I'm sure we've all thought about how we often present ourselves with different personalities depending on who we are interacting with, under which medium and other context-specific scenarios.

I'm sure you behave differently around your mother compared to your best friend or husband. In fact, I would even go as far to say there are no two people - or pet - in your life who share from you a single persona.

Isn't that kinda strange?

We have these personality tests that call us an INTP or a Capricorn, an Introvert or a sociopath. And we're quick to jump onto these. Our brains are lazy and they adore simple answers to complex problems. If an online tests tell you that your IQ is 150, then that's how smart you are. If your IQ is 90, well the test is obviously flawed and it would be smart to try a better one.

If you are in the centre-right of a political spectrum, you probably didn't fully understand a question, so it's best to repeat the test and make a little adjustment now you 'get it', and it should land you centre-left, as you originally expected.

We're so busy trying to ram ourselves into pigeon holes that we are fearful of the possibility that 'it's complicated'. In fact, when we use the term 'a complicated person', we're just referring to somebody with mood swings, or someone who's a bit weird.

But look within yourself first and see if you can really agree with any given test or star sign when you are alone, compared to when you are at work or with family. It's not satisfying enough for me to simply dismiss these as 'fake' personas that we use to get by in society. We still craft these subconsciously over our entire lives. We don't switch on and off with a button.

Just because we happen to feel more relaxed when we are by ourselves doesn't mean that is the most 'you' version of you. You may even find there are some 'fake' parts about you when alone, as you look around and realise you feel you have much more potential than you are currently living out. This contrast is because you don't really understand yourself. And how could you, when you change like the flow of water down an amazon rapid.

So I thought I'd try and give myself a little personality overview in various scenarios:

Alone

When I'm alone, I am absurdly slovenly. I am very quick to jump to 'what's the point' or 'why do now what I can do some other undetermined time in the future?'. I also fall fairly quickly into depressive moods. Although I'm considered a hefty introvert by any standards, as I get older, being alone is proving less desirable by the day.

I am not the kind of person to become something that is highly secretive, however; a dark shame that nobody can ever know about. The things I consider are probably quite embarrassing I'm also pretty sure are pretty bog standard as far as humans go. I'm not particularly hedonistic in this way. But I do find myself going into a fairly imaginative place (interpret that how you will) often enough.

I laugh to myself a lot, or I let my laughter take over me when I watch shows, and my tears flow like a well-maintained shower whenever I watch a decent show or movie. I am a sucker for crying when watching stuff, something I expend all my living energy to prevent when around people.

I have cycles of interests, because I generally have so many interests, passions or hobbies that I can't maintain all of them in any given season. Some months I'll be all into music, others into writing, others into making music, or learning, or gardening, even crafting. Often I become very outdoors-ey and when alone, I can get very deep and therapeutic in thought as I unlock all my senses to the winds flowing through the bamboo hanging over my balcony, the birds teasing my cats from a safe distance.

I think I'm most romantically set in my ways when alone, something that is quick to dissipate around others in most scenarios.

Family

I guess I'm pretty cold in a logical sense around family. Not cold in the way they think I'm some robotic burden, but I have never, and likely will never, share my emotional ills with them, though I assume they know its a thing that exists. I am open to express casual annooyances and the typical bad moods, but they will never hear, for example, about the details of any romantic life I'm going through, and anything I'm forced to express is very quickly dismissed and moved on from.

The deepest emotional aspects of me are well hidden from family, regardless of whether they are my distant father sending me deadpan emails once per year on or near my birthday, or my close sister with whom I chat on a daily basis, often at great length. It's not like I set a rule consciously about this, It was just always the case growing up in a rather loveless family (my dad's half), and that's just how it's gonna continue. I wouldn't know how, nor would I want, to do it any differently. Kind of like how you just want to keep politics out of some things entirely, and when your celebrity idol starts to show their colours, even if it's the same side as you, your feelings about them sour.

So, overall, I am quite jovial with family. But it's quite different between them. With my sister there is a lot of silly humour that presumably only us two find remotely funny. With my mum it's often very... matter-of-fact or 'informed' about things, even if it's a personal issue. With my dad, it's almost like an acquaintance whenever we interact, and kind of awkward whenever he takes me for a drive somewhere when I visited. He was very incapable of expressing any emotions to me unless he was drunk and falling into a deep depression, when he might make things real weird by saying he loves me. It makes it quite hard to believe.

With my step-mother, it's quite friendly and jovial, but also in an acquaintence kind of way. She's more socially well-adjusted than my father. My half-sister is practically a stranger, and I think she is very much what you might call a 'normy', the kind of person who goes on 'hen nights' and wears custom pink t-shirts with her friends while riding in a limo on somebody's birthday. Don't get me wrong she seems like a lovely person anybody would be lucky to be friends or boyfriends or close family with, but we never really got beyond the 'hi how's life' kind of stage despite living together for maybe 10 years.

Friends

Friends are of course mixed too. I used to have friends I was exceptionally open with as I had never met them in person. Online friends such as Tyler, or people I met in Uni but interacted with 95% online, like Faye or Tiffany, these I would probably feel closest to. But on those occasions we do meet, the personality changes to 'normie mode' the best I can possibly conjure.

Even when I'm open to these people, there are of course plenty of things about me that have never escaped my own mind. Things I might consider significant, too.

My daily usual friends, though I feel relaxed with them whenever we hang out, are not people I engage with on any deep level. None of my friends I've had in person have enough in common with me that my passions force themselves out into long, overthinking strands of monologue. In fact, when this starts to leak out via phone chats, I'm often told tl;dr, get to the point, or 'Stop overthinking'.

