No, I'm just presenting a factoid of life. YOU CAN BE YOURSELF. BUT, when your doing what you need to survive, even thrive, then you learn to use facades, BUT, when you can, you drop the facade and be yourself.
everybody has personae - what you call facades - for different parts of their life: job person, parent person, friend person, etc. we all behave differently with different people and in different situations. so it's not so much a matter of being fake as developing a particular persona. yes, it can feel as though it's fake, but as ozy says (and i agree with all of his post), it's about learning to behave in certain ways, which is exactly what i did.
Ack, I must be completely not saying what I thought I was saying.
I've got no problem with facades, personae, whatever. I have no moral problem with learning to behave in ways that are effective. That's what I've already done.
i thought that...
But what's effective has changed. I'm not having the effect I wanted. I know how I need to change, I think - it's just something I'm scared to do. And I can't find a middle ground between too scared to function smoothly and not changing at all.
okay, then it's about identifying and working with or around the fear.
This is starting to sound ridiculous even to me. But I don't know how else to explain.
nope, it sounds very familiar, and is a hell of a lot more common than you might think.
much as i think a lot of self help book are just good for a laugh, "feel the fear and do it anyway" by susan jeffers has some very good, practical advice. i'm probably biased, but i suspect it's cos she's a brit and not some californian new age guru that she makes sense. mind you, it's a while since i read it...
laugh if you will, but i used to use the Litany of Fear from "Dune" when i got into a pickle - you know, when your head starts looping, and there seems to be no way out? it worked.
yep, i'm completely insane. but "by any means necessary" and all that.