/hikki/ - NEET / Advice

I cannot really call myself a hikikomori because I'm in college, but I dropped out of two courses already and I've been (poorly) autopiloting everything regarding education and IRL socializing for the last 7 years.

I think the root of my current condition is in the fact that I feel no connection with the culture of my city and my family, everything from work to entertainment feels extremely alienating or vapid, it's like whatever career I pick will just end with me feeling miserable and contributing to some kind of industry or group of people that I despise. Creating connections in real life is hard for me because I myself feel uninteresting to other people but other people here seem to be even more uninteresting to me. As for mental illnesses, I have some level of diagnosed autism, and I had symptoms through my life that were similar to schizotypal and avoidant disorder along with recurrent anxiety, but I didn't bother to get a diagnosis for those because it seems a bit useless.
Sometimes people say I should get therapy to try to deal with those things but opening up is really hard to me, I feel like all of my mental problems will be silly to whatever therapist I pick so I don't even want to think about opening up to someone that would think of me as some kind of weird crybaby and only listens to me because they are getting paid, I tried it before and it was not a good feeling.

>>8807
Thinking about it again, I may have been autopiloting for way longer than just 7 years. I mostly only performed okay at school because of pressure but I all my dream careers were extremely far fetched or poorly paid.

I'm not a hikki anymore since I started college (again) but even then I'm a loner on campus.

I was always a bit reclusive and very shy and this society isn't especially welcoming for people like that. So you get stuck in that corner and that's your whole life. The social skills and speaking got worse as I became more and more of a loner.

Society is basically dead now anyway. Every interaction is so impersonal that unless you already have friends or go out of your way to insert yourself into people's lives, you will just end up alone and nobody will notice. Its very easy to end up a hikki.

In old movies, you'll see people talk on street corners or interact with waiters and stuff. Do people do that anymore? No. We use electronic service machines, social media, and order stuff online. So how do people not turn into hikkis? If you're reclusive, mentally ill, shy, or odd you will end up hikki adjacent because your connection to the social world is already weak.

1. I'm autistic and have a brain injury, both diagnosed. The demon psych professionals put me on every pill they could as a child, if it was given to children in the 2000s I was on it. They also put me in solitary confinement and severely traumatized me. My self-isolating behaviors are all rooted in responses to my childhood environment being overwhelming and then recoiling from the education/prison systems attempts at forcefully reintegrating me instead of just letting me hang out in a park and read books or something. Children aren't meant to be locked in sterile rooms where they sit still and listen for 8 hours, not just autists like us.
I digress, I feel safe and can think when I'm alone. I mask in most social situations and it builds stress all through my body when I have to do it. There are a few 10+ years online friends I have where I don't have to mask and I really enjoy their company. I have PTSD, depression, anxiety, ahedonia, insomnia, and misophonia. Everything but the misophonia and the ahedonia are "officially" diagnosed but I know myself well enough to apply the other two at this point.
2. I've been hikki or hikki adjacent since I was a child. These past few years I've really tried my absolute best to get out of it recently. Somethings are better others are the same, I think my sleep is worse than its ever been. I went out with my cousins for new years which was really nice yesterday.

Nice datamining thread. I'm not a hikki anymore, but there were definitely 6 month plus stretches of time where I did not go outside during my on again/off again NEETing days from 2015-2023. Hikkis tend to be pissy when it you let it be known you don't number among them anymore. It's the same kind of reaction you'd get from admitting you don't walk the the path of the wizard anymore. Perhaps it's an unpleasant reminder that their own days are numbered.

I had a bad (to me) childhood that I suspect caused CPTSD (self-diagnosed). I've been formally diagnosed with Avoidant Personality Disorder and Major Depressive Disorder. Basically I grew up poor and had a mental breakdown over performing academically and never recovered.

Hikki lifestyle ain't bad when it's someone else paying for it. The early years are sweet notwithstanding the spell of anhedonia I had. I think having been a hikki for a few years is enough that you will carry that experience with you the rest of your life. I don't think working a dead-end job to survive is that different in the grand scheme of things in terms of who you are as a person.

1. I have a schizo-spectrum disorder, one symptom is that being around people causes me to lose grip of the world and drains all my mental energy, another is anhedonia, so no motivation. I was also raised with the intention of making me helpless.

2. Several years, briefly interrupted by some attempts that didn't work out. I would be ok with hikikomoriism if I could live alone, but living with my family removes too much agency and privacy.
A cure might require magical intervention or an apocalypse scenario, nevertheless I have hope that these things are possible. I also might be able to make myself money online somehow (I am beginning to write a blog, which can't make money on it's own but maybe it could lead into something). I would like for one of these three things to happen soon, before I end up on the bad route.