Karen Horney – Reasons Why I Am Who I Am

Karen Horney’s 10 categories of neurotic needs tell a well-rounded story about me. Horney’s Psychoanalytic Social Theory revolves a lot around one’s attitudes and behavior in its most extreme form. According to my results from the personality disorder test, I am most likely to have Schizotypal, Borderline, Histrionic, and Avoidant disorders. I may have Paranoia and to be a bit too Antisocial, Narcissistic, and Dependent on others. At the very least, I have a low chance of having Schizoid or Obsessive-Compulsive disorders. 

After the test results, what comes to mind first is how the quiz determines the disorders it did for me. Schizotypal and Avoidant disorders are pretty similar to each other in how they both move away and against people. They are opposite to Histrionic which moves towards people and wants everyone’s attention. 

At a young age, I was already marked as an eccentric child. Going to a predominately white private Catholic school, an Asian girl with terrible English would never fit in. Thus, I was labeled as odd and weird. This made me a super anxious person later on. I avoided people. I never wanted to talk because I was afraid people would make fun of what I say. My way of speaking differs from others. At home I would speak Chinese with my parents, rarely practicing English; therefore I never picked up on common phrases or flow of words that other kids learned from their families. I remember people would often say I “grew up under a rock” because I never knew the latest hit music or the new hottest Hollywood movie to listen to or watch. I often had this basic anxiety that never went away. 

A symptom of schizotypal includes having odd thought processes.  For example, I had a desk critic in studio with my professor and I was explaining my thought process, but she had troublesome following my trains of thought. I tend to think differently than others. For instance, when a friend trips and falls, I would laugh at them instead of ask them if they are okay. On the upside, having different thinking means I think outside the box. This is good for my profession as an architecture student. You need to think creatively and innovatively in order to solve problems. Another symptom of schizotypal is believing in a sixth sense. I am pretty superstitious. I believe in fate and that everyone has their own destiny. Even cheesier, I believe in soulmates. Lastly, another symptom of schizotypal I relate to is having difficulty maintaining concentration. I get distracted a lot. I have trouble starting and finishing homework in a timely manner. Often I will procrastinate on work and end up staying up very late to finish projects the night before. Being easily distracted is a very bad habit and trait. I try my best to clear myself from distractions, even pushing people away from me to have the time to finish what I need to do. 

The two disorders I’m highly likely to have according to the test is Avoidant disorder. Symptoms of this disorder include fear of rejection and criticization in social situations, embarrassment, poor self-image, and desire for a better self-image. Since being made fun of a lot as a child, I have developed a very low self-confidence level. Whenever I’m put at a social event, I have difficulty taking the first step in engaging others. I get anxious that people will turn me down and away. I fear for the answer no to any of my approaches. I am also afraid of giving people material for embarrassment. What if when I’m walking up the stairs and I trip and fall and a whole crowd sees this and laughs. Due to my fears, I don’t have a very large network connection in my profession. However, people always emphasize how important it is to make connections in order to find jobs. As a result, I have always found difficulty landing internships. I rely on my friends to help me find jobs and help. 

Yet, I also have this pull to the Histrionic disorder. I believe this is because I never had a safe or satisfied childhood. I definitely developed basic hostility towards my parents. While I am an only child, my parents put a lot of pressure and effort on me to be perfect. Rarely were they satisfied with good results; everything had to be perfect to the T. This definitely influenced me to move towards other people and gain their attention and approval. What I could not seek or receive from my parents, I went to gather from friendships and relationships. I gather their attention by depicting myself as a humorous person. I always have the time to make sly jokes or chide people for absurd issues and matters. While I may be constantly talking and engaging my friends and peers, secretly I am seeking their approval. When there are awkward moments and silence, I would take these exploits as neglect and rejection. I experience in self-contempt and frustration for not foreseeing the failures in these situations. Another part of the histrionic disorder is being manipulative. I have certainly been told I am manipulative by some of my close friends. I will exaggerate situations sometimes to make my friends more empathic towards me. One time last year, I was late to club dance practice and everyone was waiting for me. When I walked in everyone was waiting for the instructor, who is a friend of mine, to call me out for being late. Instead, I walked up to my friend and told her in a low voice that I was late because I was on the phone with another friend dealing with a situation that made me cry, thus making me late. I knew that my friend had a weak heart for people who cry and is always ready to empathize with them. I manipulative my way around her heart and away with being late to practice. 

