External Behavior

This was a mail I was intending to send to people in my team at the Company. But I was never able to gather the courage to do so. And on second thoughts, its good I didnt really end up sending this.

Hi,

This will be one of the stranger mails you will have received in your recent memory. You can safely avoid this mail, but it is important for me that you read this completely.

You have no doubt observed my absurd social behavior. I don't even need to describe it. I have given various reasons for that to various people. Chris and Guy, I told you about cultural differences. David I told you about behavior patterns, but I didn't specify which patterns. Shib, I told you about ego. Shruti, I must have given you lots of different reasons.

They were not lies, but they were just problems as they look on the surface. The root causes are different.

I believe I have textbook Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), along with certain symptoms of Aspergers Syndrome (a subclass of autism) and symptoms of Disorganized Schizophrenia. These affect my personality hugely, and have severely impaired my social abilities of relating to people and having relationships, including all levels of friendship.

NPD forms a mutually reinforcing relationship with Social Rejection due to which both social rejection and NPD go on multiplying.

The combination of NPD and Social Rejection have caused other unpleasant related behaviors to emerge on the surface: lack of interest in life almost on the border of depression, lack of the ability to enjoy and provide others enjoyment, lack of motivation, discourtesy, inability to be follow cultural and social norms, indiscipline, no real friends, inability to connect with people, etc. These are direct symptoms of types of Autism and types of Schizophrenia.

[NPD: loving the image you portray to others instead of loving yourself or the others, all actions correlate to building an image, which eventually breaks easily. Etc. NPD is the root cause of my problems.

http://samvak.tripod.com/msla.html
http://samvak.tripod.com/npdglance.html

Aspergers Syndrome: Externally Visible: all sorts of asocial behaviors

http://www.udel.edu/bkirby/asperger/aswhatisit.html

Schizophrenia: Externally Visible: negative symptoms of Disorganized Schizophrenia, Schizoid/Schizotypal Personality Disorder: lack of friends, confused state, cultureless, etc

http://cebmh.warne.ox.ac.uk/cebmh/elmh/nelmh/schizophrenia/diagnosis/icd/page3.html
http://www.mentalhealth.com/dis1/p21-pe03.html
http://www.mentalhealth.com/dis1/p21-pe02.html
http://www.mentalhealth.com/book/p40-sc02.html
]

I don't know of any person in the world, who really likes me or my company, I am alone. My condition reminds of the condition of the main protagonist in the Fyodor Dostoyevsky's story depicted in the movie Notes From Underground [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114005/], though he might have been better off than me. I am, at this point, simply put, "very unhappy" with me and my life.

[There is a slight tinge of saving grace though. I believe and try to follow the non-duality spiritual belief, and believe myself and everyone to be one entity as against separate entities. This lets me help other people with little self interest; and love all people from my heart. (This tendency serves as a big contrast against NPD, and causes lot of conflicts internally).]

I have known these problems for a while now (several months), but now I feel that these things are affecting me severely in my ability to even work, and I am now considering definitive action in order to solve these problems.

I am considering seeking professional help, but, for now, I will try to do it on my own. I believe I have the mental capacity to attenuate these problems significantly and lead a somewhat better life.

I request you to support me in this. Though, I can guarantee that you don't want to talk to me, you dislike me or even hate me, I just would love it if you would talk to me. That's it. Only talk to me like a normal person. Ignore all of the abnormalities. Give constructive criticism if you want, but don't hate me because of my behavior. I don't want anything else. I don't want you to deliberately become my friend, or give me some big help. Only sometimes talk to me when you pass by or something. I believe this will relax the social rejection problem, I will have more room to work on the underlying problems.

This is completely optional though. I wouldn't even mind if you didn't even read this mail completely.

Thanks for reading.

-Gaurang.