Introduction

Persona – noun The aspect of someone’s character that is presented to or perceived by others.

Oxford Language definition via Google

I am using this series to explore various personas or aspects of myself and the difference between myself and these aspects. Some of these aspects are good, while others were born out of trauma or emotional deficiencies in my life. The aspects born from these darker factors are not bad, so much as they can cause harm when left unchecked or unbalanced.

I know that all of us have personas or aspects of ourselves that we share with others. There is a school persona, a work persona, a family persona, and a friend persona. Each of these tends to play up certain aspects of myself.

In the past, certain personas became so ingrained in me that it was nearly impossible to tell the difference between them and my true self. This caused problems not only for me but for those I loved and cared about. It wasn’t just the behaviors tied to the personas that were harmful to others, but also the fact that I couldn’t distinguish certain triggers and behaviors from my deeper self. It was like seeing the world through VR goggles that I didn’t know I had on.

I will interchange the concepts of persona, personality traits, and similar factors throughout this series. Is that correct from a psychological standpoint? I don’t know. I will try to highlight both the positive and negative aspects of my personas throughout the series. The goal is to show that we all have aspects to us that are neither good nor bad but can become so depending on how they work in our lives.

I intend to explore my personas/aspects and their evolution over time in the series. Some of these aspects manifest themselves in ways that might not be appropriate for younger readers but are a reality nonetheless. I will provide content warnings for those posts.