Lastly, in my most likely to have disorders topics, there is borderline personality disorder. I expected borderline to appear as a disorder for myself because I tend to have very unstable moods. My friends say I am rather unpredictable; I am a time ticking bomb that will explode any minute. I tend to do things on impulse. I was in a group call with some friends once and we were playing Minecraft. I remember how all of them had administrative permissions and were flying around the world having fun. I had yet to figure out how to get these administrative permissions and thus I was complaining about the unfairness. While complaining, I passive-aggressively threw blame to one particular friend of mine who often is the “mom” of the group and manages everything. I knew she had the answer to how I could get admin access. She warned me to stop blaming her for things I could not get. I tried to exploit others. Getting admin access was actually an easy google search, but instead, I impulsively kept blaming my friend until she hung-up on the group call and left the game. I knew how to push her patience, and without a thought, I crossed the line. I had this neurotic need for power. I knew to show power it was to demand what I wanted and not give up. My friend hung-up on the call and in a way that showed that I had the power to get her to leave the group call. I realized my wrongdoings after this situation. I mulled over my stupidity and occupied myself with self-torment for being so impulsive and not thinking through my friend’s feelings. 

Another time, I was in a group call with the same people. I hadn’t gotten the chance to join calls in a week due to being neck-deep in work and missed out on a number of inside jokes and memes. During the call, they would just talk and talk and then laugh about these inside jokes that no one has let me on into and I had to mute myself because I was fed up with being left out. I felt really mad that no one was letting me in on the conversation or at least including me in. I felt so excluded that I wanted to scream angrily at them for being unthoughtful towards me and leaving me out. I had the neurotic need for social recognition. I did not get any; instead, I got unstable friendships. It did not take long for us to have a consequential fight and then separate onto different paths. At the end of the day, a lot of the conversation between all of us was toxic and pointing figures at each other’s faults. Another symptom of borderline disorder is getting angry when expectations are not met. A very clear example of this is this one time when my food in the computer lab was thrown out. I was staying up late working on a group project with my friend in the computer lab. We both had food out, since we were working through dinner. I left in the morning to go shower, and in the morning the janitor comes in to clean up the lab. The janitor ends up throwing away my container of food due to the no food in the lab rule. When I came back, I went looking for my food, and my friend said the janitor may have taken it away. I asked my friend why her food was not taken away and she said it was because she packed away her food and hid it before the janitor came in. I threw my hands up in disbelief that my friend did not think twice to also put my food away along with hers and hid both of them. I could not believe that a simple step of also putting away my food too while putting away her own did not phase her. I was mad and annoyed and noted to myself that my friend is completely unreliable.

Then, the personality tests say I could have paranoia, narcissistic, antisocial, and dependent disorders too. My paranoia started with troublesome friendships. As a child, I rarely had friends in school. I was aware of the reasons why I did not have friends. It was all due to being different. Often, I was paranoid. I was paranoid about what people said about me. I wanted attention but was paranoid about what people would think if I gathered too much attention. There was a show and tell week at school, and I was scared of showing off too much. Thus I purposely messed up while performing. In second grade, math was my favorite subject and I would always finish multiplication quizzes first. However, I was paranoid at what my classmates would say if I always got up from my sit too quickly to turn in the test. I self-realized after that, that I grew to distrust and be wary of my surroundings. I cannot read hearts and minds, thus I am paranoid at what people are always thinking. I could never have enough pennies to pay for people’s thoughts. 

