Meet the Other Phone. Protection built in.

Meet the Other Phone.
Protection built in.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Chat

Join the discussion and chat with other Mumsnetters about everyday life, relationships and parenting.

What’s better, to be bland & inoffensive, or to ‘be yourself’?

83 replies

Sunkisst · 29/10/2024 15:51

If ‘being yourself’ is a weirdo and run the risk of people thinking you’re annoying and/or possibly blurt out something offensive?

I have social anxiety and opt for option A and only show my true personality to my husband, who is a very easy-going person and enjoys my personality (or else he wouldn’t have married me I guess). But I do think and say strange things, such as my belief that raisins are the devil’s turds. Yes I realise that is crude and childish and offensive to raisin lovers. I don’t say this to anyone obviously, except my husband who didn’t even bat an eye at it as strange, but he’s an exception. So I have learned to keep my thoughts to myself as I know I’m a strange person, but it’s pretty stifling.

OP posts:
thestudio · 30/10/2024 17:18

Screamingabdabz · 30/10/2024 09:16

Thinking of yourself as a ‘weirdo’ is quite a teenage thing. It assumes you’re quite special and misunderstood whereas most people are weirdos in their own inner life. We all have quirks and raisin-turd things.

The key to passing in society as a non-weirdo is empathy. Instead of thinking about yourself and your ‘social anxiety’, you need to match the vibe of the people that you are around. You can still be yourself but if you do it empathetically, it doesn’t come across so brash or jarring.

This weirdo has taken over 50 years to learn this (and still learning it!)

My experience exactly!

Ginkypig · 30/10/2024 18:08

All the examples you have given are quite normal and actually if I may say quite sweet personality quirks.
I totally get what you mean, when you feel you are massively different from most people (I am too) you think you have to almost blank yourself to present as beige but that’s not true, you can show these things but don’t let them dominate and pick when. It sounds like you haven’t found your tribe and so you are around people who are quite different to you a lot of the time.

i actually I think part of the problem is that you have had it reinforced by different people that the way you behave is inappropriate when actually (although I know it will be hard for you to work this out) that it’s just about sometimes choosing when to not do this stuff but it sounds like you actually do understand there is a time and place when you describe the raisin thing and not commenting when others are eating them.
sometimes it might be about tone I think, so I’ll say something weird but in an amusing tone rather than with a serious tone and it lands better. Or who you share these thing with as some people just can’t understand that there is a spectrum of personalities out there and automatically think if they aren’t like me they are odd but that’s more about them than you OP!

i have done similar to all your examples. Occasionally I get the reaction you get but mostly not but I do kind of pick when.

I have more than once said in response to do you want tomatoes oh no thankyou they are the devil’s fruit. I say it jovially and the other person has laughed it I probably wouldn’t say it to a serious type of personality person.

i used to call my cat and now call my fish my little chickens in a im talking to a small child tone but I wouldn’t do that in front of people I didn’t know because it might be seen as weird.

I would have no problem using the lovely sounding fan you described but I probably wouldn’t use it in a meeting for example or at a more formal dinner etc but ye fuck someone else if they judge your poor hotflushing self if they judge you for it!

iv also said hello to animals but again I might not if I was with a more serious type person than me.

oh and by the way there’s absolutely nothing wrong with your interests I like both of those two but I get not everyone does so I wouldn’t bang on about them to people who I knew probably weren’t but I would hope they wouldn’t bang on to me about say love island or strictly if that makes sense.

i think this is a long post that boils down to we all need to kind of fit in a “normal” (hate that word) so show glimpses of your true self because nothing you have said here is weird or wrong! But know how to show a bit without opening the whole dam.
i say that not because you are weird but that is what WE ALL DO in public. We share a bit of our uniqueness but hold back a lot of it and save it for our people when we feel safe and comfortable (husbands or friend etc) and kind of tone ourselves down to a degree to not stand out too much in front of strangers.

you sound lovely @Sunkisst dont let other people form your opinion of yourself, be who you are because there is nothing wrong with that!

Maviz · 30/10/2024 18:09

God OP you sound like me. I would find the raisin turd comment amusing although not if I was eating them at the time......but, we've established that you don't shout profanities whilst people are eating so all good!

I also talk to animals. In fact, I FAR prefer animals to the vast majority of people.

Also get on better with men.

I would not bat an eyelid if I saw you fanning yourself.

I don't think any of this suggests that you're on the spectrum, nor do I think I'm on the spectrum because it all sounds perfectly normal to me! Or perhaps we're both on the spectrum?! Fuck knows 😆

maudelovesharold · 30/10/2024 18:31

I don’t know who told you it was odd to use a fan to cool yourself down, but my guess is that they themselves were self-conscious and uncomfortable, and had the idea that people might look. I’m glad you didn’t let them stop you. Never let other people trammel you with their hang-ups about what is conventional. We’re not clones, thank goodness.

