DIY psychiatry disasters
Unable to afford expensive therapy, I often end up being my own psychiatrist. Every so often, I have the habit of psychoanalysing myself and adjusting my personality according to my conclusions. Sometimes, this does not go as well as planned. Here are a couple of times things went somewhat wrong.

1988: Aged 14, and I was being bullied on the school bus. This was mostly being teased, and rarely went physical. After taking a step back and looking at the problem, I realised that the cause was my over-reaction to being teased. I decided to master self-control and ignore any insults flung my way. Metaphorically, I treated my anger as a fire and decided to avoid having fuel added to the fire. This worked and the fire went out of it's own accord. This had the desired effect. Nearly everyone (apart from one twunt, but even he eventually stopped) stopped bullying me. However, such mastery of self-control was unheard of amongst my peers and from the outside, I appeared to have very low self-esteem. Internally, this was because I was letting insults pass right through me, but from the outside, it appeared as if I didn't care. Initially, I did not feel this way and had lots of inner calm, but this perception of low self-esteem eventually got to me, and it became how I viewed myself. Also, people were gradually starting to take advantage of my generosity and ability to not fight back.

1992: It was my last year at school and I would soon be off to university. I decided that it would be a good idea to once and for all get rid of my shyness. Up until then, I had relied on my intelligence and my imagination to supplement the gap in my worldview that resulted from not having participated in enough conversations. My solution would be to try and mentally force myself to bypass my intelligence so I'd be forced to ask questions, which would lead to me, becoming engaged in conversation. This appeared to work. My social-life skyrocketed when I went to uni, but seeing that I was studying for a Computer Science degree, bypassing my intelligence may not have been the best idea. DOH!

Today: While some of my shyness still remains, I consider myself to be an enthusiastic individual, and have 'hacked' my personality in such a way that I rely on my enthusiasm to smash through my shyness. This has varying degrees of success. Sometimes, people become scared by my enthusiasm, although personally, I think this is because they are a bunch of wusses, although these days, after another application of DIY psychiatry, I've toned down my enthusiasm.

I have had many DIY psychiatry successes, but these are just the disasters I can think of right now.
( mistaspakkaman and the inedible shifting caterpillars, Mon 7 Apr 2008, 13:04, Reply)