Her ostentatious competitiveness originates from her childhood experiences, marked by the mental illness and the suicide of her mother Kyōko. Asuka faced her loss by immersing herself in pride, becoming indisposed to any kind of help or advice and adopting strength and self-affirmation as her only "raison d'être". Tormented "by the fear of not being necessary", she pilots Unit-02 only to satisfy her intimate desire for acceptance, longing to be considered "an elite pilot who will protect humanity". Her excessive self-confidence leads her to clash with Shinji, gradually losing self-confidence and becoming psychologically and physically compromised. The Fourth Child's selection, Tōji Suzuhara, also contributes to the destruction of her pride. After she learns of Kaji's death, she questions the meaning of her life and her identity, avoiding any kind of human contact and never meeting the gaze of other people. Overwhelmed by the fear of being alone, the young woman shows that she has a great and morbid need for the Eva, even more than her colleague Shinji has. In a scene from the twenty-fifth episode, she excoriates the Evangelion unit as a "worthless piece of junk", but immediately admits "I'm the junk". In the director's cut version of the twenty-second episode, two scenes set in the ninth and fifteenth episodes were added, in which Asuka appears frustrated in front of the sliding door of her room and after the kiss with Shinji; from Asuka's dialogue that overlaps these scenes, it becomes clear that she has been looking for help and love from Shinji. Her self-love represents an act of psychological compensation to be recognized in the eyes of other people. After her mother's mental illness, she represses her sadness and eventually decides to not cry anymore and to behave like an adult with a reaction formation. Her memories related to her past and her mother are repressed and removed from her consciousness during this phase. In the last episodes, Asuka completely loses her self-confidence. She develops a deep disgust with herself and suffers from separation anxiety.