I’m constantly testing my friends by asking roundabout questions if their intentions of things are true and pure. Sometimes people have hidden motives. For example, when a new freshman in the club started to talk to me, I was suspicious of her. I am not the most approachable person in the club and I was wondering why she wanted to talk to me. I later found out she was also an architecture student, which made me even more paranoid. I was not sure if she was being friendly to me to get more laser-cut time or leftover architecture supplies from me. Another time when I got really paranoid is when a guy part of my China study abroad trip started to talk to me a lot. He would constantly message me hi and ask how I was or what I was doing. He knew I liked cats and often sent me pictures and memes of cats. One time, a group of us wanted to go to the club. I was not for a late night and opted out. The guy planned on going but ended up not. I got a message from the guy once everyone left, asking if I wanted to hang out with him and watch a movie. I was paranoid that he was going to make a move on me so I ignored him and went on with my life. I tend to move away from single guys because I never know if they are “thirsty” and want to get laid. 

This leads to my next disorder called narcissistic. Narcissistic is like a follow-up to my histrionic counterpart. There are some narcissistic aspects that I relate heavily to, while others do not. For example, I am somewhat self-centered. I have this sense of self-importance and putting myself first. I got personal admiration for myself. I want people to pay attention to me and focus on my success and the good things I have accomplished. The keyword here is through all aforementioned, I am making myself superior to the others. In a recent instance, I compare my grades to my two friends in the same class. Since I have a higher grade than them, I assert my dominance over the other two when we brainstorm for other homework problems and studies. This is because I have the highest grade; in relation means I am better at this subject than the other two.  My neurotic ambition causes me to fail shortly in the future. I overshot my understanding of the class materials for our test and made a few careless mistakes. 

Another part of narcissistic that is on point is the symptom to lie. I lie to myself and others a lot. I try to be as honest as possible, but many times I consider other people’s feelings (at least that’s what I convince myself I’m doing) and lie. A typical example of lying to my friends is when they ask for personal opinions on whether they are obsessing too much on a break-up or being too petty about an argument. However, the main aspect of the lying symptom is how I lie to myself. I have this self-idealization, the neurotic need for perfection. I try to make myself appear the way I want others to perceive me, all in good aspects. For instance, recently I had the impulse to dye my hair. I felt like it would make me different, mentally and physically. After dying my hair I fancied a wardrobe change. I felt like I need to dress up prettier to play the part. I bought a few party-like clothes and started to wear make-up when I go out. I made myself appear like a movie replica of Mean Girls. By dressing-up, I believed more people looked at me, thought about me, and approached me. 

Next, I have some parts of the antisocial disorder. I see this disorder as an equivalent to the borderline disorder. On top of the symptoms of antisocial disorder, I started to have a conflict of self-hatred. Specifically, I expressed Horney’s self-destructive actions and impulses. A part of my fake self-idealized persona, I started to go to parties with friends on the weekend. Yet, since I’m antisocial, I’m afraid to approach strangers and interact. To combat my fears, I would drink alcohol until I am tipsy or drunk. By getting drunk, my brain stopped thinking and processing fears and worries, and I became more captivated by strangers. I remember making pretty irresponsible decisions while drunk. Some irresponsible decisions are like staying up until 5 am, ignoring doing homework, wasting money to buy McDonald’s even though I was not hungry, and throwing up from overdrinking. 

The fourth disorder that I got a moderate rating for was the dependent disorder. I used to correlate to this disorder a ton. When I was a child, I used to cry when I lose games. I was dependent on others to know that I wanted all the glory of winning. Consequently, my childhood friend’s mother would tell her to lose on purpose so I could win. Being an only child, I was lonely a lot. When my family and I travel, I often felt bored and helpless because there was no entertainment for me. Back then, portable TVs and smartphones were still a luxury. Therefore, whenever I made a friend, I felt the need to drag them everywhere. I was dependent on their presence and wanted to spend every single moment together. 

