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Comment by senectus1 | Hacker News Reader

I'm fairly self conscious of the fact that I am at least 3 or 4 different people.

My "work" personality is a completely different one to my "Home" personality.

and My Online and internal personalities are all different people as well.

which one is the real me? shrug they're all real, just used for different purposes. I'm fairly sure I'm not unique in this, but then I suspect I'm better at compartmentalising than most others so maybe I am.

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The "Worlds Theory”, according to Seinfeld:

https://youtu.be/uPG3YMcSvzo

There is a classic book by the sociologist Erving Goffman (https://www.amazon.com/Presentation-Self-Everyday-Life/dp/03...) that covers this phenomenon. All the world's a stage.

I can't really tell, because I can't know for sure what you experience internally, but I felt similarly a few times, and I think that calling that "personality" is not appropriate. I believe you are talking about "behavior". We can display different behaviors in different contexts and that can still be perfectly coherent with our personality. In fact, I think that realizing about those details that make you behave differently, even when you initially think about the situations as "similar contexts" is really helpful in getting to know yourself (and others near you) much better, and finding out about the often most subtle and yet most unique details about your own personality.

What you're sort of saying, is that you show different sides of yourself depending on what role you're currently playing and who your audience is. I think we all do that to varying degrees. Some more than others.

It's more than that. The mind doesn't have the mental capacity to hold all of yourself at once, so when interacting with others you become fused with current role and it becomes almost impossible to juggle other roles with current one. There are many psychology studies of internal conflict when you are forced to play two or more roles at once (for example, introducing your parents to girlfriend/boyfriend). A balanced person therefore needs to have goals of different roles aligned.

Some might say the real you is the one which is aware of all the other ones.

ha! yeah. the overseer me. but in a true S.O.D. that me does not exist anywhere but internally. he has no personality or outworldy existence.

Yes, the idea being that something that is constant and is aware of everything is more real than anything that is subject to change and is observable.

same here... my "work" personality is so much different than "home" or "friends" personality. And the real me is somewhere in between. When I'm with friends I have problem with compulsivnes, I am really care-free etc.... When i'm at work I'm 100% serious, I dont make jokes, I dont make fun of myself etc... I really noticed this when i started working full time so I am 100% serious person half of the day instead just sometimes and it shows in my "home" and "friends" personality

I've known people who, at the office, are devoid of logic and are unable to think through complex topics. They operate in a permanent state of lizard brain, reacting with panic to everything that comes their way.

Perfectly normal and decent folk outside of work. Able to hold intelligent and thought provoking conversation, and talk intelligently about many fields.

The lesson? Some people are so good at compartmentalizing that they leave their intelligence in another box.

That sounds more into the range of a severe anxiety disorder, "dissociation" rather than compartmentalisation.

I feel like the "version" of me interacting with my wife has a lot less redaction of thought/stage management going on than the one of me at the office.

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