Do you know yourself?

Posted on by Zaujat Kanyunya

Today, teenagers and young adults go through life with three or four different faces and personalities, depending on who they are with. Like chameleons, they skillfully alter themselves in order to adapt to their high pressure environments and the various demands that originate from their bosses, parents, spouses, family and friends. Life has become a masquerade for them, and over time external layers which were initially invented as a coping mechanism, compelling them to have different hearts, minds, soul and even goals in order to accommodate whoever they are with, develop.

Are you the same person with your family, your friends and others? Or do you develop alter egos, meek in front of parents, easygoing amongst friends, rigid with family, charming with your colleagues; and living behind conflicting facades in order to achieve what you think you need: to accommodate everyone, to satisfy everybody, to blend in, or even just to escape you own reality? If you act with a different personality before different groups, and ask these various groups to come together to describe you, will they give a consistent coherent picture of who you are, or will their reports be contradictory?

All these layers of make believe and being phony, will develop habits of living an illusion.In the end, such people disintegrate internally and are in constant inner conflict, because all the various personalities and faces are not reconcilable. Like a lens that is constantly shattered and reglued, each cracked facet, even when joined together, unifies to a very fragile and dysfunctional whole.

How many faces do you have? Are you forced to be different people all in one, revealing or suppressing different aspects of yourself depending on who you are interacting with and who you are trying to impress? Can you really be three or four different persons within one body and soul, and be true to who you are and who you were meant to be?

Published by Zaujat Kanyunya

Student of Life

45 thoughts on “Do you know yourself?”

  1. In young people these personality changes are frequent, but also in adults the same happens when they have not acquired enough maturity and when life brings them to their reality, you do not know what to do.
    I enjoyed your reflection. An irrefutable truth of how you posed this problem.
    My greetings and good weekend
    Manuel

    Liked by 6 people

  2. I guess this generation has to cope with a lot of challenges than the previous generation. Parent’s expectations are very high. Since childhood they want the kid to rank first where ever they make him/her stand. The same kid ends up struggling his whole life.

    Liked by 3 people

  3. Thanks for following my blog!
    I had an extremely mystical childhood but doctors tried to label me with mental illness and my family labeled all my experiences as just my imagination. I was rejected in school for my IQ. So by junior high and high school I learned to suppress that big part of me and attempt to blend in. By high school graduation I spent much of that summer in my parent’s family room, drinking screwdrivers and painting a picture I called “Schizophrenia”. It was a picture of me with olive skin, dark eyes and hair on one side and light skin, blue eyes and blond hair on the other. That’s how I felt.
    Years later, after a breathwork session, the therapist handed me a piece of paper with a circle in the middle and asked me to draw my experience. The resulting picture showed the integration of those two sides. It was such a gift to realize I had made it to that point of resolution. I am still growing, still evolving but no longer agree to hide the true me.

    Liked by 5 people

  4. Really interesting & some very well thought out and valid points, though I feel there is a difference between being more relaxed with people you love and actually putting on a whole new personality to present an image that isn’t true. We teach our children to be more guarded around strangers, so immediately we encourage them to show a different side to their personality. When they go to school they yearn to be accepted which is understandable, so often adjust their behaviour to blend in. Sadly we know that some of these will break their hearts, and others will try to steer them into areas they shouldn’t and I think it’s here that the strength of the family is so important, so that they always know where the truth and honesty lie, and who they can always trust. Many problems with society have roots in the measures that ridicule faith, destroy discipline and respect and weaken the family.

    Liked by 4 people

  5. “How many faces do you have?” That’s an insightfully posed question! Young people aren’t the only ones putting up facades. It’s a tough world out there and many of us have learned how to hide. I admit, being the real me isn’t always easy.

    Liked by 4 people

  6. Very true… I soon have to deal with something that I am not allowed to have any emotions with – I don’t think I can.

    I try to be stone but that’s not who I am… I am dealing with my government which is broken anyway.

    I am supposed to be silent and show no emotions… I don’t do well in either case lol ✌️😘

    Whatever is going to happen will just have to be as is. I can only hope and pray it will all be ok. 🙏✌️

    Your words are true!

    Liked by 4 people

  8. I believe that in order to function in society there has to be a bit of different personalities. I work with the public and I am certainly different in front of them then I am with my friends. And I am slightly different with my family than my friends because we are interested in different things we are DOING different things. And then none of them see the same side as my husband . . . but I don’t think of that as a bad thing. I don’t have the same relationship with everyone so, I will be different with each person or group. So . . . perhaps being different around different people isn’t all bad.

    Liked by 5 people

      1. I used to feel bad, like I was being fake presenting different “sides” to different people, but not all people are worthy of seeing my most intimate side. I don’t need to bare my soul/self to everyone I meet. I don’t need to be FALSE and fake, but we people have many facets. 🙂 I think maybe that is part of growing and maturing . . . . (?) . . . finding the difference between squelching oneself – perhaps in trying to conform (?) and just realizing that not everyone is worth “exposing” yourself to. 🙂 Deep post!

        Liked by 3 people

  11. Those masks help to block our inner pain. We don’t want to hurt any more so we ‘blend’ into all things…and fail the most important…us.
    But eventually, as you said, we reach that point where it all comes to a head and explodes, rendering us open to it all so that we can finally see what we had been covering over. That confrontation is the most profound thing our lives can touch, for through it is a jewel more beautiful than any diamond could ever be, it is a love that no longer has any conditions to bind it. And in that moment, for the first time, we will know ourselves truly 😀 ❤️ 🙏🏽 🦋

    Liked by 2 people

  17. I think everyone is guilty of this to an extent. Naturally you want to have a different way with your boss than you would with your children. It’s only a problem when we take it way too far.

    Liked by 3 people

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