Did Adam Lanza enjoy his isolation?

As we all know Adam Lanza social disabilities caused him to tend to avoid interaction to the point of complete isolation. This behaviour was encouraged and supported by his mother who did the best she could to keep him in an alternate world were he could remain in his little comfort zone and avoid physical contact with other people.

My question is whether or not he truly felt somewhat at ease when he was completely alone, or did he in fact wish he could lead a normal, social life but simply couldn't handle it due to the overwhelming nature of his condition? Did he want to be isolated becuase it made him happy or did he find himself in complete isolation because it was easier to deal with than overcoming his disabilites, even though his true desire was to be able to fit in?

Was his thought process: "I'm glad I'm inside all alone so I don't have to talk to people." or was it "If only it weren't so hard for me to talk to people, why can't I just be like everyone else?"

Hope my question makes sense

We are not still sure about adam lanza thought process.

I think he proffered to be alone. I mean he did avoid contact with people. In the sandy an american tragedy there is a passage in which a couple of teens invited lanza for coffe and he refused saying " I am only 17

He was quiet and reserved. Apparently, he hated this society, described his "scorn for humanity". So it's likely that he enjoyed being that isolated.

When Adam Lanza once had a mental breakdown, he was very upset at himself during the situation because of how much of a "loser" he was, and he really wanted to do something about it. From my knowledge, this was just a couple of years prior to the incident at Sandy Hook. I'd imagine that he called himself a loser because of his inability to be social, because why else would he think of himself as a loser? No, I wouldn't say that he enjoyed his isolation, and I doubt that any other mass shooter really did. I mean, Nikolas Cruz and Elliot Rodger complained about their loneliness in their manifestos. Sure, Adam Lanza intentionally blocked contact from the people who cared about him the most, but didn't Lanza have a great deal of resentment towards his mother? He did shoot her four times, afterall.

Knight430 wrote:

When Adam Lanza once had a mental breakdown, he was very upset at himself during the situation because of how much of a "loser" he was, and he really wanted to do something about it. From my knowledge, this was just a couple of years prior to the incident at Sandy Hook. I'd imagine that he called himself a loser because of his inability to be social, because why else would he think of himself as a loser? No, I wouldn't say that he enjoyed his isolation, and I doubt that any other mass shooter really did. I mean, Nikolas Cruz and Elliot Rodger complained about their loneliness in their manifestos. Sure, Adam Lanza intentionally blocked contact from the people who cared about him the most, but didn't Lanza have a great deal of resentment towards his mother? He did shoot her four times, afterall.

I believe that the "loser" incident that you are referring to was about difficulties with school so I would disagree that this was related to his social deficiencies.

The Reckoning by Andrew Solomom wrote:

Schoolwork often triggered a sense of hopelessness. “He was exhausted and lethargic all day, and said he was unable to concentrate and his homework isn’t done,” she wrote. “He is on the verge of tears over not having his journal entries ready to pass in. He said he tried to concentrate and couldn’t and has been wondering why he is ‘such a loser’ and if there is anything he can do about it.” He had been taking classes at Western Connecticut State University—for high-school credit—but he struggled there. “He wouldn’t speak on the way home and had his hood completely covering his face,” Nancy wrote one day. “He went straight to his room and won’t eat. I gave him time alone to compose and have tried to speak to him twice now, but he just keeps saying, ‘It does not matter’ and ‘leave me’ ‘I don’t want to speak of it.’ ” Two months later, Nancy recorded his despair when faced with some coursework in German: “He finally and tearfully said that he can’t complete the German. He can’t understand it. He has spent hours on the worksheets and can’t comprehend them.”

Nancy wanted to take him to a tutor, but, she wrote, “Even ten minutes before we should leave he was getting ready to go, but then had a meltdown and began to cry and couldn’t go. He said things like it’s pointless, and he doesn’t even know what he doesn’t know.” In early 2010, when Nancy told Peter that Adam had been crying hysterically on the bathroom floor, Peter responded with uncharacteristic vehemence: “Adam needs to communicate the source of his sorrow. We have less than three months to help him before he is 18. I am convinced that when he turns 18 he will either try to enlist or just leave the house to become homeless.” Nancy replied, “I just spent 2 hours sitting outside his door, talking to him about why he is so upset. He failed every single test during that class, yet he thought he knew the material.” Later that day, she wrote, “I have the feeling when he said he would rather be homeless than to take any more tests, he really meant it.” Nancy said that Adam had been pretending to go to classes and passing his time in the library.

