Strong Suits and Identity

Two things I learned last weekend that really got me thinking.

I’ll talk about one of them today. It’s called strong suits.

A strong suit, to put it simply, is a personality or identity you slam on because you believe it works and makes you successful. So whenever you’re face with a problem, a decision, or whatever it is, the strong suit is activated.

People usually have three main strong suits. People can have more, but it’s usually just a branch out of the three main ones.

Strong suits develop due to three events in your life that had a huge impact on you.

The first strong suit you slam on usually occurs when you’re 2-8 years old. Something bad happens, and for the first time in your life, you feel like there’s something wrong, you felt like you weren’t good enough.

The second strong suit occurs later, possibly in your teens, when the most important people in your life are probably your friends. Something bad happens, and you felt like you didn’t belong.

The third strong suit occurs again later. Something bad happens, and for the first time, you felt like you were on your own.

Now these strong suits you put on, works, and it has made me you successful, in whatever way you wanted it to work. But it also restricts and constraints you. It also makes you unhappy.

For example, I’ll talk about my strong suits. I’ve only figured out two…

1. This happened when I was in Pakistan. I was in 1st grade. I was with my dad. We were outside and his friends were there. I was playing around. After my dad’s friends left, he started yelling at me really loudly. And he hit me. He was very angry. He scolded me for not “wai”-ing his friends, which is a traditional Thai thing to do when you meet elders and said I was impolite, rude and disgracing him in front of his friends. I honestly didn’t know. I didn’t know that I had to “wai” his friends. I thought I didn’t do anything wrong. I thought, I disappointed my dad, and that I wasn’t good enough. From that day on, I slammed on my first strong suit. Being different. I didn’t understand the Thai-ness in the society I lived in, I didn’t understand why everybody had to conform, I didn’t understand why he had to be so angry at me when I was just being myself, I didn’t understand why I had to act a certain way because he wanted me to do it, or because society expects me to do it. Since then, I’ve done everything I could to be different, from wanting to learn everything possible so that I can think differently, from traveling a lot so I can see things from different perspectives, from experiencing everything I can so I won’t be labeled easily on a shelf. And it worked, being different made me feel powerful and special. I had to know everything and its meaning and reasons. But how has it restricted me? It’s also made me feel isolated.

2. This occurred during middle school in 6th grade. I don’t want to recount this one because some of my friends who were involved in the incident also reads my blog and I don’t want to talk about it. But I was hurt, and for the first time, I felt like I didn’t belong. The strong suit I slammed on was being an extrovert. I became super friendly, super nice, super understanding, super supportive, super outgoing, and probably a lot more. I became a super friend. And it works. People like me. I’ve made tons of friends. But yet, it conflicts. I’m shy, I can get pretty timid, and I have my own world that I like to be in, not even being physically alone, but just mentally alone. It’s restrictive because I feel pulled in two directions, as though I have a split personality.

I don’t like thinking that people’s personalities are shaped because of these things. But I think it’s interesting to try and figure it out anyway, just to see if something did happen, which has made you act a certain way. It’s actually quite fun thinking about these things. I’m still trying to figure out my third one. I feel like it’s within my grasp, but I’m not quite there yet.