Mental Health and Grown Up Stuff

[Auspice]

Keeping busy, yeah. I'm learning to, when my brain starts to go off into 'panic mode.' Happened last night, so I went off and followed a half hour yoga video.

It helped, immensely.

[Monogram]

@surreality It's a monstrosity built of faux wood and bent aluminum. But it's at least better than the damn thing I had from Walmart that I'm pretty sure would fall apart if I so much as sneezed at it.

Besides, I am not putting what will eventually be a $1500 gaming PC on it.

But yes, doing stuff with my hands, there is a certain amount of catharsis to it. I've thought about doing the Bob Ross paint thing, because why the hell not. I've found when I needed a moment to chill the hell out, I'll watch Bob beat the devil out of his brushes and keep wondering why I don't do that myself.

There is one other thing I've noticed that helps me. Is simply asking a friend or two to do a simple RP campaign on Google docs. There's no sense of urgency, I can pose when I feel good about doing so and it's singular story between two people. Not idea that I have to worry about the ramifications or metaplot if I'm running something for someone else. It's rewarding in a way and right now it's comfortable. Because I still like writing, still enjoy writing, it's still hobby no matter how much I believe I'm not as good as I want to be at it.

And that is the greatest fault that I find myself struggling with, something I've talked to a few friends. And it reflects so hard on my life away from the computer. The desire to be 'good enough'. Just as I wonder to myself 'why would this friend want to talk to me when they have others?' is just as equal to 'why would this person want to RP with me when there are better people to do so with?'

My girlfriend applies to the theory of 'fuck them', because she, like @Ganymede is a brickhouse when it comes to that stuff. I don't know whether it's the doubt or the confidence that has me constantly wondering if it's me. Either not creative or interesting enough or bad posers or rife with grammatical errors.

I will never be good enough to be an author, I just want to be good enough for own thing.

Added note: I want to build a gym in my basement. I think lifting weights would be good for me to get back into.

[Monogram]

Because I haven't updated in a week or so. This has been a rather hard week for me, but I think I've found some respite in a couple things. Mostly in a very beneficial conversation with a friend and then another conversation with my therapist based upon the first.

A friend kept asking me 'why' RP was so important to me. I couldn't really give an answer to it. It was when I finally started to question the 'why' on the physiological level instead of the emotional and mental aspect of it. Turns out, strangely enough, I had been using MUing to self-medicate. When we do things we enjoy, our brains secrete four particular chemicals. Usually this is serotonin, endorphins, oxytocin, and dopamine. I had somehow subconciously been seeking out the biggest provider of serotonin and dopamine since that's something I don't produce as much as I should. There's a more long-winded explanation that I'll hold off on.

My therapist thought this was very forward thinking today, proud that I had come to that conclusion. There is a bit of guilt involved for me, now the sudden realization that I was treating people I RP'd with like some kind of drug pusher to get my fix.

That all said, today's session combined with now being on medication has helped immensely, and for the first time I feel like I can think straight. This last week has been hard. To the point where it almost felt like withdraw. I couldn't figure out why it felt like that until I came to the thought that I did. Still, the pull is there. It doesn't feel so dire now, and the need to remind myself on the now instead of fixating my thoughts on the past or the future.

[Ganymede]

@Ganymede said in Mental Health and Grown Up Stuff:

But I just am. I have no trick to it. It's how I am, and, I suppose, that means, relative to others, I don't suffer from mental health issues.

Apparently, I too have mental health issues. I've only recently begun to recognize it.

It's ennui. It is a severe, heavy boredom.

I've done my 'net research. It's not quite anhedonia, but it is approaching that. I honestly thought that my part-time smoking habit was causing the food to taste bland, but apparently that's just my brain. Even that smoking, which I usually enjoy, has become monotonous and repetitive.

Every day is like the one before. The feeling I have waking up isn't quite the same as sadness or shame. I am not physically unable to get out of bed; to the contrary, I get up just fine, and am usually quite motivated to get into the office to repeat the same general 9 to 10 hours again.

