Then I became silent. The most people could get off me was an "oh" or an "ok". I would not leave the house, brush my teeth, and I showered only once a week, all that while having constant suicidal ideas and being very self aware of how miserable my life had been up to that point. With the exception of the Internet, I had completely closed myself from the outside world. My mother would not say much about the situation but seemed to be increasingly worried. My father was a constant reminder of how lazy I was for having quit my job and spending my days doing nothing except play computer games and use online forums. I don't think he had enough empathy to see that I was sick.
At age 19, my mother started taking me to see doctors. At one point I ended up at a psychiatrist and was diagnosed with catatonic schizophrenia. I had already diagnosed myself with depression at age 13 (while not telling anyone), but was not expecting the schizophrenia diagnosis at all. To understand what catatonic schizophrenia is, it’s necessary to understand the underlying causes of catatonic behaviour. A person who won’t move or speak might seem insane and incapable of motor control, but the truth is that this is a survival strategy used by people and non-human animals alike. It’s used to deter attacks and can be the only strategy someone might have at their disposal in order to survive.
But if we are living in a society built by humans for humans, where the dangers of actual physical harm seem far fetched when compared to a mouse, why does it still happen? It still happens because our brain has evolved in a very dangerous environment, an environment so dangerous that living without the protection of the tribe was the equivalent of a death sentence, so even now, humans would consider peer rejection to be as dangerous as being chased by a tiger, and some even consider the fate of being rejected by a crowd of people to be worse than death. Even today, children would not be able to survive without the support of their immediate family. So when a child experiences peer rejection from caregivers, she will go to great lengths in order to stop the rejection from happening again. If a child suffers constant rejection when talking, she will stop talking, and if a child suffers constant peer rejection in his actions, he will stop moving.
Yours truly,
Anon