Kray Question

Prerequisites

What age range are you in?  Any disorders or conditions we should know about?
College aged.  I have been diagnosed with clinical depression and maybe an anxiety disorder?  I’ve actually been diagnosed with social anxiety as well.  I’ve had some weird symptoms, so if something sounds wonky and as though it’s mental health related, it probably is

Main Questions

1. What do you think your life is about? What drives you in life? This can be something like a goal or a purpose, or anything else that comes to mind.

My life is about self transformation (ie. gaining vast amounts of knowledge and becoming my “best self” if such a thing exists), ambition, and reaching goals while attempting not to be slammed into the ground by life.  Such goals and ambitions are fairly versatile, some involve saving other people, many involve transforming myself into something better and solidifying myself in the careers I desire.  Life really has no purpose, so that’s what I’ve made of it at least.  I’ve had these same goals since I was a child and they’ve changed very little.

2. What were you like as a kid?

I was relatively spiritual, painfully curious, excessively well behaved, and consequence oriented.  I tackled the world very optimistically, seeing it as a large domain full of mystery and problems to solve.  I indulged myself in various studies, preferring documentaries (specifically animal and astrophysics) to most cartoons.  Despite wanting to know as much as I could about everything, I was also very nervous, very uncomfortable accessing and manipulating my body or the physical world the way that I desired and fearing physical distress and pain to an excessive degree.  I was constantly thinking of the future, calculating the best way to help specific people and reach my academic ambitions.  I was also very naive, lacked boundaries, and lived more in my inner world and solitude (by choice initially) than in the real world and was delusioned into thinking I could be some sort of hero.  Tendency towards being naive and dissociated from the real world but inclined towards philosophy and analysis.

3. Describe your relationship with your parents. Does anything stand out about the way you interacted?

My relationship with both my parents were rather abnormal I suppose, but not terrible?

 My relationship with my father was always very strained circumstantially, especially early on.  Most of it was characterized primarily by me analyzing him and his behavior in attempts to understand why he behaved the way he did, how his thought process worked and how to effectively interact with him while he was kind of just there.  As I’ve gotten older, he’s become easier to tolerate, as he’s the only one who really matches my adventurism and that’ll have in depth philosophical conversations with me I guess.

My relationship with my mother has almost the exact opposite trend.  I was very close with her, perhaps idealized her as a child, as she confided in my greatly and made me feel powerful/useful with the information she gave me and feel as though I had some sort of purpose because of the problems I could solve for her.  We were (and are) very different people, but I argued that that’s why we got along so well.  I could solve her problems and analyze why she was feeling the way she did or what caused that and she was able to provide me emotional support and warmth.  Again, a lot of analysis to understand her as I did my father.  As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become a bit more resentful/confused of my initial relations with her, realizing that my initial idealism blinded me from a lot of problems that our relationship actually had.


4. What values are important to you? What do you hope to avoid doing or being?

Knowledge, control, and understanding if you’re looking for the top three I’ve always held dearest.  I say the same thing every time and it’s super cliche, but knowledge is power.  Having a wide pool of information to work with and an understanding of how things function on both a theoretical and physical level  allows you to gain control and power over circumstances and solve problems in a rational way.  This bleeds into control a bit in terms of awareness and ability to manipulate my surroundings.  Control to me also goes to self control, being able to quench your own desires and control the passions in order to get what you want in the long term.  And understanding, especially since knowledge holds little purpose without understanding.  Understanding also bleeds into people, being able to comprehend perspective and why people do the things they do in order to empathize and deal with them.

I don’t really avoid anything at the moment, as I am in a transition point in terms of personality and growth, EXCEPT stagnancy.  I know at this point if I stop moving, I won’t have the energy to restart.

 5. Aside from phobias, are there any fears that characterized your childhood? Have they continued into the present day, or not, and if not, how have you dealt with them?

I think most of my life has been plagued with an overarching fear of blindness and being overwhelmed if I’m looking at how my fears connect to one another.  I’ve always avoided bias and being overtly subjective, as I don’t want to be blinded by over idealizing something that makes sense to me and then blindsided when that something isn’t as “good” as I suspected or has some dangerous drawbacks I didn’t account for.  I’ve always avoided my own passions and trusting myself fully because I fear being mislead by myself and others.  Thus, to this point, I sort of dealt with that by demonizing pleasure, avoiding attachment, and submerging myself in self doubt.  I’m not sure how I ended up doing that or why I ever thought that would work, but the fears still persist unsurprisingly.

6.
a.) How do you see yourself?
I see myself as a mess.  Ambivalent, apathetic, insecure, cowardly yet strangely reactive.  Dissociated from the self as well as the world to some degree.  Chaotic and disorganized, but persistent and self controlled/temperate.

b.) How do you want others to see you?
Capable?  Out of my social anxiety, I don’t have any specific image im really trying to project outside of maybe “decent person” and not hypersensitive.  Not weak as well, because then I’d be truly incapable.

c.) What do you dislike the most in other people?
I guess I typically have most issues with people's lack of self control and inability to understand perspective?  People’s inattention to consequence is also a real big irritation for me.

