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It depends on the character. Some characters reflect me. Some are neurotypical extroverts that can provide proper emotional support and absolutely do not.
 
I only put enough of my own self in my characters to find a connection with them. I like to use what I put of myself in my characters as a version of a simple rectangular house drawing that I can use to mold my character(s) into people with depth, with reasons for doing the things they do and so they don't feel like near-caricatures of what they're supposed to be. I do research if I am going to write a character outside my own upbringing. If my character is rich, I want to make sure they act like they have been silver spoon-fed everything, or if they are a poc, I will make sure what I make isn't offensive. But despite all of this, at their core, I know who they are and I know there are parts of me in them that help me write them with confidence.
 
Here's how I make a character.

I wing it. The applications aren't the most complex, the very first impression I have of them may or may not be plain, but every action I take with them - I wing it.
 
My first RP characters were all very similar to myself because, being new to the whole RP thing, I wanted to keep things simple until I got the hang of it. To avoid making a straight-up self insert character, I gave them one or two traits I didn't have, or a different background. This incidentally allowed me to explore what having those one or two traits would be like, or the effects a certain background would have on a person in the present. The first character I was truly invested in was basically me but with none of my redeeming qualities, all of my negative traits turned up to eleven, and a backstory and home life to semi-explain why she was such an a**hole.

At the time, I had very low self esteem, so I think I was using this character as a way to process everything I hated about myself while taking out my self-directed anger in a vicarious fashion. Whether or not this was healthy, the results were a complex and fascinatingly terrible person whose hypocrisy, anti-social behavior, arrogance, and complete lack of introspection or self-awareness were at the root of all of her problems. At one point I just went full out and put her through one trauma after another until she finally admitted that she was to blame for her current situation and that she'd been a terrible person all along. It was immensely cathartic.

By the time I found this site, I'd been roleplaying long enough that I felt comfortable making characters with little similarity to myself. These characters are typically created to explore a specific situation, dilemma, or set of life experiences. How much my character draws from my own personality and traits depends on the RP in question and what I feel would fit best and complement the other characters. However, the characters I get the most invested in still tend to be those that are most like me and enable me to explore my own psyche or live out some kind of entertaining fantasy (like being a diabolical political mastermind, lol).

So... yeah.
 
I think that once you've identified your general lines in the sand that you don't want to cross for whatever reason when writing, my go-to method would be to take a look at the scenario (whether it's the setting, the current cast of characters, the plot etc) and to isolate what would be the most interesting / fun factor to chuck right into the middle of it. Since we want to have fun writing our characters, I like to have that 'thing' which will make me enjoy writing in this scenario to be a big part of the character I'm playing.

An example might be in a high school romance / drama plot, you have this jaded, not-that-great-at-English but incredibly competent janitor who is actually a highly successful mystery novelist. Or in a werewolf story, I might stick in the last in a long line of brutal monster hunters with the power to transform into animals... who wants to be a marine biologist but turns into a mountain yak.

Basically, Marie Kondo it. Look at the story, find what 'sparks joy' and build your character around that.
 
For me, I guess I think that a character is something that allows you to "feel" how it'd be like with that certain personality, therefore there's bound to be a little bit of my real personality inside, since their personality would cover a wide range, and they're "people" too. It's like how when you're super shy irl, and want to have a go at being outgoing and social, so you incorporate that into your character and such? From that one point, as the roleplay progresses, more of the traits would come out and the character can be developed further, centered on that starting point. Honestly, most of my characters aren't similar to me at all as I'd prefer trying out new personalities, and explore what are the things I could do if I had that certain trait- something that might be impossible in reality.
 
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