My "Fake" Personality

previously published on my Halcja's Place blog

I've already vented about this once on Facebook but I figured it wouldn't hurt writing a blog post as well just to gather my thoughts and see where I'm standing.

My therapist thinks that my personality is "fake". That I only have a lot of interests because it's a way of making myself interesting enough for other people so that maybe they'd want to talk to me and be friends.

It doesn't count that I've always been that way and that when pursuing my interests I don't think about other people. I'm caught up in the moment, engaged and fascinated by whatever it is that I'm doing. And when I'm sharing my interests I'm not thinking about how I'm being perceived at the moment.

How can all this be fake?

My therapist once told me to do an exercise where I was supposed to "explore" my true self. Somehow she led me to the conclusion that without my interests I don't exist.

And I can only find my true self through mindfulness and meditation.

I tried asking her to give me some examples of "real" personalities so that at least I knew what I'm looking for but she said that I'll have to figure that out for myself.

Long story short, I'm not talking to that therapist anymore and I have no intentions of giving up on my interests. Now I know better, and I no longer think that I won't exist without them. I'll still be there but it'll be a terribly boring existence.