I mean as in Spy x Family. Everyone has a secret they hide from everyone else, even their closest people.
Do you think real life is like that?
It is to a certain degree. You don’t bring your love for milk shakes to your “business attire only” office job. You may love Hentai, but you’re not telling the person next to you during an opera visit. These are aspects of you that don’t match the occasion, so you skip that. Most people do this naturally, they don’t spend much thought on it.
Then there’s “masking” as used by neurodivergent people. That’s an entirely different matter. More info an that is over at neurodivergentinsights.
Haven’t watched but going by your description alone : absolutely and I think it’s necessary.
Your closest person could be ok with most topics except for a few that maybe you talk to a therapist about as this person would incredibly sensitive with said topics to the point they’d have a meltdown or have very limited experience and start giving terrible and/or biased advice on. And maybe you care about all the other aspects about this person enough that you just save it for the therapist. EG: family trauma, mental illness, etc. and the therapist relationship, while different and not as deep, it can functionally overlap these missing parts and give you what you need to share it.
Or maybe that person does understand but can’t find the right language and say it in the way you need or want to hear it. Or you could have issues trying to share your perspective. Again: what a trained therapist can help you with.
And that is fair. I think we need to understand and respect the limitations of the people we love and respect our own boundaries about such topics. There’s only so far you can stretch a person or the relationship with them. It’s healthy to recognize this.
It’s also important to realize that no one other person on earth is going to be your entire witness of your life. Especially when they are already witnessing their own life. Equally: You are your full witness. This is your journey. You’re just sharing part of your ride with other people.
Persona (psychology) - Wikipedia https://share.google/aeMgXcVW6RqPHrwg7
As for everyone keeping a secret from everyone? Maybe. You don’t have to share everything with everyone, it’s ok to keep stuff to yourself if you want to. Most secrets are probably pretty banal though.
The person you don’t show others is no more your “true self” than the one you do. It’s still you, existing in that moment, responding to your environment, whether it’s your deepest emotions or your best mask.
Yeah, I like to think of out more as a spotlight than a mask. You’re choosing which aspects of yourself to draw attention to rather than hiding yourself behind a persona.
That is, unless we’re talking about the masking that neurodivergent people talk about wherein they put conscious effort into hiding their essential nature in order to fit in.
As someone with ADHD, absolutely. I’ve heard that many people with nerodivergent brains use this coping skill.
I think I’d go further and say that there isn’t really any such thing as a person’s “true self.” People present different aspects of themselves in different circumstances. It’s like asking which orientation you should hold an object against a light to see the “true shape” of its shadow.
I believe thats whats called in Buddhism as having No Self. You are who you are at that moment.
Could be, I’m not deeply familiar with Buddhism. There’s still a core “something” in there that’s casting the shadow, but it’s not something that can be interacted with directly so I don’t know if it would fit the normal definition of a “self”. You can only directly interact with the shadows it casts and those shadows are situation-dependent. It doesn’t think or act in isolation.
I suppose one could just pick some specific set of circumstances and call the self that emerges under those conditions the “true self.” For example you could call the version of you that emerges when you’re lying in bed alone at night thinking about the dumb stuff you did during the day your “true self.” But that’s a bit arbitrary.
it’s called roles. we play the sibling role, parent role, friend and SO role, our job role. there is no true self, just adjusting to meet the role’s needs.
Just watch out for the person who thinks they have to be the handler role all the time. That’s a messiah complex.
And some are psychopaths in all roles and each role just covering for it.
I’ve always thought of it like a d20. For every role we occupy, we show a different facet on top. Some facets remain visible despite not being the “dominant” one, but others are hidden on the other side.
No single face is our “true self” but they are all a part of who we are.
I like that
Or persona per the psychologist Karl Jung IIRC.
So definitely a thing for basically everyone.
Yes. We all have an avatar
What’ll really blow you’re mind is when you realize we aren’t even honest with ourselves either.
Your mask you show to others is no more fake than the mask you show to yourself.
That is not universal, some of us have actually thought about things for a long time and are honest with ourselves.
I try to be honest with myself about everything, but I’m also honest with myself that sometimes I subconsciously avoid thinking about things consciously anyway
Acknowledging that sometimes you avoid thinking about certain things is part of being honest with yourself, even when it is subconcious. Being aware of who you are doesn’t automatically change anything.
Wrong person sorry
My friend I’ve thought about who I am for 20 years. You are not honest with yourself if you believe you are honest with yourself.
People meditated on mountains for decades to be honest with themself. You didn’t accomplish that on Tuesday. Neither have I.
We get closer but to truly reach that point… we probably zero-sum and cease to be.
We learn to lie before we learn to speak. It’s part of all of us. You can’t escape it unfortunately. It is the default setup.
Maybe you’re just really bad at it?
Yeah I kinda suck at grand spiritual enlightenment. Glad you figure it out. Any tips would be appreciated.
I know that was sarcasm, but stop thinking about it in pseudoscientific religious nonsense terms like “spiritual” and “*enlightenment”.
You’re a human, humans can be figured out, we’re not magic.
“Stop thinking about-“
No. I’ll continue thinking if it’s all the same to you. About everything all the time.
I continue working to enlightenment. Magic and all. It would be great if you could just let me know how you achieved enlightenment but if not I just keep thinking about things. Like people do. You know… like the human brain does lol
I personally am in the camp that people should think more but I don’t want to make a this political.
