Hey everyone! I'd like to ask for your help in trying to "make sense" of where this comes from. I have a colleague from college who, despite being quite competent and intelligent when it came to his coursework and the subjects he chose to study (philosophy, psychoanalysis, etc.), was nonetheless rather odd when it came to social interactions. At the slightest hint of conflict, or even anything he perceived as disrespectful, he would simply stop talking to whoever was involved, cutting them out of his personal life and withdrawing entirely. By the end of college, he was essentially on his own, except for his girlfriend.
When we talked, he told me he was highly volatile when it came to other people's opinions of him, and that he unfortunately couldn't control his emotional responses whenever he felt someone had mistreated him, even if it was clearly just a passing mood on the other person's part.
What made it all the more striking was that, outside of this, he was perfectly calm. Gentle, studious, articulate, and extremely polite. It was as though he concealed a deeply reactive core beneath that composed exterior. At times, he seemed to speak poorly of others over absolutely nothing, at the slightest possible disagreement.
Anyway, I'm not sure why, but I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Where do you think this might come from? Thanks.