"Who you are."

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This is a split from this page http://www.wrongplanet.net/posts182034-start90.html because I wanted to start a new topic. freakZ told me you can't change who you are. I disagree because you can change who you are. I have changed over the years. I used to be very naive and not I am not anymore. When I was a kid, I used to tease people all the time. I did stuff to provoke them just to see how they react and I loved the attention. But it caused me rejections and they didn't want me around. Mom felt sad for me because I didn't know when to quit and even parents didn't want their kids playing with me. But then I changed that about myself because it was making me a bad person.


Where do you draw the line for "who you are?" Lot of people say you can't change who you are but to me I think that is not true because I have changed stuff about me. Can a bully stop being a bully? Can a jerk stop being a jerk? Can a user stop being a user? Can people stop being interested in sports and get interested in something else? Can someone stop managing money poorly? Can someone stop being a compulsive spender? Can a cheater stop being a cheater? and so on.


My mom used to lose her temper and hit us. Whenever she get mad, she hit because that is what her father did. Her dad was also hit growing up so he learned when you get mad you hit. But he worked on that fault and then moved onto doing the silent treatment. My mother didn't like how she hit us whenever she get mad so she had to work on not doing it and it was hard she says.

My ex hated working and he used me as his meal ticket and didn't want to work. He wanted more of a mother than a girlfriend. He also loved joking and teasing and using sarcasm but he used too much of it it would upset me. He would use it when I be serious and it would feel like he didn't care about me. He knew I was literal but he didn't care. He expected me to get used to it because "it was who he is." He didn't want to say what he meant with me, he wanted to do it to me too than to other people only. But then he get pissed when I take him seriously because I didn't know what he said was a joke.


What does it really mean "who you are?" I don't think I ever took this literal because I have always thought you can change who you are because I had always changed growing up. I can think of some things that's never changed such as my favorite food and I still love sweets. But I am not the same person as I was as a kid or few years ago.

you're quite correct. everyone changes. Its how life arrodes us, changes us, smooths us like water carving into a rock to form a stream and then a river. Life does this to us as we grow.
We learn, grow and hopefully become something good and wonderful.
We take in our surroundings, what people tell us, or our perspectives, what we like and dont like, friends, family, they all add to and take from what we are, and what we are at the end of lifes journey.
We can be anything we set our minds to. People change with maturity and experiences. This is the same for both NT's and people on the spectrum, life benifits and takes from all humans...
Ive changed a lot in the past year and ive seen my freinds change alot in the past year, we grow appart and become different people, we may not even like the person weve become, or other people may not like what weve become or vice versa, etc etc..

So why do people say you can't change who you are?

I've changed a lot. I used to be very ignorant and most of the subjects I've hated I now love. I believe my intelligence may be slightly above average but still very fixed on a limited no. of subjects. If you met me as a kid and then met me as I am now you wouldn't believe it. I was quiet, aloof, bad at almost every school subject and oh so sacred of everyone. Now I'm quiet but can prattle on in conversations, my interests are science/history/art and I'm not scared of people, but more detached.
I had a reading disability and used to hate to read but now I'm writing my own stories.
I used to wake up late and not get dressed before 3pm and sometimes pent longer in what I slept in. I'd eat poorly, not exercise, not clean up after myself and had no real goals in life.
Now I'm very clean and orderly and everyday work towards reaching my goals.
I've developed social skills through rote memory and learned things, even became less of a creative right brained thinker to a more logical left brain. Actually I have a near perfect balance. I still have no interest in maths but I can do it now.
I'm not totally introverted any more.
I used to hate exercising but now I love it.
Most shocking of all I used to be extremely cautious, now I'm impulsive. I was even hyposensitive and now I'm extremely hypersensitive. Of course that's some extreme change that this thread isn't about. I didn't consciously decide to become hypersensitive, the medication made that decision for me.

Even with with disabilities I think I can get around them to learn new things, like say a musical instrument. It doesn't matter if I don't have raw talent - though I think I might be good at music - but that I can accomplish something.

Just saying you can't change is a defeatist attitude. I don't have meltdowns over change any more. It still startles me and sometimes it can make me panic but I think I'm dealing with it a bit better.

People are not born with skills but develop them. You can have genes passed onto you that gives you the potential to be very talented at something but without practice you'll never know how good you can be.

