An Amateur Analysis

There was a marathon of Alfred Hitchcock movies on Encore this weekend. A number of his films deal with the subject of psychology. One in particular that I watched was “Spellbound”, which dealt with psychoanalysis. As I sat up all night thinking, I couldn’t help but start analyzing myself. Here are some of my amateur findings.

Why am I so anti social?

This really confounds me because once I know someone I can talk to them for hours about any subject. I just can’t seem to initiate conversation with people. I thought about the root of this condition and I think it started at age 12. That’s when I moved from Spring Valley, New York to Savannah, Georgia. It was a total culture shock for me at the time. It’s not like today, when people are familiar with the other parts of the country via music and videos; I had no clue what the South was like and I didn’t fit in at all. Accordingly, I began to retreat into myself and become more of an observer than an actual participant in social settings. This was around the same time I was entering puberty, an important time in a child’s social development. I hypothesize that this was the root of my anti social behavior.

Why do I push people away?

It is way too easy for me to cut people out of my life. I mean, you may not even know that’s what I’m doing, but next thing you know, you haven’t heard from me in 6 months. Why is that? Why do I push people away? Since this, is supposed to be self analysis, I won’t talk about what other people do to make me push them away, but I will say that I am repulsed by neediness. I think this is because I have always been so independent and seek like minded individuals to be in my circle. If I sense my freedom being infringed on, I take steps to regain it. I know often times this is all in my mind and people are not trying to take my life over, but subconsciously, I react accordingly.


Why do I always fall for women who are already involved with someone?

I think I have a subconscious fear of commitment. Perhaps, that’s why I choose to be involved with women with boyfriends. It’s like I know that nothing serious can come from it, so there is no chance of me getting too deep. But that’s where my conscious and subconscious minds butt heads because I do get deep, sometimes too deep. My conscious mind wants the traditional man and wife thing, but subconsciously, I seem to do things to ensure that doesn’t happen. Or maybe it’s just a coincidence. Maybe these women have something special about them individually that I find irresistible. I’ll have to do some more thinking on this one.

Why am I so stubborn?

I think this goes back to me being anti social to an extent. I always had a good relationship with myself since I wasn’t trying to fit in a group with anybody. I have a strong sense of who I am and I celebrate my individuality. I like what I like and I don’t care who knows it. I try not to pander to popular beliefs. I think I am the coolest muhfucka alive, even if nobody else thinks it. So from there, I kinda developed a whole “I am always right” persona. I know logically that I am not always right, but it takes an act of Congress to prove to me otherwise. You gotta really come with it to get me to change my mind. That’s not to say that I am dogmatic. I understand where people are coming from and I often will agree to disagree. I respect everyone’s right to have opposing viewpoints, but I generally won’t change my mind. I have been doing a better job over the last year (coinciding with my blogging) of actually admitting to myself when I am wrong. The next step is admitting that to others.

What’s the deal with my procrastination?

I am always late. I can always find something to do to stop me from doing the thing I am supposed to be doing. This isn’t just work. I’m like this in most areas of my life. If I am supposed to be somewhere at 9, I won’t leave the crib until 9:10. I really don’t know why. This was the one area that I could not come with an amateur diagnosis for. I was searching the internet for possible reasons, but they didn’t seem to apply to me. Its not depression; I am always content. It’s not low sense of self worth; have you read my blog and seen how arrogant I am? I don’t have ADD, or a learning disorder and I don’t consider myself lazy. I just could not come up with a reason for my extreme procrastination. I’ll have to continue to analyze my behavior and hope I can come up with something to change this.

I probably could analyze myself on a myriad of other topics, but this post is getting too long. Now that I have identified some of my issues, the next step is to do something about them. To me that is the hard part. It’s all well and good to admit that, but how do I change some of these behaviors? Do I even want to or am I comfortable with who I am? My problem with psychology is that you can always figure out what the problem is, but I don’t know if you can undo who you essentially are. That’s why people stay in therapy for their whole lives. Anyway, thanks for reading this self indulgent post.

It was written…