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I'm a shut-in. This is my story

fighttheurgetofade.com

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Re: I'm a shut-in. This is my story

#101

Post by Domenic_S »

q_revert wrote: post #23
jpxxx wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to put this in all caps because you are not paying my day rate: YOU ARE AN ABUSE SURVIVOR. Find professional help (NOW) to starting approaching it and dealing with it. Find professional help (NOW) to help manage your mental disorder (depression) which carries an enormous and present risk of self-harm. Get whatever the fuck is wrong with your foot fixed, and start walking out the door on the regular. You app…

even a cursory read of the post would suggest that the OP is actually doing quite a good job of dealing with his problems

To the uninitiated, perhaps.

It's the first step to wellness, but people (especially the types that are drawn to technology) put way too much weight in analysis. "Getting better" stalls, more often than not, in analysis. It's why your friend or cousin or mother or whoever tells you they went to therapy for 10 years and accomplished nothing.

The root cause is this: feeling bad about yourself is easier than the pain of actually doing something about it. So if you can stay in analysis mode and take a couple hesitant shuffles in some direction, that's good enough. You'll never get better, but at least you don't have to change.

That's why the author should get into therapy today. With a good therapist, and some willpower, he can begin actually changing his life. As it stands, I expect a couple more blog posts and another existential crisis sometime around Thanksgiving.

Re: I'm a shut-in. This is my story

#102

Post by hvs »

[deleted] wrote: post #66

[deleted]

A professional psychiatrist or psychologist would never presume to diagnose someone based on something they wrote, and I doubt that your armchair psychology is any more accurate.

Re: I'm a shut-in. This is my story

#103

Post by Osmium »

I find it interesting that a person who has shunned all outward social connections, tries to then make a social connection via the internet in retelling his story to us.

Humans, whether you like it or not, have evolved to be a social species. Even if one wishes to withdraw, they can only do this in practice with the tacit permission of the society they live in, at least unless they're prepared to give up all worldly conveniences and just go live in a cave somewhere. I also find that interesting, though I'm not sure what to make of it.

Re: I'm a shut-in. This is my story

#104

Post by Erwin »

nickknw wrote: post #85
Erwin wrote: post #38

This reminds me a bit of this first-person piece of autism-related sci-fi: http://www.amazon.com/The-Speed-Dark-Elizabeth-Moon/dp/03454... I used to keep a diary, where 13 years ago my entries were long monologues similar to this. There was a clear correlation between amount of personal and emotional human contact I had in a day and the length of the diary entries where I tried to reminisce going mushroom picking wit…

Just curious, which way did the correlation go? Less contact => Longer entries?

Yes, less personal contact, perhaps a less meaningful job at the time meant more time brooding over everything due. Now that I do something people depend on and no longer live alone, I haven't felt the need to reminiscence.

Re: I'm a shut-in. This is my story

#105

Post by itafroma »

cowsaysoink wrote: post #93
k-mcgrady wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I presume he orders online. I'm not sure what it's like where you are but here I order online from the largest supermarkets (Tesco, Asda etc.) and have it delivered to my door the next day for a £3-5 delivery charge. It's pretty commonplace.

That isn't commonplace in the US which I assume that is where he is from considering the whois info. In fact it would probably be much more expensive here. The main choices probably are a family member picking up groceries for you, or a small market which still can deliver groceries, I know mine stopped offering delivery around 5 years ago because the community size grew so much.

Though I don't have any metrics on how "commonplace" it is, it is pretty accessible in several urban areas (Portland and other Oregonian urban areas, Seattle, LA and other SoCal urban areas, San Francisco, and New York off the top of my head) and the price is only slightly higher than what k-mcgrady quoted. In Portland, if you're okay with a four-hour window, Safeway charges ~$7 USD. A one-hour window is ~$13.

Re: I'm a shut-in. This is my story

#106

Post by strlen »

astine wrote: post #92

There is a persistent ignorance about homeschoolers lacking socialization, an assertion I find laughable. Homeschooling done properly, frees up more time and increases true socialization. I was involved in sports, chess, and a wide range of homeschooler organized activities. 90% of the homeschoolers I have ever encountered were as equally if not more involved in social activities. I was homeschooled and while it's tr…

Most personality traits follow a normal distribution: half are more socially awkward than average, half are less socially awkward than average.

