In other words, you are having a super-hero fantasy and want to know what your weakness is?

Are you making a run at being the next conservative man?

I've already got that, I'm a nerd. Intelligent but socially awkward. Not easily curable though. Would I give up my intelligence to gain social abilities? Hell no.

I said this wasn't about me, krellin :)

Being a nerd is not an illness, Alderian :)

Let me guess - you have testicles hanging from your chin and you're nervous that you won't be "you" once they're removed?

My OCD. I wouldn't give it up for the world. Part of what males me so indemand is my inherent problem solving and bug tracking abilities and that comes from my unwillingness to let things be less than perfect - an aspect of OCD. So I'd rather continue with the OCD. A second thing I'll keep is my borderline manic-depression. My creative forces do their best work in either manic or depressed states and to be "normalized" would end the creative side of me.

And yes, the OCD pisses me off that we can't edit our typos in posts...

A small amount of Asperger's with an INTJ personality type allows for deep concentration, the ability to hold many more ideas at a time in the old cerebral cortex than normal, and the ability to keep calm. This gives great problem solving abilities even in crisis situations. Add a splash of paranoia and you get a defensive-minded programmer - perfect for my line of work in industry where coding mistakes can kill people and destroy equipment.

Bad stuff with this combo - insomnia. It's hard to stop thinking...dammit! And being less emotional can be a pain - for others, mostly. Worth the trade-off, IMO.

In general, go for a line of work and lifestyle that works to your strengths. I'd be a useless nervous wreck in an assembly line or a place with a lot of rigid rules, but I know people that love that sort of thing.

There's lots of recent stuff out - based on real science - on what actually makes people happy. Go wild.

And, go ahead, get that thing on your chin removed.

ditto for correcting posts.

Do not allow this brainless ninny into any more site tournaments please.

Draug, have you actually been diagnosed with OCD? You seem fairly well adjusted.

Good examples Draug and Theodosius.
That's the kind of thing I'm talking about, not everything is about steephie the superhero...

@ghug: out of curiosity, how would you recognize someone with OCD over the internet?

If it's severe, you may recognize it after playing a game with the person. Just guessing.

@jmo.
I read some of conservative man's threads...even just the titles...wow, just wow.

And the world will never see the like again.

My Narcolepsy:

When I first stared falling asleep in school, I originally thought that if I could just have enough willpower, I would be able to stay awake. I fought it and fought it, all the while telling myself that I was better then this; that I wouldn't doze off this time. But no matter how hard I tried, I kept succumbing to the overwhelming desire for sleep. Eventually, it got to the point where I was sleeping through most of school. I lost the edge I'd had on my peers up until that point and began failing classes for the first time in my life. My teachers and my parents, (even myself to an extent), all thought that I was merely being lazy. I was told to try harder, and try harder I did. But even then, I was unable to keep alert or learn anything in school. I dropped from the absolute highest tracks available all the way down to standard-level classes. Because of all the social and academic ridicule I was receiving when I dozed off, I ended up suffering pretty severe depression. I hated my own "laziness" and my inability to succeed at something that had previously been easy. I even began to seriously question my childhood faith at this point, wondering why God would've made me if he knew how miserable I'd be.

It was extremely rough for a while, but things actually started to improve once my parents figured out that something was medically wrong. It took some time, but I was eventually diagnosed with Narcolepsy and put on medication for it. I could go on about all the different medications we've tried, their side-effects, and stupid health-"care", but this autobiography is probably already longer then anyone cares to read. Long story short, I'm thankfully now able to function mostly as normal due to my medication. I still doze off during school on a daily basis and I'm still a lot more tired than I'd like to be, but my condition is WAY more controlled now.

My Narcolepsy; would I give it up? I'm actually not sure if I would... Sure at times it really sucks, but I ultimately think I'm a better person for having had it. (Plus it gives me some pretty amazing dreams) Before I got Narcolepsy, I was extremely arrogant. (Perhaps not on the outside, but definitely on the inside.) I considered myself better than my classmates because of my "vastly superior" intellect. Narcolepsy has humbled me. It's made me realize how little control I have over my own life, and how precious our short time on this Earth is. It's given me the ability to understand and empathize with others, and it's made me realize that people truly can't help what they're given biologically. Certain people are born with different amounts of talents and/or weakness than others. That doesn't make them any more or less valuable of human beings. Through my struggle with this disorder, I have gained an entirely new outlook on life. And to be honest, I thank God for giving me it...

Thanks for the thread Stephie, it was good for me to write that down somewhere. :)

I assume that was kinda what you were looking for?

Re: my OCD and MDD... Yes, I've been diagnosed with both. The OCD isn't as extreme as what you see on Monk, but it is there. I drink fluids in multiples of four swallows. I shave in multiples of 5 strokes. When I try not to, I then find I specifically am counting and that is still a symptom. I can't just shave or drink or do a number of things without counting every motion involved. I even catch myself counting when I walk down the drive to the mailbox so that all my steps on each section of cement is exactly 4 steps.

