Different Versions of Ourselves: The People We Become Around Different People
Have you ever noticed how you can be a slightly different person depending on who you are with? Perhaps you are really confident with one friend, but yet quieter with another, and then somehow morph into a teenager again within ten minutes of arriving at your parents' house. You might be the funny one at work, the sensible one in your family, or the person who suddenly finds themselves agreeing with everything somebody says, despite having plenty of opinions of your own.
We tend to imagine that we have a fairly consistent personality, something that belongs to us and travels around with us wherever we go. Yet the version of ourselves that appears over coffee with an old friend can be remarkably different from the one who attends a work meeting or spends Christmas with the family.
Of course, some of this is perfectly ordinary and understandable. We behave differently in different situations because different situations ask different things of us. Nobody expects us to speak to our dentist in quite the same way we speak to our closest friend. We adapt, read the room and make adjustments according to the people around us. It is part of being social, and generally, a rather useful skill.
What interests me is what happens when those adjustments seem to take place without us having much say in them.
You might have spent years building a life in which you feel confident, independent and perfectly capable of making your own decisions. Then you visit a parent, they make a small comment about something you have done, and you find yourself explaining your choices with a level of detail you would never dream of offering anybody else. You might even hear yourself becoming defensive and wonder, on the drive home, why you felt the need to justify yourself at all.
Or perhaps there is a particular friend who brings out a particularly silly side of you. You can spend an afternoon laughing about things that nobody else would find even remotely amusing, and leave feeling lighter than you had done so in weeks. Another friendship might bring out your more thoughtful side, while somebody else seems to encourage a version of you that is rather more cautious and careful.
There is something intriguing about the way our personalities develop through relationships. From very early in life, we begin learning how to be with other people. We discover what gets a smile, what causes irritation, when it is safe to speak, and which parts of ourselves seem to be welcomed. These experiences gradually become part of our understanding of who we are.
A child who discovers that being entertaining brings warmth and attention may become very good at making people laugh. Another who finds that being sensible keeps things running smoothly might grow into the person everyone relies upon. Someone who has learnt that disagreement leads to uncomfortable consequences may become particularly skilled at keeping the peace. None of these ways of relating is necessarily a problem. They can become qualities that serve us well throughout life. The really interesting part of all of this is that we do not always realise we are still doing them.
Sometimes a particular relationship seems to invite us back into a role we have occupied for years. Families can be especially good at this. You might be forty-five, have a mortgage, a career and children of your own, yet somehow remain the youngest sibling who is never quite taken seriously. The family may not even be consciously doing anything to create this. Everybody simply slips into the positions they know, and before long the old conversations are taking place again.
Friendships can have their own familiar arrangements. Perhaps you have always been the one who listens, while the other person does most of the talking. Perhaps you are the organiser, the worrier, the adventurous one or the person who never seems to need anything. These arrangements can feel comfortable because everybody knows what to expect. Occasionally, we begin to notice that we would quite like to be something else.
This is where things can become a little more complicated. When we begin behaving differently, other people may not immediately know what to do with us. The friend who has always relied on us to organise everything might be surprised when we suggest they choose the restaurant. A family member may find it strange when we no longer feel the need to explain every decision. Even positive changes in ourselves can create small disturbances in relationships that have developed around a familiar way of being.
There is also the question of which people allow us to feel most like ourselves. I think most of us recognise the difference between spending time with somebody around whom we feel relaxed and spending time with somebody whose company requires a little more effort. With some people, conversation seems to happen quite naturally. We can be funny, serious, uncertain, enthusiastic or occasionally rather boring without worrying too much about how we are coming across. With others, we become much more aware of ourselves, perhaps monitoring what we say or wondering how we are being perceived.
That difference can tell us something about the relationship, although it can also tell us something about ourselves. Why does one person's opinion matter so much? Why do we feel the need to impress somebody we do not particularly like? Why can we disagree quite happily with one person but find ourselves unable to say no to another?
These are the kinds of ordinary questions that can lead somewhere interesting in psychodynamic therapy. We are not necessarily looking for a problem to solve, or trying to establish which version of ourselves is the real one. We are becoming curious about how our experiences with other people have shaped the ways we relate, and whether some of those familiar ways still suit us.
There is perhaps some discomfort and obstacles that arise through believing that we must always be the person everybody expects us to be. The responsible one might occasionally like to be looked after. The quiet one might have something important to say. The person who makes everybody laugh might sometimes want to be taken seriously. We are all considerably more complicated than the roles we have become accustomed to occupying.
Perhaps the next time you find yourself behaving quite differently around somebody, it is worth being a little curious about it. Not in an overly analytical way that takes all the enjoyment out of spending time with people, but simply noticing what happens to you in their company. Do you feel more confident, more relaxed, more cautious or strangely younger than you actually are? Is there something about that person that brings out a part of you that rarely gets much attention elsewhere?
I like the idea that the people in our lives introduce us to different parts of ourselves. Some of those parts are familiar, some are surprising, and occasionally we discover something we might have almost forgotten was there.
Hannah Downing
Psychodynamic Psychotherapist
