No sense of self

Who am I? I have little idea. I know what I am interested in, and I know what my strengths and weaknesses are, and what I like and dislike. I am often told that I am a very articulate and self-aware person.

However, most of my life has been an act. I have internalised multiple personas over the years, pretending to be someone I am not, regardless of whether this someone is real or a figment of my imagination. As an extreme example, once, when I was at school, I imitated the precise way a girl pouted her lip. I ended up pouting my lip, and must have looked quite ridiculous.

I try and imitate hair styles, dress styles, speech patterns, actions, almost anything. Sometimes this is very conscious, sometimes it is almost unconscious, but I am always aware that I am playing a part. Even when I am alone in my bedroom, I act 'through' others. Even my interests are often dictated by someone else, someone I admire or want to be like. It feels like I have no autonomy or 'self' that I can call my own; everything is stage managed.

My interests currently come and go, but I am only interested in one area of a subject, and find it hard to generalise my interest to related fields. I have always had this problem, but I am more aware of it now; it means that I find it hard to plan my life, decide what I want to do, and what I want to achieve in life.

I also get obsessed with certain people, and live my life 'through' them, often in fantasy.

Can anyone else relate to this lack of self, identity confusion?

  • Wow, I was looking for some information about autism and identity problems and this, what you say here, is exactly what I feel as well. Especially the feeling of losing yourself (sense of self) in the presence of others is really relatable. :O 

    Never saw this kind of recognition.

    Thank you Blush

  • I could have written a great deal of the original post.  I know what I'm interested in, I know my strengths and weaknesses; I'm intelligent, articulate and self-aware.  But for most of my life, I've felt like an actor in a film.  I've felt like the Prot character in the film K-Pax - an alien who's come to earth and is looking around and thinking 'This is all very strange.  What primitive beings these are.'  I don't mean that in the sense of feeling superior or self-righteous.  I mean that I look at what people get hung up on - fashion, vanity, money, religion, cults, status, gadgetry - and find it all quite baffling.

    I used to be heavily influenced by other people.  I tried to copy them.  I even ended up compromising my own beliefs so that they tallied more with what other people more generally accepted.  Even now, though I have firm beliefs and principles, I can feel myself on shaky ground if anyone challenges them.  It's not about lacking the courage of my convictions, but more about self-confidence and personal esteem.  After having these things shaken by a lifetime of indifferent, contemptuous or hostile treatment at the hands of others, it's hard to re-build these things.  A mere comment can reduce me to emotional rubble.

    Having said all that, my diagnosis has helped to restore a sense of indentity.  I'm me, and no one else.  Nor do I want to be like anyone else.  I wish I could be better at some things.  But, as I started out by saying, I know what my strengths are.  I try to play up to those as much as I can now.  I'll always have the weaknesses.  But I tend to put them aside much more, because they're in large part what fed my confusion and lack of sense of self. 

    I've mostly identified as 'existentialist'.  I find it a very congenial set of ideas, rather than an ideological or philosophical doctrine.

  • Dear Hope

    One book you might find interesting is Nobody Nowhere, by Donna Wiiams. Her words seem to come straight out of the outs of some of the individuals described by RD Laing, in The Divided Self. Donna became something of a guru within the sold of autism in the 90's, though sadly she recently died.

  • i don't have the skills to notice others, let alone copy them, and am aware of scarcely anything around me, but i agree with the no sense of self and no ability to construe my memories into anything, they're just random *** in my brain. I don't have any likes or interests particularly either, i'm completely passive.

  • Hope, you could be describing me exactly! I think I have always immitated people and when I am in the company of others it feels like I jump from one person I've known to the next. A long time before I was diagnosed I became aware that I could turn myself into another female person and copy their way of speaking and would copy their antics and everything. I didn't know why I did this but was just aware I did and it scared me a bit.

    Often I would sit and watch other women and take notes of what I should do to appear more like a 'normal' person as in copy the way they held their hands, arms, walked, spoke etc. I would even grade myself at how well I was putting across these actions which I saw as things that would make me fit in better. Years later still not knowing I had Aspergers I began to realise that I was always like a different person in different scenarios and always to fit with what the people I was dealing with seemed like. As an older person now diagnosed I feel as though I can completely cover up my Aspergers by fitting myself into one of these roles depending on where I am but only for a short time and then people realise I'm a bit slow, odd or whatever.

    I think I am happy most often when I am on my own but amongst others for example I enjoy going out for a coffee. I sit on my own and read a magazine but can feel so happy and upbeat especially in comparison to how I would feel going for a coffee with another person. I have no worries about what I'm saying and if the other person is enjoying my company and dealing with all that chatter in the head in connection with fitting in. I can just dream and read my magazine and look around and feel so good. I think this is when I am my real self maybe. Often I feel really happy like this and then I go somewhere and meet others and in an instant I can feel down just by someones reply to something I say. It doesn't take much to make me change from feeling good to feeling depressed.

    Sometimes I prefer just to be myself and try to maintain that good feeling while it is there.

