Parents leave me confused

[Stratocaster]

To be honest I've been bottling this up inside for years so please excuse me if this is a bit long.

First, about me:

I am 19. I am a freshmen in a good college. I am very happy with my life, but after a conversation with a parent (mom) I think I need to ask for some advice.

However, with a lot of people my age (i'm sure), I am still not quite convinced that I don't have something in the way of a mental disorder.

After looking up symptoms for the past few months it would seem that I have something along the lines of a mild narcissistic personality disorder corabined with slow cognative tempo (possibly ADD). Don't get me wrong, I am a smart person, but I am often the last one to get a joke =).

I believe the ADD gave me social anxiety disorder. Throughout high school I know that I struggled with SAD, (not knowing I had it). This gave me a very low self esteem, and while I have always been a very happy person, I never thought that my issues might have come from the way I have interacted with my parents my whole life.

I have never been good at making frienRAB. I have many, but I think people who like me wish that I was more outgoing. My best frienRAB accept me for who I am, but I get the feeling that the key to all my social failures could be in what my mother said: "I am not compassionate and I make her feel like I don't want to be around them" This is coming from her after spending three weeks of spring break with me. Obviously we have been around each other too much, but this is something she hinted at before.

The truth is, I am a compassionate person, but I am reserved in a way that comes off as unconfident. Even though I have pushed through my period of low-confidence, my personality is still either quiet or loud and self-centered. As I have gotten older, I have become much calmer and more in-between these two extemes, but around my parents I guess the loud and self centered side still shows.

College has helped me socially. I finally pulled together enough charm together to succesfully get the nraber of and date a pretty girl for a few weeks. I say that its a step in the right direction for me.

But after my argument with my mom, I feel like this all makes sense. I project a selfish, critical person when I am around my parents. I project a different image around people my age that is equally bad. (Self centered, anti-social/snobbish)

Part of the reason I have always take advice from my mom is because she was always the my "leader" parent. I don't feel like I have had a real father figure in my life. I have issues with my dad that I am not going to get into. Moral of the story: I feel like my mom is a better person to get life advice from. (My dad is too childish. I feel like the adult when I'm around him)


So my mom calls me "Cold and distant" which is to say I am not outgoing. But honestly, how do I change this? Why would I change this/do I even want to change who I am? The immediate answer is , No. And it could also very well be that my mom's hyper-criticality of me is part of my problem too. I feel that she probably was so critical of me growing up that I lacked self-esteem. Now we are just both critical of each other and we drive each other crazy!

All in all, I don't have any major problems and I won't lose sleep. I just wonder if I should stop taking my parents' advice now or if I should spend time and energy to try and be a better person. I know its that time in my life where I need to make my own decisions. One of my resolutions for the year is to stop seeking approval from others.By trying to change my personality for other people however, I find myself in an awkward position.

Any advice as to where I should go from here would be great! Thanks for reading!

 

[writeleft]

This is a perfect time for some introspection. I am glad to see you are wise enough to ask for, and respect your mother's worRAB of wisdom. After all, she is the one person in this world with your back.

At the same time, you are at the time in your life that you are naturally going to move on, the college transition is the perfect place to ease from one "you" to the next phase of "you". Since life is like the seasons, you move though.

This is where you get to shed the "skin" that your parents molded you in, taking with it those things that you deem positive, helpful and worthy of use in your lifetime.

Here too, you get to choose what parental errors you want to leave behind, after all they are "theirs" not yours anyway. Your parental errors are yet to be made, but you certainly do not have to accept theirs!

As you can see, it is you who is under the transformation, just like the metamorphosis.

I definitely agree that the environment in which you grew up can play a huge role in your adulthood. Again, a choice that has to be made by you. You can choose to leave that which was not good, and to include those things you found to be missing. It is all about you. The ago old story.

This is where you choices start to become important. You become the person you want to be by your choices, which is a wonderful place in life to be! I wish you the best...

 

[Benit]

I have ADD (more like SCT, because there's no hyperactive element) and probably mild Asperger's as well. There is--and will always be--a great stigma about mental disorders, so you don't have to tell anyone what you may have if you don't want the extra hassle and criticism from people who don't know what it's like. Diagnosis is necessary if you want treatment from a so-called professional, otherwise if you spend some time learning about the disorder and you see it in yourself beyond reasonable doubt, then self-diagnosis can be a potentially helpful tool.

About changing your personality to please other people and be a part of the crowd, some people think this is the same thing as "maturity." Don't make that mistake, even if it means you won't have a large network of frienRAB. For me, in large part due to some neurological differences I've always had, trying to "measure up" led to extreme feelings of inferiority which then led me to drug and alcohol abuse.