After entering college, my dependency needs grew. I entered my first relationship and I was definitely very clingy. I had this fear that if I was not spending time with my boyfriend, he would leave me. Especially when he spent time with other girls, I was afraid and would cling even more to him.  The more I spent time with my boyfriend, the less time I spent with my friends back home. They grew less dependent on me and the same happened vice versa. When we grew apart, I acted out and threw tantrums because I thought they weren’t doing enough to keep in contact with me. I would also merciless self-accuse myself for not doing enough in keeping my friendships. My expectations of dating were all referenced from typical modern TV shows. My impression was that the guy would know what the girl wanted. I expected my boyfriend would know and understand my feelings and needs even without my speaking up about them. None of this was true, and our relationships got out of hand and toxic. Soon after, my boyfriend and I broke up. Shortly after the break-up, I had this neurotic need for a partner. I went out to find and start dating another guy. However, the relationship never sat well with me. One day, I had a realization that I had to grow out of my dependency on others. 

My two lowest disorders are Schizoid and Obsessive-Compulsive disorders. My personality does counter to the symptoms of these two orders. I get more anxious at social interactions, therefore am more antisocial than schizoid. Schizoids solely prefer to be alone; I’m more alone due to circumstances. I can easily express anger to others while schizoids do not. For obsessive-compulsive disorder, one thinks in a very black and white manner. I tend to be in more grey situations and don’t believe in solely one answer to problems. I believe there are many paths and solutions to dilemmas. Also, I understand there’s no perfectness in this world. Therefore, the personality test is right that I have a low relation to both these disorders. 

Horney ultimately wants us to have self-realization. To recognize that we should give up our idealized self-image. Through self-analysis, you would acquire the capability to be responsible for your emotional growth. In me, I had a self-analysis period when I was in China. China removed me from my toxic self-hatred and gave me an aerial view of all my problems. I realized I was too invested in self-hatred. I learned to grow independent. I was determined to become more self-confident and look less for other people’s approval and give myself more credit. I tried to minimize my need and thoughts to compare myself to others. Eventually, I’m trying to detach myself from society’s modern toxic cultural. 

Freud – Stories that Created Me

          I am only who I am today because of my past. If you change my past, you change who I am. But who exactly am I? There is this theory of psychoanalysis that Sigmund Freud founded that breaks down one’s personality. Freud claimed that human behavior is driven by unconscious motivations that are caused by past experiences like childhood drama, love, death, complex emotions, and sexuality. Some of these experiences are very difficult to remember because our minds like to suppress traumatic memories. I know that I have countless memories from when I was a child suppressed. I am not sure yet how all my past emotions and actions explain my personality. Therefore, to gain insight about myself I must analyze my past. With Freudian’s theory, I must dig dip deep into my own unconsciousness and try to uncover bits and pieces of me to put together for a complete “me, myself, and I”.

          First, Freud stated there are 5 stages of human development. After reading about these different stages, I have realized that there are times when I did not properly work out a crisis and I became fixated at that development stage. The first development stage is the oral stage. At this stage, the mouth is at the center focus. I believe there’s a part of me that’s been fixated at this stage. Babies do not have much control over what they do. As a baby, I was fed a lot. My parents kept feeding me multiple times a day. I remember in middle school I had an obsession with chewing gum. I did not chew gum because it made my breath smell fresh, but because my mouth could move. I can still remember that at times I will unconsciously start chewing gum very loudly. Sometimes I will even get obsessed with hearing a loud gum pop. These were all terrible habits to have, as I was disruptive to the people around me. When I got braces and retainers, however, the dentist advised against chewing gum, thus breaking my habit of chewing gum. After getting my braces off, I no longer had the urge to chew gum. However, I started to have a habit of snacking. Even if I have three meals a day, but I will often snack. I snack not because I am hungry, but because I like the feeling of munching and eating. I do not think this habit will ever be fixed because my dad loves to buy snacks, as he too has an eating habit, and in turn, there will always be snacks available in my household.