The manic depression everyone here has seen in the past in my rants and "quits". It's do in large part ot my other medical conditions (thyroid, diabetes, and blood pressure) but is there even when those are in check, just not as bad.

@Theo - I am with you on the "unemotional" part as well. I either am hyper emotional to the point of nearly unstable or I have zero sympathy/empathy and am called a cold hearted bastard. My dad is the same way. I think many analytical minds are that way. Something about always analyzing every situation. My dad was an NDT engineer before he retired and you can see the mind always analyzing every situation in his face even when you just want to vent.

Engineers are generally trained to analyse everything. Some people can even spot the engineer in the crowd. He/she's the one analyzing the crowd...

I'll be going slightly off-topic but who cares :)

I don't recognize the OCD stuff as explained at all so I can't react on that. For me it's with stuff I consider important only, which is sort of good.
I'm actually planning to work on the unemotional and over-analysing part which I definitely have, although that's not an illness at all I suspect. I plan to have a good talk with the only girl I continuously fail to analyse, although that's a bit of a leap of faith from my side, since, well, I don't have a clue what will happen, and that's exactly the point. I'll be forced to trust my emotional intuition with her, which is exactly what I want to learn. Worth a shot I'd say, although I need to play my cards right to get that conversation and whatever comes from it at all...

This wasn't what I was initially going for with this thread but that's exactly what I'm 'training'.

OCD - Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. It is exactly what it sounds like. As far as the detached and over analyzing self centered being an illness, narcissism is a classic symptom of OCD as well as the OCD sufferer has to have things his way or he can't stand it.

Steephie, oh, so this is about a girl. I keep forgetting that you're at the prime age for obsessing about the opposite sex. A piece of advice: Learn about male and female differences, learn about different personality types, learn about emotional intelligence, learn about learning styles, love languages, reformers versus protectors, etc. and then decide if you are even compatible with this person.

Jesus wept.

This RETARD is actually PLAYING with you morons.

<smack forehead...> Good lord, Mujus, I hope your brought your sword and shield....because the equality retards like Thucy are going to jump your ass for DARING to say there are differences between men and women. Sorry for your future pain, bro.

@Mujus: I actually know pretty much all of the things you just listed already.

I'm also not obsessed about the opposite sex, I'm obsessed with mysteries. I don't give a shit about most people in terms of interest.

She actually has been hitting on me quite a lot (and she's gone a bit further, but she was drunk then...), although partly jokingly, so it's definitely not like I freak her out in a bad way. I originally just didn't care, but now she mystifies me.

Last but not least, I know this will sound ridiculous to some people, but while she seems more interested in an adventure (you know what I mean), that's really not what I'm going for, at least not initially. She actually asked/dared me to kiss her once and I refused. I want to get to know her and see from there.

And it's not just the mystery. I see an opportunity for valuable lessons to be learned for me.

Of course, I happened to notice she's a girl, and I don't reject the theory that I would be less interested if she wasn't, but it's not that simple.

I want to learn a bit of her lifestyle. Right now, for me, the things I really enjoy in life are pretty much all the kind of things that raise your adrenaline, and that's not her type of fun. I need some fun with which I actually relax, because right now I'm either racing or whatever or suffering from adrenal fatigue. I can go somewhere 20 minutes earlier so I don't have to rush at all, but then I continuously want to speed up because I sometimes literally fall asleep without adrenaline. Going slow is just so damn boring to me. If I force myself to go slow, I'm continuously fighting myself and that causes stress, so that isn't a good idea either. I think I need to hang with people who are quite the opposite.

I want to learn to enjoy relaxing stuff again. That's the main goal. I don't think I know any relaxed guys I really want to hang out with.

Sex is the ultimate way to boost adrenaline, you pathetic fairy.

Exactly why I don't aim for that. Did I mention I refused to kiss her, even though she's hot?
Sure I did.

For the record, if sex somehow happens, that doesn't mean a mission failure. I don't hate adrenaline, in fact, like I said, I'm rather addicted to it, but I want another way of feeling really good, so I don't continuously get tired the moment there is no action. There was a time when people called me stoned like 20 times a day, and in a sense, they were right.

I don't want to have to choose between feeling a bit down or feeling really good at the cost of feeling even more down later.

Also, the amount of sleep I take is getting rather ridiculous if you hold in mind I'm still tired most of the time. I sleep in class when I know I won't miss anything, and sometimes that's the only way I can get through the day.

So in short, I just want to get out of 'survivor mode', although that's quite a huge overstatement. I want to be able to enjoy the normal things in life again.

There are times that I enjoy those things, but they're rare and usually in holidays in which I basically do nothing. The base of my life at this point is the adrenaline pumping that keeps me motivated enough for school and everything, but I want my life to be a bit more based on normal stuff.

I could go on but I don't want to repeat myself.

That lifestyle is a trap leading to burnout, but you probably already know that.

The best way to get out of it...is to simply stop doing it. Choose a healthier path and immediately start following it. No excuses, no backsliding.

It takes 4? weeks to break a habit or compulsion by not doing it. Good luck.

