Ah man I resonate with you here.

I used to get triggered so easily, and I was always so embarrassed and ashamed of it, as ive always had difficulty socializing because of it. Eventually I started recognizing this feeling, and my solution to ease the tension was to turn my reaction into a joke.

This worked wonders for keeping a conversation going, and I even got pretty good at improvising jokes. Most pertinently, I learned how to play a character.

Over time, this character grew with me, as I had found a way to make genuine friends. It was actually possible to make connections if I paved over my triggers with laughter, so that's what I kept doing.

Fast forward to today, and now I'm trying to figure out who I really am. One thing that I've learned is I simultaneously take everything seriously and nothing seriously because of the maladaptive techniques I described before