I agree with your basic point anyway.

I don't believe that Adam enjoyed his isolation but I do believe that there were too many things that were getting in the way for socialization to be worthwhile to him. Adam was probably too inflexible for friendship. He was too quick to blame others (and himself) for shortcomings. He could not accept differences in personality or opinion without forming negative opinions of other people or incessantly debating their point of view. He managed to make a friend in real life but he dropped the friendship even though the issue might have been resolved. Regardless of that, it does not seem that he desired to be so isolated as much as he could not find a way to be with others comfortably.

I think that Adam's "me" document revealed many things about his experience of social interaction.

Adam wrote:

I am heavily emotionally susceptible to environments...All of them are typical detestable humans, and it bred an aura of innumerable negative emotions for me.

...

I incessantly have nothing other than scorn for humanity.

...

I used to be hate-filled and couldn't just dismiss people I didn't like.

Adam was not very emotionally demonstrative (unless he was crying to his mother) but other people often upset him and he didn't approve of their behavior, so he had no incentive to get close to them.

On the other hand, the same document shows that Adam definitely wanted to feel affection for, and even love, someone else. Beyond that, it troubled him that he could not seem to find anyone to connect with. If he enjoyed his isolation, he would not have cared. He was at home most of the time. He could have avoided others completely if he was not hoping to put an end to his isolation.

Adam wrote:

All of them are typical detestable humans, and it bred an aura of innumerable negative emotions for me. You were a respite from that.

...

I have been desperate to feel anything positive for someone for my entire life.

...

I'm capable of boundless affection. I had never been in a sitation to feel that way before, so I thought that it was special.
 
...


Because I used to be hate-filled and couldn't just dismiss people I didn't like. It tore me apart, and I needed someone who didn't.

As the above excerpts suggest, he managed to find someone who he felt that he could love. He valued that sense of connection at first, but his personality sabotaged him anyway.

Adam wrote:

After having spent much time analyzing this, I've determined which factors enabled me to love you.
 
I projected a personality, which I consider to be virtuous, delusionally onto you. For the same reason, I ignored the many things which I fundamentally hate about you. I was deluding myself.

...

I have an affinity for people whom I perceive as being abused, and consummate scorn for the abusers. It was probably the primary enabling factor. The way you are relentlessly treated by these humans is obscenely offensive to me, so everytime they would do it, it would simultaneously increase my sympathy for you and increase my resentment for all of them. My wrath for them fostered more of a negative atmosphere, which would cause you to be even more of a respite from their depravity. It was self-perpetuating.

(This was sad to me because I sometimes wonder if all love, all sense of connectedness [or at least the majority of it], is an illusion or a projection. I think Adam was probably being honest here and he may have been right that he was idealizing someone for the wrong reasons.)

He explained away the feelings that he had for this girl and then wrote a series of questions which might suggest what he "fundamentally hated" about her. We don't know if he ever sent this to her but he also wrote a series of questions which were supposed to prove whether or not she understood him. It was all about Adam and his needs.

Lanza was all about communicating, apparently...

Adam wrote:

You could actually type coherently. Relationships cannot exist if communication is not present, which would immediately preclude me from being able to have a relationship with 99% of the humans there...I remember one person in particular whom I followed around only because he typed properly, which allowed me to communicate with him without feeling as if I was dealing with a severely mentally handicapped duck. He spoke disrespectfully of his girlfriend the first day I spoke to him, which would normally serve as the catalyst for my detestment of such a person, yet I completely overlooked it because I was so relieved to be able to speak with someone who was in any way capable of communicating.
 
Relationships have absolutely no physical aspect to me: all that matters is communication. The nature of the internet fosters this.

...but it seems that he was totally focused on others understanding him and that he refused to acknowledge anyone else's point of view as being legitimate.

He even created a list of things that he disagreed with her about (and potentially disliked about her). They are simply disagreements in point of view rather than examples which suggest that she had hurt him or been unkind to him in any direct way.

Adam wrote:

You're a Christian. Religion, being cultural, inherently subjugates.
 
