Identity and isolation

[Meadowsweet]

I can't remember where or by whom (sorry), but I recently read a quote that said 'one man is no man' and the analysis after it explained that peoples identity is created mostly by who they have around them.

It's something that I completely relate to. I can look at most of my life and see how my identity has been influenced by the people around me, and when I've changed the people around me (especially those close to me), I've changed who I am to suit it.

Now, I have work, and as long as I act professionally, no-one really needs to know me personally, and I have my children who know me as a good mum. But I don't have friendships and people around who want to think that they 'know' me. And after some years of nobody showing me (with their actions) or telling me directly what kind of person I am, I have no idea.

So the idea that 'one man is no man' seems to make sense. I wondered what other people thought of this?

 

[kahlan]

It actually makes a great deal of sense to me. Personality and sense of self is based on a lot of external factors starting with immediate childhood caregivers up through people in your day to day life as an adult. Mannerisms likes dislikes,all can be influenced by surroundings.

 

[Leah123]

We all exist in relationship to others, humans are social creatures, and I have come to know myself very much by how I am seen by others (while sometimes struggling to reject their perceptions), how I am reflected by them. I find it critical to surround myself with strong, wise, encouraging, kind, healthy, honest people. I improve in their presence and languish without it. I have an internal identity, sure, but it thrives or decays partly based on the community (if any) in which I plant myself.

Certainly, when I am in close proximity with unhealthy people from my past, for example, I struggle more, see myself in a distorted way, based on our shared past and their perspective on me, and am influenced, sometimes subtly, insidiously by their attitudes.

I'm very happy to be consciously focusing on this right now- connecting with people who can help me (and who I can help) and with people who are similarly minded and motivated as me.

 

[maddog]

I posted the "one man is no man" quote, taken from the book I'm reading on healing toxic shame at the moment. Totally agree with what everyone has said here, and I posted the quote, and its rationale, because they resonated deeply with me too. The notion was in support of the traditional psychosocial development theory which says that a big part of how a child's identity is formed is dependent on the connections and influences with external others, particularly primary caregivers and key influences during early childhood. Sadly, I think many of us now battle with the legacies of that phenomena, but just as it sometimes feels like one of the most hopeless understandings of why I am the way I am, I suppose it also offers hope for change.

Surrounding oneself with positive healthy influences is all part of the process, now widely clapped and clamoured in the neuroscience literature, that new neural pathways can be formed and ingrained in later life, and that they can, in time, take precedence over the old ones. Simplistically, the more we surround ourselves with positive healthy influences, the more our identities will slowly reshape in response, presuming that the negative influences are minimised as much as possible too.

Sadly, how it also often feels is how Meadowsweet describes, whereby my external self is shaped to be a specific way as expected and accepted by the people around me. Hope I didn't paraphrase you incorrectly Meadowsweet... I know that I am hypersensitive and overaware of how I present to and am perceived by others, and how I feel and act in their presence, and so presumably I exaggerate, to some degree, the extent to which I change around people and somehow feel inauthentic and invalidated as a result. I know that I like myself most when I am with people I like most and feel most comfortable with, whether they are actually friends or just good decent people who feel safe and stable. I guess that's the part I need to hold onto, and to consciously think about the qualities in those people that bring out that feeling in me, and try to maximise my contact with people with those qualities.

Figuring out who I am, who I want to be, and how to get there, feels like one of the deepest most daunting mysteries of life, but even though often I wish I could,I know that I won't get there if I hide away in my isolated world of just me.

Maddog

 

[mamachick]

I think this is very accurate for me. When I have thought about it, life is all about relationships. Be it parents, siblings, other relatives, friends, co workers, people we come in contact with at grocery store, etc. Its all about relating. Without that, what else is there.

For me, without that, it makes me wonder what my purpose is, yet I chose isolation.

 

[mixtapeheartache]

Relationships, externalities in general, are transient. What happens to the Self when they dissolve, move on, depart?

 

[mamachick]

Life is not forever either. Yet while we are here, we innately seek relationships. First as babies with our caregiver, then siblings, then off to school. The relationship with ourselves may be the most important, but it is often a reflection back of our experiences with others.

If the core of the self is strong, I think the person does better when relationship with others dissolve. They dissolve for many reasons. I have witnessed elderly people, where one by one their siblings and friends start dying off. I have witnessed their own life decline following. Also, many older married couples who have long and best friend relationship with their spouse, one dies and the other follows soon after.

Generally speaking-people need other people and that is not unhealthy. They do not need it like they need water and air, but fail to thrive without others.

A similair concept is that we do care what others think. How many times have I heard that "I don't care what others think about me".
Maybe that is true for some who say this, I don't know, but most of us want to be generally well thought of. We care about our credibility, our reputation, and whatever else we value. Those who feel disliked by the world project it back on others.

Lot to think about here......

