I have two different sides to my personality

Post Reply New Topic

I hate myself for this. When I'm at home, I can be stubborn, assertive, confident, arguementative, honest, and even hyper.

When I'm out with a friend or at work, I turn into this meek, sweet, calm, dishonest (due to fear of conflict and awkwardness), timid, and chilled person.

When I'm at a social gathering, I go all mute and don't say anything.

I don't think any of my friends can imagine me being how I really am at home, and my family can't imagine me being all calm and meek when I'm out with my friends and something happens what normally would have triggered off an outburst when I'm at home.

Anyone else have opposite sides to your personality depending on your company and environment?

Yes.

yep.

Yeah I know what you mean.

I do! I hate confrontations and avoid it when necessary.

Am I the only person who doesn't?

I'm stubborn, afraid of conflict, shy, incredibly honest, and seem both overly mature and immature at the same time, in both situations.

I shut down around people, stim, get angry and all my autism just seems to be 10 times worse.

At home I am confident, motivated (to clean up after myself), easy going and can actually have a conversation...with medication. Sometimes without but I don't say a whole lot.

I exist on a continuum depending on how much I like my company. it's quite varied, but it's all under my control.

For me, it's not that I really have two sides to my personality but that parts of my personality and parts of my autism conflict (and may appear like opposite forces).

I like talking or communicating in another form with others, I figured out that foolish around is a lot of fun to me and I'm confident and don't easily back away. I like to speak to my mind and I'm very curious about all kinds of things that I want to ask about and hear more of.

But because of autism I can't simply talk wherever and whenever I want to do it, I can't express myself spontaneously (and need to plan ahead) and I struggle to communicate in certain environments. I then appear quiet, dreamy and shy and not like the curious, giddy and determined person that I am.

It makes sense that you're like that. You're used to your family, so you feel confident enough to speak your mind....with others, you aren't so confident, because you don't know them so well, so you have to present as a quieter, meeker person. You know that you won't easily lose your family but you feel you could lose other people if you start getting blunt with them and challenging or offending them too much. I was similarly more outspoken with my parents and sister than I've ever been with anybody else......another factor was that I was itching to get away from them, so offending them really didn't feel dangerous to me.

Perfectly normal and natural, I reckon. When your friends are well-established and the friendships have matured over the years, I expect you'll feel more able to be yourself.....though if your behaviour with family is normally a little too aggressive because of ill feeling and a frustrated desire to leave the nest and set up as an independent adult, then you'll probably not become quite that blunt with your friends.

I think a little bit of aggression is quite important in a healthy, close friendship......meek people are easy to get on with in many ways, and aggression is always awkward to deal with, but I don't think anybody can be really close to another if they hide all their objections and disapprovals away.....how can you really know somebody who won't share their negative side with you at all?

On the other hand, I think the ideal way is to be assertive with everybody, never particularly aggressive or meek. So I'd look at assertiveness and try to work out how you could use it in real-life situations. Not that I'm much cop at it myself. I'm very rarely aggressive (parents are now dead, and once I left home I pulled my punches with them just like I do with everybody else), I'm assertive sometimes, and mostly I hide a lot of my annoyance.....I'm still too shy to even suggest fun things to do with people for a lot of the time, and I don't challenge folks enough, I just keep myself invisibly well-defended somehow, expecting little and being ready to cut and run if I get badly hurt. I don't engage, so there's a limit to the harm they can do to me. But once in a while, especially lately, I get the assertive thing right. I've noticed that a lot of grievances can be expressed in quite a positive, invitational way.

Aren't all people like this?

They have a different personality when around those they know as opposed to those they don't know. Or when alone or when in public. No matter how meager of a difference it may be? I mean it could even be something like, someone would be slightly more honest or jokingly rude towards a good friend and polite but also casual around an acquaintance.

I don't know how to explain this...I feel like my real personality is trapped behind my slow processing. I have always imagined myself acting a different way with people than I actually do. But in a real-time situation, my reactions are too slow.