Echobelly · 30/10/2024 21:51

Generally people are much less interested in you than you think. If someone sees some small feature as 'weird' that's kind of their problem and I honestly don't think most people would bother reporting 'Can you believe @Sunkisst said raisins are the devil's turds, that's so weird?!'

another1bitestheduck · 31/10/2024 11:11

Screamingabdabz · 30/10/2024 09:16

Thinking of yourself as a ‘weirdo’ is quite a teenage thing. It assumes you’re quite special and misunderstood whereas most people are weirdos in their own inner life. We all have quirks and raisin-turd things.

The key to passing in society as a non-weirdo is empathy. Instead of thinking about yourself and your ‘social anxiety’, you need to match the vibe of the people that you are around. You can still be yourself but if you do it empathetically, it doesn’t come across so brash or jarring.

This weirdo has taken over 50 years to learn this (and still learning it!)

Yes, sorry, the main thing that jumped out at me from your post was "I'M MAD ME" or "I'M NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS" and then you gave the example of raisins, which is a comment that i wouldn't bat an eyelid at if I overheard a friend or colleague say.

It's very normal when you start a new job or make new friends to be a slightly "toned down" version of yourself and then as @Screamingabdabz said match the vibe as you get to know them. If your office is a very traditional one then referring to turds to your manager might not be fine. Same if you are at a raisin lovers conference. Otherwise nobody will care.

Very few people act exactly the same with their friends as with their family as with their colleagues as with their manager as with their lover as with their vicar! That doesn't mean it's binary with only two options being completely bland and inoffensive and being yourself and nothing in-between.

another1bitestheduck · 31/10/2024 11:24

Sunkisst · 30/10/2024 10:11

To answer some questions, no I don’t have friends. I have ASC and find that women my age definitely view me as a ‘weirdo’, and men are more accepting but then my experience has been that they have ulterior motives. I don’t have misogynist views like ‘all women are catty’ or anything like that, I can just tell they think something about me is not the same as them. I also have very specific interests not many women my age share (No I’m not trying to sound ‘special’, it’s just how it is. And because people will probably ask, video games and foreign language dramas). Older women are more accepting I have found but I don’t really know how to fully be myself around other people. I don’t have a good filter. It’s either totally on or off and I might say something weird like the raisins thing. Or maybe I’m just overthinking it and people will either be weirded out or not by me? For example I call my cat Moobs because he has humongous dangling cat moobs. It’s not his real name, he has a normal name that he was given before we adopted him. So with other people I only use his real name. That’s what I mean about being bland and inoffensive at all times. I have recently started taking anxiety and depression meds which have helped me to the point where I’m considering just having a ‘who cares’ type attitude and not be ashamed of who I am. It’s hard after a lifetime of being like that though.

What do you actually want though?

If you tamper down your whole personality to the extent you are as bland as possible then perhaps people might not find you weird but they will likely find you very boring and likely very restrained/closed off (because you are trying so hard not to be). So it's unlikely you'll make many friends and even if you do it will hardly be a true friendship if they only like a false version of you. Whereas if you act like yourself you will know that people like you for who you are.

There is no personality in the world that everyone gets on with. Someone's friendly and gregarious is someone else's loud and annoying. Someone's quiet and respectful is someone else's boring and judgey. You'll never please anyone so don't bother trying.

I can appreciate its hard though. I had a colleague who was autistic and people thought she was weird because of the things she said. For example she had cats (which she loved) but when talking about one of them doing something annoying she referred to them as "that stupid fucking bitch" in quite a deadpan voice so it came across very oddly and a bit disturbing, but I can absolutely see how from her point of view what she was saying was almost indistinguishable from another person saying "that little fucker peed in my shoes!" in a joking voice, which everyone laughed along with. It's an incredibly thin line between exact phrasing and tone of voice that makes things sound weird/not weird and I sympathise that if you don't just "get" that innately it must be almost impossible to learn!

FruitFlyPie · 31/10/2024 11:45

Sorry OP but you sound completely normal.

Many people are quite picky eaters. Any time I go out with a group of say 6 people, we'll have 3-4 different dietary requirements, people questioning the waiter endlessly, and someone who doesn't eat at all something completely normal like fruit. Not liking raisens is nothing.

Like foreign dramas - again extremely common.

Video games - one of the most popular hobbies on earth.

Talking to birds and animals - who doesn't do this?

New posts on this thread. Refresh page