Two personalities?

[Elisabeth]

           Has anyone felt as though they have a personality that they act out in real life but that their true personality is the one they act out in their daydreams?  I have thought this for a long time.  It first occurred to me in 5th grade that I did not act they way I felt inside.  The way others saw me was a quiet girl who followed the rules and didn't express her feelings or thoughts.  I avoided trouble and promoted peace in the most silent way possible.  I was often asked by others, "How come you don't talk?".  I hated this question.  When others tell me how sweet, quiet and peaceful I am I get angry because it tells me I am not being myself.  As a child I loved the saying "be yourself".  I embraced weirdness, personality, differentness, and strangeness.  I wanted to think of myself as crazy, weird, and unique.  But when I realized that I wasn't acting my true self I became very upset.  

            I haven't met anyone else who feels the same way.  In my daydreams I am a confidant girl who is in control.  I am the queen and people do what I  say.  If I don't like them I stand up to them and make them leave.  I am the center of attention and I tell stories to an adoring, quiet audience all night.  I had wild parties and adventures with my imaginary friends all through middle school and high school.  Compared to reality, I went to no parties, had no adventures, and only ever talked to my friends when I was at school, and even then it was limited conversation.  My house was a quiet one.  My dad worked till late and my mom was basically a hermit.  I think a lot of my MD was a coping mechanism to deal with the crushing silence and aloneness.  I would sneak around the house to avoid my mother and live in my daydreams, talking in whispers and prancing silently around the house.  While most children brought home friends from school, I brought them home in my brain.  I would give imaginary tours of my house and talk about anything and everything with any kid in my class.  But in real life I never really spoke to any of them.  No one ever really knew me.  When I graduated high school, many students expressed regret that they never really got to know me.  My high school graduating class was about 20 students.  There was no real reason for us not to know each other.  

            I have always felt trapped in my dual personality life.  I have tried for years to bring my daydream self into reality.  I am much better but I still have a ways to go.  Sometimes I ask people if they think I'm quiet and if they say yes I take that as a bad sign.  If they say no I rejoice.  I don't want to be a controlling and obnoxious person, I just want to be myself.  I want to be able to communicate to others and express myself.  I want people to get to know me and I want to have a positive impact on them.  

[Brian Lee Carlson]

This describes me exactly. My mom works up until night and my father died when I was six. I, too, heavily embrace my inner personality and I even attempted to try and let it out. But I'm still incredibly reserved. I only have one friend that I hang out with outside of school, only on Saturdays though, and every other friend is during school, and like you said, it's through limited conversation. 

I remember in middle school, after graduating, somebody told me that I should've spoken more and that I seemed interesting. Right now, in HS, there was a girl (she's hot) who had a crush on me but I didn't act on it and now she has already graduated (she was one more year above me). I could possibly ask for her number on Facebook, but I'm still contemplating on that. 

Anyways, when I read this, it felt like as if you were describing me, so your not the only one. For me,  my inner personality that I imagine is sometimes through third person in a made up character and other the times through a self-glorified me. I like to imagine part of myself as more witty, cheeky and creative. But I usually just end up not saying anything, avoiding social situations, such as sitting in the library on the sofa chairs during lunch, and mumbling and nodding. I can kind of connect with certain people when the topic of gaming, anime or music comes up, but without those, it's impossible for me to connect.

[Elisabeth]

Thank you for responding!  It has taken me many years to open up to people.  The best thing for me was to move far away to college and try to recreate my identity.  I was not 100% outgoing but I was better than before.  When I came home to visit high school friends, one said she noticed a difference.  I believe I'm happier sharing my real self with others despite my anxiety.  I still don't feel I am 100% but I believe change happens slowly.  I hope you find a way to break the barrier into reality.  It can be very terrifying but worth it.  I'm glad you have a good friend and some topics that help you connect with others.  I had some incredible friends in high school that despite the lack of interaction I had with them back then, we still meet up today, 6 years later.  I had one friend I really felt the closest to because she was so similar to me.  She also daydreamed, and wrote stories, but she was also a talented artist who could bring her daydreams to life on paper.  Although she was my best friend, we always had a polite friendship, each afraid of offending the other.  It wasn't until I move away to college that I made a friend I could tell absolutely everything and we could give each other a hard time with no bad feelings.  

