I now know why I'm uncomfortable with my name

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This alter ego is really relieving some of my stress. I went to my mom's art opening last night. I was there as myself(I can't really be my alter ego when my mom is around.)

I felt kind of shy, but I talked to people anyways. My mom is uptight, so she thought joking around was inappropriate. I got super stressed out about socially messing up and my mom being uptight.

I woke up feeling stressed out. I told myself that I'm now Sage Green and my stress and depression went away. None of the crap with my mom happened to Sage Green, so I felt fine. It would come back whenever I thought my mom was around.

Art is such a beautiful thing. Why must people be tense during art openings.

Is your mother an artist?

OMG I love this! May I borrow your Garfield personality the next time I get in a pinch? As some of you know, I'm NT, so this isn't an exclusively aspie thing. I think not being sure of your personality is a human thing, but maybe especially a young person thing.

There are some situations in which my true personality is not acceptable. Such as when an authority figure is telling me to do something that I don't agree with. Without thinking about it, I will borrow upon my late brother's personality- strong, quietly judgmental, indifferent, but generous. I remember how I would fight for his attention and approval, without him doing or saying anything. He would say something like, "Okay, I can do that, but you're an idiot." As we got older he wouldn't SAY that, but I knew what he was thinking. I try to give a similar impression.

As to the name thing, my (aspie) husband immediately renamed our son after he was named. It wouldn't have mattered what we officially named him. He had to have his own special name for him. He's renamed one of our dogs three times. Our son has learned the official names for all the pets and their alternate names. He answers to both the name I call him and the name my husband calls him. We've asked him to say his own name, but he won't. I'm curious as to what name he'll call himself.

My mom is an artist. She was tense because I was teasing a man we used to know. He seemed like a tough jokey guy, so I thought he could take a joke. My mom was uptight because she thought I was repeating something she told me in private. I wasn't. I didn't even remember it when I was talking to him. I guess it was just a big misunderstanding.

I really hope she doesn't find out about Sage and her life. I'm having trouble because one of the steps to have an independent life is having my own car. I have to practice driving around her. I can't be my alter ego around her and she's constantly worried when I'm driving. That really weighs me down.

When I finally have my own car I bet I'll be driving as Sage Green. Since I'm a new driver I'm not allowed to have distractions when I'm driving. That means no contact with my mom.

It's cool that you have a real person to create your alter ego from. Sage Green is mostly based on fictional character. That makes her a bit Mary Sue-ish. Actually a lot.

I did a Mary Sue test on her. She always gets high scores. I guess all alter egos get high scores. There's no Mary Sue test for alter egos. When she spends more time living her life I guess she'll start to seem more like a real person. I started going to school, so I can start basing some of her persona on actual people.

I'm also beginning to make stuff that happened to me fit into Sage Green's persona. That will be useful when I interact with people as her. I do not want to be caught in too much of a lie.

Sage Green still suffers from mental illnesses, so my depression and flakiness won't be out of character for her. If people that know me as Sage(I'll avoid mentioning the name Green) discover my "real name", I'll just tell them I'm trying new names.

You care about "coming across" to others more than actually "being", so you create these personas who you hope will please everyone, but in the end you will always fail to please the most important person, yourself.

Ah, but which is the construct and which is the True Self?

In my case, the construct was all anyone knew of me during my youth. After a while, that "anyone" included me. After a while it became like a sybiot; I couldn't tell where the construct ended and I began. After a number of years, all I knew was the construct. Mostly because I was so used to giving it the highest priority when dealing with others in order to get affection/avoid punishment or shame. Eventually, decades later it collapsed when our oldest child turned out to be just like me and I had to deal with choosing which way to raise them.

It can be quite useful to create a second construct so the first can be dis-assembled one trained behavior at a time - with a replacement behavior waiting*. The second, you see, is in some part intentionally modeled after one's ideal True Self, and after a while it simply fades away because the traits that get adopted *are* the real ones. It's a lot of work to keep a constructed persona going.

