Most of my life has been marred by some level of PTSD cognitive/emotional distortion. Primary fuel source: anger.
Sometimes I slip into a much more playful and relaxed personality. Trying to figure out what the primary fuel source is, there.
(No, it's not curiosity.)
Conversation
My impression is that most personalities are fairly tightly wound around one or two core emotions that define their patterns and motivations.
Often people have more than one subpersonality, but which one is ascendant is a matter of emotional inputs (environmental or bottled up.)
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I feel like if I could start installing more of the right firmware, and alter my emotional environment, I'd live a much freer, happier life.
Just a matter of finding out what's needed, and, um, actually doing it.
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A large part of the motivation is that my "core personality" (read: my habits and disposition for most of my life) is disintegrating.
There just isn't enough residual anger left to keep the machine running as before. Which means most of the time, nothing is running. Boring.
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People sometimes apply some folk theory of a true, genuine version of themselves. I doubt there is such a fixed property.
But there's something to free, uninhibited, creative expression - the sort of thing held down by neuroticism, trauma, learned helplessness, conformism...