I don’t think Cremlian was talking about you, tbh.
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Yeah, hindsight… shrugs
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So, yeah. Among other things, I’ve been using PAXes as something of a stress test for myself, and having just finished my sixth PAX AUS (and choosing to Enforce this year) I’ve come back with some added insight. In short, I am fairly sure I have an anxiety disorder; it’s hard for me to judge the overall severity but I’d say it isn’t mild.
The thing is, I’ve spent quite a bit of my life coping with it; in some cases (more so social ones) with avoidance, and in others with channeling it into productivity and perfectionism. The problem is that until recently I also never really fully figured out what exactly was wrong. Within the well-structured confines of high school and undergraduate study, with clearly defined tasks and strict deadlines, I excelled.
But, outside of those confines, I hadn’t yet fully developed the skills I need to handle decisions of genuine importance. So, while I’d already gotten reasonably good at (in essence) independently learned CBT, I simply wasn’t ready to handle career decisions and it hit me pretty hard.
In 2013, after graduating, I fell into depression pretty quickly until I finally decided (with some impetus from PAX AUS 2013) to start a research Master’s in AI. But a research degree has way less structure than coursework, and come late 2016 I petered out, frozen by the dual fears of my work not being good enough, and of the desolate uncertainty about where I would go once my Master’s was finished; my thesis deadline came around and I was unenrolled when I didn’t have one ready.
2016-2017 was another rather depressing year, between some failed attempts of mine to pull together a conference paper, Brexit, and the election of Donald Trump (In addition to caring about the politics I had also been looking at the UK and the US as places to go for my career). Then in late 2017 I finally decided that being unemployed was no reason not to have a social life, so I started building that up again.
Come late 2018 I now actually do have a social life, and I’m re-applying to finish the Master’s since the deadline to continue and still get credit for my earlier work was 2 years after being unenrolled. Re-applying doesn’t mean I’ll get in or actually finish, and it’s still going to be hard to deal with where I go after finishing it, but I have plenty of options and fallback plans, and I can always seek help.
There are still things I’m avoiding, e.g. for the most part I simply avoid thinking about romantic relationships altogether. Getting better at that is on the list, but it’s not important enough for me to deal with as yet.
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So a friend of mine, someone I’d hung out with maybe a dozen times, started getting really clingy (both physically and otherwise) over the past few weeks. At first I thought it was like a crush or something, but over the past few days he started telling me that his anxiety and depression have been coming back and I realized that he’s been making me into his emotional bedrock. I was already trying to figure out how to put some distance between us without hurting his feelings, but now I have no idea how to extricate myself without doing any damage.
I thought this might be useful in regard to the alcohol conversation we were having before.
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So I have an uncle. He is damaged from alcoholism, he has either Bipolar 2 or schizophrenia, and my family believes he moved out of the nursing home too early. He had successfully recovered for like 6 months then once he was moved into his own apartment…problems occurred. Feared his neighbors would kill him, has reportedly not changed clothes for weeks, stained teeth, refusing/forgetting to take his medications, turned his apartment into a cesspool but not cleaning and forgetting he had food. Calls people for attention. My family thinks he’s going to have to go back to a nursing home despite having nurses now who’ll check him twice a week and a housekeeper.
Hearing about how my uncle can’t get through the day just makes me think…I think when I get too old that’s going to be me. I set up an IRA for tax purposes alone and I don’t think I’ll be able to live long enough to reach that. I’m 30, don’t have a career. I’m not physically fit and suffer from a mix of depression/anxiety/ADHD. Didn’t get motivated for a job searching after living on my own since my passions of either food/beer service or writing are incredibly unsustainable where I live. Now I’m wrapped in two parts of family business that is stressing me out that I’ve been doing for 3 and 1/2 years now. I can’t stop working for my family either for health insurance reasons.
Today I learned my 93 year old great aunt who has helped finance my new apartment away from my family had a seizure that lasted 15 minutes. I’m fearing that the end is nigh for her. She began to deteriorate after her husband of SEVENTY years died two years ago and the seizures became a recent development. I know she would pass away at some point but I’m just not ready for it.
Over the past year it feels like I’ve been hit by wave after wave of emotional shrapnel. Bad things don’t happen to me directly all the time but when I hear stories of abuse and my uncle losing it; my mind feels heavier. I feel sluggish and hard to cope and it becomes hard to do things. I’ve lost a lot of friends in 2018 and my girlfriend and I had to end our relationship. I’m just finding less and less support these days and it hurts.
I do think I’ll be better by the time August rolls around when I can finally move to a new apartment that has up to date fixtures, no screaming children, no thin walls, not near emergency sirens. I’ll have walking access to my downtown which is pretty sweet. I have the money; I just feel like the money won’t be able to get me through the pain.
I’m going in to see my physician tomorrow (today?) and I really don’t want to. I already talked to my psychiatrist and both my therapists about my mood swings. My physician barely knows me. What’s he gonna do that we can’t talk about on the phone?
Fortunately my 20-60 minute mood swings gave way to 3-6 hour mood swings and I pretty much didn’t swing today. I don’t know if I need anything besides the already in place lamotrigine increase.
Mood swings are back up to 20-60 min but not between extremes anymore. Before it was like going from “Jesus, how did I ever get so lucky as to be alive” to “Am I gonna die soon? I need to die.” Now it’s like going from “I’m really lucky to be where I am” to “I can’t imagine how to cheer myself up.” This is livable, in part because the moods are closer together and in part because they have more time in between each other.
Called a hotline last night. Wasn’t suicidal, but I needed someone. Trans Lifeline was closed so I called the National Suicide Hotline and they weren’t very helpful. The weekend was really rough, and I couldn’t get to my Monday open mic which didn’t help. It had probably been a month since I needed that, which isn’t too bad. I still think I’m ready to go up on Estrogen on the eighth, tho.
