I worry a lot about how easy it is to sterotype people,to turn
them into one dimensional cartoons,but another danger is to kind of
turn yourself into a cartoon,to be so focused on who you THINK you
are,and who you are trying to be,and who you want other people to see
you as,that you forget that perosnailty is somewhat fluid,that it's
possible to have many sides,many dimensions to yourself,while still
being "yourself"...It's easy to get so stuck in habits and patterns and
ruts that you almost become a kind of self parody...I was thinking that
one way of avoiding this is maybe to kind "borrow" form different sides
of yourself...that's what I do sometimes I think...I try to remember a
certain scene in my mind,an image,and the feeling that I had associated
with that image...I guess it can be a real memory or just an imagem of
some fantasy enviorment...I guess another good method of not becoming
"stuck" in a narrow sense of who you are is to just try to laugh at
yourself,as my friend advised me years ago,to "try to take life
seriously but not yourself seriously"...that does work with me
sometimes...I've always had a sense of humor,but it often gets
buried..and then of course,it helps to step back from yourself and
focus more on other people,other things OUTSIDE of ourselves instead of
all the intense self scrutiny...I guess a big part of depression is
connected to taking ourselves too seriously...What I've noticed is that
it's really easy to get stuck in those negative vicious cycles,which I
know are connected to both shyness and depression...the cycle of
feeling shy/depressed and then wanting to withdraw,and then feeling
lonely,and then wanting to be with people,but people not feeling
comfortable with us...then wanting to withdraw again,and then our self
esteem going down,which makes us want to withdrawe even more,which
makes us more lonely ect,and on and on and on...It's just really hard
to get our of those vicious cycles...

-"Alvintchase"

...It's just really hard
to get our of those vicious cycles...