          The second stage is the anal stage. This stage is related to toilet training. According to Freud, if your toilet training was not too successful, then the repercussion is a messy person. This means that during potty training your parents did not encourage or praise you when you peed and pooped successfully. I do not like to think I am a messy person, but unfortunately, there are times when I get really disorganized. I think this is because I am not good at regularly doing a number 2. I am also really bad at going to the bathroom often. I forget to drink water and I am always sitting, thus I barely get the urge to use the bathroom regularly. In these terms, my room, desk, and computer are usually messy. I like to use any table surface available to put things. I am not good at putting things back in their place in a drawer. I am not too good at planning a month ahead, but usually, I can plan my day out. Hence, Freud’s theory about the anal stage is accurate. My bowel movements are related to my sloppiness in life.

          The third stage is the phallic stage. Freud wrote that children between the ages of 3-6 crave closeness from their parents. Children start to develop sexual pleasures, and an approach they take to fix their needs is by sleeping with their parents. I definitely did this as a kid. However, my parents sleep in separate beds and rooms. My mom has a larger bed, so I ended up sleeping with her a lot. I think I preferred my mom as opposed to my dad. Back then, my mom would often scum to buy me things compared to my dad. Due to this, I disagree with Freud’s theory about an Oedipus Complex. I never felt like I had penis envy nor dislike towards my mom or desire for my dad. I never tried urinated standing up. In China, it’s common to squat while urinating and I do like that method. During this stage, I’ve never had a preference on which gender I preferred to hang out with. I think my neighborhood was only filled with girls my age, thus I hung out with girls a lot more than boys. The boys were either a few years older or younger than me. I remember that I hated wearing jeans as a child. I preferred to wear the skirt and dress version of the school uniform. Even when I am not wearing uniforms, I would wear skirts or dresses.

Next is the fourth stage, which is the latency stage. I think Freud would believe this is one of the hardest stages for me to overcome. During this stage, we develop feelings of guilt, shame, and morality. For this particular stage, the only thing that comes to mind is how I learn about morals in catholic school. I have many memories of tying religion and ethics together. While I was 6-12, middle school, I have many experiences with Freud’s mental structures. The ID has a lot of impulse desires. Even to this day, I suffer from impulse decision making and consequences. When I was a child, I wanted attention. From the phallic stage, I got much of my parents’ love and attention. Especially since I was an only child, my need to be surrounded by people grew. Yet, at a private catholic school, an Asian child is weird and different. Thus, I was a loner growing up. But as a child I never gave up for attention, therefore I became a class clown. I would impulsively bombard other friend groups and playtime. During this age, I remember I had a lot of crushes. Nothing became of them, but I wanted to friend them and had dreams about them. During this stage, I think I mostly had female friends that were my support network. I never had any clear idea of what I wanted to do as a career during this stage. I knew which career paths I never wanted to go into.

          Over time, I developed a superego. I realized as much as I wanted attention, I cannot always hog people’s time. Watching my parents, I slowly learn how there are times when people want to be left alone. My conscious formed an “ego”. This ego tries to keep a balance between my ID and superego needs. Freud would argue I have an overriding superego. I aim to please a lot. Like I have said, I like to be surrounded by people. Thus, I like to please people to like me. I always have trouble doing that. However, I still try my best. My parents often encourage me to befriend everyone. At times there will be two sides of people I want to befriend and civil with. Sometimes, one side will talk trash about the other side, and my ID and ego want to step in and shut the people down, but my superego persists on. I have never been self-conscience about my weight or appearance, but freshman year my mom called and told me my cheeks were fat on a recently uploaded picture on Facebook and I immediately became self-conscience and stopping eating regularly after that. I was annoyed at my mom for saying something rude like that, but my ego kept me from speaking out of line with my parents. Growing up Asian, I know there’s a stereotype of us needing to be the best of the best, but that was not possible for me. For a long time, even now, I am conscious of my grades and my intelligence. I am not smart, so I try to make it up by either waiting for someone else to hint the answer or pretending I can follow along.

