The Neurotic's Guide To Living

I am a neurotic and it has been a huge problem in my life, causing both me, and others who have dealt with me a fair amount of pain and suffering. What is a neurotic? I constantly and unconsciously do things and invent scenarios, both in my head and in real life, that creates conflict in my life with other people where the result is that either them, or I, (or both), experience suffering from these chain of events. Part of the illness is to actually believe it’s the other person causing the problem when in fact it’s me creating the drama to begin with. Most neurotic’s will reject that this applies to them and actually believe that they don’t do stuff like that. They do, know lots of people who do.  I think I’m getting better, because after years of therapy, I’m beginning to see that it’s me: I’ve created my own suffering. I have actual masochistic tendencies to create suffering in my own life. Yes, I create problems first in my mind and then in real life and the pay off is that I can suffer. I created things in order to suffer. It’s called psychic masochism.  “I create suffering in my life.”I know, sounds weird. Sounds like I am cray cray. Who would knowingly want to create suffering in their life? No one. That’s because I don’t do it consciously. I have no idea it’s happening at the time. Even when I am doing it, I’m not even or only half aware that I am doing it. In time, or with the proper therapy, I figure it out and am able to manage it but there was a time in the not so distant past that I was controlled by this illness and once the damage was already created I was too far in to find a way to stop it or admit that I was wrong. Admitting fault is the hardest thing for a neurotic – it shatters our whole understanding of the reality we think we created and that so-called reality is tough enough as it is. If you think that this is my problem alone, it is actually extremely common and most of us (unknowingly) do it.