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Not having a sense of self and self image has costed me a lot in terms of personal and professional life. I would become clingy, needy, dumbfounded because I just couldn't think on my own. I felt so much emptiness that I needed to be engulfed by someone else to even feel alive. 

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When I was a child I used to cling to some cousins and classmates. I would essentially engulf them and not know where they ended and where I began. 

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I was so desperate for love and romance that I daydreamed all the time and did online chatting to fill the great void inside me. 

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I was like a ghost or a parasite. I used to do maladaptive daydreaming all the time. I would see mental images of other people and try to emulate them. I was a different person with different people with a different persona and voice for everyone. 

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I did not know who I was. I did not have a sense of self. I was needy, clingy, follower and empty inside like a balloon. 

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It took me a long time to understand why I used to become so attached to people and why my sense of self was so unstable. This caused me to become easily offended, defensive, hypersensitive, do mind reading, be gullible, very loyal, people pleaser. 

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When I gained clarity and did contemplation, I realized that it was all because of lack of sense of self and internal image. So what was the solution? 

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I studied the lives of the masters. The philosophers. The geniuses of their fields. Academic philosophy, Academic psychology, economics, occult, metaphysics, Stoicism. I found a meaning and an image for myself. This is how I developed a "backbone" for my life from here onwards. Every time I get carried away by my emotions or confusion, i simply retreat to the study of these subjects. It has helped me a lot and I hope it reaches the right people and helps them too.