That whole "dishonor" fatuity. Something is "dishonorable" not because it lacks virtue, but because it goes against their "authority". All they're doing is imposing their will on you.
 
You submit to the notion of culture, which your parents forced onto you.

-You often made reference to the ways genders should behave.
-You celebrate holidays.
-You derogatively said that C_Redfield was "whitewashed" because his Vietnamese pronunciation was poor as if that was an issue. Vietnamese culture is equally as pathetic as American culture is. The entire notion of culture is pathetic. You believing that he should be able to speak Vietnamese merely because that's what his father did is absurd.
 
You saying that I shouldn't disassociate myself from my parents- that I need to change the way I think about them. I had never spoken about my parents prior to that, so you had no knowledge about them. Saying what you did would necessitate all parents inherently being virtuous, which is not true. The reason you believe that is because the culture your family forced onto you virtually diefies familial elders.
 
When your sister was angry at your mother, allegedly over a haircut. It had nothing to do with the haircut; she was angry about other issues.

Adam was an ideologue and like others who take a radical stance, he seemed to see problems everywhere and he took it personally ("if you are not with me, you're against me"). He couldn't separate her beliefs from her behavior toward him. In some sense it is reasonable to seek out people who share your values but if you care about someone enough, you can often remain connected even if there are deep ideological divides. I don't think Adam wanted to do that. He only wanted someone who thought like him, acted like him and reacted like him.

Sadly, Adam also wrote out what appear to be the personality traits that he was looking for in a partner. Once again, we can see that he did not truly want to be alone. These are not unreasonable desires.

Adam wrote:

She needs to be contemplative, introverted, introspective, insubordinate, non-confrontational, able to communicate with me, and engage in banter. And I think I want her to be at least vegetarian.

The only problem was Adam's unwillingness to compromise. I think that the reality is that if you want to have successful relationships, you have to acknowledge that no one is a perfect match for you but I don't think Adam was willing to accept that. Once he became disillusioned with the girl that he had previously "loved," he discounted the relationship altogether and labeled himself delusional for feeling love for her.

Adam didn't enjoy isolation but he had a very narrow view of what made a person worth his time and this meant that he had few options to begin with, most of which he inevitably sabotaged or disregarded as unworkable in the end.

James411 wrote:

We are not still sure about adam lanza thought process.

I think he proffered to be alone. I mean he did avoid contact with people. In the sandy an american tragedy there is a passage in which a couple of teens invited lanza for coffe and he refused saying " I am only 17

In An American Tragedy the author documented that during the (very) short time Adam was taking community college classes a couple of young women asked him to join them at the local bar for a couple of drinks after class. Adam tells them “I’m only 17.”

Maybe this is a stupid thing to ask but at first I always believed Adam shot his mother because he didn't want her to find out about the devastation he would cause. But I didn't realise he shot her four times. What could have possibly made Adam so hateful towards her?

Gold Digger wrote:

Maybe this is a stupid thing to ask but at first I always believed Adam shot his mother because he didn't want her to find out about the devastation he would cause. But I didn't realize he shot her four times. What could have possibly made Adam so hateful towards her?

Adam might have considered his relationship with his mother to be abusive, interpreting some of her actions during his childhood as attempts at subjugation, which he himself implied is a major epidemic in parenting.

Examples of this would be Nancy allowing the doctor Adam wrote about (Pg. 1422 of Final Redacted Release) to examine and fondle his penis without his consent. He considered this to be an act of molestation forced upon him by his mother. Among other, more minor offenses like this, generally making decisions on Adams behalf and putting him in situations he did not have any control over. He might of retroactively grew to resent his mother because of this, though I suppose that's really as good of an explanation for Nancy's murder as any.

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sscc wrote:

Knight430 wrote:

When Adam Lanza once had a mental breakdown, he was very upset at himself during the situation because of how much of a "loser" he was, and he really wanted to do something about it. From my knowledge, this was just a couple of years prior to the incident at Sandy Hook. I'd imagine that he called himself a loser because of his inability to be social, because why else would he think of himself as a loser? No, I wouldn't say that he enjoyed his isolation, and I doubt that any other mass shooter really did. I mean, Nikolas Cruz and Elliot Rodger complained about their loneliness in their manifestos. Sure, Adam Lanza intentionally blocked contact from the people who cared about him the most, but didn't Lanza have a great deal of resentment towards his mother? He did shoot her four times, afterall.