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Have you tried things like the crisis text line? I have a friend who used to work there.
Text isn’t nearly as effective at grounding me as a phone call. There’s something about hearing a voice that brings me back to earth in a way texting just can’t.
There’s a cursed sector of the anxiety/poverty chart where you have to juggle the chances of you having a heart condition vs. Anxiety and how much having that professionally determined will cost you.
Edit: spoke to primary doctor, heart rate is indeed spiking up randomly but all of my other tests say nothing is happening to me, so tough shit don’t call again unless you’re dying.Now I’m afraid to go to the gym. Hopefully this goes away soon.
Yeah anxiety’s the fucking worst. I fell off running for a few months, due to injury then laziness, and now I’m back to the point where exercise gives me panic attacks. Now an irrational fear of heart problems is making it a lot harder to actually reduce my risk of real heart problems.
I’m working on trying to cut processed sugar from my diet, and let me tell you, the sugar withdrawal symptoms are real. I’ve moved on from “Can’t I just have some sugar as a pick me up” to “I am just feeling bereft and there’s no real reason for it. (But my brain is more than happy to find lots of examples why I should be depressed.)” It’s crazy how much you come to rely on the serotonin boosts from food to keep you going, and I’m really hoping I smash through this phase sooner rather than later.
It also doesn’t help that I reached out to a bunch of friends this weekend to try and go out and do something to keep my mind off of it, but when no one was available, my Gollum brain started pulling the “nobody likes you, they’re all out without you having fun” business on me.
Kicking sugar is a bitch. Before I went full keto, I found that partially shifting some of my carbs to fat helped with that issue, because you create satiety and satisfaction without needing that hit of sweetness.
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I’ve not had any struggles with depression, but my identical twin brother has bipolar disorder and clinical depression, so I’m constantly on the lookout for things like that in myself because, well, my genetics don’t seem particularly hopeful if that’s going to be a factor.
But looking back, the closest I’ve ever come to any depression was when I quit my job and had the worst breakup of my life (so bad I now see elements of post traumatic stress in my recovery). Those came in quick succession, and then I decided to quit drinking coke. Then I stopped eating chocolate. Also I was doing a full time circus acrobatics course, and I REALLY needed that sugar and energy. I was MISERABLE! My thoughts were going all over the place, and it got pretty dark in my head.
Then I started eating chocolate again, and the improvement was immediate. Like from one day to the next, whatever sugar and chemicals I needed to balance myself out were back, and it kicked off a real recovery from my lowest emotional and mental health dip ever.
I came home from work yesterday after having a filling fall out my tooth and had it crumble a bit.
I was a bit upset by this but it’s not painful or anything.
I told my wife about it when we were talking about our respective days and she got upset that I sounded down about this and that I had to grow up and stop trying to get her to validate my feelings. I was upset by this because when something has gone wrong for her I always validate her feelings and she responds well to it. She said I don’t do well with validation because I twist it around and use my sadness to make our lives worse and it’ll give our unborn child a complex.
We got into a massive argument about how not to fuck up our kid when she arrives and it went on for hours.
I don’t think people can be made to feel happy and that it’s a by-product of having love, security, bonds and trust and you get there by respecting the emotions of the child and empathising without over-reacting.
She thinks we should be always pursuing happiness and should downplay the negative emotions and emphasizing the positive ones.
We both think the other’s approach will lead to bad things.
We’ve had this argument before and like last time I had to admit I am too fucked up to really understand what I am talking about.
I just feel like now I’m the biggest danger to our kid and if I ever kill myself I’ll have to make it look like an accident. But jesus, if I ever actually died in an accident they would all think it was suicide.
I don’t know how to kill off my belief because it still feels like the right way of doing it even though it doesn’t stand up to actual scrutiny.
The hardest part there is that you’re both right, and both wrong. You’re right, Happiness isn’t a direct action you can just do, it’s something you can get in part from love, security, bonds, and trust. She’s right, just because you can’t just be happy as a direct action, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be pursuing it, and wallowing in negative emotion isn’t the way you’re going to get there.
And you’re wrong - Happiness isn’t a byproduct of just where you find yourself, it’s also a byproduct of your actions, you make it with your own two hands, and the help of the people around you, relying on others and your environment for your happiness without chasing it is waiting for a taxi you didn’t call, it’s not gonna come on it’s own. You can have all those things, and still be unhappy. She’s wrong, in that negative emotions are something to be downplayed, suppressing or downplaying negative emotions just turns them into a corrosive rot, it eats away the insides of your soul, you gotta accept it, feel it, understand it, and ultimately let it pass.
I can’t lie, though, I can’t tell you I think that thinking that validating feelings is a good plan, though - feelings are valid with or without the input of others, self-actualization is the name of the game. Nobody needs anyone else’s thumbs up to feel how they feel. Empathy and support trumps validation every time.
As for if it will screw up your kids, honestly, who the fuck knows. It’s not like parenthood comes with a manual, you just gotta do the best you can and have some faith it will work out for the best. It’s not reassuring, I know, but I don’t want to lie to you about it. Shit’s scary, but it’s the same scary every new parent deals with, so at least you’re not alone on that.
Honestly, the fact that it FEELS right, right now, give it some time. Think more about it in a couple days time, once you’ve had some time to forget about the argument. Leave it settle out for a while. One of the hardest times to examine our ideas is when we’ve just had to defend them, or worse, had a fight about them. If you want an example, look at this forum, which has seen more arguments than we’ve had hot dinners, that went longer than they should have because it was hard to let go of ideas right after arguing about them.
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Summer always makes me lovelorn.
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