*Famous therapist up in Portland, OR (now retired) said, "Never take away someone's defense adaptation unless you are absolutely sure you have something better to replace it with".

Sage Green wasn't designed to please everyone. She was designed to please me and the people I want to attract. I just enjoy talking about her. I'm just using this thread to document her.

Ah, now I understand more. You are a very insightful person DevilKisses. I wish I'd have known myself so well when I was your age.

Being painfully shy is also a trait of mine. Maybe my alter egos were there for a similar reason to yours as well.

I believe you. I think I've gotten the wrong impression, DevilKisses.

There's a lot more to this and to learn than I was able to recognize at first.
In fact, this topic has become very interesting to me. I've been thinking about and expanding on it for about 4 hours now.

I had a stupid dream last night. I think it was because I had Nando's with my dad. After eating everyone felt sleepy. I went to bed at around nine. My dream was kind of weird, but not too bad. Except for the part when my mom got a disability placard for my car.

I've told my mom in real life that just because I can get one doesn't mean I should. My main disability is depression and I'm ablebodied.

After that scene I went exploring. I ended up at "universal studios." It was beautiful at first. There was a beautiful lake to swim in, so I decided to swim with my new dream friends.

I decided to take off my clothes in the water to be more spontaneous. I didn't think of the name Sage Green in the dream, but I was practicing being Sage Green.

I kind of enjoyed swimming like that, but then I noticed the water turned into a road and there was cars driving towards me. This wasn't scary, but it was very annoying.

A bunch of little girls in the dream started acting like they were in a horror film. They kept asking each other "What did you do to me?" Nothing truly scary happened, but I wanted to wake up. I asked a dream character to help me. Every time he touched me it felt weird and kind of painful.

This made me have a false awakening. I realized it was a false awakening when I couldn't turn on my light. I woke my self up for real by tapping the melody to Hungarian Dance no. 5. I guess I'll do that next time I'm in a dream I don't like.

I hope this dream wasn't trying to tell me not to be Sage Green. I hope it was just Nando's.

Sounds like your mom/parents (like most parents at your age) are a bit suffocating. And Sage Green is an escape. Like they dote on your autistic traits- and being Sage Green lets you escape from being either autistic- or being Not-austistic. You just dont have to think about it all. Just be yourself ( and you're probably less autistic acting when you dont worry about whether or not you're acting autistic- because you're free of being self conscious about it). If that makes any sense.

Well...thats my theory (based upon my own memories of being your age).

But to change the subject: when I am in a dream I dont like I just (1) shut my eyes, and then (2) reopen them. When you reopen your eyelids in a dream- your eyelids always really open- and you find yourself lying safe in bed.

My dad can be annoying as well. He often accuses me of being silly, ignores me, he's kind of sexist, makes me feel stupid and just doesn't engage with me. I constantly feel like I'm doing something wrong when I'm around him.

He also doesn't care about my health. He keeps making me eat unhealthy food. That causes me to have sensory issues. He doesn't take care of that either. He just takes me to noisy places or places with fluorescent lights. I go kind of crazy when I'm dealing with that and he starts mocking me. When I have my own car I'll be visting him way less.

I have an update. I found my alter ego two dimensional, so I decided to create a tulpa. A tulpa is basically a sentient imaginary friend. I thought it would be a good way to make my alter ego more three dimensional. I was wrong.

They do warn you about "head pressures". For me they were more like whole body pressures. I also lost a lot of my energy and motivation and got way more sensory problems. I even ended up having a panic attack about egocide.

I guess I have to find another way to make my alter ego three dimensional. I wish I got more warnings about tulpas draining my energy.

You know your making things up right?

I do know that made up things can create real physical effects though; I've experienced that.

I think that, perhaps, it all reconciles if you consider them as 'useful constructs' rather than 'made up' (which implies pure imagination)?