Hello elevatedsoul: Well... I don't know. I guess, for me, the question would be... is there really shame attached to becoming someone you're not around people? (Perhaps I just don't understand what you're getting at here.) From my perspective, I think we all do this to one degree or another. I'll bet you could count, on the fingers of one hand, the number of truly authentic people there are in the world... if that! Maybe it's just me because I've been in hiding since I was knee high to a grasshopper, as the saying goes. (It's a long story.)

You wrote that you're making a mess of things. So, yes, becoming someone you're not around people may present some practical difficulties. It may put you in awkward situations from time-to-time. (For me it has resulted in a lot of long-term levels of high stress & anxiety.) But there's no shame in becoming something you're not around people. At least I don't think there is. It's simply a coping mechanism... a way of conducting yourself that perhaps could be handled in a more constructive... more efficacious manner. To me... tossing shame into the mix simply complicates the whole situation by several orders of magnitude.

So my thinking with regard to this is, first of all, see if you can extricate yourself from the feelings of shame you're apparently feeling. And then consider why it is you seem to feel the need to present yourself differently to people than you actually are. If you see a therapist, this might be an excellent topic for discussion. Beyond that, my personal perspective is that this is mostly a matter of learning to accept yourself... just as you are. One technique for developing this kind of acceptance is referred to as "compassionate abiding". You can find descriptions of this practice by searching the term on the web.