Well, I'm glad you are making so good progress, dude.:amused:
See your shrink says you should grow up. Well, I agree with him, but I have something to add. You WILL grow up, no matter if you want it or not. You can't evade it, it's a natural process. Your brain gathers experience continuosly, no matter if you pay attention or not, which leads to more processed information and those to built into your personality. So you will grow up, no matter what, it's not something you can control. You can't speed it up or slow it down, you will grow up at the pace you can. I'm only saying this so you won't feel any pressure growing up, that "OMG, I need to grow up FASTERRRRRR! Like NOW!" or something. Just observe. Walk around the world and observe, gather knowledge. Don't dive headlong into something you don't even know, thats called extreme sports:amused:. What I did is that too, I mean the observation, the learning. It doesn't require any effort at all, just so you pay attention to little details, open your mind. The best way to gether knowledge. Don't dive into textbooks or study rigorously, that won't help, your will only get tired and you will forget most of what your learn that way. But what you learn by simply "wanting" to know something, and think "wow, I didn't know that, how interesting", you will remember that till the end of your life. Experience.
Remember: Knowledge is the only thing that cannot be taken away from you!
(no, don't count electroshock therapy! Positive thoughts, remember?
)
You said you need to get to know yourself, your feelings and thoughts. If you take an advice from me, learn languages. They say, the more languages you know, the more people you are. That may sound confusing at first, but it's really not. I'm hungarian, and the best thing ever happened to me, that I learned English. And German. And Japanese (well, sort of). The more languages your speak, the more cultures you get to know, the more you get to know yourself. Talk to people. I know it's hard for you, because you are not used to just striking up a conversation with complete strangers, and it's very frightening too. What will that other person think about you, what if they are not nice, oh if I screw something up surely they will think I'm a jackass...etc. Yea, been there, done that. But that is not even close, trust me. Most of the people you meet think the very same thing about you, too. Just think about it, you are more prone to talk to somebody if they address you first, right? Well, most of them are just like this. I used to travel a lot. Not because I wanted to, but I had to (school, work, family, moving...long story). I came to realise, that people are not like I imagined them to be. Usually I travel by train. Locked together with a handful of strangers in a cabin (trains like here in hungary mostly have 6-8 seat cabins insted of line of seats) can be a strange experience. More in fact, if some of them know each other, and start talking. You don't even have to evasdrop or look at them, they are sitting right near you. You can gather some valuable intel listening in on these conversations, and not mainly on the subject they are talking about. Observe their talking style, their body language, their personality. I'm very good with people, and I can assess the mood and general personality of people quite fast, it's a perk of mine. You can aquire this perk too, just by doing the same thing. observe people. If you are afraid of interacting with strangers or people in general, this is just for you. It's like passive sonar, you just gather information, and don't have to involve yourself at all if you don't want to. Some time later you'll start to see patterns, personality traits and body language that is connected to one kind of a personality...etc. It's not only a very valuable skill to have, but it is fun too :amused:. Is amazing how different people react to the same situations or questions.
And here comes the best part. You'll learn hella lot about yourself too in the process. You'll start to recognise personality traits that you yourself have, that you couldn't recognise otherwise. You can select the personality traits you like and build it into your own. Just like Lego. Think about this: if you grow fond of a person (for whatever reason, it doesn't matter), you unknowingly start to assimilate his personality to a certain degree. You start to use expressions, body languages, opinions like that person. This is how you build your own personality. Interesting huh?
Okay, I gone too far now. You see I'm prone to ramble on about things I like, that's me : ). If you don't want any more of it, just don't read it ; ). I don't wanna bore you any longer, so I might just finish this off now. See you in the next edition of "Personality With Playbahnosh" : D!