          The last stage of development is the genital stage. Freud stated that the ID will reawaken during adolescent. This time, sexual desires will project outward towards outsiders. According to Freud, if you are heterosexual, you are healthy. If you identify as a homosexual, then you’re stuck in a genital fixation. I believe this currently puts me in a fixation. While I do not identify as a homosexual, I do believe that I can find love from any gender. Most of my flirting started in college. I only began to sexually desire a significant other once I came to college. It is also at college when I stopped caring about which gender I’ll end up with; I like to keep an opened mind. This means Freud’s theory about fixations is right. I haven’t gotten over my fixation of eating, thus my oral stage is not complete. I cannot reach full sexual maturity and be mental health with this chewing habit.

          I did have times when I suffered from loss of sleep and productivity due to close relationship issues. Many times I would take late night walks around campus because I could not relax my mind and sleep. Other times, issues persisted so much that I started to lose interest in clubs and extracurricular activities. During my third year, my (ex) best friend and I had such a huge dispute that I barely left my room or associate with anyone for a few weeks. I remember I was affected so much that even when I dragged myself to a club meeting one week, I had to walk out because I felt like crying. In the end, I took the opportunity to study abroad the next semester in China to escape the confines of America itself. 

          Another revolutionary theory of Freud’s is his viewpoint about dreams. Freud believed that dreams are the “the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind” (Freud). Part of the dream analysis is how you sleep. How your physical sleep affects the dream you will have. I, for example, sometimes will fall asleep with my arms above my head. When this happens I remember in my dreams my arms will always feel paralyzed or locked behind myself. This is because in reality, my arms have fallen asleep and the blood cannot easily circulate through. Another physical thing that has happened to me is, falling asleep with my blankets above my head. When I do this, I remember in my dreams it is hard to breathe. Sometimes my dreams will take place underwater and I’ll feel like I am drowning.

          Freud said dreams come from two mental sources: recent memories and childhood memories. Sometimes I’ll have dreams that involve people from elementary school. In these dreams, there’ll be events that happen that even I forget about. Yet, when I wake up, I’ll only vaguely remember the story, none of the details. I will also barely remember who is in the dreams; I will only know it was people from the middle or so on. An example of recent memories affecting my dreams that I can think of is me bleeding through the sheets. Once during my period, I bled through the pad onto the sheets. Ever since then, whenever I am on my period, my dreams will often remind me and then wake me up in the middle night to check that I didn’t bleed through my pad. Sometimes my dreams will re-remember an event that occurred. For example, I hosted a big event for one of my clubs last year. The planning of the event took a lot of mental energy. I remember before the event I had a dream where the event went perfectly. Everyone listened to me, and this calmed me. After the event happened, my dream was chaotic. The event was a disaster and the only person to blame was me. Between the two dreams, my reality of this event is distorted and remembered wrong. When something significant happens, like the day I was robbed, I will a bad dream. Being robbed scared me pretty hard that my mind created its own dream to scare myself even more at night.

          On the topic of mental energy, Freud believed humans have a limited amount of energy. This limited energy created human behavior. Human behavior exists to release one’s tension. Freud identified two impulses that help human behavior reduce tension. The first impulse is a sexual impulse. Within this impulse is the libido. The libido is responsible for getting all your basic needs. The ID unconsciously will use its primal energy to get me what I want. As an only child, whatever my parents gave me was all for me. I used to take this for granted. Unconsciously, I got used to having my way. When hanging out with friends, I would argue for my way, my viewpoint, and for everyone to follow me. My comfortableness from being an only child created a selfish, self-center adolescent. Through time, my conscious and ego helped put me in place. Many of my friends recognize I am an only child through my behaviors. I also try my best to keep my ID in check.

