Being inside your home or outside "in the world" - is it normal to make this split in life?

• Being inside your home or outside "in the world" - is it normal to make this split in life? I've always had some struggle with my inner self and the "outer world". The way you will have to adapt to the outside world, and still feel most comfortable within your own four walls. When I'm home more than a few days, only me and gf for example, I tend to get tired of it, and feel that if I don't go out I'll loose any touch with the social world. But I also feel that this is the "real" me, at home, and that the social outside world is, sometimes exciting, but mostly NOT who I am. I've had this split view since I was very young. An example is when the phone is calling, and I've been by myself for a day or so: Suddenly I can't bare to take it and talk, cause I feel like I'm back to "pretending" to actually have anything to say. The conversation is then merely formal, before I pick up the phone, but most of the times, I get sucked into the social logic of communication, and suddenly the "pretense" feels like "bonding" with the "outside world" again. There's this conflict going on non-stop, where I either feel relaxed in my home, just us, or me, and then the need to go "outside" and try "the world" again; it seems to me like most people, if not all that I know, don't have this "split" view of their life: They seem more or less consistent in their personality when it comes to this; I seem to struggle with this notion of not having anything to communicate or say, after I've been "outside" for a certain time, feeling as if I pretending something all along, as if the communication and talk was for "their" sake, and getting tired of it again, starting a new period of the "real me" with being in our apartment and just not feeling like talking to anyone. It's like I am a split person: One - that often feels like pretense - in society, acting along, doing all the tasks and dialog, and socializing, having the socalled troubles of a regular "person IN society" that can fill up a million lifestimes if you let it - and then the "real me", that has this view that the struggles and conversations of the outside world aren't really mine, yet everyone seems to be forced into it and when they call me, I'm invited back in. As if there's a "their me" and a "me me". This conflict is worse when I get to periods where the "me me" is my mental state but the situation is based on "their me" terms - in those cases I shut down communication and when I look inside the real "me me" it's blank, cause there's nothing if I'm TRUE to myself. But there's a disharmony in this world view. I am constantly in some sort of crisis, and I'm sure it's because of this. This shutting in myself must mean something, this sort of "pretense despair" when in this situations, MUST mean something. I don't consider myself more enlightened than my friends, yet I don't feel that they have this "problem" of being totally blank inside - this consciousness of communication. The funny thing is, there can be weeks where I feel integrated in "the outside world", and there's no contact with this seperation of the two, yet I somehow always manage to find back to it, and feel that it's an important aspect of reality. The most interesting aspect to me is, that this exact, "inner reality" is awakened when I'm reading good literature. The beauty of any artform also speaks to this side of me, both the light, and the very dark works. Music too. All this is experienced through this "ME", and it seems like all this beauty and extasy from art, literature, music, etc. always get watered down to social falseness when confronted with the "outer world". Hope this makes sense, what do you make out of it?

• Answer:

  it seems to me like most people, if not all that I know, don't have this "split" view of their life: They seem more or less consistent in their personality when it comes to this Every time someone is talking to you, they're putting on their public face. I bet you dollars to donuts that the majority of people you interact with thing the same thing about you --you'll always seem consistent and the same to them. What you're describing is not some psychological flaw in you. You're describing something that is fundamental to what it means to be human. There is a considerable amount of literature on what "the self" is and, in recent years, a lot of it is skeptical. In other words, a fair number of psychologists and philosophers have come to the conclusion that there is no REAL self, but, instead, a number of different systems through which an individual interacts with situations. Who a person is may very well be shaped and structured by the social context they are in. Here's a simplistic example: when I'm with my boyfriend, I tell stupid jokes, I make ridiculous noises for no reason, and (I'll admit it) I fart. When I'm in my work setting, I don't joke around very much, I don't randomly make noises, and I don't fart. From what you're saying, it sounds like you would want to ask this question: who is the real meese, the farter or the non-farter? But, the thing is, I'm both, depending on context. Neither is "more real" than the other; instead, how I behave and act is just different in two different settings. This doesn't mean, of course, that there's nothing you are worried about. It's very clear you are indeed really worried, that you definitely find yourself suffering anxiety over how you are in different settings. What I suggest is that you try to find a new way of conceptualizing the anxiety you're feeling. Don't ask, "What is the REAL me?" Instead ask, "Why do I get so stressed out when I have to go out in the world, after being alone for so long?" Ask, "Why do I feel like I'm fake when I'm around other people?" These questions do have answers. Finding those answers can help you live a happier life. I'm not going to try to answer those questions for you. I don't know what the answers are, for you. But if I were to ask those questions about myself (and I can, because they describe what I feel a lot of the time), here would be my answer: because I struggle a lot with social anxiety, and I worry about how others are judging me; because I suffer from depression, and oftentimes people who suffer from depression describe what they feel as a blankness or an emptiness inside. I wouldn't be surprised if you may end up having very similar answers to mine.