What I mean by expressing is, I don’t know my strengths or weaknesses, I don’t know how I act. Its like body dysmorphia but for your personality or feelings. Whenever I’m faced with personal questions like, “are you short tempered,?” I don’t know. “are you very sentimental?” I don’t know, and I have to ask my partner or friends about it. Does anyone else feel this way?
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Yes. Same here. But for me, I can’t really ask anyone for how they would describe me as that is very awkward.
Wish I could change this and express more about me when in social situations, but oh well, once a shit, always a shit…
Yupp
I don’t even know how to fix it
Yep.
I used to, but the more I started to pay attention to how I react to certain things and the way I interact with people, the more I learned about myself. Like how I get VERY stressed when there is an issue and it’s out of my control, but if I am capable of handling it, then I can juggle a hundred things at once. It took me 18 years to learn that!
yep! especially when (like in your post) someone asks me directly, i entirely blank on personal aspects and anecdotes and all that stuff. i literally have notes/docs for “about me” stuff as a cheat sheet so i can actually remember things about myself when prompted online or whatever, but if it’s in-person i’m just flailing
Such feelings are common. For a lot of people, it comes from a lack of identity that they established for themselves. The proper term would be *lacking a sense of self*.
Sense of self is something that is developed over time as you get older. It changes as you learn and self-evaluate your reactions to things. Most people do have a sense of self (it’s how we know what food we prefer), but it’s a skill that needs to be developed for more nuanced, less salient things about ourselves.
How your friends and family see you is important, but don’t let them call you something that you are not. You are NOT short-tempered for simply asserting some boundaries, even if they may feel that way. They don’t have the context of how important that boundary is to you.
Making your own identity is important. Learning why you do what you do is the first step to that. Maybe you are short tempered, but only in certain situations. Your parents don’t get to see the person you are when they aren’t observing. They have their own preconceptions about you formed by experience.
It may be worth reaching out to a professional counsellor if [‘sense of self’](https://www.healthline.com/health/sense-of-self#importance) is something you are interested in learning about.
Journaling helps here. Sometimes it’s hard to be aware of one’s emotional states on the fly but it’s much easier to examine yourself in times of quiet reflection.
Invest some time each day into writing down recent events, how you felt, and what drove your choices. Extra emphasis on doing this on days where something drew a strong emotional response or unusual action from you.
Understanding yourself isn’t something that comes automatically, but it’s not SO hard if you do it intentionally, and it’s INCREDIBLY rewarding.
NO. NOW SHUT UP AND GET OFF THE INTERNET.
develop some deeper relationships, then ask for feedback. from your boss for work-related comments, from your friends for what kind of person they think you are. compare to how you see yourself and who you want to be.
Just learn to vibe w people and you’ll end up figuring out how to express yourself
I am, but I have realized that is because I rarely do—even with people I have been close to. I let them shut me down. I don’t do that anymore and while I may make mistakes or not be the most graceful of speakers, it feels so much better to be able to speak up.
Well hmm 🤔 I have a tendency i notice all the good part of myself and know myself pretty well but I’ve no idea the outsider perspectives of things a person from their view that notice I’m like.is that what u mean?
I have the same issue, but only because describing myself as either or is like reducing myself to simple terms? I feel like that as a human I am much more complex than that if it makes sense. Personally, I find myself being one thing or another depending on the situation. In reality it’s more like a spectrum rather than finding myself being just one or another.
An adjective often have a polar opposite antonym. So it’s like: “Am I organised or messy?” I am both and I am neither because it really depends on the context. For example I am pretty organise with my laptop desktop but my office desk is a kind of cluttered. What am I then? So to conlude: No you are not the only one, because it’s hard to say you are just one thing or another. Almost everything is entirely context-dependent. 🙂
u were probably emotionally neglected by ur parents and/or are neurodivergent and dissociating to survive. both for me and i had no idea who i was until my 20s