# Stop thinking there's something wrong with you



## Big Nothing (Jan 18, 2012)

I've basically gotten over my social anxiety without doing any CBT. In my opinion, it's important to address the roots of your excessive self-shame before doing exposure tests, otherwise you'll be re-normalized without any personal reflection. You may simply have your thoughts and feelings numbed, when those feelings and thoughts should be explored. One of the reasons I was ashamed was because I am sort of a ridiculously romantic and idealistic person. This might sound a bit corny and even self-indulgent, but let me finish. As a child I grew up in the woods and didn't spend time with other kids. I didn't have a disciplinarian father figure to "whip me into shape" either. I fostered an elaborate inner world of thoughts and images.

When I went to Kindergarten, the images in my head didn't match up with what was being presented as reality. The other kids just didn't make sense to me. The teachers didn't make sense. The deference to authority, the studying for tests, the overbearing Boy Scout troop leaders- none of it quite registered as true in my mind. I was eventually led to believe that my intuitive thoughts and instincts were crazy, and so I didn't voluntarily speak from the time I was 5 until about a month ago. I was praised as a "mature" and a "model student" even though I was a complete fraud and was only getting good grades out of fear. I thought about bringing a gun to school, but in my thoughts I could never imagine myself shooting anyone. I would only fire a bullet through the classroom ceiling and then run out. I cannot condemn those who shoot up schools or commit crimes. I would have done the same if my situation was a little bit worse. It's a complete waste of time to go about life assuming you're better than others or incapable of committing certain desperate acts. 

After three more years of quiet desperation I was compelled to read Crime and Punishment, which had been sitting on my mom's bookshelf forever. I had never read any book out of my own volition, never really done anything unless someone told me to. So I read it an finally realized, "Wait a minute, maybe not crazy!" Of course, these thoughts were mixed with egotistical ones ("Look at me reading Dostoevsky, I'm such a brooding genius"). I went on to read Hesse, Wilde, Kafka, Shakespeare, Kerouac, Joyce, etc. This, combined with meditation, art, and listening to The Smiths and Joy Division, finally made me realize that those thoughts in the back of my mind, both positive and negative ("maybe I should go Jack Kerouac on everyone's asses and drive across the country," "I'm pretty sure the anarchists and Marxists were right," "I'm a fraud," "am I vain" "although I can intellectually justify a compromise with society, it never quite feels right," "concepts of good and evil/guilt and innocence are made up by people who want to justify false claims to superiority") need to be engaged. A month ago I had a spiritual revelation while reading Heart of Darkness and listening to Joy Division. My ego finally dissolved and everything became meaningful.

Genius is not a matter of intelligence. Genius is simply a matter of giving scope to every thought that pops into your head (the ones society convinces you to believe are crazy) and in fostering your own personal law through contact with the universal essence. If you simply create art and don't think about what you're doing, the images almost create themselves. Do the same with writing and odd bits of irony start popping up without your even trying. As Burroughs once said, "You kill a man by killing his dreams, the way the whites are taking care of the Indians: killing their dreams, their magic, their familiar spirits." Stop trying to be some unprecedented omni-man before you've even done anything. Stop trying to live up to inessential standards. As Tyler Durden said, "Stop trying to control everything." Stop trying to push all of your bad scenes off stage- they always pop up somewhere. Liberation is not to be found in psychotherapy or self-help books- it is in art, symbolism, and the universal primitive energy. I'm still somewhat shy, but I'm not the least but ashamed of it. I have bigger fish to fry. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go start a band.


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## Big Nothing (Jan 18, 2012)

I forgot to mention one part. I had an extended existential crisis that lasted from this past September up through mid-January, complete with panic attacks and suicidal thoughts. The reason this was happening wasn't due to biological factors- it was due to the fact that I was trying to do things that went against my nature (i.e. I was pursuing a political science major even though I had know for at least a year that I HAD to pursue art, I was still trying too hard to sound smarter than others instead of engaging them, I was still worried about status and getting a degree even though I knew these things didn't mean anything if I couldn't be honest with myself and others, I still compared myself to others). But I didn't break down and take anti-depressants. I pursued my delusional thoughts and awful feelings until I finally broke free. I persisted in my folly and became wise. I'm being a bit long winded here, and I'm not sure how I'm coming off, but every word I've written is true.


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## VaeVictis (Jan 18, 2012)

It's good you've come to this conclusion and put it into practice at such a young age.

To your original heading, "*Stop thinking there's something wrong with you*", I noticed a commonality of co-dependency among SA'ers and "loners". Like you mentioned with yourself, we allow others to dictate to us on how we should act, feel, and think more often than not because we want to belong or be loved(classic fear of rejection.) It's natural to do this. It's why "societies" are created, along with the need for survival, of course.

It's rather freeing to know that when you do something, it's because you want to do it, not because it's the "right" thing or you're "supposed" to do or whatever others expect you to do. The hard part is putting that belief into practice.


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## squirrelbro (Mar 10, 2013)

Wow dude awesome last paragraph! I've been indulging in a ton of self-help material lately and just feel like my head is overflowing with info, when what I should be doing is tapping into the universal primitive energy! Ya it's time to start doing things and stop reading things! I have Heart of Darkness on tape too gonna start listening to it today.

"I cannot condemn those who shoot up schools" I don't about this part kind going off the deep end there a little bit i think hahaha, I think it's terrible what happens in school shootings..


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## Big Nothing (Jan 18, 2012)

I'm glad you guys are responding positively to my thoughts. Even though I'm basically over my anxiety, I still fear that people just won't _get_ what I'm saying. I fear that so many people have been irreversibly corrupted. I'm also aware that some of what I say might be a bit extremist- it's good to have a small voice in the back of your mind saying "maybe I'm wrong," otherwise you can become dogmatic. You just can't let that voice overpower you and prevent you from exploring different things. I know school shootings are awful, and I feel horrible for innocent lives lost, but I don't see what good can come from neurotically searching for someone to blame. We can blame the kid for being nuts, or mental illness, or the society that causes mental illness, or his paranoid mom, or the increasingly totalitarian government, or corporations, etc. Who's to blame in a society that creates such a diverse array of mental conflicts? I have no idea, and I'm not going to waste my time trying to find out.


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## Cileroot (Mar 6, 2012)

I just want to say that what you wrote is right.

And I really admire the fact that you could just become such a genious in literature. I just wish I had such...passion or willpower to take a classic book and read it. My HS had strong humanities and we had 20 hours of literature every week (British, British modern, American, European) and we had to read loads of books. But we HAD to read them and whatever thing I MUST do because someone tells me, I don't want to do. So I liked some of the books, but I seriously did not like analyzing them, which ruined the magic for me. I hope that in some years I can take up reading them again.

But such a wonderful post by the OP!


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