How to suppress parts of myself, to blend in.

[jonb]

I take "be true to yourself" to mean: don't make a bad habit of pretending to feel or believe things that you don't actually feel or believe.

Now, that's how I interpret it personally but how am I supposed to know that that's the correct interpretation when it's so vaguely defined/ill defined?

This was in the context that my advice, was meant. I have had a lot of friends who were gay in the sixties and seventies, when not only society, tried to stop them from expressing themselves, but in the sixties even the law was used against them. I do not know of one who was not adversely affected by trying to conform to an agenda that was not their own even when simply conforming would seem the easier path.

As a result I will always argue against the suppression of elements that constitute what we are even if some see 'the self ' as a woolly term.