Hi. I came across this forum when I googled about overthinking and social difficulties. I don't know what I can say precisely about my mental issues and my difficulties socializing, but I can be sure of a few things.
1. I have social difficulties, at least enough to constantly be in awkward situations where I am treated very differently from other people and I don't know why. Luckily I don't have so much of a difficulty that I don't have close loving friends. At least this is my current status, because I was eventually able to find plenty of like-minded friends in college, which I didn't get into until I was 26
2. I've been diagnosed with a learning disability, which can only be described as a disorder that shows that I have a high enough IQ to easily attain a MD or PhD, but when I do particular tasks, like memorizing a random list of words, I show below average ability. Usually this amounts to me being both brilliant and slow. The slow part tends to upset employers and keep me from being able to finish homework on time, even though I always do well at finding new ways to improve efficiency and I tend to pass exams with above average scores.
3. I'm constantly going through depression that correlates with a lot of the grief stricken problems that life throws at me, like being kicked out of the house by my mother, having multiple falling outs with my dad, going through divorce, losing my savings and my car to said divorce, being unemployed and unable to find work. I've tried medications before, but things only seemed to get worse when I did.
4. I think too much. At least, I know it's too much when I feel depressed or locked down from having too many options to consider and not a single one that I know will not be a waste of time and energy.
5. My friends and my girlfriend understand me really well, but they say I come of as being confrontational even when I'm not trying to be confrontational. That's at least how they explain why I get caught in awkward situations, where people are uncomfortable or angry with me, even though I've been careful to not say anything that could be
taken as offensive.
My family has many views that they refuse to reflect on or talk about and happen to be downright wrong. Being incorrect and needing time to reflect on it before making a determination or counter argument or even just feeling like it's not something worth thinking about are all positions that I can understand.
But the part where even if I try to prod them playfully after they reiterated their agreement with objectively false claims and fallacy, their response to yell at me and threaten me seems to be out of control. Yet even people who agree with me seem to sympathize with their anger and tell me that something as simple as 'I' and not "you' statements would make all of the difference.
A recent dialog that was like this occurred when my family was watching a show where the word 'motherf-cker' was said about 7 times in the same scene before they decided to watch something else. They were even saying "eww" and "ick" and "gross" from that one word just because it was profanity.
It wasn't even being descriptive in a way that it could be disgusting in any way. What they were doing was classically obvious, and using ick-statements to justify their ridiculous overreaction to profanity. So I made a playful statement, "You guys are ridiculous," for which I was attacked from all sides at once with even more ridiculous overreaction.
"You're ridiculous."
"That's your opinion!"
"Why do you care?"
"If you're going to talk about that then get out!"
In the frenzy I decided to respond to the most reasonable statement that I heard, which was the childish, "you're ridiculous" that my grandmother had said. So I playfully retorted "no, you are." I kept hoping that people would catch on that the venom in their attack was completely unnecessary. Issues like this happen often enough for me to have to feel afraid to say anything around my family, even when it's over something important to me, like my Mom accepting my girlfriend or someone making comments that provoke the idea that there's something wrong with gay or trans people.
There was a little back and fourth that went on between my grandmother an I in this event that went like this:
"Majority rules."
"That's a fallacy"
"Your opinions are fallacies"
"You don't even know what a fallacy is. Saying that majority rules is the definition of the ad populum fallacy."
At this point my mom got threatening, insinuating that she might kick me out of the house again, or at least giving me that impression.
That got me livid, but I shut up and I tried to figure out why they always react this way over things that I say. They disagree with each other all the time and it doesn't turn into a fight It doesn't matter what I say, how nice I put things, and it never matters how strong my argument is. It's like trying to convince a wild cougar that you aren't food or a threat.
I feel like I can relate with a lot of the difficulties that others mention here, and the name of the site definitely says it all. I do not feel like I belong among most people. Any leads or advice that you have to offer me in finding guidance, or leading my doctors at the VA to recognize what my real diagnosis should be so that I can get adequate treatment, I would appreciate it.
21 Feb 2012, 12:25 pm
