Psychological Disorder

It is a concept universally acknowledged that psychiatric problems are multifactorial (I am not citing any literature or textbook, just recalling it from what I've read in the past, so correct me if I am wrong) which means there is no single reason why someone is mad.

And the overt manifestation of these somewhat inorganic diseases is usually the outcome of an interaction between the predisposition/genetic makeup of its sufferers and its environment; very much like Buddha's proverbial seed which will only sprout in conditions optimal for growth -- the right amount of rain, sunshine, air -- or in short, when the conditions are right, you become insane.

Yesterday, we were asked to fill out a survey form for a research in supporting the living and learning of international students at Hiroshima University . One of the questions I was required to answer was to check, among the seven available counselling groups, ones that I know of. I knew none. And before that question, they wanted to know to whom, among our colleagues and friends, we spoke whenever troubles arose. That was left blank as well.

I come to Japan with my predisposition, my very own Pandora Box whose contents -- low self-esteem, inferiority, hypersensitive to criticism, mistrust, emotional distancing, lonely self-perception and all, save agoraphobia -- were unleashed in full force by a new environment, the potential disastrous effects of that unfamiliarized harshness is clearly evinced above.

To safeguard my sanity, I self-helped. I was convinced that self-imposed social isolation was the best way and that it would help tide me over the predicament. I retreated deep inside my cave with a hell lot of reading materials and it seemed to work on the surface. But oblivious to me was the deeply seated, gradual conflagration of the neurotic flame of immaturity which flared up and engulfed the best of my behaviours at the so called right condition/time  -- a little past 1130 a couple of nights ago. I then sat burnt-out, smoldering in regrets and asked "what'd happened to me?" I'd become dissociated, paranoid, passively aggressive, making excuses, severely jealous, and most of all, anxious or in Vaillant's term, my somatization mode had been switched on for too long a time.

Japan turned out to be all wrong. It was wrong because of my predisposition and my engaging in the wrong method of psychical sanitation. I thought I was smart; I was gaining control of the whole situation. But, quite on the contrary, every layer of my sanity was flying in the face of itself. Luckily, left in the box is my awareness -- the ability to see that this is steering into a hazardous territory, the ability to know that I need help, the only force that'll save me from reserving a bed in the psychiatric ward and hopefully help put me on the right path again.