I had a period of over a year during which I was fixated with applying a diagnosis to myself. It was a desperate search for an easy explanation and a clear solution. Finding an explanation would, in itself, relieve much of the shame, guilt, insecurity and confusion that comes with a nebulous complex like mine. A diagnosis would allow for a compartmentalization of my problems, separating them from my 'self'. From an aberrant individual, I'd become a normal individual who happens to have a "problem".

In the past several months, however, I think my search was on hiatus. My current therapist influenced me in this, suggesting that I carefully study the nuances and subtleties of my problems rather than affix a label to them. It seemed like a good idea. I've been digging concertedly since September, making steady progress at a gradual deconstruction of my entire complex. My method had been to start with a single symptom, something easy to see, and follow the course of causation until I came to a wall. I've come to a number of conclusions, which I'll summarize at some point in the future.

However there's one glaring black box at the center of everything, something which may need a different approach to understanding. Simply put, it's the extreme power of the emotions which drive my complex. What I've labeled "anxiety" out of convenience is better described as extremely acute insecurity. It's chronic, only vaguely correlated to external conditions. I think it may be based, simply, on the transplanting of a series of thoughts, feelings and behaviors into a situation where they don't belong. In that sense, it sounds very much like post-traumatic stress disorder. In response to a "trauma", you take mundane situations to be matters of life or death. Maybe I'm oversimplifying.

I've used words like diffidence, anxiety and insecurity. They're very crude approximations to the my real feelings however. It isn't mundane, commonplace feelings which make every moment of my life feel like agony. I feel endangered. It feels like my very physical/psychological integrity is under constant and sustained threat. I don't rationally analyze the risk in anything. I just feel like I'm walking the razor's edge every second. I don't know what the threat even is exactly, which makes it that much scarier. Few things in life are able to inspire that level of dread. The powerful feelings I experience have few correlates in my own normal emotional functioning. They're far removed from the designations which I normally apply to them. I desire approval not because I care about approval intrinsically. It's simply a way to reassure myself and suspend the powerful piercing negative emotions which are constitutively active.

I dislike labels in psychology. They're confining. It feels like I become defined by them. They have the potential to become like self-fulfilling prophecies. I act out the diagnosis, maybe in an effort to make it applicable. There's a depressing fatalism to labels as well. But in fact, if I am afflicted by something which could be classed as a specific disorder, it doesn't matter whether I diagnose myself. It makes no difference if I internalize the label or not. The original problem remains unchanged, unaffected. The word "diagnosis" itself carries a connotation of fatalism and absoluteness. Forget that. Don't be quick to diagnose, but if the description fits, in a meaningful way, then you can use it to help you understand. Understanding is half the battle.

After that long preamble, I'll move on to the punchline. A quick look at Wikipedia suggests that my core issue may correspond to complex post-traumatic stress disorder. The feelings that I feel are certainly not normal, after all, and I'm well aware of this. They have to come from somewhere, from some thing.

The following are the symptoms as seen on Wikipedia:

Difficulties regulating emotions, including symptoms such as persistent sadness, suicidal thoughts, explosive anger, or covert anger, which is characteristic of passive-aggressive behavior

My emotions tend to be extremely inhibited. Covert anger is a major problem, as occasional explosive anger.

Variations in consciousness, such as forgetting traumatic events, reliving traumatic events, or having episodes of dissociation (during which one feels detached from one's mental processes or body)

I feel as though I modify my memories, my past, in some way. I rarely think about it directly. I've mostly dissociated myself from my past, and my former self. I don't feel I'm the same person. I don't feel there's consistency, stability, or an unbroken narrative to my identity. I very rarely relive traumatic events. I repress them, I think, instead facing them, which makes things worse. It makes it easier to see them irrationally and non-analytically.

Changes in self-perception, such as a sense of helplessness, shame, guilt, stigma, and a sense of being completely different from other human beings

Absolutely dead on. These feelings haunt me for most of my waking hours. Very pervasive.

Varied changes in the perception of the perpetrator, such as attributing total power to the perpetrator or becoming preoccupied with the relationship to the perpetrator, including a preoccupation with revenge

Yes. Most of the time I attribute total power to the perpetrator. That's when I feel the above feelings. Sometimes I do feel great indignation and indulge in revenge fantasies.

Alterations in relations with others, including isolation, distrust, or a repeated search for a rescuer

Isolation, check. Distrust, check. Search for a rescuer, always. I search for a rescuer in the form of a friend, and especially in the form of a girlfriend. For some reason, having a SO would be very reassuring. It would allow me to relax, if I knew that somebody liked me.

Loss of, or changes in, one's system of meanings, which may include a loss of sustaining faith or a sense of hopelessness and despair

Hmm, tough one. My system of meanings is very skewed. In general I always have some kind of hope... is it hope, exactly? Sustaining faith might be a better word. What sustains me is a belief that my effort, struggle, journey will bear fruit. Maybe.