Hard to be who you are?

[abcqwerty123]

Does anyone else find it extremely difficult to be yourself? Every morning, I wake up and wonder whether I should just be myself at take the abuse or to hide myself and be like everyone else.

 

If I choose to be myself, then I am attacked on everything I do. I have so little, if anything at all, in common with people around me and I have been locked in a cage for so long that now that I am old enough to go out and leave this area behind, I can't figure out how to even start.

 

-I say I am an atheist, I am told I'm a fucking idiot, by atheists who refuses to tell other people they too are atheists.

 

-I say I am an anarchist, I can't even finish my sentence with "because I believe that everyone should be free." before I am being called childish scum who just wants chaos.

 

-I say I love tennis, I am called a pussy and told to watch real sports like football and hockey.

 

-I attempt to get a job, I am told if I am not home to do what is asked of me at the time it is asked, then I will be kicked out.

 

The list goes on... So again, does anyone else find it extremely difficult to be yourself?

[Prairie]

I find it difficult to be myself. Almost everywhere I utter anything about myself, I have someone subconsciously bothered by it and saying things to me in order to change me or my view or my feelings. It's usually hard to get the person to acknowledge that they're bothered and trying to change me. I spent some time with a group that would break up into pairs where one person was the listener and the other could talk about whatever they wanted. I got a lot out of not having someone constantly give their two cents on everything I said. I've wanted to set something like that up less formally with people.

 

I experience this in general as a strategy people employ to ward of anxiety, that of controlling others, either in what they do or what they think. I've found some interesting things in a search for heteronomy (the opposite of autonomy) on the subject.