I believe that the "loser" incident that you are referring to was about difficulties with school so I would disagree that this was related to his social deficiencies.

The Reckoning by Andrew Solomom wrote:

Schoolwork often triggered a sense of hopelessness. “He was exhausted and lethargic all day, and said he was unable to concentrate and his homework isn’t done,” she wrote. “He is on the verge of tears over not having his journal entries ready to pass in. He said he tried to concentrate and couldn’t and has been wondering why he is ‘such a loser’ and if there is anything he can do about it.” He had been taking classes at Western Connecticut State University—for high-school credit—but he struggled there. “He wouldn’t speak on the way home and had his hood completely covering his face,” Nancy wrote one day. “He went straight to his room and won’t eat. I gave him time alone to compose and have tried to speak to him twice now, but he just keeps saying, ‘It does not matter’ and ‘leave me’ ‘I don’t want to speak of it.’ ” Two months later, Nancy recorded his despair when faced with some coursework in German: “He finally and tearfully said that he can’t complete the German. He can’t understand it. He has spent hours on the worksheets and can’t comprehend them.”

Nancy wanted to take him to a tutor, but, she wrote, “Even ten minutes before we should leave he was getting ready to go, but then had a meltdown and began to cry and couldn’t go. He said things like it’s pointless, and he doesn’t even know what he doesn’t know.” In early 2010, when Nancy told Peter that Adam had been crying hysterically on the bathroom floor, Peter responded with uncharacteristic vehemence: “Adam needs to communicate the source of his sorrow. We have less than three months to help him before he is 18. I am convinced that when he turns 18 he will either try to enlist or just leave the house to become homeless.” Nancy replied, “I just spent 2 hours sitting outside his door, talking to him about why he is so upset. He failed every single test during that class, yet he thought he knew the material.” Later that day, she wrote, “I have the feeling when he said he would rather be homeless than to take any more tests, he really meant it.” Nancy said that Adam had been pretending to go to classes and passing his time in the library.

I agree with your basic point anyway.

I don't believe that Adam enjoyed his isolation but I do believe that there were too many things that were getting in the way for socialization to be worthwhile to him. Adam was probably too inflexible for friendship. He was too quick to blame others (and himself) for shortcomings. He could not accept differences in personality or opinion without forming negative opinions of other people or incessantly debating their point of view. He managed to make a friend in real life but he dropped the friendship even though the issue might have been resolved. Regardless of that, it does not seem that he desired to be so isolated as much as he could not find a way to be with others comfortably.

I think that Adam's "me" document revealed many things about his experience of social interaction.

Adam wrote:

I am heavily emotionally susceptible to environments...All of them are typical detestable humans, and it bred an aura of innumerable negative emotions for me.

...

I incessantly have nothing other than scorn for humanity.

...

I used to be hate-filled and couldn't just dismiss people I didn't like.

Adam was not very emotionally demonstrative (unless he was crying to his mother) but other people often upset him and he didn't approve of their behavior, so he had no incentive to get close to them.

On the other hand, the same document shows that Adam definitely wanted to feel affection for, and even love, someone else. Beyond that, it troubled him that he could not seem to find anyone to connect with. If he enjoyed his isolation, he would not have cared. He was at home most of the time. He could have avoided others completely if he was not hoping to put an end to his isolation.

Adam wrote:

All of them are typical detestable humans, and it bred an aura of innumerable negative emotions for me. You were a respite from that.

...

I have been desperate to feel anything positive for someone for my entire life.

...

I'm capable of boundless affection. I had never been in a sitation to feel that way before, so I thought that it was special.
 
...


Because I used to be hate-filled and couldn't just dismiss people I didn't like. It tore me apart, and I needed someone who didn't.

As the above excerpts suggest, he managed to find someone who he felt that he could love. He valued that sense of connection at first, but his personality sabotaged him anyway.

Adam wrote:

After having spent much time analyzing this, I've determined which factors enabled me to love you.
 
I projected a personality, which I consider to be virtuous, delusionally onto you. For the same reason, I ignored the many things which I fundamentally hate about you. I was deluding myself.

...

