Well... I have a scepticism around the 'mental disorder as disease' model. My scepticism is especially pronounced when it comes to what are known as 'personality disorders'. I don't like these models whereby mental illness is due to a 'deficit'. I quite often think that regarding people to be defective is one of the important causes for their feeling incomplete and defective.

Sometimes... I really think it is about finding out about who you are. Oftentimes we fail to notice things about ourself (like our capacity for kindness and our desire to be a good person) and suchlike. Or if we do notice these things we dismiss them and focus on all these things we take to be defects. I think part of feeling happier as a person is in becoming aware of these things about ourself that leave us feeling happier about ourself. Pleased and proud of our positive qualities as a person. Everyone has things they want to work on. Focusing on them all the time is only going to result in a sense of inadequacy and hopelessness, however.

With respect to 'which is the real me' people are complex. People often have conflicting desires and emotions at times. They have a range of things going on. Being able to present to the world as competent when necessary is a valuable skill. Some people are unable to pull that off. One can even be a bit behaviourist about it and ask: What more to competence is there but acting competently? One can be competent yet at the very same time not FEEL competent. That is another thing about your personality, I guess... That you don't FEEL particularly competent at times. I don't know anyone who feels competent ALL the time. If someone did then I'd figure they weren't a very good assessor of competence. I don't know... Trying to piece the pieces together... Part of it is about being able to focus on strengths and being able to cast the weaknesses in a managable way. In a way where we can either accept them with a shrug and a smile or in a way where we can take some small steps towards altering them.

Sometimes I think people don't feel like they have a sense of self because they can't look to their self. Because they can't face what they see (which IMHO is a function of their not knowing how). Because sometimes people don't look at us charitably. Because they are projecting their fears or whatever. Then we learn to do this to ourselves and before you know it one can't look...