I'm terrible at faking it, my personality always spills out towards the end - and in many cases it never ended well. I've been a lone wolf by choice through a big part of my life but I wanted friends when I was in my early 20's. How naive was I to think that I'd magically make friends with everyone in my college department after being so socially inexperienced? In that case I didn't even try to fake it - I acted naturally and many people ended up hating me.
Later on I started working and I needed to act as professionally as I could because it's a business. I tried my best to act that way in front of the boss and clients and I think it went pretty well for a while. I was the only employee for a few months and then gradually started getting coworkers, so I needed to fake it even more. Retrospectively I remember being reserved and still revealing some of my weirdness to them, but as the years went by the mask inadvertently slipped. They started seeing all the anxiety, negativity, whining and complaining, immaturity, self-hatred, inability to control emotions and the inability to be self-reliant, lack of social skills and lack of common sense. I got into some squabbles with a few of them because of my behavior and ended up exhibiting the self-hatred even more.
However, what I AM good at is being nice and respectful towards my boss, coworkers and clients. I don't see anything wrong with them, and I've never gotten mad at anybody but myself over there. I always put myself down and I always elevate them to superhero status. I have very good programming skills, too - despite lacking so many other skills. I believe that the programming skills and my ability to treat people with respect despite my behavior are the main reasons why the boss is still keeping me around.
I still try to fake it when it comes to the few friends I have, as much as I possibly can. It's only been a couple of years, as opposed to work (almost 5 and a half years). I'm worried about about how the mask might slip even further and the possibility of losing them. At the same time I can see that they accept me for who I am and didn't ditch me like a dirty diaper to this day. They try to help me with my social issues. So do my parents and coworkers. That's something I will always take to heart. I feel like I slightly improved since college by observing all these people and I'm learning how to better myself even further through my psychologist.