I thought this was interesting and it is part of a pattern…
He ‘reduced me.’ He has elsewhere bragged about driving people away and predicted he had done enough to drive me away and I would be soon leaving. He has said that he knows why people get irritated at him and that his posts are triggering their fears, loss of comfort. There are other examples of what I would call a general pattern of him
claiming to control the behavior of others.
So perhaps he views interactions like this as a situation where someone else might potentially control him.
If he admitted someone else was right about what he had done or said, they would be ‘reducing’ him, or compelling him to some feeling or behavior. IOW he views it as a kind of power struggle where someone can actually gain control of another person. And since he assumes that the only possible issue someone might have with his process is to avoid losing comfort and consolation, I think it is fair to wonder if this is how he views interacting with others: they are going to take something away from him if he admits anything or changes in any way in response to what they right.
And of course actually engaging in the practices of a school of therapy or at a Buddhist temple is verboten. That would be potential loss of control in spades.
Which fits with his concern that for all he knows he will have some new belief system in the future. He has no way to know if he will be a Buddhist or Catholic or racist later in his life, even though these, now, do not fit is values and beliefs.
And his concern that he has gone through a series of belief systems before, as he has pointed out hundreds of times. (which actually is an observation very much in line with Buddhist thinking. There they do not think there is any self, with him he bemoans this changing self, which he calls fractured. And any Buddhist worth his or her salt would recognize that he has become aware of something most people have not, but is frozen at the stage of being afraid of it)
Now (to protect himself from being controlled by others) if anyone is going to affect him it has to be via something that would change every single rational person’s mind on the planet.
No one is going to control him, certainly not in particular. Won’t get fooled again.
So when he is the subject it is taboo. Though he is happy to make claims about others and what is going on in their minds, even unconsciously, and further it is sometimes under his control what they think, feel and do.
The last thing he wants is for someone else to have, what he conceives of as, control over him AGAIN.
Now the Buddha argued that what one thinks and feels is not who you are. So he would have seen such a defensive position and a view of dialogue as people controlling other people (selves) as confused and clinging…
suttacentral.net/mn148/en/sujato
This is the conclusion, the full argument is in that link.
So, from a Buddhist perspective focusing on the contents of thoughts (and feelings) is confused. It is the relation to the thoughts and feelings in general that need to change. He’s fighting a war of control with others - celebrating victories where he drives people away or reduces them - and making sure it never seems like they won a battle by controlling his thoughts and feelings and behavior.
Buddhism offers a release from this battle.
It’s not the release for me. But I think Buddhism can give a little insight into what is happening and why it might be confusing to interact with him.