Hello all. I have something I want to share with anyone who cares to listen.

I've been going through a rather depressing time in my life. I recently started thinking about something, and I realized that none of my friends like me for who I am, they only like the version of me that I tell them about, the one where I lie about every aspect of myself, so I started to distance myself from them and I've felt incredibly lonely for the last two months or so. I think I'm having an identity crisis because of it. Realizing that I was lying to all of my friends, and even me, about who I was got me thinking about it. I don't know who I am and who I want to be, and thinking about who I am now makes me upset, because my current self is pretty pathetic and not so great.

My entire personality and identity changes every couple of months or so because I can't commit to one, but I try to fool myself into believing that I'm the same idealized version of myself that I always was, which I'm afraid is no longer accurate in the slightest. Only recently did I realize this. The upsetting thing, and what I think is the crux of my depression, is that the only facets of myself that consistently carry over to each of my identities are my most glaring flaws: Vanity, Pride, Arrogance, etc, which I try to hide behind a facade of humbleness.

I want to loathe myself for being so obsessed with praise and ego boosts, but at the same time, if I'm not showered with praise regularly I start to become embittered and envious of others accomplishments, and it makes me a complete mess, so I need it.

It makes me feel so good when I'm admired for anything, but when I'm not my spirit and positivity completely dies, and it leads to me creating threads like this one! With regular ego boosts and praise, I remain completely happy and ignorant towards my own problems, and when that happiness is gone I begin to become aware of how much a problem my vanity and pride is, considering it leads to my current depression. Let me emphasize that I feel terrible because nobody has said anything particularly complimentary to me in a single week.

And like I said earlier, I can't commit to a single identity and I end up inexplicably switching to a new one after a while, and the only thing that each identity has in common are these flaws of mine. Each subsequent identity becomes more selfish, and lenient towards my self-important characteristics, and I'm worried it'll only get worse. I wish to commit to an identity that I genuinely desire, but it's too difficult for me. This is the other source of my depression, which I think predates my sadness caused by lack of praise. I've only recently become aware of this problem, but I've been affected by it for quite a while.

I didn't just make this thread to lament about my problems, even though that is definitely the dominant reason, but I'm also curious, is there any way to "get rid of" excessive vanity? It doesn't seem possible. It just feels like something that will stick with me forever.

To sum everything up: I didn't get enough attention, so I got butthurt, realized how self-centered I am for being butthurt over such a trivial thing, started thinking about my identity in the midst of my butthurtedness, realized I have a problem with committing to an identity and that I'm having an identity crisis, got extra butthurt because the only true characteristic that has stuck with me throughout all of my identities is my excessive pride, which is also the source of the whole problem, and then I decided to make a thread about it.

Ugh. I had hoped I would never be one to make a thread like this, but I really wanted to vent and tell someone about it. And yes, I realize how whiny I sound. Anyways, if you have any tips/anecdotes/snide comments for me, I'd appreciate the attention.

Realize that praise and vanity are nothing in the long run, simply lies to feed your ego. You want to stop lying to yourself and those around you? Learn to live with the person inside you. Take a big step back, and look at how empty the praise you receive really is. You say you lie to everyone about who you are? Then you are being praised for the very lies you've perpetuated. Which means you've fed off your very own lies for too long, you've become swallowed up by the mask you put on. The real you has been buried beneath the personas you've embodied. To get to the center of the problem, you're gonna have to seek more professional help. Perhaps then you'll find yourself more happy with who you are, instead of who you pretend to be... maybe then you'll find your true self.

Stop lying, it will never do you any good. Your friends do not like you for your lies, they like you for who you are. And, unless you change friends with your personality they know who you are and are still your friends for a reason.

Second, earn that praise, it will make it feel so much better when it is actually earned (yes it will take hard work)


[censored] excuse.

I need to clarify. The praise I receive is often well-deserved and doesn't derive from my lies. The lies I tell about my personality generally just make myself look a bit better in other peoples eyes, but the praise I get from them does come from my actual actions. And they aren't actually "lies" per se, I only obscure the truth by acting differently than I normally would when I'm around certain people. But, it's not even that I'm trying to be someone better than myself when I do that, I'm just trying to be a better version of myself. I think that counts as a lie, in a way, because I've never adapted to this better version of myself.

I realize there's a glaring communication error in my original post.

...Reading this, I just realized I was in the same boat as you, when I was a sophmore.

For me, I learned to simply brush away the thoughts of being praised yet once in a while the old thought of beingp raised enter in. Instead self-motivate yourself by telling something good about yourself.

To be honest, what you're going through sounds a lot like fairly normal teenage angst. When I look back on being a teenager, I mostly remember struggling with who I was, what was going on, who I wanted to be, etc. It's pretty normal to struggle with your own identity - most people don't really settle into themselves until their 20's really (and it's probably something most people struggle with all their lives.)

As an example, I specifically remember there being a lot of focus on what clothes I would choose to wear, what music I listened to, etc. Looking back, I was trying to classify things and I'd change it up a lot of times. One year I'd be really into grunge and then when everyone started getting into heavy metal I started altering myself to that and trying that on for a bit. Mostly because things like that were easy to latch onto and compare/contrast. I don't really define people in the same way I used to, and I don't really think of these things as defining qualities anymore. I mean, if you asked me 20 years ago who I was and what my identity was I'd probably list off a bunch of bands I listened to and the types of movies and TV channels I liked to watch.

Not like any of that's going to make anything easier of course. I remember being very tormented, and well... fully of angst and uncertainty when I was younger. But from my own inexpert view of a person based on a couple of paragraphs read online (ie just ignore everything I'm saying) it sounds like pretty normal behavior. (And of course my sincere apologies if you're, like 45 or something... )

Erickson would call your dilemma identity vs. role confusion. I hate Erickson. I also have no sympathy for your identity crisis and had become quite comfortable an acceptable degree of my own personal flaws. I have no advice. It's not productive.

Huh. I always thought I'd avoid teenage angst. I was pretty fine up until this point.

Also, I made a pretty silly mistake when I made the OP...

... this whole first paragraph about me lying to my friends and being distant with them was, ironically, pretense, and I only included it to give the situation more context and to make it easier to explain. I'm actually on good terms with my friends and don't really lie to them. But it should've been obvious that this would look like an important part of my situation, and that I would have to explain it. Disregard this part.

Acknowledged.

A personality shouldn't be a thing you have to work at, it should just be natural. I tried to 'keep up' a personality same as you when I was younger, and at the end of the day you end up even more isolated because the act is popular, not you. And acting is a tough job, you can't just say something you end up having to think if that fits with the persona, every action is though over rather than just being what you'd do. Peter Sellers had this problem.

I just grew out of it to a certain extent, and became less social, but that's 'cause I was a tad introverted all along, and being a social tyrannosaur made me lonely rather than the opposite.

It stemmed from insecurity for me, because if I was just putting on an identity like a costume, if someone said I was an [censored] it didn't hurt me, because i'm not the [censored], the mask is. It's easy to have people to hang out with, but hard to have real friends.

The key is to have people you are yourself with, I'm sure everyone has a certain level of a facade to their persona, I mean, your not gonna talk to your boss/teacher like you talk to your parents about personal problems, but everyone needs a confidant or two.