People need to be careful about telling someone on the spectrum that they can't change. It's really difficult and takes a lot of practice, tears, meltdowns and broken relationships (possibly) but the more you work on those issues you can change. You may never be completely rid of them but they may decrease. That's what is important.

See my thread on being bad at budgeting? I had shutdowns over not being a good cook. I'm recovering from that and I'm going to learn how to get better at it.

That said, you shouldn't force yourself into very stressful environments but start with something you know you can handle and then add a bit extra.

Here's another one: I went from impulsive shopping to buying exactly what I need. That's was a real problem for me.

Maybe to change yourself you have to understand a lot about yourself. I feel I know so much about who I am and I can usually work out the necessary steps to change something about me that is causing me problems. Sometimes I need pointers because I overlook some options especially when I get frustrated easily.
I even think I went from one Myer Briggs personality to another. I'm an INTJ these days. I can't remember what I was before.

EDIT: Ohhhhhhhh....I get what Freakz meant by 'can't change who you are' - referring to AS/autism. It's not about decreasing symptoms for yourself but people wanting someone to change. It's like telling a blind person to see without glasses, someone with ADHD to just pay more attention as if they can just switch it on whenever and telling someone in a wheelchair to get up and walk.

Changing who you are to fit in better is not something I'd want to do. I change for myself, so I can stop feeling like sh**. If someone think what I talk about is weird and I should stop I won't because that's the only way I'm able to converse. I can sometimes talk to people about other stuff but not always and hardly ever without medication.

I used to get treated like my meltdowns were in my control to stop, even my shutdowns. That's one thing I can't change. I can suppress meltdowns but not shutdowns.

Gosh, I take things so literally sometimes.

I think we can change and improve certain things about ourselves, but we never change who we are.

Good post League. I think change is possible. As for someone not being able to sing beautifully that is subjective. Otherwise, Joe Cocker and Nico should have never put the thought in their head. There is too much evidence that motivation is what actually gets things done. Great thoughts and great skill mean nothing without the will to work something to completion.

It is complicated as whilst we have some choice about how we choose to behave biology also comes into play, and that, we do not have quite so much choice over.

Personality is complex. There are core traits that are stable and enduring over time and then there are the choices we make and the things that we learn. Personality can be a complicated mix of neurobiology, social learning, experience and so on. It can be influenced by many different factors...our experiences, our environment, the people we encounter, and our own biological make up and even what we ingest (foods, drugs) and so on.

The parts of us that are defined or governed by our biology I believe we have less control over. The parts of us that are governed more by learning we do have more choice over as we can relearn new skills or ways of being or doing things. The question is which things are governed by which? Or rather which parts of our personality are governed by our biology and which do we have free choice over.

Also our neurobiology will not only partly determine some of our core traits but also our ability to learn, so how we learn and what we learn and the way in which learn that and then use it can be affected by that. Your perception of things is also affected by your basic neurological make up.

In conclusion (for the time being) we can change some things and other things we either cannot change or may need to learn to work around.

I am presently studying personality and personality development, but I need to gather more data and do more research before coming to a definite conclusion. At the moment I have fragmented ideas on the subject that I have not yet drawn together as a whole so more study is needed.

What I can point out at this time is that people who have suffered from brain damage (ie due to an accident) can experience personality changes afterwards...which indicates that at least some of our personality is actually determined by our neurobiological make up. However the brain can show plasticity and form new connections and neurons etc, so there is also a certain amount of room for change as this plasticity allows learning to take place.

You can pretend to be a bear but you will always be a human.

"If you say you can, or say you can't, either way you are right."

Of course we can change who we are.

I will say this though. There may be certain things about ourselves we never have time to learn to change, simply because we run out of time and die. We've all got a limited amount of time to change, and we can't all change everything we want to before we die. If we could live forever, who knows what possibilities there are?

The challenge is in learning what we can change in the time we have left, then doing it. If we can...

In some ways, I'm very different than I was twenty and thirty years ago. In other ways, I'm the same. I've no idea how much of myself I'll be able to change before I'm gone. I don't think any of us do. But we can all change. We just have to decide to, and follow through.

Geez, if nobody could change, we'd all still be clinging to our blankies and bottles. (extreme analogy, but you get the point)