It was a few years back that I started seeing a therapist for daily life improvement. I was disappointed with my lack of social life and how I failed to reconnect with former classmates after college. My therapist criticized my lack of effort to have real friendships with any of my classmates while in college and that's why reconnecting with them didn't work. He kept egging me on about how I never never did any social activities with them outside of class to form a real relationship. He emphasized that this was why I had no real relationships to speak of.
In response, I told him how I simply didn't think about them outside of the classroom-as if that's the only place they existed. I used a metaphor to explain this. I explained to him that while in his office, I can not see my car in the parking lot-and because of that, it might not even exist. Only when I got outside to the parking lot can I see that the car exists. I further explained that there is no way I could have known of his existence before I met him, so therefore he might not have. I basically purported that my conscious experience is what makes things exist and that other people might not have thinking minds like me.
My therapist was aghast by these assertions. He immediately started to compare me to people who "believe" certain things-i.e. delusions. His examples were someone who believed that their spouse was plotting against them, or that every white car had an FBI agent out to get them. He further stated that these people took medication and then felt a lot better. When the session was over, he immediately made an appointment for a psychiatrist to take medication. That's how I got prescribed anti-psychotic medication (first seroquel, then saphris).
It was after that session that I had to face the reality that I was a solipsist. It's not that I truly "believe" that things don't exist outside my mind or that other people don't have minds. It's that I just don't think about things and people existing outside what I'm consciously observing and I just don't think about people having thinking minds like I do. In that sense, it might as well be that way.
The medication didn't really do anything to "change" my solipsistic beliefs. All it did was make my "flighty" and make impulsive, rash decisions. I've already moved three times and have changed jobs countless times. In my new location with my new therapist, she suspects that I instead have aspergers and therefore I should not be on this medication at all.
I want to know what others think about my ordeal. Does anyone else have a solipsistic mentality? If so, were you branded "psychotic" or prescribed anti-psychotics because of it?