Everyone has their own personality traits and experiences that they would prefer not to share with others. Often these are things that the person is ashamed of and believe that even their closest of friends would think of them differently if they knew about them. Just last night I was speaking with a friend and trying to help them work through their issues with how he was seen by others. He had become frustrated by the image others saw of him and wanted my opinion on how he should go about changing it. Even though he was not trying to change how he truly was at heart he wanted to alter, or modulate his “outsider identity”. This would mean that others would perceive him differently for some reason, and most likely that would be a result of suppressing his inner emotions. I personally do believe in trying to rationalize most everything and make a constant effort to think logically about how something may turnout, but I often end up over-thinking and suffer because of a heightened amount of caution. My advice to him was essentially, “If they don’t vibe with you then, who cares? The ones who really matter don’t want you to change.” As one of those friends I don’t think he should try to be someone else just for the sake of making more friends. While I don’t think I am saying that to him just too make sure he stays my friend and doesn’t get more caught up with other people, it is possible that I’m doing it subconsciously. Modulating one’s identity is usually done in order to gain or preserve a relationship. Relationships are only strong if they are rooted in emotion though and that is where reason fails. His reasoning is, why wouldn’t he want more people to like him if he could just change how he acted a little bit? It sounds reasonable but the sacrifice of his natural personality is not worth a few extra friends who didn’t appreciate him before. All the little insecurities that are shared between friends make the bond all the more stronger and if no one had imperfections then there wouldn’t be any personality in the world. It’s ridiculous to think someone needs to be normal to be accepted.