7. Which habit do you most automatically act on? Rank the following habits from most to least automatic, on a scale of 1 (most) to 3 (least).

a.) Work for personal gain with more concern for self than for others.
 b.) Strive for a sense of tranquility in yourself and the world around you
c.) Decide what is right for the betterment of something or someone else.

B = C >> A.  I’m proud of myself, it used to be a clear C > B > A, but I’ve sort of been forcing myself to balance my own inner world a bit.  I’m evasive/unaware of my own desires to a degree because I demonize them, so I’m far from A.  I struggle to do things just because I want them, but if someone else needs something at least I can rationalize a reason to move towards that.

8. Where does the wandering mind take you? What provokes this?

I’m a habitual daydreamer, so when my mind wanders it goes to my inner world of stories, scenarios, and quite literally, an actual world that I’ve concocted.  Early on, I think I created such a world in order to gain an understanding of things and test ideas that I couldn’t understand or manipulate in the real world on a world of my own creation, with physics mirroring our own world (of course with my special alterations).  It’s very heavily cathartic as well.  More recently, it’s kind of just been a habitual location my mind just goes to defend itself from the real world and provide me with entertainment and catharsis.

9.What makes you feel your best? What makes you feel your worst?

Being allowed to be able to do things on my own and not having to deal with the demands of others (despite knowing that I can never truly escape them for real) is what makes me feel my best.  I love being allowed to be independent and having my own space to do what I want when I want.  I feel at my worst when I am in a situation I cannot manipulate or am trapped in any way shape or form, unable to understand what’s actually going on.  I also hate when I am forced to relax because apparently I can’t do that well and it gives me anxiety.

10. Let's talk about emotions. Explain what might make you feel the following, how they feel to you or how you react to the emotion:

a.) anger
I try and use my anger for a fuel towards the few ambitions I have left. Usually, I get angry if I lack understanding of something or someone is behaving in a way that makes no sense to me.  I guess I am also angry when I become trapped and out of control.  I have a tendency to hyper analyze my anger, trying to figure out where it comes from so I can actually resolve it I think?  I don’t think I necessarily find comfort or discomfort in it, although I know when I get really really angry (which is incredibly rare), I am almost enthused by the energy anger gives me.

 b.) shame
I almost always feel ashamed I think?  Being incapable, comparing myself to others, or having specific/unideal emotions/reactions to things can make me feel a lot of shame. Shame seems like something I cannot avoid, so I’ve mostly been trying to look into myself and see what causes the non-ideals that I find within me so that I can alter them and transform into something far more desirable to me.

c.) anxiety
Anxiety is a state of being for me.  I’m always anxious over anything and everything?  I deal with typically by stepping back and trying to get a handle on life/everything in the world that overstimulates me.  Gathering information also is helpful, since it gives me some false impression of being in control of things.  If the situation calls for it, sometimes I even put myself in a position of power so that I can control the way that things go, which mitigates uncertainty I suppose?  Sometimes I can have very strong reactions to things even doing this though.

11. Describe how you respond to the following:
a.) stress
By becoming hyperactive.  Stress is a fuel as much as it is a detriment to me.  If it’s a really high pressure stress, I’ll break down and sometimes rashly “attack” the stress, but more often than not I try to work through it/ignore it to get whatever I need to get done done.

b.) negative unexpected change
Depends how negative.  You can’t control everything and things don’t always work in your favor, so typically I just find a way to work around it.  Maybe sometimes I whine if it really annoys me haha.

 c.) conflict
As long as it’s not physical or it doesn’t play on a specifically weak point of mine (ie. insecurity), I can tolerate conflict.  I feel little guilt creating conflict with others if I feel justified to do so, but I do know I’m typically one to try to work around things and even take “the long route” around a problem in order to try to deal with it without direct conflict unless the situation really pisses me off.  People conflicting with me isn’t really a huge problem either, so long as I can see their point.  Conflict is a normal thing.  I wouldn’t say it’s comfortable but it’s something I deal with.