I have an affinity for people whom I perceive as being abused, and consummate scorn for the abusers. It was probably the primary enabling factor. The way you are relentlessly treated by these humans is obscenely offensive to me, so everytime they would do it, it would simultaneously increase my sympathy for you and increase my resentment for all of them. My wrath for them fostered more of a negative atmosphere, which would cause you to be even more of a respite from their depravity. It was self-perpetuating.

(This was sad to me because I sometimes wonder if all love, all sense of connectedness [or at least the majority of it], is an illusion or a projection. I think Adam was probably being honest here and he may have been right that he was idealizing someone for the wrong reasons.)

He explained away the feelings that he had for this girl and then wrote a series of questions which might suggest what he "fundamentally hated" about her. We don't know if he ever sent this to her but he also wrote a series of questions which were supposed to prove whether or not she understood him. It was all about Adam and his needs.

Lanza was all about communicating, apparently...

Adam wrote:

You could actually type coherently. Relationships cannot exist if communication is not present, which would immediately preclude me from being able to have a relationship with 99% of the humans there...I remember one person in particular whom I followed around only because he typed properly, which allowed me to communicate with him without feeling as if I was dealing with a severely mentally handicapped duck. He spoke disrespectfully of his girlfriend the first day I spoke to him, which would normally serve as the catalyst for my detestment of such a person, yet I completely overlooked it because I was so relieved to be able to speak with someone who was in any way capable of communicating.
 
Relationships have absolutely no physical aspect to me: all that matters is communication. The nature of the internet fosters this.

...but it seems that he was totally focused on others understanding him and that he refused to acknowledge anyone else's point of view as being legitimate.

He even created a list of things that he disagreed with her about (and potentially disliked about her). They are simply disagreements in point of view rather than examples which suggest that she had hurt him or been unkind to him in any direct way.

Adam wrote:

You're a Christian. Religion, being cultural, inherently subjugates.
 
That whole "dishonor" fatuity. Something is "dishonorable" not because it lacks virtue, but because it goes against their "authority". All they're doing is imposing their will on you.
 
You submit to the notion of culture, which your parents forced onto you.

-You often made reference to the ways genders should behave.
-You celebrate holidays.
-You derogatively said that C_Redfield was "whitewashed" because his Vietnamese pronunciation was poor as if that was an issue. Vietnamese culture is equally as pathetic as American culture is. The entire notion of culture is pathetic. You believing that he should be able to speak Vietnamese merely because that's what his father did is absurd.
 
You saying that I shouldn't disassociate myself from my parents- that I need to change the way I think about them. I had never spoken about my parents prior to that, so you had no knowledge about them. Saying what you did would necessitate all parents inherently being virtuous, which is not true. The reason you believe that is because the culture your family forced onto you virtually diefies familial elders.
 
When your sister was angry at your mother, allegedly over a haircut. It had nothing to do with the haircut; she was angry about other issues.

Adam was an ideologue and like others who take a radical stance, he seemed to see problems everywhere and he took it personally ("if you are not with me, you're against me"). He couldn't separate her beliefs from her behavior toward him. In some sense it is reasonable to seek out people who share your values but if you care about someone enough, you can often remain connected even if there are deep ideological divides. I don't think Adam wanted to do that. He only wanted someone who thought like him, acted like him and reacted like him.

Sadly, Adam also wrote out what appear to be the personality traits that he was looking for in a partner. Once again, we can see that he did not truly want to be alone. These are not unreasonable desires.

Adam wrote:

She needs to be contemplative, introverted, introspective, insubordinate, non-confrontational, able to communicate with me, and engage in banter. And I think I want her to be at least vegetarian.

The only problem was Adam's unwillingness to compromise. I think that the reality is that if you want to have successful relationships, you have to acknowledge that no one is a perfect match for you but I don't think Adam was willing to accept that. Once he became disillusioned with the girl that he had previously "loved," he discounted the relationship altogether and labeled himself delusional for feeling love for her.

Adam didn't enjoy isolation but he had a very narrow view of what made a person worth his time and this meant that he had few options to begin with, most of which he inevitably sabotaged or disregarded as unworkable in the end.

This is by far the best post I've seen on here.
So well illustrated & thoughtful.
It really humanises Adam, which I think is quite important.
It can often seem uncomfortable to acknowledge the inner aspects of a person who has committed such unforgivable things.
But Adam had real desires & vulnerabilities like the rest of us & much of his story is pitiful.