Who Is This False Me, and Where Did It Come from?

Do you remember when you were a kid, and you got this great shirt or sweater that you really liked?  You couldn't wait to wear it to school so that everyone could see what a great shirt or sweater it was.  When you got there, though, somebody made an insulting remark about what you were wearing, and all of a sudden, all you wanted to do was take the thing off and never wear it again.

You also might have liked a certain teacher or classmate, until your friends started teasing you about "being in love" or having a crush on that person.  In order to stop the teasing, you pretended not to like the person anymore, and you possibly lost the opportunity to make a good friend or have a strong relationship with the teacher.

In each of these cases, we see a piece of the development of the false self--the person that we present to the world isn't truly the person we are.  In the first case, your true self loved the sweater, but the self that you presented to the world hated it.  In the second, your true self liked a certain person, but the self that the world saw didn't.  As we go through life, we see that the self that we present to the world is very fussy and very demanding, and all because it wants to fit in and be accepted by others, even to the point of being untrue, unfair, and dishonest.

I see this in myself a lot.  At heart, I'm a cheerful, outgoing person who loves to be around others.  As a kid, I was this way most of the time until I started growing up and my father's alcoholism became a factor in my life.  I became withdrawn, afraid of what would happen if people found out my family's "secret" (which of course wasn't really a secret at all).  There was an unwritten code in my family that we wouldn't expose ourselves to the ridicule of others because of my father's drinking, and we stayed to ourselves, involved in no social life at all.

The self that I presented to the world as a result of these years was a self that was full of fear--fear of rejection, of ridicule, of exposure.  And it had complete control over me, affecting my life very strongly.  Its hold was so strong that later in life, when I was exposed to the idea of "Who cares what other people think?", I saw that concept as incredibly selfish and unrealistic, for the false self wanted me to see it in a negative light so that I wouldn't adopt that philosophy and free myself to be me.

The part of me that the world saw was a nice person, but someone who wasn't sure of himself, who was often depressed, and who was afraid of "blowing it" in virtually every social situation I found myself in.

I finally realized two important things, all on my own:  first of all, this person that I was being wasn't me, and second of all, it wasn't my fault that this self had grown, but it definitely was my responsibility to do something about it if I wanted things to change.

I now do what I please without worrying what others think about who I am or what I'm doing.  I'm not worried about being selfish or arrogant, because "what I please" involves working hard, trying to help others, and trying to live by my conscience.  I'm trying to let my true self shine through, and the results have been great.  If I don't want to go to something, I don't go, no matter the way it would "appear."  I definitely do things within reason, and I don't do everything I want to--I do have responsibilities that come first--but I try to do as much as I can.

What's your false self like?  Is it afraid?  Lonely?  Is it angry and forceful?  Is it putting on a show to try to prove to the world that you're someone that you're not?  Is it overweight or underweight?  Is it rude or overly friendly?  Is it manipulative and controlling?  Remember that identifying this self is the first step to figuring out who your true self is, and once you can let that true self shine through, then you can start living the life you were meant to live.
  

   
More on self.