My Self Evaluation

[AnonUser]

This post is something I've decided to write after having read Kohut's Self Psychology, and I hope there may be others who will share their problems, or reflect on those I have listed.

I've split it into several parts, each having related sub points with related fears, problems, etc.

Some of the fears listed may appear under different sub points or categories, thus are possibly not completely related.

Fears:

Social:

* Fear of being viewed as homosexual.

* Fear of being embarrassed.

* Fear of being left alone.

* Fear of being rejected (related to fear of being left alone).

* Fear of being viewed as mentally ill, unstable, stupid or generally dysfunctional.

* Fear of being inferior, mentally and physically.

* Fear of being hated or generally disliked.

* Fear of being judged incompatibly with my own self-evaluation.

* Fear of being lied to.

* Fear of losing self-control (related to fear of being embarrassed).

* Fear of incompetence, lack of understanding, or appeal to lack of caring in social situations.

* Fear of unintentionally causing harm to others.

* Fear of not being able to physically hear other people's voices enough to interpret their sentences.

* Fear of having bad hygiene (smelling bad, etc.).

* Fear of becoming the center of attention in heavily populated places.

* Fear of losing my ability to properly communicate opinions or explanations, on critical and uncritical areas.

* Fear of having constructed a sentence which would appear to be hateful, disliking or disrespectful to others.

* Fear of socially not being acceptable in a given social group (related to fear of being rejected).

* Fear of never obtaining social relations to anyone.

Personal:

* Fear of losing the sanity I believe to have left in me.

* Fear of losing my sense of self.

* Fear of losing mental and physical control.

* Fear of becoming mentally ill to a degree whereat I can not escape it (related to fears of having individual illnesses).

* Fear of becoming the person I was abused by.

* Fear of becoming helpless.

* Fear of becoming stuck in my current mentality, and never changing.

* Fear of dying.

General fears:

* Fear of losing people I critically need in my life.

* Fear of life's objective emptiness and meaninglessness.

* Fear of being in an infinitely long and wide spectrum of water, left alone.

* Fear of being judged by God or gods in the end of time, accordingly to my wrongful deeds.

* Fear of being stuck/trapped and not being able to get out.

* Fear of falling from tall buildings or places (related to the fear of losing control).

* Fear of drowning, or forcibly being drowned.

General mental issues, responses to them and how I cope with them:

*When I feel a sense of hunger for [a] certain stimulus (from foods, intellectual discussions, etc.), and this stimulus is successfully obtained via social contact, certain sexual/harmful obsessive thoughts arise, coupled with fears.

These thoughts are not centered around acting out, but rather about the imagination of these things having been done to this, or these individual(s). Some of the fears that arise are unknown, thus a sense of being afraid, while others are centered around the fear of being judged or the fear of not living up to their expectations, on the basis of this received stimulus.

When these obsessive thoughts arise in me, coupled with the fears, I focus on the individual(s) rather than these issues. These obsessive thoughts go away when the stimulus itself is not subject to my conscious awareness.

*When I feel that I am in a socially awkward, or harmful situation, I get obsessive thoughts of being inferior to these, or this individual(s). Under some circumstances I am able to remove these thoughts, and balance this sensation of inferiority, with a stronger sense of intellectual superiority. When this sensation of inferiority is becoming too strong, I become sweaty, and under very extreme situations I start to shake, thus causing a loss of control of my self.

*When confronted with violence, or memories of my traumatic past, I tend to become illogical and unreasonable in my thinking. A strong sense of inferiority and a fear of death arises duo to this. When I get these fears and sensations, I lie to myself, thus causing me to unconsciously have a false sense of the objective reality

Conclusion:

Having reflected upon my issues, I can see multiple disorders:

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, duo to these sexual/harmful thoughts;

Social Anxiety Disorder, duo to my many social fears;

Possibly an inferiority complex, duo to certain feelings in social situations.

[devils daughter]

Anon, I haven’t read Kohut’s work directly but I have read what some others have written about him. In particular I posted a thread “Disorders of the sense of self” in the Personality Issues section. There is a link there to an article about Kohut’s theory.

For most of my adult life (I am now 64) I most likely had an obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. I found it helpful to know what was “wrong” with me – not primarily in the sense of social dysfunction but because I felt something “wrong” inside.

But, having done that, what has been most helpful recently is gaining a cohesive, realistic sense of who I am and what the world is like. The article on the Disorders of the Sense of Self thread talks about what went wrong in childhood for people with self disorders, but also describes what it is like when things have gone right. So that gave me a sense of what I was aiming for, not just what I was lacking.

And, with a good therapist, I think I have gotten it! We’ll see. A little early to tell for sure. But certainly a lot better than things were 10 years ago.

I really didn’t know a lot of my fears 10 years ago. They were cut off, covered over, whatever. So maybe you’re starting from a better place than I was.

Have you tried therapy? I’ve been to a lot of therapists over the last 30 years and for the most part they didn’t have a clue. However, with a lot of research on my own part as well as the help of a friend (which seems like a miracle!), I did get to someone finally who is very capable and has been able to help.