I don't know if anyone will care about this, but I found it pretty interesting. And warning, long post ahead without a TL;DR

So I just finished reading a book called *The Courage to Be Disliked by*  Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga. It claims to be a Japanese book on the cover, but the content is all about the teaching of German psychologist Alfred Adler. And boy, did Alfred Adler kick my ass.

Adler's approach toward mental illness is one of "teleology." Don't let the word scare you. Basically, it's the idea that all mental illness serves a purpose for the one who has it, and that by having mental illness, the mind is subconsciously striving for and accomplishing some goal. It sounds unusual, until I really started thinking about it. And holy fuck, what a trip!

I realized that every bit of "madness" in my life serves a purpose. It doesn't even matter if it's biologically caused or not. Everything achieves a goal. My delusions, my hallucinations, my fears, my reaction to traumas...all of it works together to accomplish something in my life and achieve a particular state. Sometimes the goals conflict, but the goals are pretty clear when I think about it. Now, I find it too unflattering and embarrassing to go into all of the details of my psyche here. It would probably be oversharing. But suffice it to say that everything about my so-called insanity makes perfect sense. Largely, it is defensive escapism, with plenty of additional nuances. There are some things in my life I can't explain, but even my reactions to that make sense in the context of teleology.

I don't know whether I've achieved massive insight or if I'm just talking out of my ass right now. But the book is a really good one and goes into detail about a lot more things than that. It is a whole philosophy of life. I have always innately felt that schizophrenia had a teleological explanation--even if I didn't know the word until now--but to see mental illness explained that way by an "authority" is just mind-blowing.

The only thing that bothers me, is if I know the reasons behind everything on a psychological and emotional level, why doesn't it just go away? It seems to be deeply engrained. But it is something to think about, and perhaps a serious thing to consider in terms of self-care and my daily battles of dealing with schizophrenia and life in general.

Oh yeah...about the title of the book. It's about freedom. Unless we have the courage to be disliked by at least some people, we will forever be people-pleasing slaves that attempt the impossible goal of appeasing everyone. Accepting that some people will dislike us, and having the courage to act anyway, is the only possible way to attain freedom.