Too close for comfort?

Now that we know that, not only 1 in 7 people across the world suffer from mental disorders, but that 1 in 4 Maldivians are also psychologically imbalanced, I am now wary of becoming too close with people.

I am wondering what kind of impact this might have on my psyche if I have to always be on alert when interacting with people, wondering whether they will break our friendship just because I might say something that appears to be harmless but to them might appear as harmful.

As science has found out, humans are excellent in cognitive dissonance, i.e. they are capable of accommodating conflicting thoughts in their minds, and I am wondering how much psychologically I would be affected if I am always frightened of comfortably interacting with such many unbalanced people in our society although I, as a person suffering from Bipolar Disorder, feel empathy with people who are psychologically challenged.

It could also be an issue of "trust". Due to my coming to know about prison murders in Maldives, not to mention reading about violence in other countries, I have a difficulty in placing my trust in humans. It sometimes take years of intimacy before I could start trusting other individuals.

One of my friends, who is now more than 30 years of age, told me she has never had a boyfriend to date, and has doubts whether she will even get married, because she cannot trust men due to their potential violent tendencies.

I deactivated all my social media accounts (except this blog, my YouTube channel and my Flickr photostream) because I am now happy to have just a handful of close trusted friends. I am keeping my blog just to "express and share" my thoughts with my friends and well-wishers which, as one of my old friends said, is a healthy thing to do for my mental well-being.

When I was younger, I was very attention seeking. My becoming a journalist and blogger may be an outcome of that. But now I value my privacy. I guess with certain periods of our age, our priorities in life change. Earlier, I wanted to obtain as much acquaintances as possible but now I am happy having a circle of few close and trusted friends.

I earlier thought I was odd and weird but one of my close friends said that she is of the opinion that everyone is attention seeking to various levels all through life because as humans we all want to be accepted, acknowledged and noticed or praised by others especially when we're young.