12. a.) What kind of role are you naturally inclined to take in a group? Why?
Depends on the purpose of the group.  If it just a general friend group, the quiet one or the outsider.  It’s not a role I actively choose, I just genuinely care less about other people than most of the people in the group and also tend to be more easily overwhelmed/exhausted than the majority of people.  In a group for work though, it end to take the leadership/organizing position because I like being in control haha.  I won’t repeat my 7 control monologues again.

 b.) If put in power, how do you behave? Why?
I behave like a person?  Perhaps, in all serious, a bit more organized and a little bit more direct, because usually when I’m in a position of power it’s a position that requires me to delegate tasks and such in order to reach a goal.  I’m not particularly demanding, as I don’t really like the idea of squishing other people’s ideas or making them uncomfortable so long as they are getting work done.

 c.) Do you tend to struggle with others who have authority over you? Why?
Not really, so long as I’m allowed to do my own thing I guess?  Some tasks require me to have a more knowledgeable authority above me because I’m not capable of being that authority, and typically even then I am able to work with the authority, not against.  Perhaps I’m young, but I haven’t really ever encountered someone who wanted full control over me.  When my boundaries are crossed, telling someone that I’m going to do something my way or that I’m just not going to do the thing typically hasn’t gone over poorly for me.  It’s worth noting that my way of speaking has been said to be very calming/non-confrontation though, so my lack of issues may just come from my speaking style.

13. What do you see or notice in others that most people don't?

… Consequence?  I’m not very attentive in general and am generally very dissociated from most things.  I genuinely don’t have the data pool to compare myself to others, I struggle to know what the natural strength and weakness of the populous are because I don’t care.

14. Comment on your relationship with trust.

Apparently I’m fairly modal with trust.  I can be pretty naive with some things (ie. prone to assumptions, sometimes not necessarily questioning what someone tells me) because some situations really don’t require that level of thought/distrust.  However, more generally, I tend to be pretty untrusting.  I don’t trust myself, as despite probably not being too bad I see as weak and vulnerable to influence.  However, I distrust people more than I distrust myself because I cannot truly gauge how vulnerable to influence others are being that I’m not in their head (although of course, some people are easier to gauge than others haha).  Also others are fairly unpredictable.  So generally speaking, I’m in a constant state of being unable to trust things and am either a) immobilized/apathetic or b) searching for information so that I can build trust thought understanding.

15. Briefly: What religious and/or political beliefs do you have? Do you think they influenced your responses in this questionnaire?

I’m agnostic and moderate/slightly left leaning in the American sense.  I don’t really think either affected this too too much, as I’m not really active in either arena.

Optional Question (due to personal nature)  Discuss an event that has impacted your life significantly; more importantly, how you responded to it.

Keeping things light, my high school internship.  I had to live at my grandparents for the summer and commute to and from their house to a highly populated city with little help from them.  Before then, I really hadn’t been exposed to that level of adult independence and my parents were really nervous about the whole thing.  I didn’t really know how it would go initially either, but I wasn’t scared really for it.  It was really a unique experience because I realized how much I really enjoyed that independence and solitude and was shocked to find that, despite never being in such a situation, that having to do such a thing on my own came incredibly natural to me.  I had never really feared being on my own, but I figured I’d struggle at least a little bit and I just didn’t in the slightest.  From here on, my hunger for solitude has grown and I now actively seek to be completely (or… as close as I can be to that) independent from others, which really wasn’t a drive till then.

Extra Questions  Which of the following temptations do you find yourself acting upon the most? (And briefly state why)
- To constantly push yourself to be “the best”
***- To be without needs, well-intentioned ***
***- To replace direct experience with concepts****
 - To have an extreme sense of personal moral obligation
 - To think that fulfillment is somewhere else
- To cyclically become indecisive and seek others for reassurance
*** - To overuse imagination in searching for yourself ***
- To avoid conflicts and asserting yourself
 - To consider yourself entirely self-sufficient

I highlighted my top three.  I’m pretty sure it goes in that order too, although all are pretty big in my life.  Situationally, having needs was always a disadvantage to me, so I’ve tried to do without them and, thus, have struggled with identifying them.  I struggle to deal with and understand the real world, especially when it comes to people.  I’ve done a lot of reading and contemplating such things and find that almost my entire understanding of the real world has been replaced by concepts because interacting with the real world is stress inducing/difficult for me.  Which is.  Really bad hahaha.

 I struggled a bit more picking the third between personal moral obligation, being the best, and the one that I actually chose.  None really fit entirely.  I know that I force myself into obligation to induce action and I know that I push myself to be the best that I can be.  But at the same time, I hate being fully connected to things and am often overwhelmed/trapped by what I must do, so the obligation one can’t be my third.  I’m not really that competitive and, when it comes to being the “best,” it’s literally not applicable to almost any situation other than being my best self.  So, the last one fits.  I’m very self searching because I fear my lack of identity and how much I’ve thrown myself away meaninglessly.  I search for substance and a feeling of not being empty, and my imagination sort of runs heavily through that.

What's something you are:
a.) thankful you have?
My self control.  It’s super annoying because I’m virtually an ascetic, but it’s really helped me actually look towards actually doing things in the long run.  Also it helps with my finances hahaha.
 b.) wish you could have? Why?
A sense of self and some level of attachment to my physical body and emotions.  I feel incredibly empty without that and it’s difficult to move forward when you have relied on having a direction all your life and have no desire to move forward.