
New Insights into Hikikomori – People Who Withdraw from Society for Years on End - DanBC
https://digest.bps.org.uk/2019/05/22/new-insights-into-hikikomori-people-who-withdraw-from-society-for-months-or-years-on-end/
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paviknada
I was a Hikikomori (In North American) for 1 year. These bits from the article
really resonate with me “I am anxious about the possibility of meeting people
that I know” and “These anxieties may be related to a sense of humiliation,
which suggests that they are afraid of being seen in their current situation".
Before becoming a Hikikomori I had failed out of University and felt
embarrassed to leave my room, also felt embarrassed at my physical appearance.
Looking back at it, I wasted a year of my life doing nothing but getting high,
and consuming entertainment. Great news though now I work 40 hours a week and
waste my time getting high and consuming entertainment only during the
evenings.

~~~
bjs250
The joys of capitalism.

I jest, though. While it probably feels the same on paper, your mental health
is (probably) much better now, I would assume.

------
therp43
Is there really anything to gain from contact with society? Most people run
some sort of scam.

I ghosted a few years ago after bad divorce, and it was very good decision.

~~~
trevyn
I’ve also noticed the perspective that a majority people seem to “have an
angle”, whether that’s an outright financial scam, emotional manipulation,
some sort of hustle, wanting to monetize your brain by employing you, or
whatever. Interested to hear other people’s observations related to this.

~~~
raducu
Not to forget they want to fuck you if you're a woman. But there are people
who genuinely also want friends, but they are rare as you age.

~~~
in_hindsight
Also people who just want to genuinely have fun in this life - they are a
treasure

------
vfinn
Hikitomoris often have low status. They aren't respected in the eyes of their
peers, because they lack either a job, skills/education, a spouse, or looks.
So when they talk with their peers, they feel inferior, and are often reminded
about their position. That's why they rather step aside. Some of them are
unwilling to integrate with the ill values the society has, and that paralyzes
them, since they don't have where to go. Mental issues are related to this
matter, at least partly caused by the system, and maybe childhood experiences,
traumas, etc. The longer they stay isolated, the more they fall behind, and
the harder it gets for them to go out and compete.

------
bashwizard
I felt probably like a Hikikomori when I moved to the other side of the
country for my now ex and worked remote for two years. I basically never left
the house except for walking the dog and doing grocery shopping. I had no
friends and no real social life except when my ex and I visited her friends
and family or if I flew back to my hometown.

Even as an introvert I felt fucking miserable for the entire time. I enjoy
solitude but that shit wasn't it, it was isolation.

~~~
bjs250
This is my fear of working remote. Seems to come up relatively often in
threads that discuss remote work -- needing to force oneself to leave the
house (which is also the workplace)

~~~
in_hindsight
Working from home when remote seems like the most dangerous idea if your work
does not require human interaction (live meetings etc)

------
MistahKoala
"But one local demographic variable did stand out as being protective"