          The second impulse is the aggressive impulse. Aggressive impulse generally involves death-provoking activities. For example, substance abuse is an aggressive impulse. In my sophomore year, I was obsessed with a coffee drink. Architecture takes its toll, thus three days a week my friend and I would sneak out of the studio and take a trip to the DCC café for a cup of coffee. I became so addicted and used to caffeine by the end of the semester that I couldn’t live a day without it. When I went back home for a break, I went to the dentist. There I found out I got 2 more cavities, and 1 more developing. My dentist gave me a rundown of why. It was because I was sipping on coffee for hours a day that my mouth never resumed its normal ph level and potential to fight against cavities naturally. Thus, during break and the following semester, I swore off caffeine unless absolutely necessary. I never want to be dependent on caffeine again, and I most certainly do not want any more cavities. Another aggressive impulse I have is drinking alcohol. While do not think I am really bad, but whenever I hang out with a certain group of friends, we will always end up drinking. Our friendships never started off with alcohol, but once we started drinking, there was no turning back. When we are drunk we will go off on adventures (not drunk driving, don’t worry). Being drunk together keeps us on our toes and entertained. I am not sure there are many memories anymore that we all share where we are sober.

          Freudian levels of Mental Awareness are the key to understanding human behavior. Freud distinguished three different levels of mental awareness; the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious. Conscious is the easy explainable subject of knowing what you’re always doing in everyday life. All my decisions, while sober of course, are made consciously. I think before I tell someone yes or reply to a message. The preconscious is the easily remembered portion of the unconscious. This includes me remembering what I wrote in this paper last night along with what I ate for dinner. It is the unconscious metal portion that Freud is most interested in. He believed that if you can understand the memories hidden away in the unconscious, then you can explain what you do sometimes. This makes sense. For example, I will always unconsciously look at my surroundings whenever I enter a new room and area. Thinking back on it, this is because since I was little, my family would take trips to Hong Kong and my parents will always repetitively prepare me on what to do if I get lost. They would contently point out safe areas, important people to ask for help, and anything useful for gathering attention. I will always still remember the one bus that will always take me back to my grandparents’ apartment in Hong Kong because it’s been ingrained into me. I think another explainable, unexplainable behavior I show is the behavior of being an only child. Since unconsciously I have always owned whatever my parents give me, I will always treat things I have as my own. I have this certain “mine” attitude that all other only children will share. Many of my friends will point out that they have inklings I am an only child due to how I act.

          Freud mentioned the process of investing libidinal energy is called cathexis. If someone creates too much cathexis, a person can experience Neurosis. I believe whenever I go home for a break after a semester in college I experience Neurosis. At school, I spend a lot of time in libido. I talk to people, hang out with friends, and make new ones. A lot of this socialness is spoken in English. At home, I typically speak Cantonese to my parents. I remember after freshman year I got into the car back home and the whole ride I could not wrap my mind around speaking Cantonese. I could see listen and understand what my parents said, but I had a brain freeze and could only reply in English to them. I had a moment of neurosis, a moment of loss of my mother tongue. A similar thing happened when I went to China for about five months to study abroad. Two years ago, I came back to campus and I knew my English level dropped significantly. Many easy vocabulary words could not come easily to mind because of how long I haven’t heard or spoken English.

          As mentioned above, human behavior exists for tension reduce. It reduces feelings of anxiety. Freud has a list of defense mechanisms that help reduce his types of anxiety. Some of these defense mechanisms can be helpful or harmful; as long as it reduces anxiety it is fine. The three types of anxiety are reality, neurotic, and moral. The types of defense mechanisms are repression, denial, intellectualization, projection, rationalization, displacement, and regression.