I found it surprising and even counterintuitive, but empirical data suggests that on average home-schooled students are still better socialized than students of public schools. Here's one article: it was published in a Catholic journal, but it seems to be heavily cited by secular social scientists and sufficient in its methodology ( http://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/02/001-is-private-sc... )

I'd add that there's also more to socialization than not being socially awkward: someone can be socially awkward, but start a family, be active in their community, and contribute to society through work, entrepreneurship, or academic pursuits.

Re: I'm a shut-in. This is my story

#107

Post by sliverstorm »

unconed wrote: post #84
RyanZAG wrote: post #37

I think you're wrong on one point: you constantly repeat how different and strange you are from everyone else. You're really not. As you mentioned at one point: you didn't want to go out and play, but the teacher forced you to do so. This is very common behavior, and teachers are forcing children every day to go out and play. Huge amount of people go through similar experiences to yours. Others start to lapse into an…

I identify with huge portions of this post. And if there's one thing I've learned over the years, it's that I don't think like most other people. I don't mean "my ideas are better" or "I have superior reasoning skills". I mean "the tools that I use to reason about the world are not the same that most people appear to use". It's the only logical explanation for the fact that several popular ways in which humans commun…

I think it is important to distinguish here; you do not necessarily think differently from other people. You LEARN differently, which is VERY COMMON.

Supporting anecdotal evidence: I usually learn best with written words and supporting visualizations. My mother and youngest brother on the other hand are highly visual, and have an awful time with written words. They need imagery. This is all contrasted to the auditory method common in our schools, and this is just within my family.

Re: I'm a shut-in. This is my story

#108

Post by sliverstorm »

crntaylor wrote: post #98
unconed wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I identify with huge portions of this post. And if there's one thing I've learned over the years, it's that I don't think like most other people. I don't mean "my ideas are better" or "I have superior reasoning skills". I mean "the tools that I use to reason about the world are not the same that most people appear to use". It's the only logical explanation for the fact that several popular ways in which humans commun…

I don't have a voice in my head. When I learnt from reddit discussions that most people experience their inner thoughts as an inner monologue, I was flabbergasted. If I heard a voice, I would think I was going insane. I think that's pretty normal. A quick poll of the other three people in the room reveals that none of us experience an 'inner voice'. It's more like a stream of associations, some of which might involve…

I'm pretty sure the "inner voice" is just a metaphor to describe a concept. I, too, do not hear a voice echoing in my head as if God was speaking inside my skull. I have a train of thought that I could directly translate to spoken words, but is not actually in words. It is more abstract; I shuffle around ideas. Sometimes I will speak aloud to myself when I'm trying to disassociate to find a new viewpoint, but that's about as far as the inner voice goes.

Of course, this could potentially be less typical than I usually assume. I've noticed writing notes to work through my thoughts is ridiculously limiting, because my train of thought goes 2-10x faster than I can write or draw. I've always wondered about that, because it seems to be a popular method for brainstorming.

Re: I'm a shut-in. This is my story

#109

Post by gruseom »

mrtron wrote: post #79
gruseom wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your first paragraph. We're really not very different from one another, but a craving for identity causes us to seek or invent distinguishing features, which have a way of turning into traps. The pattern seems to be that one spends adolescence and early adulthood acquiring this "wardrobe", then later the task becomes to shed it. That is not easy, because by when you get to shedding-time you've lost the a…

Is this why travel is so important? It forces you to have a barebones "wardrobe" and it helps you down the identity-building path?

In my view, that can go either way. Sometimes we expect a change in external scenery to change us and, after the novelty wears off, find ourselves in the same state as before. Emerson said that travel narrows the mind; I suspect he was talking about something like that.

Re: I'm a shut-in. This is my story

#110

Post by pm215 »

sliverstorm wrote: post #108
crntaylor wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a voice in my head. When I learnt from reddit discussions that most people experience their inner thoughts as an inner monologue, I was flabbergasted. If I heard a voice, I would think I was going insane. I think that's pretty normal. A quick poll of the other three people in the room reveals that none of us experience an 'inner voice'. It's more like a stream of associations, some of which might involve…

I'm pretty sure the "inner voice" is just a metaphor to describe a concept. I, too, do not hear a voice echoing in my head as if God was speaking inside my skull. I have a train of thought that I could directly translate to spoken words, but is not actually in words. It is more abstract; I shuffle around ideas. Sometimes I will speak aloud to myself when I'm trying to disassociate to find a new viewpoint, but that's…

I tend more towards inner monologue, but it's not 'the voice of God', it's like I constantly talk to myself, only not out loud. On the other hand I can't visualise images internally at all.

I think it's fascinating how we all have basically the same brain hardware but can end up with remarkably different inner experiences.

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