I wish I was socially adept enough to have found people I can relate to on a deeper level, but people like me tend to keep themselves to themselves so it's kind of a paradox in that way. My friends are all great in their own way, but if I want to fill every hole in my social life, this is likely a lifelong and futile struggle. I seek out more socially adjusted people possibly because it reminds me not to be too introverted, they create a balance in my life which I think is healthy.

That's not to say they have nothing in common with me. Indeed one is passionate about music on my level, albeit in a slightly different way, another is into computer games to an unprecedented degree, and we all go to the movies frequently together, play board games and go for picnics etc, all things I love and cherish. But there is no room for the 'by myself' personality here.

With friends, I am very much a 'background' kinda person. If you have a group of 9 people and they all had to pair off, I'd always be the leftover one at the end. And again, this is mostly my own choosing. I didn't have to be like that. Thankfully my friend group has diminished to such an extent here in China thanks to the Pandemic that I'm just comfortably close with the 3 that remain and I never find myself in those horrible situations with 8+ people I'm meant to consider 'friends' in a room. I hope never to be in that situation again, in fact. It's simply too much energy and dialogue for me to handle.

Romantics

Of course this changes with each relationship, but in general I don't think I've ever truly let my guard down no matter how intimate or close we get. Certainly in some aspects I do, but I will still suppress my tears in movies, for example, and those deep inner secrets will not even bubble close to the surface. There are walls that have been built for a reason and I haven't had a good reason so far to let them down!

That being said, these are the ones that I'm actually fairly open to my own perceived failings in life, my insecurities and so on, but they are presented in a rather matter-of-fact way, rather than something stabbing me in the gut. Not sure what else to add here.

Students

I am a teacher. My persona around students has changed vastly over the 11 years I've been doing this job. Now I strictly teach high school, and I have been given a position that is somewhat an authority in management, my relationship is quite a strict authority. However, that is not without my friendly persona that I have had this entire time.

One thing that has irked me about most teachers is that they are either nothing but professional; teach the subject at hand, remember their names, and go home, to a separate life, or they are nothing but friends; go drinking together, talk about their relationship problems, grade them nicely if they're friends and let them run riot because they feel appreciated that way.

It's chaos that I pretty much hate. Because I've been aware of this for so long I feel I have crafted myself to be balanced in between. Students will talk to me at night, weekends, vacations, sometimes at great length. Others will spend their breaktimes at school just to come to my office and hang out. But these students all know I am still perfectly happy to give out detentions, discipline, and enforce my rules with an iron fist.

They also know I'm not completely perfect at this and can get away with some things, but I think this is the most interesting persona I have out of them all. Some students I think are so wonderful that I genuinely wish they were my own children. Others I just think are a tragic result of neglectful parenting, as they sit in the corner wearing the same clothes every day (not the required uniform), happy to accept 0% grades wherever they come from. I do my best to treat both equally, as impossible as it sounds. Trying is the important thing here.

So in some cases, I can be quite open and personal with them, but when it's class time, all that stops and it's down to business.

Colleagues

Ugh. I used to have colleagues I liked and although I rarely took their offers to go out for drinks or whatever, I liked the idea of it, and I would visit in their own offices just to hang out, some of which I still talk to now. But since they all left (because this job is a nightmare), and were replaced with others who frankly give no shits about this job as they are all barely older than the students themselves and simply using this job as a layover; something to put in their CV 6 months after signing up, I have just had close to zero interactions with any of them.

I feel no reason to do anything other than a passing 'hi' or a smile that is necessary when passing each other. I still don't know their names very well after almost a year in some cases. The ones I have interacted with enough to know what kind of person they are, well, they are typically exceptionally dull and simple. More 'normies', the kind of person I wouldn't dare express my opinions about anything or tell any kind of joke I might actually find funny. The kind of people who do that frown at you like you're a weirdo whenever you let your personality leak through just a bit.

There are a couple I get along with more, as they are in my department, but even those are strictly 'lets have a meeting about this' kind of thing. I feel no desire to go to their outings which they often go to together, as they will almost entirely be gone within a few months and I just feel there's no point wasting my time developing any rapport there. So this category is essentially non-existent for me these days.

Strangers

This is the worst. I cannot handle any spontaneous or unexpected interaction. If a taxi driver says something in Chinese that differs even slightly from what I expect, my vision and hearing go into static white noise and I struggle desperately to come out with something normal. In fact, although my Chinese is good enough for most interactions, it completely falls apart in even the most simple exchanges. 'Where are you?' 'Sorry I don't speak Chinese'. I can go back to my room and play the conversation out properly in my head, but rarely can I ever do the most basic dialogue when approached by strangers.

This is mostly the same even in my own native language of English. I find myself rapidly going into stutters and saying messed up things that just barely make sense:

This even happens with certain extroverted colleagues and friends too. I simply cannot keep up with their pace of interaction, but I can only try, and so I end up creating a pretty weird impression of myself when I could otherwise put on my 'interesting guy' persona if they were quieter and slower.

Conclusion

There are others, for example talking over the phone resets all of these into something slightly different and more uncomfortable. Phone calls are something I think most people these days just want to be over with and go back to texting. Phones are too direct. There's no beer on the table or sports on the TV, there's no dog to pet or TV to stare at. It's just your voice, and their voice, and you both have to fill the void at any cost.

Horrible.

This turned out to be 17x longer than I expected but I'm sitting in the 'self-study room' during exam time so it's not like I can do anything else.

Ciao!

Our Different Personalities