Is Neurosis the same as selfishness? Because in a sense if you are selfish you are wrapped up into your own problems, and therefore selfish.
And people with saint like personalities, always caring and emoting, seem to be unneurotic.
What is the selfish - neurotic connection, if any? Can neurosis be considered involuntary? What if people’s attitudes and behaviors cause instead of just reflecting their neurosis?
You really think so? I’d characterize them as emotionally needy.
Being neurotic is what, exactly? Like, being depressed? Anxious? Having some kind of character disorder? Because while self-absorption may be involved with these conditions, it is not necessarily a criterion for said conditions.
Some people who are prone to depression do not manifest it in crying jags, incessant sleeping, eating binges, or any other kind of “self-indulgent” behavior. They may actually become emotionally blunted, non-introspective automatons. Or they may strive to be “perfect” people–putting on fake happy expressions for the sake of others, not discussing their thoughts and feelings because they don’t want to bum others out, and over-extending themselves in every and all activities to keep the wall of blackness at bay. I can’t say a person like this is “selfish”. Would you? Would you call this person neurotic?
Likewise, a person with OCD, who’s afraid of getting their hands dirty and contaminated, could be viewed (with a pretty narrow lens) as “selfish”. But then there’s OCD where a person cannot keep thinking nonsensical thoughts like commercial jingles or the last word they heard someone say. However silly it sounds, it can nonetheless affect how well they function in life, just like the first case of OCD. But how is having strange thoughts, thoughts that are generated without your control and are pretty close to impossible to stop, akin to being “selfish”? Or maybe you’re referring to the reactions people have to these thoughts? Is it selfish to talk about how horrible these thoughts are? How is someone supposed to feel if they have a screaming voice looping in their head nonstop? Is it somehow wrong for them to feel, I dunno, a little self-concerned?
Or maybe I’m attaching a negative value to the word “selfish” that you didn’t intend?
I think “seem” might be the key word here. Putting aside the fact that a person can be very caring and emotional while being neurotic (if that’s even a real thing), people can act like the perfect person as a way of hiding their inner pain. All it takes is one little trigger and they can explode.
Define for us what you mean by neurotic? Are you talking about people with psychiatric disorders, such as anxiety or mood disorders, or people who are just annoying?
If we are talking about real psychiatric disorders, I would say of course they can be considered involuntary. I don’t know anyone who would want to be depressed, suffer from phobias or panic attacks, or have obsessions or compulsions.
I’m not saying the line is always clear, though. I have a weird movement disorder (probably a combo of Tourette’s and OCD…no one can figure it out and I’m probably not being much help) that makes me freeze. Like, I’ll be walking down the street and stop at an intersection. It’s hot so I’ll raise my arm to wipe my brow and suddenly I’m stuck, like the Tin Man. I’m perfectly aware of what’s going on around me. I can hear people asking if I’m alright. If I’m stuck in the middle of the street, I can hear cars honking at me. I can feel people touching me. But they don’t understand…I’m locked in the Argument. There’s Me and then there’s The Body. When I’m “stuck”, The Body is a big mass of “No”.
It goes something like this:
Me: You know, I really need to move. These people are starting to get worried.
The Body: No.
Me: This is not funny. I need to move. I’ll be late to work. My boss will be mad.
The Body: No.
Me. OK, then. We can stay like this for awhile. Because I guess I don’t care that much either.
The Body: [silence]
long pause as my thoughts loop the same phrases over and over again
Me: Is it time yet?
The Body: Yes.
So is it voluntary or involuntary? I don’t know. Sometimes my gait only becomes slightly disturbed as The Body tries to take over but Me won’t let it. Most times Me wins completely and I walk fine. But I know that most people do not have this internal, this infernal conflict. And I know I have done nothing to bring this upon myself. I’m just not that creative to come up with something as strange as this.
