Spent formative years being told to be someone else?

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I just read something in a meditation book and it's something that I've been thinking about:

"We spend many of our fomrative years beng told that we should be somebody we are not. Meditation returns us to ourselves and helps us to remember who we really are."

I feel like the bad kids at school kind of made me become someone else and tricked me into experiencing that reality. I didn't realise this until now.

Without getting drawn into a negative pattern of thinking, what's your experience of this?

Told most of my life to be normal. Now I embrace being weird. The quote you said: "We spend many of our fomrative years beng told that we should be somebody we are not. Meditation returns us to ourselves and helps us to remember who we really are." reminds me of the middle age post -grad students who were told when they were my age to take a serious profession like teaching. Now they have come back to study what they really loved in the first place

I spent my formative years being told I had to become a part of something that repulsed me. I'm still not a part of society, and I'm still being told to become part of it. I want to get my own apartment so there is nobody left to tell me I have to be somebody else. Trouble is, in order to afford an apartment, I have to temporarily become someone I'm not, and I've been resisting this for the last 5 years. I'm dying inside.

I think this was definitely true for me. My mom told me who I was when I was a kid and heres the problem, I found out for myself that I was very different then she had thought. That confused me by the time I hit 18,19. I saw the type of person my mom had dictated to me exhibited in other people yet I was being treated differently and people werent taking to me like they were taking to those people. It led to so much disappointment and thats why I developed depression because I couldnt live up to that person I was expected to be. Its like, so if Im like them then why are they getting all the friends and Im not?

I think aspies need to be raised with a correct identity. You cant just tell us who we are and expect us to follow it. You have to realize the type of person we are and help us learn how to cope and function keeping in mind who we are as individuals. If you tell us to be someone else, we're either gonna fail trying or gonna turn into complete chameleons without a sense of real identity.

Person I was told to be: shy, sweet, nice, quiet, obedient, polite
Person I am: still shy, opinionated, blunt, somewhat argumentative, a random quirky weirdo

Overlap: shy and socially naive

All of my experiences of being someone else have failed. I am myself, and no matter what I do, that will never change even if I wanted it to.

Who was it who said "I know myself and that is all"? Was that Goethe? At any rate, yes, I've had the experience the previous posters have had. Being encouraged, nay urged, to be someone else, to drop the constant quoting of things and obsessing about statistics and boats and all of my specialized interests. I think I only hit my stride when I got to high school and was on the speech team, because those people accepted me for who I was, unlike my parents, who wanted a son who was good at sports and did Boy Scouting and all of that nonsense. Of course, I grew up in the Eighties when AS wasn't a recognized diagnosis, so their lack of knowledge of this situation was understandable. Their lack of understanding that someone might be a little different is not.

It happened.

Actually, I don't think my parents were able to decide whether they wanted me to be someone else, or to accept me for who I was.

I've always been told to change and grow up.

To be honest I don't mind if people tell me how to improve, just as long as they're not insulting about it. As for accomodationg other people, I have to decide whether it is really necessary. We put a lot of thought in to these things. it's very unhealthy for anyone to just assume, especially given how little we just fit in neatly in to the crowd.

To be honest I don't mind if people tell me how to improve, just as long as they're not insulting about it. As for accomodationg other people, I have to decide whether it is really necessary. We put a lot of thought in to these things. it's very unhealthy for anyone to just assume, especially given how little we just fit in neatly in to the crowd.

Edit: Whoops

That says a lot right there.

One woman wrote a self-help book titled, "Normal Is Just A Setting On Your Washing Machine."

I came to a revelation when I realized that all the pushing and prodding to be "someone else" was done by those who wanted me to shape-shift into what THEY wanted. In truth, someone else would likely have wanted me to be something else for them as well.

I decided to stop trying to make everyone else happy at my expense.

If you accept me the way I am, I will endeavor to change to please you.

If you want me to be the way you want me to be, you can kiss my butt.

It's easier to please someone when they are willing to accept you even if you can't or don't change at all.

You can never please someone who expect a laundry list to be accomplished before they will accept you.

I'm always being to stand up for myself. But it's just too difficult for me! If I do stand up for myself, I know I will say the wrong thing, or it will be the wrong time, or it will be the wrong person, and people might think I'm being awkward, stupid, childish, huffy, et cetera.

Browse around Self-Help book sections in either libraries or book stores. You'll find this "being told to be someone your not" is everyone's experience, Aspie or not.

Finding one's "center" and defining who we are for ourselves, is the common experience of every human being on Earth. The difference between Aspies and non-Aspies where this is concerned is first in the level of difficulty in figuring out what's happening (Aspies tend to recognize it for what it is right off the bat), and second in the level of difficulty figuring out what to do about it (Aspies tend to just dig in and fight it ~ which really doesn't work so well), and third, the level of difficulty effectively establishing a self-identity that is not only accepted by oneself, but also accepted by those around us and society in general. It's this third thing Aspies on general tend to suck pretty bad at. NT's, once they figure out what's happening, have a much easier time establishing self-identities, and being accepted for who they are.

I got the classic "You should be more like your sister" statement from my dad.
If we don't think the same way, its impossible.
And he still didn't answer my email I sent him TWO WEEKS AGO.

The depute head at my daughter's school advised me to speak with a mum with a similarly behaved child, regarding behaviour management strategies. I got quite a shock when I did. She doesn't let her daughter away with any 'weirdness', as she sees it, and sends her to her room for it. She also stopped taking her to after-school classes as she was embarrassed. She admitted she's much tougher on her than the younger NT daughter. She could not see any positives (she'd no way of finding any if she was going to change her). The AS daughter is academically gifted and the NT daughter is below average, but she couldn't take any pride in the AS girl. Furthermore, she's decided not to pursue a diagnosis, after it was initially indicated that her daughter had AS traits.

After our meeting, I realised that I was in a much better place than her, emotionally, and my daughter is a happier child as a result. Yes, she'll benefit from help in certain areas, but I still want her to be the person she is. She goes to a few after-school classes and, although she does stuff that's a bit weird, she regularly does stuff that's uniquely brilliant and I'm not embarrassed, I'm proud. I took no advice from the mum, instead I think I opened her eyes to a better way of seeing her lovely daughter.

Great information there. I understood the 3rd part only recently. I kind of realised that other people in society have this thing where they figure out who they are, I didn't realise this until recently because nobody mentioned it, was I abscent on this day of school or was I supposed to be psychic? More recently I've been going throught this process of realising where my social blind spots are and where my difficulties lie. Doing this brings about acceptance and total peace. I would go as far as to say that this is the holy grail / answer to the problem I've been searching for all these years. I found tonnes of amazing coping strategies but I think this is a big deal. Diagnosis is very important to me now, this is what people have been talking about when they say how amazing their diagnosis has been for them. Really amazing.