command
and that I need no one,
but don't believe me.
My surface may seem smooth but my surface is my mask,
ever-varying and ever-concealing.
Beneath lies no complacence.
Beneath lies confusion, and fear, and aloneness.
But I hide this. I don't want anybody to know it.
I panic at the thought of my weakness exposed.
That's why I frantically create a mask to hide behind,
a nonchalant sophisticated facade,
to help me pretend,
to shield me from the glance that knows.

But such a glance is precisely my salvation, my only hope,
and I know it.
That is, if it's followed by acceptance,
if it's followed by love.
It's the only thing that can liberate me from myself,
from my own self-built prison walls,
from the barriers I so painstakingly erect.
It's the only thing that will assure me
of what I can't assure myself,
that I'm really worth something.
But I don't tell you this. I don't dare to, I'm afraid to.
I'm afraid your glance will not be followed by acceptance,
will not be followed by love.
I'm afraid you'll think less of me,
that you'll laugh, and your laugh would kill me.
I'm afraid that deep-down I'm nothing
and that you will see this and reject me.

So I play my game, my desperate pretending game,
with a facade of assurance without
and a trembling child within.
So begins the glittering but empty parade of masks,
and my life becomes a front.
I idly chatter to you in the suave tones of surface talk.
I tell you everything that's really nothing,
and nothing of what's everything,
of what's crying within me.
So when I'm going through my routine
do not be fooled by what I'm saying.
Please listen carefully and try to hear what I'm not saying,
what I'd like to be able to say,
what for survival I need to say,
but what I can't say.

I don't like hiding.
I don't like playing superficial phony games.
I want to stop playing them.
I want to be genuine and spontaneous and me
but you've got to help me.
You've got to hold out your hand
even when that's the last thing I seem to want.
Only you can wipe away from my eyes
the blank stare of the breathing dead.
Only you can call me into aliveness.
Each time you're kind, and gentle, and encouraging,
each time you try to understand because you really care,
my heart begins to grow wings--
very small wings,
very feeble wings,
but wings!

With your power to touch me into feeling
you can breathe life into me.
I want you to know that.
I want you to know how important you are to me,
how you can be a creator--an honest-to-God creator--
of the person that is me
if you choose to.
You alone can break down the wall behind which I tremble,
you alone can remove my mask,
you alone can release me from my shadow-world of panic,
from my lonely prison,
if you choose to.
Please choose to.

Do not pass me by.
It will not be easy for you.
A long conviction of worthlessness builds strong walls.
The nearer you approach to me
the blinder I may strike back.
It's irrational, but despite what the books say about man
often I am irrational.
I fight against the very thing I cry out for.
But I am told that love is stronger than strong walls
and in this lies my hope.
Please try to beat down those walls
with firm hands but with gentle hands
for a child is very sensitive.

Who am I, you may wonder?
I am someone you know very well.
For I am every man you meet
and I am every woman you meet.

Charles C. Finn
September 1966

Don't give up being who you are. Do try to work on your self-esteem. Do try to find people you feel comfortable with to talk to. If you are very depressed, seek help for it. Don't keep living behind that mask, because some day you will look back and see that "someone else - not you" lived your life and that your life was a "lie", and that there was no "true" happiness.

It doesn't seem to me that you have any MAJOR personality / psychiatric problems, but it does seem that you do have problems in your life that need to and can be worked through. The sooner you start working on them, the sooner you'll start to feel better.

BTW, I wrote a poem back in 1988, it was when I first started working on my own problems. It's called:

Walls (or Winds Of Change II)

I found myself alone in the middle of the day -
I had no friends, I didn't know how to play.

I looked around and what did I see?
Four strong walls surrounding me.

They kept me a prisoner for many a year -
They fed on my ignorance, or was it my fear?

They seemed insurmountable from where I stood -
I tried to "wish" them down, I did the best I could.

Then somebody offered me a "ladder" one day -
The thought seemed appalling and I turned them away.

I'd gotten used to living alone in my "cage" -
I'd forgotten about love, and sorrow, and rage.

My heart it grew colder, it was turning to ice,
Thinking became difficult, I was paying the price.

Then a "miracle" happened! It was all so strange -
A "dove" flew in on the Winds of Change.

With the voice of an angel, he sang me song -
My heart resumed beating, it was getting strong.

He sang out so freely with honesty & love,
I knew in my soul he was a gift from above.

He allowed me to "talk" and to "trust" and to "feel",
And he showed me so cleverly that the "walls" were not real.

I walked out of my "cell" (or self) for the first time in years,
Leaving behind me a great many fears.

I turned to thank him and ask him to stay,
But on the Winds of Change he flew away.

L.F. 1988




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