I also did not invite the thumping, repetitive thoughts or the hand-biting tics or the other suite of crazy-looking behaviors that have become a part of my repertoire over the past few years. I don’t know a lot of people, but I don’t think most people wake up one day and decide to be weirdos. But guess what, sassyfras. If you came to my office, you would not find me being all “neurotic”. You would see me smiling at people and going the extra mile to be helpful. No one at work knows that when I go to my office and close the door, that I do so because I don’t want them to hear me talking to myself or catch me biting myself like some kind of animal. Otherwise, I would be selfish, wouldn’t I? Isn’t that crazy? If I had diabetes or cancer, I wouldn’t have a problem telling people. They’d be 100% sympathetic. But I can’t tell people that I’ve got psychiatric problems, because that’s somehow selfish or self-absorbed. Or there must be something about me personally that makes me have these experiences. Not brain chemistry or hardwiring. But character flaws. What utter bullshit that is, IMHO.
But maybe you were talking about some other type of neurotics, not the kind I’m thinking of.
Obviously, people with seemingly saint-like personalities are the most selfish of all, doing good deeds so they can feel really good about themselves while making the rest of us look bad.
Jung said ‘Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering’ which sounds about right to me. Most neuroticism seems to be attempts to avoid being vulnerable enough to expierience the pain of shame, pain, fear, violation, rejection, abandonment, etc. So people become hyperactive, anxious, depressed, because they can’t deal with the emotional pain they’ve experienced or are at risk for.
So I’d assume neuroticism is more about vulnerability to pain and trying to avoid pain than to selfishness.
Self compassion is negatively correlated with neuroticism.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_7398/is_5_37/ai_n35703225/
However self compassion is also an extremely selfish act that requires endless self-absorption to develop. Buddhist monks are arguably extremely selfish. They spend their entire lives focusing on themselves and trying to make themselves happy.
But buddhist monks can spend thousands of hours a year focusing on their own lives and mental health with various meditation practices, and I’m sure their neuroticism scores are far far lower than the scores you’d see with the self absorbed celebrities in the west. So self absorption doesn’t seem to be the problem, it is more a lack of self acceptance (accepting one’s weaknesses, flaws, pains, etc with compassion and tolerance) that leads to neuroticism.
I think you can’t always attribute selfishness to being a bad thing. You need a certain amount of self centered behaviour to properly look after yourself and family.
I think often though people fail to achieve a good balance between their problems and real issues.
I used to volunteer at a place called Paralyzed Veterans of America. Let me tell you, you see those kids of 20ish who will never walk again, or walk unassisted and suddenly your problems don’t look so bad.
This is what I mean about perspective. You can’t always look at the big picture and you can’t always look at the little picture. To be successful in life you need to be able to know when to alternate views.
Traditionally a neurosis has been a mental problem that interferes with everyday life, but does not cause a “break from reality.” In otherwords a neutrotic will know he/she has issues but doesn’t have the ability or hasn’t been show the ability to deal effectively with it.
Over the years this definition has muddled as research has shown many “neutrotic” conditons to be caused or at least, triggered by actual physical problems.
A neurosis is involuntary but that doens’t mean it’s not controllable to some extent. Think of a sneeze. This is involuntary, but most of the time it’s not controllable to some extent. We can feel the sneeze coming on and in a few instances stop it, but in most instances we can at least hold off enough to cover our mouths with our hands.
Again this is a product of black & white thinking. We see something as involuntary and think it can’t be helped. This is so, but just because it can’t be helped doesn’t mean we can’t learn to modify the effects so it doesn’t render us helpless in everyday life activites.
I could be wrong but my understanding of “neurosis” was that it’s a very general old timey word. There used to be “neurosis”- mild messed-upness, as opposed to “psychosis” - serious messed-upness. Therefore neuroses wouldn’t necessarily have anything to do with selfishness but would include mental disorders that weren’t serious enough to get you a ticket to the banana farm. :dubious:
Very interesting. Really, I know nothing. But what you describe sounds like total little brain function glitches and “psychological” per se, at all. Do meds help it?
Sorry Monstro, I meant to write “Not psychological”
If I understand correctly, the idea of a neurosis is behavior that’s meant to be positive taken to a level where it becomes a negative.