What does 'protective' mean in this context? I wondered if it was somehow a
typo of 'predictive', but that's a bit of a leap for a typo.

~~~
nyolfen
you see it in medical literature; i believe it just means what it sounds like,
ie that living in the environment they describe makes one statistically less
likely to be a hiki

------
daodedickinson
>But if these anxieties are keeping people inside their homes, what’s
prompting them to retreat there in the first place? The survey also revealed
that hikikomori are more likely to have dropped out of high school or
university. Perhaps finding ways to keep young people in education may, then,
reduce the risk.

Holy God no! I had excellent grades and extracurriculars but in high school
there were months I would cry every day in class or even cut my wrists in
class to relieve social pain by replacing it with the more endurable physical
pain. A few angelic classmates tried to help but teachers did not, although I
learned after the fact that they talked about me a lot in the faculty lounge
where I was called "Boo Radley". One doctor at the high school said I was
autistic so my parents gave me to the local university's psychology department
and paid a bunch of money so every week I had an hour appointment each week
one on one with the dean of the department. It was maybe worse than nothing. I
never had any idea what to say and he had no idea what to ask and he would
tell my parents that I wouldn't talk (when it was more that I didn't have the
ability to skill or something to - he would ask queations that I could totally
understand were normal for normal people but as for me answering them - I
wouldn't know how to even begin because usually either they didn't prompt a
verbal reaction in my consciousness, or it would prompt the beginning of an
potentially-endlessly complicated chain reaction that would take hours and
hours of me forming and conducting a commission investigation in my jead) and,
as far as diagnosing me, one prof gave me an IQ test and called me a genius
and they said that once I got to grad school I would fit in. The professors
told my parents I wasn't autistic, and that's all my parents heard. The
professors diagnosed me with "Pervasive Developmental Disorder", which was
later replaced with "Autism Spectrum Disorder".

Anyway, I got into my first choice school, and I got accepted by all of them
except the ones that have interviews to keep people like me out, but I was
afraid of debt so I went to my last choice school because I got a full ride
for academics. I was still extremely depressed but felt better overall than
high school, although I attempted suicide at least once in high school and
once i college. I missed two questions on the GRE and got into the #1 ranked
program for my major. I was leaning on not going to grad school because it
seemed insane to borrow $60K a year for three years but my parents wanted me
to go and said they would pay for the first semester and my godparents talked
about how they met in grad school and I thought about how the psychologists
said I might not fit in until grad school.

So, I went, but I was still the most awkward person by far. I couldn't get any
mentorship from my mentor anymore than I could connect with that psychology
dean. The final straw was this irrelevant-to-our-major class we were all
required to take, one of those ones where they get a not-a-professor maybe as
desperate as I am, and one where you have to write papers. This guy was a
Marxist homilist, just about literally. He would start each class reading from
the original Marx (never Zizek, Bookchin, Foucault, Butler, no not for him).
Guy would tweet about how Dungeons and Dragons had a dangerously inaccurate
portayal of agriculture. I shit you not. Anyway, there was an essay prompt
that really inspired me, and I wrote what I thought was the best writing of my
life. I worried if the teacher would like it and prepared to really try to
learn from the feedback. The next day, the teacher told us he wasn't going to
read any of the papers and as long as he got an email from us with a document
attached, we would get an A.

I switched to computer science where the professors openly hated their lives
and had absolutely no flame of earnest passion to pass on. Students would
openly cheat and I was the only one who would complain. Profs would tell us
they were being forced to pass incompetent undergraduates to maintain revenue.
The #1 student in my year was an audacious sociopath who loudly bragged about
hacking university systems and businesses for money, with no shame or hint of
ethics or philosophy. I was #2 and #3 was a girl that really wanted to be a
math major and was leaning back and forth. Well, I guess one week she decided
it was going to be math and blew off studying for an exam. As the professor
roams the room during the exam, he looks at her paper and panics, realizing he
could lose his job because she's the 1 female out of the 3 in the 80 person
class that is holding up the female average and he's already under
investigation for gender bias. So he just starts telling her the answers and
trying to get her to cheat on a test she doesn't care about. I lost the last
of my hope in the utility of universities and made to leave. They offered me a
teaching position if I finished, as if that was an enticement. Somehow Google
got my phone number and wanted to interview me but I couldn't work there in
good conscience. Out of all the cs jobs I applied for, I finally got through
an interview, and I was offered $500 to work the entire summer as an
internship. The charity I had been doing volunteer computer work for two years
offered me a position for maybe 80% of federal minimum wage. I went back to my
janitor job because it paid better. But I was completely alone and eventually
I had more and more sleepless nights and when I kept having 2+ sleepless
nights in a row and I decided I couldn't safely drive to work anymore.

Fifteen years earlier, in middle school, I remember when my babysitter heard
that my friend was paid $500 by his uncle to work all summer she called him up
and cussed him out until a fair wage was paid. I worked on her farm for many
years. I still have only worked for people that loved me. Why did I make an
exception for schoolwork?

I tortured myself for years, submitting to this imposition of school for what?
To come up with answers for people that do not care for me, do not pay me,
already have the answers to the objective questions, and are not interested in
my subjective answers.

So, no, keeping kids that are emotionally wrecked and socially destitute
coralled in schools will not help because that's not their function.

Our society can't turn off the media and go back to each other now because we
wouldn't know where to even begin.

------
isnetea
I’ve cut off all family and friends for a long period of time now, and
discontinued my career/work after finally reaching a cynical point of no
return a few years ago. My only interactions at this point are with food
service workers at the store or coffee shop, or other shopping/errands.
Perhaps this is a variant of Hikikomori. In fact, the characteristics of one
for me are essentially spot on, except that I’m more of a shut-out (in public
alone often).

I’ve given away my retirement and am preparing for suicide. I’m not in search
of advice nor assistance regarding my situation. I smile in public, but inside
I’m meditating in preparation for the unknown void of the afterlife. There are
almost certainly many others like me.

For a long time, I wondered if it were possible for people to treat each other
better and whether that would have changed anything for me. The reality is
that I was unequipped to build a healthy place in society because I decided a
long time ago that I hated being alive and hated people. It’s my own
shortcoming, and suicide is a valid way to remove a weak seed from the gene
pool, if not controversial or taboo in Western society. My understanding is
that it’s not as frowned upon in Japan but not sure if that is still the case.

~~~
vokep
Take LSD or mushrooms before you go. Not because it will make you no longer be
suicidal, but because it is one of the most powerful experiences that you can
achieve in this universe. To die without such experience, is incredible
tragedy, especially for someone with your perspective. It also may inform you
of ways you can optimize your impact on departure, given your reasoning about
being a 'weak seed'.

