introjection
is so weird. i'm glad i finally have enough self-awareness to combat it, even slightly, consciously. it only took 8 years... someone says "you have an alcohol problem" then becomes truth in my eyes & i absorb it as a fact about myself. it overwrites any and all of my own assessments and genuinely start to believe it, and at times i'll act in accordance with it. it's completely passive and often unconscious & is never a self-choice nor is ever wanted. weirdly enough, another aspect of BPD, Splitting, often rejects these subjective/grafted truths entirely, sometimes violently.
the chameleon
is similar and i may have conflated introjection and this in the past as i only recently learned about introjection. this is where the common sayings with bpd's of "they hate you because you mirror them" comes from. its not that simple? if im around someone that likes metal, ill become a metal person, not in the sense of generic normie adoption, but ill obtain the knowledge passively enough that ill know just as much as a genuine metal person. this being said, i do genuinely enjoy metal and i have since i was a kid without anyone to mirror, i'm just using it as an example. more examples, if im around someone intellectual, ill become more intellectual, if im around someone dumb, ill become more dumb. if i'm around someone evil, ill become more evil. good = good, bad = bad, creative = creative, etc. this often increases 1000x if the other person is my FP and or my whole perception of reality starts to revolve around them.
the funny thing is (to me) is that people see the very tip of the iceberg of some of these aspects and think they can genuinely manipulate me into painting a narrative of theirs onto myself. i laugh at you internally for thinking you could beat my ever vigilant defense mechanisms. there's only a few who have and oddly enough i still love them deeply.
core identities
while i can say i have no true coherent core identity myself, i do try to only copy my past self & what i liked when i was younger. such as tech/web dev/etc, i was very into that when i was younger. and most of my music taste that has roots in evanescense, rob zombie, green day, three days grace, meg and dia, papa roach, get scared, etc etc is both copied from my fathers tastes and early me. meg and dia/papa roach/linkin park/get scared/asking alexandria/pierce the veil/black veil brides/etc and similar scene/emo genres i found and chose myself, just built upon my previous mirroring of my fathers. this is also evident that my BPD really didnt fully take effect until adulthood.. i'll correlate that eventually