For example, it’s smart to wash your hands to prevent the spread of germs. And it’s smart to keep your dishes clean and your food properly stored so it doesn’t become spoiled. These are simple things that help a person can do to stay healthy.
If someone offers you food that you think might be spoiled - it’s smart to refuse eating it. Some people would see that as selfish, though, since you’re refusing the hospitality of the one offering the meal. Maybe the person doesn’t have much food to begin with, so offering you some is a genuine big deal. Turning down food in that situation is putting your own needs above your host. It might be the smart thing to do, but it’s putting your own needs first.
OTOH, a person who becomes obsessed with avoiding germs, can take that obsession into the realm where they’re afraid to touch things or other people. A germ obsession can harm the person who has it by severely limiting the person’s ability to function in the larger world. When a simple precaution about hand washing prevents becomes a larger fear of germs that impacts a person’s daily life - that’s when it becomes a neurosis.
That’s how I understand the term, anyway.
I think it’s psychological for the very fact that I feel like I have some modicum of control over of it. For instance, if my mother were to show up on the scene while I was having a freezing moment and start yelling at me, I’m pretty sure The Body would say “yes” with a quickness. Which is why I once called my doctor (after a car almost hit me) and commanded her to tell me, in her harshest voice, monstro, you have to move right now! I figured maybe my brain would “record” and “replay” her voice whenever I freeze; her voice could serve as the much needed “third party” in The Argument. She didn’t want to do to this, but I insisted. But alas, it hasn’t really worked. And I’m too afraid to call up my mother and ask for the same request.
But you know, just because it’s psychological doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a biological basis. Catatonic schizophrenics, who have documented brain problems, are not unaware of their environments either and have described having utter indifference to the world (i.e., giving into The Body’s “No”). Except that I imagine their indifference is much deeper and longer lasting than mine is and is affected by more cognitive distortions. I only have racing thoughts; they have delusions and stuff. Plus, their sense of time is completely off, and I have never felt like mine is.
Abilify helped the freezing and the gait abnormalities. But apparently I’m sensitive to developing tardive dyskinesia, and after a few months of dealing with lip movements and hoping they’d go away, I got off of it. But I stuck with Abilify for almost a year, so it’s not like I didn’t try. TD can become permanent, and I just didn’t want to deal with that on top of everything else. Unfortunately, though, it didn’t stop the thing that bothers me a lot more than the movements do, which is the racing thoughts. Right now, the hateful faucet has been shut off (I suspect it’s because my estrogen levels are pretty high now, as I’m ovulating). But it won’t take long for them to come back. And then I’ll have to put on the happy face of normality so that no one knows what madness is happening behind my eyes.
The thread has kind of pissed me off, I must admit. Yes, I have a flawed personality but I do not think my flaws have caused my problems. I think they may be related, but only as co-morbid entities. No one who would meet me would (I don’t believe) think I was “off”. It takes a long time for people to say, “Hey, you’re kind of weird! Sweet, but weird!” I’m not afraid of things, irrational or otherwise (except for maybe telling my parents that I “freeze” in the middle of intersections). If someone is picturing that all neurotic people are all annoying, nerdy Woody Allen caricatures, then they’ve got it all wrong. Really, the only thing that separates a neurotic person from a psychotic person is that the latter isn’t aware that they are sick. The two could actually be suffering from similar underlying brain malfunctions. Take a person with severe OCD. They think if they don’t blink five times, spin around eight times, and say “What do you know, Sammie?” ten times that the house will catch fire. They will feel very very anxious if they are not able to “protect” the house with this ritual. Yet, they are aware that this is irrational, despite the temporary relief the ritual provides, so they would be deemed neurotic. Now let’s take a person with schizophrenia. They think if they don’t do the very same set of rituals, then the Black Demon Devil will possess their souls. They aren’t aware that this is irrational. Why should the behavior of the self-aware one viewed as any less “invountary” than the latter’s? Remember, they both suffer from basal ganglion disorders; it’s just that one has poor insight and the other doesn’t. They should be viewed with equal amounts of sympathy, but people will treat the OCD victim like he’s a joke. It’s like you don’t get any respect unless you’re hanging-from-the-chandeliers crazy. But if you manage to keep from going crazy (for instance, people with high IQ scores are said to be more resistant to psychosis), hold down a job, and do everything in life that you have to do, then you have no right to complain about the same inner turmoil an insane person may feel, but just isn’t articulate enough to voice.
