I felt lonely and anxious because I couldn’t fit in with relationships and friendships. I thought I needed to be more sociable, so I bought alcohol and went to classmates’ houses at night. With the help of alcohol, I was able to talk a little for a few hours, feel a connection with people, and my loneliness was somewhat alleviated.
In this way, for me, relationships and friendships were something I had to work hard to achieve, even if only a little.
However, the next day or so, those relationships would also fade away.
During university summer breaks, I sometimes applied alone for long-term live-in part-time jobs in rural areas or resorts and worked for several weeks.
At those jobs, I would drink and have fun with new student co-workers at night, and I was able to temporarily return to the early days of high school, before my social anxiety disorder and phobia began. However, these relationships were ultimately built with the help of alcohol and momentum, and they faded away once I returned to my university life.
Looking back now, my character, at its deepest level, was what Horney called neurotic, erythrophobia (fear of blushing), and in more recent terminology, developmental disorder, social anxiety disorder, autism spectrum disorder, bipolar disorder, and selective silence.
According to Horney, I had a deep-seated anxiety (what he called “basic anxiety”), and without a neurotic personality system (self-idealization, tyranny of “shoulds,” pride, demands, etc.) or the help of alcohol, my mental anxiety and confusion prevented me from interacting with others with humanity and empathy.
Horney states that mentally healthy people have a healthy self (what Horney calls the “true self”) at the center of their mind and spirit. Neurotic individuals and those with chronic mental health disorders have a damaged and underdeveloped “healthy self,” replaced by a strong “basic anxiety.”
When you have natural humanity and empathy within your heart, you can interact with and connect with others through it. When I look at myself, I feel anxiety and confusion inside, and in this state, I become like a machine, a robot, devoid of ordinary human qualities.
When something good happens, I enter the manic phase of bipolar disorder, my emotions become narcissistically elevated, and I can behave more sociably than the average person, but it doesn’t last long.
Then, when I can no longer behave sociably, my mood and emotions swing to the opposite side, and I am overwhelmed by depression, melancholy, anxiety, inferiority complex, and self-loathing.
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