Persona

Do you alter your persona to gain validation? How conscious of an agenda is that? How do you feel if you catch yourself?

yeah i do.

i am quick to adapt but ill thoroughly think about it once i consciously realize that i want something from that person.

which perfectly answers your next question about what i do when i realize - i try even harder. or, drop it. it's a cost benefit analysis.

I don’t think I do that. Can you give an example?

I don't.

u guys do.

dont think of it as validation think of it as a supply to extract goodies from.

or, validation that your needs trump theirs.

Well, just got an offer from an admirer to suck my dick with no strings attached.
Best of luck fellow narcissist

thats awesome

validated

ViniStonemoss, when you say validation, do you mean for an issue you're experiencing, or acknowledgement, or...?

I've noticed mine sometimes develops a different personality without me intending it to, and I don't I realize until afterwards.

My mental health caseworker left me a voicemail some time back and I didn't call back, so he dropped me which meant I no longer got a small associated financial supplement.

I didn't want to call him back because I acted in a manner that made him really uncomfortable and maybe feeling angry or threatened or upset.

I justified it (aka to avoid feeling guilty and needing to apologize) by thinking of the number of times I've been victimized by people in positions of power in the mental health field
 ---- and the fact that even though I had a letter from my psychiatrist from my old city saying I needed therapy not antipsychotics shoved upon me, he wouldn't help me get it.
( After almost a year of asking, I went over his head right in front of him to my psychiatrist, and a therapist who dealt with me in group, in order for me to get into therapy which also pissed him off. )

The thing is, if I'm honest with myself, it wasn't intentional and I don't know why I did it to him.
I became another person without meaning to and didn't notice until thinking about it after his voicemail.

Then I noticed it with my psychiatrist around the same time frame.

I was still being honest, but my mannerisms all switched into an entirely different person.
Again, I didn't mean to become that person.

Then I think about my therapist which I adore, and I become very agreeable with, full of admiration and put her up on a pedestal.

I have reason to admire her because she's actually very impressive, but it's not who I am in real life.

To note: she's aware of who I am in real life because I talk about it; it's just weird that I become a different person in my interactions with her - almost childlike.
Very sweet and docile, if I'm angry and low on patience, I avoid her to make sure I don't lash out on her.

It's like, instead of consciously figuring out how to act in situations that are stressful to me, I unconsciously step back into autopilot and let some other aspect of me step in and take the wheel. I'm as surprised as anyone as to which part comes out.

Also, when I was taking my courses I tried to act very friendly, nice, dumb myself down and clown around - which is genuinely part of who I am at times.

But a huge part of me acting like that was more because I knew I didn't see eye to eye with them and I come from a completely different place than them.

Part of my personas are that if I come into something with a really strong personality (when I have it), people will instantly become defensive and want to try to challenge me
- sometimes a whole bunch of people all at once.

I don't have the desire, energy or willingness to even attempt to engage in pissing contests (I'm not smart enough on how to "win" at doing so anyways) so I try to enter in very passive and polite and friendly and bubbly, but I can't always be that for very long.
The contrast of me switching from being really docile and agreeable to a more aggressive and intense person probably made it even worse with them. That's when there become problems for me.

I really do wonder if my social retardation is because I have aspergers/high functioning autism sometimes (among my cluster ###$ of other disorders)

I have no idea what validation means in this context.

Of course I use a persona, everyone does. It’s a core component of the jungian model of the psyche.

In so far as I know I’m aware of the impression I’m trying to give and why I’m doing it. it’s difficult to catch yourself doing something deliberate.

Having had a brief look on wiki here’s the paragraph about the absence of the persona:

The alternative is to endure living with the absence of the persona—and for Jung "the man with no persona... is blind to the reality of the world, which for him has merely the value of an amusing or fantastic playground." Inevitably, the result of "the streaming in of the unconscious into the conscious realm, simultaneously with the dissolution of the 'persona' and the reduction of the directive force of consciousness, is a state of disturbed psychic equilibrium." Those trapped at such a stage remain "blind to the world, hopeless dreamers... spectral Cassandras dreaded for their tactlessness, eternally misunderstood."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persona_(psychology)

I mention this because of an irony some of you may not be aware of: Cassandra is the OP’s previous username, she’s one of the forum’s resident “empaths”.

Like most quoth jokes it’s probably isn’t very funny unless you’re me.

just had a couple bruskis on my way home from work. my case got dismissed so after i get disability housing rent based off my #######5 job ill go back into finance.

how come no ones online during covid? i check pf on my smoke breaks dude