I was trained to behave in certain ways growing up, so I've pretty well always been a champ at faking it.

At the same time, I also wanted to learn behaviours that didn't come naturally to me to help me fit in better.

So the behaviours I display? They don't often match how I think and feel, it's just how what I taught myself. It wasn't what came naturally. It's fake, but not fake at the same time.

What I did was I took a look at what behaviours made me feel like I stood out. I didn't like those behaviours, so I thought about what do I want others to see? What would I want to see? And then.... then I started to fake it, until it became natural.

Sometimes, when the depression is a lower-grade, just resorting to that skill set can help pull me out of it, at least for the time that I'm out.

I view my depressions and negative beliefs as well, like being at war with my brain. haha. My natural behaviours were based around those, and I don't want them. I want to try and be the me that I might have been if my brain and life circumstances had been different. Of course, there's no way for me to really know who that would be, but it's what I base things on when I was trying to change parts of myself. So... in a sense, I'm trying to find the me-that-could-have-been, but I have to fake it because of the me-that-was-raised.

Not sure if I made ANY sense!