New Year’s Eve/Day Open Thread: It’s 2016 Already Updated Edition

He’s 24 and a complete shut-in. He was home schooled through most of high school and after that he locked himself in his room on the 2nd floor. He didn’t step outside the house in literally 3 or 4 years, not even the back yard. When there are guests in the house he will lock himself in his room and won’t come out until he’s sure they’ve left. He’ll keep texting and calling his mom to get updates on the situation.

If he lived in Japan, he’d be called a hikikomori. It’s a well-known, if not widespread, phenomenon there. Although many hikikomori have social anxiety, the phenomenon itself is social rather than psychological.

@dhag85
I have some experience with a family with a completely unreasonable authoritarian father, a nurse-mother who doesn’t want to rock the boat, and a son who exploits his mother’s wish not to see her son suffer.

The situation is challenging.

I know that you have national health care in Sweden, so perhaps free or low-cost counseling is available. If so, you might want to consider counseling to get some perspective on this situation and tips on how to deal with it.

Best wishes to you and your wife.

Happy New Year/2016 everyone! Thanks for being such a cool and insightful bunch of people. I enjoyed reading this blog and the comment section (it seems a good comment section is a rare thing).

@Hambeast, Dalillama – I’m sorry that you lost people close to you this year. Virtual hugs if you want them.

@dhag85 – I know this is a superficial thing to notice, but it seems there are a lot of people in that family who expect other people to make food for them. Possibly you could offer to help cook and maybe get one of the men involved too? If that is a possible/tolerable thing?

@Johanna – I’m sorry for what you’re going through. I hope your move works out and, if it is a goal for you, that you and him can get back together.

And hello to everyone I haven’t mentioned! Best wishes for 2016!

Happy 2016, everyone – best wishes for the next 365 days of planet earth slowly spinning around on its axis.

@dhag85: Sure, we can hang out, but it’ll have to be virtually, since I gather you’re in Sweden? Haha, no, I don’t think you’re coming on too strong!

Just try to be patient with me… I’m a novice with the “hanging-out virtually” stuff.

Hugs to those who need and would like them.

Dhag85, I feel your pain. I have a few relatives who, well, fulfill their brat potential every time I visit. I’ve found that if I pull out my knitting I can plausibly claim that I haven’t been following the conversation, if that helps.

I broke a bone in my non-dominant hand three weeks ago. It seems to be healing, and hopefully I can go back to work Monday. I have to say that one-handed typing is more work than I thought it would be . . .

@nparker

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/nigel-farage/12078683/Nigel-Farage-fears-he-was-victim-of-assassination-attempt-after-motorway-crash.html

Assassination and war are the worst possible forms of politics.

That said, something about this smells off to me. It happened in October. And he decided not to press charges.

Why bring it up three months later?

Why not press charges?

The headline says that he “fears” that he was the victim of an assassination attempt, so I don’t think that I’m alone in my skepticism.

In 2015 I accomplished very little of what I wanted to accomplish, and confronted many things I didn’t want to confront. I’m calling it a win.

In the summer of 2014 I was finally diagnosed with narcolepsy, about 5 years after it started ruining my life. I made arrangements to go back to the college I had dropped out of, and started this past January.

The school administration did everything possible to make my life hell. Between their relentless harassment and my incomplete acclimation to narcolepsy treatment I crashed and burned out of school for the second time. I spent the summer fruitlessly applying for jobs in the Chicago suburbs while living with the girl who would eventually become my girlfriend, who herself was living at home with her family.

It was the first time in many years I had seen another family up close, and it was eye-opening to say the least. I knew I had had what you might call a difficult childhood. I knew that my parents were not supportive of almost anything I had done as an adult. I had referred to them as “evil” people in the past. I had once chosen for a year to live as a homeless sex worker because it seemed preferable to living with them. And yet, I had somehow been unable to think of them as capital-A Abusive until I saw how a family was supposed to work. I told them explicitly how I felt and resolved never to depend on them again.

Shortly thereafter I gave up hope of supporting myself in Chicago and decided to move back home. As I prepped for the move, I confronted them even more explicitly with my grievances and a list of demands on which my return was conditional. They agreed. When I came back, I discovered that my mother, whom I had thought to be an irredeemable narcissist, had mellowed considerably with age. I also learned that my father had been ignorant, (though perhaps culpably so), of the some of the worst things my mother did to me, and that he had evolved from a right-wing ideologue to a reluctant liberal.

My parents wanted me to get my BA, which I would be able to do if I finished enough incompletes, and after my failed job search in the summer, I wanted it too. Unfortunately, I found it difficult to concentrate on schoolwork. Thinking about the school at all made me too angry. An alumna-turned-freelancer posted on Facebook seeking sources for a story on the school’s systematic mistreatment of mentally-ill students and I jumped at the chance to tell my story.

Telling it once didn’t feel like enough. Soon I was talking to a current student making a documentary for film major, and to a journalist making a TV special for a national news network. I felt bad talking about the school administration “behind their back”, so I decided to confront them as well.

I told my adviser, who was also 3rd-in-command for the Dean of Students, that I couldn’t do my schoolwork until they addressed my concerns with their practices. From late November through December, he spent about 4 hours on the phone with me over 3 sessions listening to me complain about the way they treated me and propose several concrete reforms they could implement. He allegedly scheduled two internal meetings to discuss it, although neither has happened yet.

Although one of those meetings was supposed to involve the student counseling service, I decided not to wait. I had tried two or three times to reach out to the psychiatrist who handled my case and received no answer. I had mistakenly believed he was the director of the agency, so when I learned otherwise I confronted him directly as well. I only had one chance to speak with him before holiday break, and he left it a touch ambiguous whether he would speak to me again, but he agreed to implement one of my ideas and hold a meeting in the new year. He also requested a follow-up email. Tomorrow I will start trying to contact him again.

None of the stories have run yet, so 6 weeks in to this campaign I have nothing yet to show for it. But I’m about to make another big push and then — hopefully — pivot to my actual schoolwork. In the meantime, I’ve discovered that I really enjoy digging up secrets, hounding officials, and critiquing policies. I’m now considering trying to make a career out of journalism or advocacy. Failing that, I will at least figure out a way to include this personal vendetta as an accomplishment for my resume.

@RoscoeTCat

Omg. I’m realizing I don’t really like to do anything. That’s disturbing. Hikes sound like fun but I have arthritis. :/ Can’t really move around too much. Reading could be fun too but I have the worst attention span. This rules out most movies too since I can’t pay attention to the plot and can’t recognize characters from one scene to the next.

I play games, sometimes online. Or tedious games by myself. :p If you have any form on online game you like to play, I’d give it a try. Other than that, I study, teach, and listen to podcasts/music. I also spend a significant amount of time staring into the distance/wall.

Wow. That makes me sound pretty boring, doesn’t it. Hmmm.

@Dhag

If the position is still open I would also like to submit a request for friendship. My likes include talking to interesting people, roleplaying and game mastering, being bad a hole host of games, and to some degree programming.

I also suffer from keyboard anxiety, and slow typing. You can find me here obvoiusly and in meatspace in Karlshamn.

@Epitome,

It’s funny, because it’s the opposite at UChicago. As far as I can tell grad students don’t even have deadlines.

Happy new year, occasional reader, and welcome!