sonneillonv:

partiendolapana:

sansastark:

a weird thing about having developed mental illness at such a young age is i honestly don’t know sometimes how much of me is a symptom and how much is down to personality, like i honestly do not know my core self and it troubles me A Lot

I kinda think that my core self is perpetually terrified and miserable and there’s no way to change that.

And that’s kinda terrifying and miserable…

I think the idea of a core self is a little bit misleading.  We are all sort of summaries of our experience.  Even the parts of us that don’t work like they should are still parts of us.  Some things can be fluid – as a personal example, the severity of my depression has fluctuated throughout my life.  I have periods of years where it’s mild, periods of years where it’s terrible, sometimes with periods of months or weeks where it slides back and forth on the scale.  But I wasn’t a different ‘me’ when my depression was different.  I was just having different particular difficulties at that time.

I only offer this because you (OP) said it troubles you a lot not knowing your core self.  I don’t actually know if thinking of it this way is helpful – that all of you is you, including the fucked up parts.  Even if your mental illness was not so severe, even if you suffered the same symptoms for an external reason, those experiences would still be part of who you are and you still would have adapted to respond to them.  Maybe you’re ALWAYS you, and the only thing that changes is how difficult it is to be you right now.