I’m going to risk sounding juvenile and say it’s just not freakin’ fair.
I think about people with physical limitations as well, to put things into perpective. I also think about people with more severe mental problems than I have. That helps just as much, if not more. Yeah, I have intense repetitive thoughts, but at least I don’t hear voices. I might have psychomotor retardation and idiopathic akathisia (restlessness), but at least I don’t have full-fledged catatonia or TD. I think people look at the physically injured or ill as being fully deserving of sympathy, which is completely fine. But do the physically injured ever look at the mentally ill and think, “Wow, that poor guy will probably never have a wife, kids, or even friends. He can’t even smile. Despite my paralysis, I’ll never be in that bad of shape!” Do they ever think, “What an inspiration! That woman has fully overcome her major depression and here I am complaining about a missing limb!” I have a feeling that doesn’t happen so much. I guess it’s understandable, but it doesn’t seem fair to me.
Most people, including (apparently) many in this thread, get their idea of neurosis from Woody Allen movies or the like – they think it’s some kind of nervousness. Neurosis, when the term had any currency at all, meant any mental disorder not associated with delusion; i.e., not psychosis. The term has been replaced with specific disorders such as anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, pyromania, depression, and even schizoaffective disorder.
It’s the “Woody Allen” sort of neurosis that’s associated with selfishness – those with the time and resources to devote to being psychoanalyzed until something interesting comes up, those with the leisure to inflate petty problems into conditions requiring professional attention, are the ones who demand that their peculiarities be noticed and embraced.
Exactly.
I suspected the OP had some kind of caricature in mind rather than someone who was genuinely ill. That’s why I wanted her to define “neurotic” because it would help to know who exactly she was inarticulately talking about. But for some reason she has chosen not to participate in her own thread. I guess she has better things to do.
My impression is neuroticism is a guage of how often and intensely you experience negative emotions, and not really a mental health issue in and of itself. It is one of the big 5 personality traits.
Even so, I don’t think the Woody Allen neurosis is due to selfishness either, it seems to be due more to a lack of (emotional) safety & security.
I can’t speak for the OP, but I got the impression s/he was referring more to the factor 5 personality test type neuroticism, not neurological illnesses like OCD, schizophrenia, bipolar, etc.
Neurotics build castles in the air.
Psychotics move in to them.
My mother cleans them.
Source Unknown
Not at all. There’s an entire category of neuroticism based around people whose self-esteem is defined by how others look at them. They’re called “other-directed” and as sociologist David Riesmandescribed them, “The other-directed person wants to be loved rather than esteemed.”
In its extreme form, other-directedness leads to caring people believing nothing they do is ever good enough, because there’s always someone out there who needs their help. Hang around with people in caring professions – social work, teaching, the ministry, health care, etc. – long enough and you’ll eventually meet someone like that.
From your first link:
So very interesting…
Most of the disorders that form the infamous “neuoroses” (clinical depression, anxiety disorders, OCD, phobias, etc.) have clear biological underpinnings. Otherwise, medications would not help in their treatment. If Abilify didn’t make my lips pucker out like Daffy Duck, I would still be on it. I’d be hella constipated, but at least it just be my colon that would be frozen, instead of my entire body!
(Hey, sometimes you gotta laugh to keep from crying).