 

[Abstract]

My brain is going to explode attempting to think this through. I am attempting to combine all the different sources of information on the self to create a big picture and am flailing a little.

I absolutely hate how changeable I still am when interacting with others. It shames me. I do think that we all have different sides to our personalities and that is normal to an extent. But I sometimes can acknowledge that certain level of disconnection is far from ideal.

I tried to convince myself that I didn't need interaction with others at all but eventually had to face the enormity of that lie. And interaction itself exposes that lie even more as once the crust is broken then all the need starts to be exposed and I am not at all keen on that. Its quite confronting.

Balance that with past experiences where loosing my self has ended up in me falling under the control of unhealthy people and my brain starts smoking a little. Over dependence, co dependence and Stockholm syndrome all touch on that.

Repeated negative interactions with others seems to reinforce the old unhelpful stuff so powerfully that it is disturbing. I so agree that we need positive interactions with others to heal. It seems to be such an important part of repairing damage done by interpersonal violence. And maybe it is even for trauma that is not interpersonal as human beings are wired to need interaction to survive. Harlows wire mother experiment says it all. http://psychology.about.com/od/historyofpsychology/p/harlow_love.htm In fact it does not to be traumatic for it to be a problem at all. Just the absence of what we need is quite sufficient .

So since I first read the "one man is not a man" quote on the other thread my brain has been going off at a hundred miles an hour. All the warring parts of me doing battle trying to figure it all out. All the different feelings that it brings up battling for space. That probably doesn't make sense...

 

[CateM]

Hi Maddog, I thought your post was very interesting. Do you have the name of the book that you are quoting, it sounds like it would be worth a read.
Thanks.

 

[mamachick]

Abstract-I am with you on my brain about ready to explode. Its a lot to wrap my head around. Its all good, just a lot to absorb and ways to apply it to life. Thats how I kind of got off the topic of life being about relationships, to wanting acceptance as adults basically.

I got on line last night and listened to some of Bradshaw lecture as he discusses what is in this book where this quote came from. It reminds me of a healthier time when I still had toxic shame but was progressing rather than being stuck. A time before I repeated negative interactions with many unhealthy people.

Then it reminded me of a belief that I had about humans that was a protective factor in my life, and that is "all behavior comes from love or fear", quote by Mary Ann Williamson. When someone did something nasty, I saw it as fear so nothing to take personal, it was just someone acting our of fear. This could be as simple as another driver giving me the finger. Somewhere when ptsd was triggered, I deserted this belief and made it about me. I went back to believing it was because I am defective.

In one of Bradshaws video's, he talks about us holding on or collecting all these things that happen to us, I think he referred to it as putting them in the gunny sack. We hold on to them and remember as proof that we are defective. I think thats what I have been doing.

Just wanted to tell you that WOW there is a lot to think about in this topic and Im there with you, makes my brain smoke.

 

[Meadowsweet]

I posted the "one man is no man" quote, taken from the book I'm reading on healing toxic shame at the moment.

Firstly, I'm so sorry - and slightly embarrassed. I've done so much reading recently, I didn't realise the quote was from right here on the forums. I would have replied to it there, instead of starting a new thread, had I remembered:oops:

Sadly, how it also often feels is how Meadowsweet describes, whereby my external self is shaped to be a specific way as expected and accepted by the people around me. Hope I didn't paraphrase you incorrectly Meadowsweet.

You have put it much better than I could. This is spot on.

For me, without that, it makes me wonder what my purpose is, yet I chose isolation.

I can only speak for myself, but isolation seems to be a combination of not being particularly able socially and not being accepted, and an over-exaggerated desire to protect myself. But I think, at times, it has been essential for my own healing.

What I recognise now, is that isolation should only be a temporary choice, and my recovery is about choosing to gradually step out of it. That seems like a huge mountain to climb right now, and I can't think about a life of social contacts without it seeming too big. So I focus on one small step at a time, and dealing with the fears that hold me back.

Relationships, externalities in general, are transient. What happens to the Self when they dissolve, move on, depart?

That's just it. The self seems to be non-existent when there's no-one to show or tell me who I am.

Abstract, I can't pick out one part of your post to comment on, because the whole post feels very relevant to me at the moment. So thank you for sharing your thoughts.

 

[mamachick]

I also think that the external self is shaped to be a specific way as expected and accepted by the people around us, but also think that becomes the internal self through conditioning.

I totally agree that isolation needs to be temporary. I was very social until a few years ago. I was very active and socialized in every aspect of my life. Isolation (for me) started as self protection, yet along the way either lost skills or it just still feels like too much work. It is very much a huge mountain to climb out of. I am taking baby steps to climb out.

Meadowsweet, I love how you put that, that the self seems to be non-existaent when there is no one to show or tell me who I am. As an isolator, I see this as a huge problem when we isolate for long periods of time. The only thing worse for me is to be in situations where people show you that you have no worth, such as biological family members.