Dove Cameron has poured his heart out in a thought-provoking essay on identity

Dove Cameron has more than just spectacular acting chops and occasional resi selfies.

He is a real man, and like everyone else, he has personal struggles.

Unlike most people, his highly publicized role as an actor means that he is verifiable and visible in a way that we can hardly imagine.

In a long post, Dove pours out his heart about the identity and the fight within himself. It’s a worthy read.

“Identity vs. Self !!! Depression and Dysphoria,” Dave began his insightful Instagram post.

“I feel like I’ve always known myself deeply, whom I deeply love and cherish, like my own child,” he said.

“I know this myself and we are very close,” Dove confirmed.

“For me, identity and self have always been opposites,” Dove explained.

“And,” he continued, “there was a one-time place to occupy my life.”

“I’ve never been able to hold their hand,” Dove said.

“And as I get older, I realize it’s because I have a strong belief in who I’m wrong,” Dave admits.

“I am not allowed to stay as I am, I do not want to stay here,” he explained.

“I think if I was allowed to be here I would have to be something else,” Dove wrote, “and I really want to be here with you.”

“The more days, the more I feel the pull of an identity,” Dove reflected.

“I feel the most natural to myself as something impenetrable, a force and a presence,” he wrote comparatively.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to live like this,” admits Dove, “if I ever find a rhythm in this job where perception is one of the main foundations.”

“So far, in my personal experience, self and identity seem to be hurting each other,” Dave observed.

“I feel it. And if you are, we can do it together,” he confirmed.

“As long as I’m alive, I realize that these internal dialogues are actually quite universal,” Dove noted.

Dove explains, “The thing that really makes me clear is that I’m interested in a life free of burdens.

He acknowledges that it is “easier in theory than in practice, but we are creating space.”

“I began to hope that a universal platform that was difficult for me to learn to take my own place,” Dove wrote, “could actually be a carrier of change / mutual support / exploration / security.”

“We have a place to talk about things that scare us / can’t be made on a large scale,” Dove confirmed.

“It can’t be commercialized and given easy word-bites,” he continued.

“Perhaps the places that are the least human can become the most human,” Dave suggested.

“If we want it, and we can all let each other take a little more space,” Dove encouraged. “I love you.”

Dove had more to say, not in his caption, but in additional writing that he had screenshots and shared photos of her crying.

He writes that he has been “struggling with his ideas lately, my inner relationship with who I call myself.”

“And,” he continued, “my outward perceptible self that I feel I never know but other people think.”

Dove admits to covering the mirror and “dressing me up in a way that made me feel good.”

She was moved to tears and felt “sometimes terrified by my identity and image.”

Dove also writes about the fight over “sexuality and the performance gender norm”, a very common feeling in the context of society’s expectations.

Trying to be on-brand and artificially compatible is “not the best for mental health,” he noted.

Dove rightly described it as “a modern problem that was not created with human health in mind.”

Dove shared that he has been “struggling for more than half the time” but is determined to go through this process of “investigating” himself.

He is on a journey of “not learning self-abuse and self-loathing.”

The dove wants to be “relieved by the socially created identity.”

“Instead of punishing myself for not knowing what I’m feeling or where I’m going, I’m trying to maintain a quiet non-judgmental curiosity,” Dove insisted.

Dove explains that he doesn’t want others to “feel alone” because they examine themselves and their lives as he does, but also knows that the struggle is not universal.

“Emotions are cool. Dysphoria is fine. Survival as a human being is intense,” Dove confirmed. “Maybe the places that have the fewest people can become the most people, if we want it, and we can all let each other take up a little more space.”

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