But its really best if you don't kill yourself.

~~~
AllegedAlec
Telling someone with mental issues to take strong psychotropic drugs for the
first time, without anyone to keep an eye of them is one of the most retarded
things I've heard in a long time.

~~~
dkersten
They've already decided on suicide, so does it really matter?

~~~
AllegedAlec
Ethically: yeah.

~~~
dkersten
Why?

Sorry, I'm not trying to be argumentative or anything, I'm just trying to
understand your point of view.

The way I see it is if he's made up his mind, then there are really three
possible outcomes by suggesting drugs: 1. best case, he feels better, yay! 2.
worst case, it makes him worse, he kills himself, but was going to do so
anyway. :( 3. he has an interesting experience before the end.

I don't see any ethical issues with suggesting something that if it goes
wrong, leads to the same outcome as not doing anything. To me, it seems like
he has everything to gain and nothing to lose. I'd like to hear your opposing
view, though, so I can understand where the flaw in my reasoning is, if there
is one.

~~~
AllegedAlec
Because you do not know how the trip will impact him. It could be that he
self-harms in a way which only makes things permanently worse. It could be
that he hurts others during the trip.

There are so many factors which could go badly wrong that it is (in my
opinion) unethical to suggest this is a good approach.

~~~
dkersten
Ok, I understand. Thanks!

What if they took some precautions, eg someone was with them to make sure that
they don't do any harm (to themselves or others)? People generally recommend
that one take psychedelics with a sitter, after all. Or is the concern also
about their mental state in the coming days/weeks/however long after the trip?

~~~
lagg
Don't backtrack yourself. The day I took shrooms was the day I understood my
place in the grand organism and the true power unto a god that each person has
in their potential and the only inhibitor is how willing they are to confront
that level of their own power. I only continue to understand myself and those
around me, and how to forge my life to its fullest with every instance I take
entheogens.

I have very little respect for hand-wringing types like those above. All it
does is plant undue anxiety in a mind that could easily be calm waters. I
could go so far as to say I loathe them. But I'm trying hard to see this
person's point.

Also, I can't believe I'm becoming active after years again to infodump this.
But I can only hope the original parent sees it and knows they're not alone.

Edit to be abundantly clear: Entheogens did nothing short of saving my life.
And it has since only been an upward trend. To the extent that I hilariously
enough stopped coffee after a powerful experience forced me to observe just
what such things can do to anxiety and blood pressure and the like. On an
intimate level akin to detached observation from outside a lab. Except one's
own mind.

~~~
dkersten
Oh, I’m not backtracking. I personally don’t have any issues with it, I was
just trying to understand where AlegedAlec draws the line.

I’ve personally been what some people might call “careless” with drugs in the
past, in that I maybe wasn’t the most mentally stable and I’ve taken drugs
when others would have warned me not to (eg while depressed) and I personally
feel like they helped me through it. Ketamine especially has made a huge
difference, even in very small doses, although in large doses it gave me this
overwhelming and lasting sense of connectedness with the world. Since I spent
a lot of my life struggling with loneliness (and not for lack of friends or
people around me), that really really helped me.

I’m glad to hear that you are doing better too!

~~~
lagg
I feel you re. integration and connectiveness. I do not envy you for having
issues. But I can say that if I waited until I wasn't "depressed" (what does
this mean in the wider scope of our stories we tell each other? When you can't
know good without the bad? I think we're all depressed else we wouldn't know
happiness) I likely would have dropped off a chair instead of dropping some
caps and stems.

You have to understand where these mental hangups are coming from sometimes.
And it is my most sincere hope the OP can see what all of us are trying to say
before letting the abyss take them. I so hope they know we've felt it pulling.
Even if they aren't interested in drugs in the least I hope they know they're
not alone in any of this.

I'm not a bad enough dood to explore much of these new drugs. Mostly
experienced in the classic 3 and once DMT (hope to again someday when I figure
out how to make the rig work). But from what I've seen in this thread and
vague posts in the past it seems like ketamine offers a very empathic
experience.

I'll never forget the day I figured out how to cry again, cry healthily,
thanks to these things. Like a ghost of all my missing emotions I sloughed off
in the distant past came back to me. It is wonderful.

And can people please, _please_ stop the senseless cynicism in this subthread.
I'm being reminded why I stopped posting on HN. No matter what your personal
position is. It is ultimately irrelevant to this OP and the energy you're
putting into handwringing can easily be put into reminding them of the fact
that they are not alone. There's someone right there with them and sharing in
it for one reason or another. And we all have a responsibility to take care of
them in the same way we do our better selves.

------
DanBC
Full title is: New Insights Into Hikikomori – People Who Withdraw From Society
For Months or Years On End.

Don't forget that the BPS can sometimes misrepresent the research so you need
to be a bit careful with anything from this source.