  • I have a similar problem, except that I've never tried to imitate the personas that can take over at any time.  It is totally involuntary and I just wish I could switch it off.   I absolutely hate it.  It feels like I'm in that person' s body looking through their eyes,  speaking in their voice etc.  I despair of it because the meanness of the mean personas can come out in me.  Maybe mine is slightly different?  I don't really know. 

    My psychologist named this as 'no sense of self' and noted that this was pretty common in Aspergers.  

  • Hi Hope copying others isnt a bad thing in my opinion especially if its someone you admire.I think it can help you become a better person yourself.I myself have done this and its not been a problem for me.

    Marjorie195 Hi Imyself have had cbt and found it extremely helpful I use the techniques like you said and its helped me in many ways.

  • Hope said:

    Sometimes my life feels full of meaning, and sometimes it feels as though I have no direction and that I am looking into the void.

    This is exactly the problem that religion was invented to solve. Traditionally, it was useful to reassure people that the bits that they didn't understand were God's works and were nothing to worry about.

    Personally I don't need this reassurance and it all seems too artificial. The pomp and ceremony is bizarre and the issues that religion brings in terms of sectarian strife make it a distinctly flawed concept in a lot of cases. I don't think God exists but I think that it is a useful concept that can help some people live their lives by a set of rules that help them get on in the world.

    I think you are describing a problem that billions of other people in the world struggle with hence the popularity of religion. I don't think this is a particularly autistic thing but I guess we tend to get obsessed about problems like this so it seems more difficult for us.

    I haven't studied philosophy formally but initial reading of

    en.wikipedia.org/.../Existentialism

    seems to fit with some of my ideas.

    Perhaps, if one is prone to obsessive thinking, we (most people on this forum?) should at least systematically study and understand thought/philosoophy itself?

  • I think that one of the main issues with autism, is that it is a spectrum. There are many characteristics, that depend on an individuals personality. We are all different, just as nt people are all different. No single book/web site has all the answers and can only give examples of the types of characterisics and issues we face.

    I am currently reading Valerie Gaus, Living Well on the Spectrum. It is a much tougher read and I have to look back into my life to find examples of some of the problems she describes, but I am slowly gaining understanding.

    I have also realised that the help I received in the 90s was cbt and it has, in the long term, helped me change and cope better. It is not about having someone challenge our eroneous thinking for us, more about seeing that we have erroneous thinking and challenging it for ourselves. I was given the tools to challenge my own thoughts and had to practice and experiment with new ways of thinking, to develop new habits.

    One thing I was advised to doin my cbt, was to look out at the world more, to find things that stimulate my mind and give me more to talk about. It has helped me to become less self absorbed (some of the time) and have a little knowledge on lots of things. Eg as you walk down a street, you can lift your eyes to the buildings around, looking above shop window level, and see the beauty of the old architecture, surounded by the 60s carbuncles etc. The more you absorb of the world around you, the more involved in it, you become.

  • Hi Char1992,

    Thanks for replying. I do spend a lot of time alone psychoanalysing my whole existence but even when alone, I am not too sure who I am.  I am either interested in something to the point of obsession, or not interested at all, and so there is little continuity in my life. Sometimes my life feels full of meaning, and sometimes it feels as though I have no direction and that I am looking into the void. Fortunately life is good at putting new opportunities in my path, often when I least expect them, so I maintain hope. But I wish I was not so restricted and narrow in my interests, even though the same interests give me great pleasure.

  • I have had a look at the Tania marshall site. Some of it applies to me, but not all of it. I have never been particularly empathetic, and it is only recently that I have become more aware of other people and their feelings. Tania seems to suggest that women on the spectrum have a 6th sense or intuitive side; I cannot relate to this.

    But  thanks for pointing out the site to me. More work needs to be done around women with Asperger's and the different coping strategies used.

    It is hard because my interests vary in intensity and come and go. It makes it very hard to know what to do.

  • Hi Hope, I don't know whether you have looked at the web site of Tania Marshall, moving towards a female profile of asd. She says a female aspian "copies, mimics, acts to fit in and make others like her and generally lacks a strong sense of self".

    Further on she says "May use chameleon like skills to assimilate and be involved with a variety of groups or diferent people over time, in search of true identity".

    Your post imediately brought Tania's web site to mind. It is 

    easy to find via google and you may find it helpful. I do.Smile

  • Hi Hope,

    I find your post very relatable, I know what you are talking about and I have done the same most of my young life, only recently have I broken away from this which I feel happened because I stopped caring what people thought of me and spent a lot of time alone following my passions and learning about myself behind all the front.

    Firstly, I would say that it is normal and not weird in any way, because when we are young we pick up words and behaviours so why not when we are older? Maybe you have been picking on others behaviours and styles to fit in and be accepted, do you think that may be the answer?

    Immitation may be a way of learning socially and could be your way of trying to find out which styles and traits suit you best. I would say that most people pick things up from others, especially from advertising and popularity of items or traits from characters in movies etc.

    Also when you say you have imitated personalities and acted, are you sure that its what you have done, I only say this because people naturally change even if they dont have AS from a toddler to a child and child to young adult etc everyone changes their styles and personalities in some way as they grow older.

    Hopefully I have helped in some way but would like to speak more about things

    Nice to meet you

    Charlie