Anyway, in my theory of personalities, I tend to believe I'm a secret extravert.  One of my biggest goals in life is to turn that secret into public knowledge.  I think I'm about 1/2 to 2/3 of the way there.  Many people believe personality as how you act, but I believe there are many factors that can cause a person to not act their personality for extended amounts of time, if not years.  Fear/anxiety, trauma, and mental disorders can burry a persons personality.  I often felt as though I was trapped or in chains due to social anxiety and wished I could just be myself.  To cope with this my fantasy life served as a tool to help me survive.  In that life I was my true self, uninhibited and safe.  

These days I still have plenty of imagined conversations but this trait is far more common than you would think.  Many outgoing people talk to themselves or imagine conversations.  So what I want to express to you out of all this is that there is hope if you wish to release your inner personality.  It will take time and you should never feel guilty or angry with yourself if you don't get immediate results.  I used to think I had to destroy my imaginary world in order to be myself in the real one.  I only became very depressed.  This is one thing I regret and I wish I hadn't put myself through that trauma.  It is right to accept yourself every step of your journey, and accept your imaginary world as it is, even as you begin to spend less time there.  Look for things in reality you can enjoy and embrace them.  Take risks.  Never put yourself down for who you are.  These are things I learned the hard way and would hate for anyone to experience them.  

Best of luck to you, sorry for the long rabbit trail post.  

Brian Lee Carlson said:

This describes me exactly. My mom works up until night and my father died when I was six. I, too, heavily embrace my inner personality and I even attempted to try and let it out. But I'm still incredibly reserved. I only have one friend that I hang out with outside of school, only on Saturdays though, and every other friend is during school, and like you said, it's through limited conversation. 

I remember in middle school, after graduating, somebody told me that I should've spoken more and that I seemed interesting. Right now, in HS, there was a girl (she's hot) who had a crush on me but I didn't act on it and now she has already graduated (she was one more year above me). I could possibly ask for her number on Facebook, but I'm still contemplating on that. 

Anyways, when I read this, it felt like as if you were describing me, so your not the only one. For me,  my inner personality that I imagine is sometimes through third person in a made up character and other the times through a self-glorified me. I like to imagine part of myself as more witty, cheeky and creative. But I usually just end up not saying anything, avoiding social situations, such as sitting in the library on the sofa chairs during lunch, and mumbling and nodding. I can kind of connect with certain people when the topic of gaming, anime or music comes up, but without those, it's impossible for me to connect.

[The1andonlyAbber]

I can relate to a lot of what you said. When I was little I was homeschooled and lived in the middle of nowhere and hardly ever saw any other kids. Plus I had some sort of anxiety/OCD thing that went undiagnosed (it's gone now and my parents never noticed it or took me to the doctor for it, but I know it was anxiety or OCD because I had tons of abnormal fears and obsessions). I developed MD as a way of coping with the isolation and anxiety. I was an extrovert, so the isolation was a huge problem for me. Then my OCD/anxiety faded and my family moved to the suburbs where I got to go to school and live in a neighborhood with other kids. However, I was still forced to be a loner due to the fact that I was bullied (and therefore couldn't be friends with the kids at school) and got over 4 hours of homework per night (and therefore couldn't play with the kids in the neighborhood). I was just as lonely and stressed as I was back when I lived in the middle of nowhere. Due to the bullying and excessive homework, my parents had me change schools, but that just resulted in MORE bullying and MORE hours of homework. There was no bullying (and, strangely, less homework) when I got to high school, but by then it had become natural for me to mainly socialize with daydream characters. At school I appear very quiet and blank on the outside, but I'm actually loud, eccentric, and emotional on the inside.

[Tanya]

Oh my goodness! i feel the exact same way! i have been thinking of writing this myself for quite some time. i always thought that i was the only one who felt this way!

[Tinkerbell]

I couldn't have put it better myself :-). I feel exactly the same way. The sad thing is, when I do try to bring traits from my confident character from my dream into real life. People are taken aback and they are like ," You've changed. Are you alright."