[talmir]

I read this and had this small voice in the back of my head translating what I read into "Look at me! I'm special! I'm a shut-in! I do it because I'm special!"

In reality the author is just alike everyone else, with fears and emotions which caused him to shut himself in and rationalize it with some meditative jargon.

[onli]

Don't think so. That rather reads like the description of an undiagnosed asperger or not-so-dramatic (not in a sense of not severe, in a sense of "not screaming when overloaden" unlike in movies) autistic patterns. He even mentions an Aspie-board, maybe he is aware of it but didn't want to mention it in his article?

The water, the need for routine, the unabilty to fully play chess when in a social context, the need to simulate social interactions - the "funny" thing is that if that diagnosis is right, he is not faking by faking it, it's simply him.

The not so funny thing is that if that diagnosis were right, many comments in this thread like "we all feel like we are not normal" mask that condition, and lead to unhelpful advice.