Let me break down that comment.
So, you want to feel better about yourself, but only through supernatural means?
And when I point out that that is getting in your way to achieving what you call “enlightenment”, you not only straight il refuse, but insist that magic is definitely a potential correct path.
And you cover it all with a nice sauce of insulting my intelligence.
You have a VERY long road ahead, and you’re currently walking at a right angle to it.
You are not honest with yourself if you believe you are honest with yourself.
That is a load of self defeating bullshit.
It is often difficult, but not impossible, to be honest with ourselves. Hell, there might even be things we didn’t consider because they slipped our minds, like whether we acted in a selfish way or not when we were 10 years old, but that doesn’t mean we are not being honest with ourselves. Being honest means that when we do think about something specific, we can consider our thoughts and actions and not hardwave them away without thought. It also acknowledges that things are often complicated and how we see things and how others perceive us doesn’t align.
But being honest doesn’t mean perfectly perceiving everything, it means actually thinking things through and not letting our pride or other hang ups get in the way of introspection.
I stopped reading at self defeating. “ we can do better” isn’t self defeating it’s recognizing an issue lol.
You are not honest with yourself if you believe you are honest with yourself.
Saying that it is impossible to be honest with one’s self is self defeating. The rest of the post explains why, but if you can’t get past someone disagreeing with you then I can see why you struggle with the idea of being able to be honest with yourself.
Being honest with ourselves is how we can improve.
I didn’t say it’s impossible. I didn’t say you can’t be honest with yourself. I said if you think you don’t lie to yourself you need more introspection.
You can disagree with me as much as you like, that doesn’t mean I need to be silent on your arguments.
If I say you’ll never ride a dragon I don’t feel that’s me being negative. If you say you’ll ride dragons all the times I want some information from you…. That’s not an easily attainable thing that people just stumble apon. I have questions lol.
You’re talking about reaching a state of pure inner peace… please elaborate how you attained such knowledge?
I thought about things a lot and accepted my faults and bad habits without excuses.
I know exactly who I am and am at peace with being less than perfect, but aware of what I need to do to be better. Knowing doesn’t guarantee success though, sometimes it requires constant work.
I have no idea what the fuck you are talking about with the dragons. If you mean Komodo dragons, I sure wouldn’t ride those as they are fucking dangerous.
How does the mountain help one be honest with themselves?
How does the mountain help one be honest with themselves?
height radiation and also oxygen deprivation causes hallucinations which can have a psychedelic effect and help you figure things out about yourself that you wouldn’t otherwise know. also it helps that historically, there used to be very few distractions on a mountain because it was mostly un-inhabited.
If I could answer that I’d write a book. I’d make million dollars and never count it lol.
My point is simple tho, it’s not just as simple as “oh I don’t do that anymore. I never lie to myself”
Dude tell me everything?! Where’s your book? Do you have a commune I could attend?
This is profound information the world itself has been searching for and you have it? Tell me, please?
i think the reason why you feel like you have to go on lying and can’t be honest with yourself is because you’re worried that you’re just like the wind, when it stops blowing, it ceases to exist, because it turns into thin air. and the lies are what keep you going.
Introspection isn’t what keeps me going. It’s a hobby.
God I wish I had a very strained pun to reply with.
To summit all up, you get a peak at your inner… self?
We can workshop it, there might be something there.
Then we can figure out the appropriate pun
I find being honest with myself to be easy anymore. It’s not something I’ve always been good at but I’ve worked on it. Understanding myself is still hard at times. If I’m feeling a certain way about something, sometimes I have to pause for a while to think about why.
Example: the wife and I have an argument about something (which is rare) and I take offense to something she said. She never says anything with the intent of offending me. I know this even though I’m feeling angry. Instead of just reacting in anger, I like to put a pause on the discussion, be alone for a while, and think about why I was offended.
The reasons vary but I pretty much always figure it out, after which I’m ready to resume the discussion with, it nothing else, a little more clarity.
You would love Erving Goffman
I have a collection of masks. I assume others are like that too.
I think everyone has about 3 “versions” of themselves.
One version for work. One for family. One for friends and partners.
The work version is the least honest because so much is unacceptable to say at work and people self-censor a lot. Say the wrong things and you will get meetings, write ups and maybe fired. Everybody gives their boss to much information at least one time and learns why you don’t do that.
The friends and partners version is normally the most honest version and can be completely genuine for some. Good friends can be trusted to keep secrets and don’t judge.
Family is normally in the middle but this depends. If the family was incredibly old fashioned, conservative or religious then maybe a person would need to self-censor even more than they do at work?
Masking is how I get through the Christmas season as it’s a time of year I really struggle mentally.
That said, I think their use of it is more tied to the Japanese concept of “your three faces”. One you show the world, one you show your closest friends and one you only show yourself.
https://www.pranshuwrites.com/2025/01/The-Three-Faces-Japanese-Psychology.html?m=1
Very interesting read on tatemae and honne, thanks for the link. Always love it when I discover that some culture has a word for a familiar concept/thing
Politicians do this all of the time. Say and do one thing as theater to the public, turn around and do and say different things out of the public eye we later find out about.
I do this fairly often too. Where I work, nobody doesn’t need to know of shit about my personal life, it is none of their business. There’s nobody I like enough there that warrants me gushing about myself. I have about maybe five key friends who all know in depth of me, but how I tell things slightly differs from another but they’re generally getting the same stories and experiences I talk about.
