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I start with this email here psychoanalyzing her. Note that I do this for recreational
purposes only, and I'm not a licensed therapist. As always, if you're experiencing problems, please, consult a physician
Hey,
So, I was thinking
about friends, and the way people make friends and the situations that friends hang out. I find myself to hang out with people
differently than most people do...for example, most people have a few friends in a group, and that group always hangs out.
They do a particular activity or hang out in a particular place, where all new friends sort of branch off of the old group...that
way, one persons social situation grows from one source...but for me, its totally not like that. I tend to find friends in
the weirdest places, and i don’t think that I have ever had a 'group' of friends that I would, ya know, call 'the gang'
or anything.
This also makes having
birthday parties sort of awkward. Last birthday, I had a friend from a musical i was in, one from the Opera program, a high
school friend, my best friend from school, and a few other select people...it was weird.
Adrienne
Well, Adrienne, I don’t
know how big a problem this really is, but I took this to a friend of mine who is a family therapist (without giving him your
name or anything, naturally). I told him what your email said, and also a little about you, like, your personality and your
age and all that: I don’t know any of your other friends, but just knowing what I know about you it seems like you could
just tell a guy to paint himself blue and stand on the corner in his underwear, and he’d do it. Not that you ever would, but you could.
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Well, this could be good news
or bad news, I suppose, but my friend has been a therapist for many years and seen over a thousand patients, and he says he
has never heard of this. His best guess was that you “compartmentalize” like you have all these different friends
and have to keep them all separate for whatever reason. I don’t think this is so, mostly because this is something you
always hear about psychotics doing, like how Hitler was nice to his dog but then killed millions of people, and never saw
the two things as being related to each other.
I think it’s just because
you’re smarter than most people and if you meet, say, 100 people, maybe two or three of them would be able to relate
to you, and what are the odds that those two or three people would know each other? Plus, you live in Canada,
and there are less people up there.
Maybe not…..
March 14, 2006
Well, I dont know if I am smarter than most people I meet, but I guess that makes sense. I think the other
thing though that throws me off of this idea of not liking cliques is that if I am ever in a big group of people that I am
friends with, I always have this weird urge to eat noodles. It doesnt even really matter what kind of noodles either...ravioli,
tortellini or even just plain old spaghetti. It's like I relate lots of people to food that is high in carbs. But not individuals,
just when we are all in a big group. What's up with that do you think?
Adrienne
Compulsive behavior, just by itself, is not unusual, but when it's triggered by something like a social
phobia, it requires a closer look. I would guess that it was a repressed desire to make yourself unattractive to large crowds
of people, but in this case that's clearly not true.
Either that, or you're just really really bad at making yourself unattractive. Which would make you a failure.
And not just a failure, but such an abject failure that you certainly would be suicidal. Which, again, you're clearly not.
Or it could be an eating disorder. I'm not sure, I'll have to do more research.
As for not being smarter than most people, you have to consider how stupid the average person is. Just statistically,
if the average I.Q. is 100 (like they always told us in school), then half the population has an I.Q. under 100.
Anyway, let me know what you think....
March 23, 2006
If the average I.Q. is 100, it could be that most people are above 100, and then just a few retarded
people are far below it. It doesn't mean that half the people are below it.
Plus, today I was wondering why the song by the Proclaimers says "I would walk 500 miles" when the Proclaimers
are from Scotland, and they use metrics in Scotland, shouldn't the song go like this, "I would walk 807 kilometres, and I
would walk 807 more, just to be the man who walked 1614 kilometres to fall down at your doo-ooo-ooor"....?
Adrienne
That's a good point about the song, Adrienne. I admit that had never occurred to me.
Regarding the average I.Q., it could be that most people are above 100 and just a few are way way down there,
but just based on my experience dealing with people, it's the exact opposite. When I guessed that half the people were below
100, I was being generous; I think there are way way way more retarded people than there are super-geniuses.
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