I'm going to do an experiment to see if this motivates me. This is mostly just for attention. This is nothing particularly serious, and I could no doubt find the answers I'm looking for without anybody else's help. I'm mostly just posting this here because the psychology forum, while once in awhile it has people discussing extremely seriously problems they NEED help with now...it's often a bit of a playground for people with less serious questions. I'm not complaining. We need playgrounds too. I have the impression the mental health forum is more for the serious concerns.
I'm going to tell about myself because I want to. First of all, I have some weird emotional needs. I have a lot of symptoms of histrionic disorder:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/c...ality-disorder
In person...I look more like an autistic person oftentimes, which kind of behaves completely opposite from a person with histrionic disorder, but that's because I'm repressing a lot of my impulses. I'm usually not quiet because I'm shy. I'm usually quiet because I don't want to say things I want to say that I know will probably embarrass other people or make them feel uncomfortable. I love attention. I'm doing this for attention right now, actually. What I want to do, is lie to people about being an alien and try to convince everyone I am a genuine alien for entertainment. I like strangers to know lots about me. Other people don't like to reveal personal information to people they don't know well. There are some exceptions, but that's a very alien concept to me. For me, it's the people close to me I don't want to reveal personal information to, because that could have consequences. I like revealing personal information to strangers though, because there are no consequences.
So...people often think I'm autistic...because I'm suppressing all my impulses to be the center of attention. I love attention. I also crave others' approval. Attention and approval are two of my biggest driving forces. When I was about 11 to 13 and had Tourette's syndrome though, that was about the happiest time of my life. I love being perceived as the amusing weirdo, and if people thought I was insane or retarded for twitching, that just added to the attention so that was good.
Here are the symptoms of histrionic disorder:
Self-centeredness, uncomfortable when not the center of attention
Constantly seeking reassurance or approval
Inappropriately seductive appearance or behavior
Rapidly shifting emotional states that appear shallow to others
Overly concerned with physical appearance, and using physical appearance to draw attention to self
Opinions are easily influenced by other people, but difficult to back up with details
Excessive dramatics with exaggerated displays of emotion
Tendency to believe that relationships are more intimate than they actually are
Is highly suggestible (easily influenced by others)
Basically...every one of those would apply to me if I weren't heavily suppressing many of impulses to the extent that I look like a quiet, possibly autistic, introvert, except for being overly concerned with physical appearance. I look too much like garbage to do the inappropriate seductive stuff...but back in high school when I ran track I definitely liked to kind of flirt for entertainment.
I'm naturally extremely highly suggestible...although I've pushed myself in the opposite direction in many ways so that I'm probably abnormally not suggestible now, but if I don't catch myself, you can pretty easily brainwash me just by stating your opinion with enough enthusiasm.
I don't engage in excessive dramatics or exaggerated displays of emotion in public around real people...but that's basically what I'm doing now. I'm not engaging in the kind of stoicism most men probably go through a large chunk of their lives engaging in.
I definitely have a tendency to believe relationships are more intimate than they actually are. That's because I greatly enjoy the shallow relationships many people perceive as being of negligible importance. Most people get most of their emotional needs filled by the deeper relationships and ignore most of those shallow ones. This can often be quite confusing. It's hard for me to tell what other people want. Most people appear to want a world where there are a few people everyone spends their life with, who they greatly trust, who pay attention to every emotional need they have.
My instinctive view of the world is more competitive than that. I went to a campground this weekend. So, my dad has a lifelong friend I'm going to refer to as Phil. Phil's family is Italian and they're huge and extremely close. They've all been going to this campground for decades. Other groups they've known well have also been going there for decades. They've all merged into this incredibly adorable mutually beneficial...super organism kind of structure...where they're constantly inventing new activities to help each other bond and getting everyone included in group activities. In addition to the adults, there were a group of 20 something year olds. Some of them were dating. Some of them were just extremely close friends. Men and women were platonic friends. There was no jealousy or weird awkwardness. I just kept thinking...how does that even work? How does at least one person in this weirdly flawlessly functioning machine built of people not hit on someone in a manner at least one of the other people doesn't approve and, and screw everything up? How does someone not lose patience with someone else and flip out at some point or something and just...blow everything up?
It was a lot fun...but I put an enormous amount of mental energy into trying very hard not to screw everything up. I felt like I was walking through a mine field of explosives and priceless antiques, and I had to, at all costs, try not to step in the wrong place so as to avoid destroying everything
So...I did engage in some group activities, but I spent a lot of the weekend walking through the woods alone, which I like doing. I did, however, at one point just take a nap in a dry creek bed just to get away from everyone
They had a river that was fun to swim in too. That was another way I succeeded in dodging other human beings while making use of the weekend.
By the end of the weekend I realized: How, it's incredible how healthy and supportive an adorable and large some groups of friends are...and God am I glad I'm not a routine part of one of those groups
I wish more people were like me, so I wouldn't have to suppress so much. I want to live in a world filled with people who pretend to be psychopaths, or stare at you, right in the eyes, for five minutes strait, or wander around in the dark muttering to themselves, or do random things for attention like shout "I am the Eggman" in a crowded theatre. I want a world in which people are far more self-centered and nobody cares about other people's feelings because then I could feel like I could relax in public more.
So that's an example of what I'd be like constantly if I didn't suppress the impulse more: just endless, self-centered, venting. I just wanted to see if there would be some kind of positive emotional ramification if I unleashed that once. And now, it's time to monitor the experiment.