In my personal experience, faking has been helpful. I also grew up mostly without friends. The weirdest thing for me though was that as a toddler, I was extre

In my personal experience, faking has been helpful. I also grew up mostly without friends. The weirdest thing for me though was that as a toddler, I was extremely social and friendly. Then through a series of occurrences I ended up on the other end of the spectrum. My family moved all the time and I barely ever had any friends. I was happiest when reading. I read incessantly, constantly - often hiding in the bathroom to read because my mom wanted me to do school work. Haha. It was strange though because I read fiction exclusively. It was a way for me to find friends, even though fake ones. I left home in grade 11 (Junior year of high school) for a boarding school. I was super excited to make hundreds of friends now that I was finally going to be among more people my age, living with them. It turned out to be a disaster. I had always wanted friends but I had never learned to socialize. It was a hard 2 years of rejection, pranks, people constantly laughing at me. In a high end school in Delhi girls who don't know how to dress, do their hair, take care of themselves, are BIG jokes. :-/ To be fair, I was not smoothest operator aside from that either. After that I got into Stanford for college and that was probably the biggest blessing I got. Suddenly I was around people who were more like me. Yay! But I faked a lot to fit in and be "normal". I tried really hard to be interesting. I still only managed to make a few friends but I wasn't a pariah. Then desire struck. I decided I wanted to fulfill my dream of being a "leader" and ran for student government. That was one of the times in my life that I faked it till I made it. I was the friendliest, best looking self I have ever been. As I was going through the election campaign, I wondering if this faking was worth it. I didn't really realize then but that experience changed me forever. The faking stopped feeling fake. I now feel much more empathetic and social with people. Similar to the person who commented below about running a bar to change his behavior and comfort level, its almost like I needed practice to civilize myself haha. Anyway, in summary, I feel like faking is shitty when you are going through it but can have really good long term behavior changes. Its all about emulating the right behaviors.