Feeling Like I Have No Identity.

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Does Anyone Else fell like they have no identity? I am one of those people who mimic everything everyone does, i have self
it is very upsetting because if there is no one around to copy i have no idea who i am or what i am supposed to be doing
Does anyone else ever feel like this or anything???

Kinda. I'm myself on here, and with my bf, but with everyone else, I'm not even a clone, I'm a ghost.

Not just strictly for being a social chameleon but also for having, I guess, social fronts over the years. Taking the fronts away left me not really knowing who I am? But I'm not too distressed because I know I exist, and I'm working it out.

I don't think it's so much there's a "real me" to find as it's a matter of simply letting things settle down. It was kind of discombobulating to learn that I wasn't who I thought I was, and then to learn that things I held to be practically concrete foundations of my identity didn't even exist. Strange stuff, you know? It's a lot to process just from finding out I'm autistic.

The most distressing part is that I don't really know what to do in most social situations and finding it more difficult to hold onto my usual social scripts. Not that they're gone but more that I don't quite know how to use many of them anymore.

I feel the same way. I copy others naturally.. take up everything from them very quickly, as if it is my natural instinct to do so. Otherwise I feel like I am not here.. feel like I am moving air. Something is so empty and thoughtless about that state. Empty as in without thoughts and emotions -- perhaps only anxiety; not as in sad. I don't know how I feel or how to feel.
And just as the previous member has said, I act naturally around my friends, my two only friends. I feel like I have a different personality with every one else.

Most people don't have an identity. I know this seems like a cliche on this forum, but most people don't have an identity, because if they did, they would be happy with who they are. Most people are angry and bitter, and you can't be happy with who you are if you don't know who you are, i.e. having an identity. The question isn't "who am I supposed to be?" the question is "who am I, and where will I go from here?"

I used to feel like that. I didn't mimic everyone but usually just one certain person or a few depending on a situation. I think it kinda helped me to blend in and socialize. But it also confused me a lot and whenever I was on my own I was feeling so lost. Now I'm trying to get to know myself and understand who I really am. It's a long and difficult process but I'm happy with what I accomplished so far. I feel much better now and more confident. I think it's very important to know yourself because you are the one person you'll have to live with all your life.
There’s a quote of Erich Fromm that I like a lot and I think is relevant in this situation: "Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality." And you can’t achieve that if you’re mimicking other people. None of them are greater than you can be

I feel like I do have an identity. But I'm not really allowed to have one because it's inconvenient for other people or their issues make them feel bad if I try to show that I have an identity. So I suppress my identity because them feeling good about themselves is more important than my needs. I'm not just saying that, that's the message I get all the time, I should stop being the way I am because me having desires or feelings of my own beyond the most superficial ones is upsetting to them even though I am neither abusive nor blaming towards them. Just existing as who I am is bad enough, the least I can do is pretend to be something I'm not so other people aren't inconvenienced by me being a real person.

Interesting topic. I have always felt the need to ape someone - try to replicate their personalities - in order to feel that I have an identity. These have variously been rock stars, actors, characters in movies and TV shows, writers, academics. I am still doing this at the age of 30, although intellectually it seems immature to me. Now that I have made a self-diagnosis, though, I wonder if it is something I will continue to do, or whether I will now try to be "myself" (whoever that is! )

I actually just wrote a little something on mimicing others........hmm.

Anyways, sometimes I do wonder who the real "me" is.....but then I think its best I don't know. I'm a CNA at a hospital and at the most (usually) I'll have 8 patients. So if one patient likes to joke around and smile a lot, then I'll do the same. If one is more of a hard assed country boy that doesn't talk much, then I'll act more like that. It just depends on who I'm around. Its like I can pick up very quickly their personality and then make it my own.

Maybe we're natural actors, eh? Maybe I should move back to California............

I used to.

Now... I knew I was there all along. Plus, the concept of identity is an abstraction I have very little use for, it's something that only bothered me a lot when I was trying to live in the land of abstractions, where I don't really belong except to visit.

A few years ago when I realised I had to try and fit in, I started copying a lot. Recently I felt I had no identity and am now letting bits of real me return carefully so as not to be too wierd but still be me but using a lot of the things I have learnt socially since I started working on it.

I was actually surprised about how little it bothered me when I worked it out. Which is to say, it didn't bother me at all. It wasn't even a surprise, really. As I said above, other elements have bothered me, and it was a bit of a shock... but not a bad thing overall.

Some things that contributed to it (such as losing nearly everything that was sentimental to me on two separate occasions) are even now years later still upsetting, but I'm not really bothering to actively search for anything - "I knew I was there all along." I am learning new things or old things that I've forgotten that may contribute to self-awareness and knowledge, but there's no imperative.

The combination of this and my tendency to construct personas/fronts for particular social situations are things I don't want to bother to mention to most NTs. I was surprised when I read an essay in Women From Another Planet? by someone who described something so similar. I'd actually written a private journal piece about my lack of identity a few days before reading that essay, and both she and I wrote such similar things. It was actually reassuring more than anything else.

When I first got my diagnosis I felt as if I had lost my identity. "Wait, you mean that everything that I do differently from others, what makes me unique, is actually the same for 1 percent of the population?"

It took a while for me to feel like I had an identity after that, but apparently most of my friends think that I'm "quirky and unique" so I guess we're good.

I don't feel that way today.

But when I was younger I did have that feeling. I was often quiet and reactive, with no real internal compass. Just taking things in. A friend once called me an "uncarved block". I was a watcher, a reactor, a cypher.

Today I do recognize where Ive stolen aspects of my personality from. But I stole them so long ago that they are mine now. heh.

I used to feel that way. What do you think that Austin Powers and Sid were all about? I had no identity of my own and nobody to identify with.