It has been said that if a person enters a room full of people, and less than a third of the room is "like" them (race, gender, status, etc.) then that person will have to fight for their identity.
I think that some, in feeling defensive or misunderstood in such a situation, might become vocal- feisty to assert themselves. Others might retreat and fade into the background. Both are defensive postures, and both are very natural when one perceives that he/she is misunderstood or even powerless. This sense of having one's identity questioned or snuffed or belittled feels like a threat. It can come from a group (system, dominant party, clique) or from an individual.
For example, if one is forced out our locked out of a group that holds power over that person, it's not just the area where that power is held that is threatened, but the person's very sense of person-hood and identity that is held captive.
Or, if an individual is critical or sarcastic, and appears to jump on everything another says or does, it can have the same effect, especially where the critical person is closely related to the other (parent, spouse, child, sibling, friend.)
My friend was divorced and ostracized from a large number of her friends and from her church. While she has had a couple of years to find her self and her way again (she escaped an abusive marriage and very legalistic religious community) it was only recently that she felt she could open her home again to some who had been critical of her. An old friend came to "drop by", and while she wanted to be open and receive her into her home warmly, it was immediately apparent that the visitor was there to "snoop" around, and from little comments she dropped, was critical of my friends choices. Though she had felt restful, so proud of her home and the life she was making before the visitor came, now she immediately felt a loss of identity. It felt like drowning- as if the the healing she had experienced was being swallowed up.
This was my own experience in being ex-communicated from my church. It felt like I was being suffocated- snuffed out. And though it is getting better, each encounter with people from my old world makes me feel like I have to fight for my identity- knowing that these people haven't the foggiest idea about who I am.
I believe that Brennan Manning says that if you spend enough time with any person listening to their story, that there would be a moment when compassion would rise and you would identify with them. This is offering presence. It is only acceptance that allows another person to open and reveal their true self.
On the other hand, wherever we live to impress, we live as posers. The self-conscious parts of me that are aware of others opinions are the impostor. This impostor seeks to use others to enhance an image and seeks to kill freedom and person-hood. Groups and individuals can do this persons by stereo-typing, labeling, and belittling. It is a way to gain power.
Barbara Brown Taylor says that the moment I turn a person into a character in my own story, the encounter is over. I have stopped being a human being, and I have become a fiction writer instead. You can take an encounter and turn it into your story by using it to make your self look or feel better. Or to retell the encounter to others in a way that enhances your status at the cost of the other. We create a mild fiction of another person to improve our own story.
This is what my friend felt. She had been turned into a work of fiction, and her true self was lost somewhere.