We sometimes say that to embrace life, we need to make some changes. However, what if the changes are so drastic that you are like a different person? Will you feel sad that you ditch the original version of yourself?
For instance, a person who is shy and hesitant changes himself into a brave man.
I think I might be a case in point.
I had some pretty serious social anxiety growing up. I wouldn't want to have to speak in class. I wouldn't want to talk to people I didn't know (or even knew). I had a small circle of really close friends and that was it. The thought of, say, knocking on someone's door to do some funding drive the school or a camp was requiring filled me with terror. Or, I recall dreading for months an upcoming 3-day school trip to an overnight camp, which they were doing for reasons I don't recall. And of course, being completely miserable every second I was there. I also now see that I regularly misinterpreted other peoples' actions and motives, always distorting them with some belief that they are necessarily out to harm me. (I'm not talking about the grade bully. I'm talking about kids just playing around and being kids, and me forming some paranoid idea that it was all about targeting me specifically).
Around 8th grade, my parents resolved to move. I paced many hours in my room feeling sorry for myself, but in something like a bolt of clarify, I finally clearly saw the overall pattern of social anxiety and resolved to start a war on it. I was going to change and I was going to do it alone. No docs, no meds, no support.
So on the first day at the new HS, I simply walked up to a table of kids and asked to sit. Etc. Stuff like that. Soon, one of the freshmen football player would-be cool kids dumped shrimp and sauce in my backpack. One of his buddies came up to ask me if I wanted to fight the guy I did it. Sure, I said. He told me who did it. (Now, as it happens, I had developed a way of shooting tightly rolled paper 'wads' with rubber bands so as to draw blood in some cases. I walked right up to the kid and fired one at his face - unfortunately missing - shrugged, and sat back down. On the day of the fight, he walks up to my table at lunch and announces he's sorry...he doesn't want to fight me anymore.)
Anyway, I kept on placing myself in situations where I had two options: conquer a little more of the anxiety, or fail at something. I joined the wrestling team. I'd go to parties with people I wasn't familiar with. I'd simply force myself to walk up to a group and eventually start talking. This worked, because one thing I knew about myself is that I would much rather feel fear, even burning fear, than to fail at something I have undertaken. As time went on, I went more and more outgoing and got over it.
When I got towards the end of law school, they had these legal clinics, where students work under attorney supervision and represent clients. Even though I had already decided that I wanted to fight the lying cheating government by being a criminal defense attorney, the thought of representing an actual person in court, of doing investigation in bad areas, of dealing with everything....that still filled me with deep anxiety. But, I wrote out the required explanation of why you want to join the clinic and stared at it for a while. But I saw what was going on anxiety-wise and reached out and hit the "send" button. Now the email was sent. Now I HAD to go through with it because not going through with it would be failure. And that would be worse than any anxiety or fear I might feel.
Now, much later, I'm an appellate attorney. I still occasionally get irrational pangs of anxiety out of the blue, for no particular reason; say, I have to make a phone call to bug a clerk to get something done (I mean..why on Earth be anxious about calling a clerk's office? They don't bite. Well, some want to, but that would be illegal). It's odd, but I'm used to ignoring it. And of course, once I start talking, the idea of having been anxious it all is laughable. (Something I prepare heavily for, like oral argument, doesn't phase me beyond the usual anxiety all appellate attorneys face....before we start talking).
In retrospect, some of this may have simply been the process of growing up. But when I think back to the way I'd feel sometimes in various social situations as a kid, it lines right up with descriptions of rather serious social anxiety disorder. I certainly feel like a very different person in these respects, and I am in no way sad because it was a positive change. No more irrational crippling anxiety about silly bull****.
So in short, I think it is very much possible to change something fundamental about yourself....but it is likely to be somewhere between a very long and a lifelong battle.
I found myself changing to fit my spouse. I changed so much that I did not recognize the person I was, from the things that I did with some enjoyment but not that same thrill I had with previous enjoyments to simply being emptied of care. 