          A lot of my primary and middle school memories are repressed. There were many days when I went home from school feeling sad and lonely. I was constantly going through reality and moral anxiety. The reality anxiety is fear of getting more bullied by other kids for being, eating, and speaking differently. The moral anxiety was being ashamed of being and looking different than others. I felt like being Asian American was so unpopular and against the norms. My tactic growing up was to repress those memories and run away. On top of that, I remember the days before high school, my family and I would always be yelling. There was never a day when we didn’t scream or shout at each other. I have tried to repress the days of when I would be sacked for being out of line. There were many things in my childhood I have repressed and try to never think about again.

          When I entered high school, I finally found groups of accepting friends. They were no bullies and fun. However, the past will always come back to haunt me. I will still have the anxiety of being different. Thus, I started to project my differentness onto others. There are jokes, and there are racist jokes. I rationalized that I am not racist if the race I am making fun of my own race. My defense mechanisms were to project these racist jokes onto others, and then rationalize to them that I had the right to say them. Halfway through high school, we got a new principal. I once met him and since he was two head taller than me, the whole time I felt like he was looking down on me and did not like me. After freshman year, I went back to high school to visit teachers and friends and I bypassed the principle in the hallway. He saw me, but I do not remember him saying hi to me. This made me definitely think he did not like me. Four years later, in memory of him, I still do not believe he likes me… or even knows who I am.

          For regression, old habits will come back into place. For example, shaking my legs or cracking my knuckles. If a piece of gum is in my mouth and I get anxious, I’ll revert to my old habit and chew really loudly and rudely. Sometimes on a project, I will get anxious over the details. I might obsess over the line weight or layout of the paper. This is pretty bad when working with a partner and on a deadline.

          An example of intellectualization mechanism in my life is when my grandfather passed away. I bugged my parents to tell me the reason he was admitted to the hospital in the first place. I wanted to know what my grandfather was diagnosed with and how he can get better. I didn’t want to think about the chance of him dying (even though he ended up dying).

          An example of a denial defense mechanism is definitely my grades. Often when I get a bad grade I’ll immediately think there’s an error. Even when the teacher goes over all the answers, I will still look for excuses as to how my grade was so low. In college, architecture studio grades are reliant on your semester-long project and final presentation. Sometimes when my grades come back now, I blame the critics for not fully understanding my project or the professor for not helping me improve and progress my project further. Another time I have used denial is during middle school. As mention above, I would come home sad every day. I was pretty hopeless back then, and going to a catholic school did not help with regaining hope. When I went back to school, during pray or mass I would vehemently deny the existence of God. How can I have such a miserable life if God was watching over me and loved me? I also projected a lot of anger towards God. I displaced a lot of aggression towards God. In reality, the problem was me.

          Another example of me trying to use rationalization as a defense mechanism is the decision to delete a lot of emails from my past. Before instant messaging existed, “friends” and I would group email each other. All of these emails existed and sat in my inbox for a long time. One day, a few years later, I open to the inbox and open the emails to read them. Lots of conversations were sad to read. One day I made the decision to delete all the emails. They gave me too much anxiety. Within the emails, there was too much anxiety about my past –how I never felt accepted. When rereading the emails I feel trapped in the past. So I told myself to delete them all. One day, all the emails were gone from my inbox. And the next time I felt like reading the emails again… there were none.

          A lot of my defense mechanisms rely on repression and denial. Sometimes I would project and displace my anger onto other people; other times I would rationalize the situation to make myself feel better. I barely use intellectualization or regression to alleviate my anxiety issues. Through this paper, I have to gain more insight into myself and personality. Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of the human emphasizes so much on the developmental stages and internal conflicts one might have while growing up. It has given me insight into many of my repressed memories and unconscious childhood decisions I made in the past. There will always be times when I will feel depressed or anxious. There even might be unresolved conflicts throughout my life, but I’ll always have my ego to balance myself out and keep me in check.