@Theodosius: I know the burnout part, although so far I've found an old Russian proverb (I think) to be very true: the bear that knows he walks into a trap cannot be caught. Although I only recently realised it, this lifestyle became the standard for me about 3 years ago, and I've always managed to hang in there because I knew what I was fighting against. At some points it was just sleep, food and school, but I never burned out accidently. I used holidays to recover a bit and would go on to the next holiday. My grades are pretty good so for a really long while I saw no reason to worry.

Anyway, I know what you mean with your second paragraph, but it's not that simple, and here's why: we're not talking about addictions to alcohol or smoking or stuff like that, we're talking about adrenaline. I can't just stop 'taking' adrenaline, for obvious reasons. Now, of course, I can stop doing anything that could be considered exciting, but first of all that would mean I completely ruin my condition, next to the fact that it would be extremely boring which is not that important, but more to the point, this is why it's pretty much impossible: I still have school. Because of the adrenal fatigue, there will still be times where I'm running late because I wait to the last moment to get out of bed, in which case I will have to rush, which will increase my adrenaline, all the while I enjoy every moment of it. Then there's the fact that even if I have all the time of the world, I actually have trouble trying to cycle at a normal speed because I simply never do that, and if I manage to not run on adrenaline, the fatigue kicks in. Add PE to that and you probably start to see the issue. I can't just quit adrenaline, or at least I shouldn't. Remember that while I want to reduce the adrenaline stuff, I still enjoy it and I see no need to get rid of it entirely. It just needs to stop being the thing I do every time I get out of the house or want to have fun. It needs to become just another aspect of life again, to be used when I really need the boost instead of any time I'm outside.
I need to learn the normal way of doing things as well, and find normal stuff that gives me satisfaction, to get rid of the tiredness as well. I don't want to become your average 16-year old that does... well, nothing useful. I want to find a better balance, not completely throw myself out of the window in exchange for a new 'normal' me. I am too ambitious to become 'normal'. 'Weird' works just fine for me.

So, the plan: I want to try to find a calm hobby or activity that I enjoy, which will be extremely hard, so I'll focus on other things until I found such a hobby: I will actively try to not get excited or anything to prevent boosting adrenaline production while walking/running and cycling, although ideally I do want to keep some sort of a condition, so I would be turning it into more of a training or fast 'walk around the park' rather than an exciting adventure. Focusing more on keeping a calm rhytm rather than trying to go as fast as possible.

I know, right? Nothing conclusive so far. I want to do less activities but stay in condition and I want to find a calm hobby although almost everything that's calm bores me. While I do think I achieve something with those changes, it's probably not enough.

So how the hell do I actually make a change other than some nuances?
First of all, make sure I sleep a lot. If I don't feel tired this much, it's much less of an issue and it will probably help me enjoy the small things in life. It would also mean I don't run late for school as often, so less adrenaline going to school.
Then, this is where the girl comes in. I just know that she knows how to stay in condition and have fun without relying on adrenaline. Other than that, she'll probably help me get a calm hobby. Hell, depending on how things go, she might even become part of my hobby in a non-dirty/creepy way, or hell, perhaps in a dirty way if that's what she wants, but that would be a byproduct and completely beside the point. I just think I need some guidance from my classmates to actually pull this off, and I'm willing to ask for the help and I think at least one of them is willing to help.

I wanted to say something else but I forgot and I don't want to think about it right now :) Tips are welcome, just hold in mind that I consider completely getting rid of any active activities is just as bad if not worse than my current lifestyle IMO. Balance is what I'm looking for. Also note that I'm holding out just fine, this is just a clear point of improvement to me and I personally believe that I should therefore actually try to improve it.

Really, tips are very welcome. Something that just came to mind as potential hobby is swimming. Although that's not too calm, it's still nice and not exactly adrenaline-pumping action. It also means I will stay in some condition so I don't have to worry about that.

Some of that is just typical of a few people your age and you will likely grow out of it in your 20's. No biggy.

Getting interested in other people/one person is a good way to change your lifestyle, as long as you don't regard it as "that person saving me" but as honestly wanting to finding out what makes other people tick and wanting to spend time with them.

There are drugs to calm you down so you pace yourself, but at 16, some of those drugs can fuck up your mind pretty good for a long time. I'd advise only looking in that direction if there are serious health issues. Consciously making good choices is a harder, but usually better way to go.

Have a chat with your school councilor. They're paid to help, listen, and give advice. I'm just some anonymous asshole on a hobby forum.

Not entirely sure what you mean with the second paragraph but I don't think I need saving so I'm guessing I'm good there. I also won't be heart-broken or anything if nothing works out. It's just worth a shot. Nothing to lose there.

I won't even consider drugs.

Really though, I'll work it out, but some quick tips/suggestions on how to do some things I mentioned would potentially be useful and therefore I definitely won't mind getting them.

No tips to give? No problem. I already have a plan, I just need to do it.

Also, it's nice if I grow out of it in my 20's but I really see no reason to wait. This is going to be a useful and potentially fun project for me to work on.