I don’t think very many serious psychotherapists or psychiatrists use the word “neurotic” anymore. At least not in a clinical sense. It’s a word that’s fallen by the wayside, kind of like “hysterical”. You call a person “hysterical”, especially a woman patient, and you’ll sound like you just washed up from the early 1900s. But we do know that “hysteria” exists, in the form of somatic disorders. When people have problems expressing their emotional states (alexithymia), they develop headaches, stomach troubles, back pains, blindness, paralysis, gait issues, seizure-like convulsions–it’s pretty amazing how connected the psyche is connected to the body.
To me, the line between neurotic and pychotic isn’t really a clear one anyway. I go back to OCD, which to me often straddles the fence between non-crazy and crazy. I’m currently reading the book “The Boy Who Couldn’t Stop Washing His Hands”, which presents first and second-hand accounts about the disorder. There’s a story about a young man who has obsessional slowness; it takes him literally two hours to walk from the curb to his front door because each step has to be perfect and number up to 75 (or something close to it, I forget). Now, you can have a rational, intelligent conversation with this kid, according to his doctor, but he does not have enough insight into his condition to explain to you “why” he must do the things he does. He knows he sick, he knows that there’s something wrong with him, but he doesn’t know how to fix himself. Really, how is he fundamentally different from a guy thinks it’s perfectly normal to walk outside in his birthday suit with a toliet plunger on his head? Nothing really, except the kid can communicate with you in an intelligent way. But functionally, they are the same. Also, mood disorders are starting to be conceptualized as mild psychoses–and if you think about it, it makes perfect sense. A person who is severely depressed because they think they’re a horrible, terrible person who can never do anything right is suffering from a delusion, correct? And a manic individual who is full of grandiose, I-CAN-DO-ANYTHING!! excitement is similarly deluded. But right now, we would put depression and bipolar disorders in a separate group from “straight-up crazy”. Is that scientifically correct? Or is that a grouping based on a arbitrarily constructed framework of what constitutes crazy and non-crazy?
I don’t know. Now I’m just rambling, I guess.
Yes, it happens. My husband struggled with depression and anxiety after his disability, but he was very VERY aware that despite his poor health and prognosis, he was at least able to enjoy his own brain, most of the time. And I knew that he was going to die, but I also knew that losing him to his disease was better than losing him to severe mental illness or, say, Alzheimer.
I think, honestly, that even the best off of us can look at someone worse off and envy them, and even the worst off can look at someone better off and pity them.
Good Question. I used to think my Mom was selfish but it turns out she is neurotic. I remember my dad saying to her, “Your Neurotic” from a young age. Come to find out he was right!
I think the selfishness is part of the neurosis. In my mom’s case she just can’t concentrate on anything other then herself and what she deems important. She was probably born this way and I accept her as she is now that I’m an adult. She is actually a good person but she is very hard to be around for any length of time. People that are neurotic will suck the life right out of you. They just have to keep going, cleaning, shopping, working. Oblivious to anything but themselves, taking their emotional pulse every 5 seconds or finding a way to stay busy enough to not have to deal with things.
Saints could not be neurotic because they have peace within them. They walk with a higher power and in tune with the world not in their own. They can love all people and possess great love. Saints are very unselfish and put the needs of others before themselves. They also can see the good and the bad for what it is and not what they wish it to be. A very deep honesty. I study the saints and I know it has made me try harder in my life. I will never achieve it but I aim high.
That unselfishness would be impossible for my Mother. Still she is a wonderful woman that is just driven to distraction. Her inability to stop and smell the roses or to see her true neurosis is the manifestation of the illness. I personally don’t think it is voluntary because who could want to be that way? I’m sure deep down she knows she is hard to deal with but she would have to slow down and have a profound personality change to become normal. My poor mom has to spend so much energy acting “as if”.
On the other hand a person who is just selfish can learn to be giving. Without the neurosis driving them they could change but it would be something achievable with work. I have seen selfish people turn it around but very few neurotics can even get honest enough to see the problem that needs fixing. They live in the land of Me and not We.
I don’t know what caused my Mom’s neurosis. It sounds like she was that way from childhood. She grew up in a normal family? Perhaps your born with it? I don’t know?