And again.

And again.

I'm just writing at this point. But maybe there's something wrong with being a brick.

[Thenomain]

@Ganymede said in Mental Health and Grown Up Stuff:

maybe there's something wrong with being a brick

I'm trying to maintain the fluctuations between brick and spazz. It's wonderful when you get there, so best of luck to you getting there.

[surreality]

@Ganymede I have been in that headspace from time to time. It isn't always easy to recognize -- so many kudos for spotting it. (No, really. It's one of the easiest to overlook because there's not a 'something majorly wrong' you can readily point to.) It can be incredibly hard to shake off, because a major aspect of it is inertia. Not that nothing's going on -- just that nothing's particularly different from day to day.

For what it's worth, travel can help, if that is an option. Physically being in a new space, even for a week, can break the routine enough to be a major help. I'm lucky in that with art-work-from-home I can do that if there's $ for it (which there never is, really) and feel kinda like an asshat in that it's kinda the opposite for you most likely (likely have the $ to travel within a sane budget, but scheduling/time off is a nightmare), but if you can do it, I really can vouch for it being a big help. We do an annual drive to Florida to collect shells and just hang out NOT working ourselves to death (trip is fairly cheap, mellow as all hell, pretty, meditative, lots of tasty places in the area, etc. -- in all seriousness if this sounds like fun to anybody ever/at all PM and I can give info about a good where and when and such) and it does a good job of staving this off.

The other thing, if time allows, is a 'challenge hobby'. I joke about collecting too many weird and usually useless skills; this is partly why I do it (and why I am not really joking about that). It can be a collection of something, too, not necessarily a skill. I tend to pick stuff that's at least marginally related to other skills so they can enhance each other, but it doesn't have to be. Next in the useless skills queue, for instance, is needle-felting, which, when I tried it a ways back, I realized was 'creatively applied repetitive stabbing'. (That can't be bad for stress at least, right?!) Broadly speaking, learning a new thing helps the brain create new pathways. This is good, 'cause it helps break some of the inertia.

[surreality]

Double post, oh, well.

I know the role RP serves in terms of my mental health. Mostly, it's a chance to get out of my own head for a little while -- something that I consider more or less essential once in a while.

My head is not a particularly happy place to be. I won't go into specifics on the reasons why.

One of my brain's oh so fun quirks, however, is problem-solving. I rely on pattern recognition a lot, for better or worse. Sometimes, this comes in really handy. Other times? Not so much. If something breaks the pattern or doesn't make sense, my brain will pick at it -- and pick at it, and pick at it, and pick at it -- while approaching it from just about every possible angle until it's more or less driving me bonkers. It may be something major, it may be something completely trivial, but either way, I end up stuck in that particular loop, and go around and around and around until I'm dizzy and usually frustrated as hell. It's like a computer getting stuck in a loop and consuming more and more processes until it eventually crashes.

Not fun.

RP lets me step out of my own brain and into someone else's for a very short while. This? Handy. It helps break the head-loop thanks to the perspective shift, no matter how brief.

This is pretty amazingly helpful. And, weirdly enough, incredibly healthy for me at least, in moderate doses.

It also means that if real life is spectacularly horrible, RP is a bad idea, because stepping back into my head again becomes scary as hell. So when it could arguably be the most useful, I've had to learn to avoid it, lest the 'brief vacation from my brain's badly wired processes to hit the reset button' become 'I would much rather live here now k thx because this imaginary hidey hole that doesn't really matter in the long run is way better'.

I harp on self-awareness a lot. This is partly why. I know that if I'm not careful, and not paying attention, it's easy enough to fall down the 'I'll just hide here' rabbit hole, and focus on problems that aren't remotely important because in the end, the stakes are so incredibly small compared to more or less anything in the real world and even if everything goes totally wrong, it's pretend wrong/important/etc., no matter how important it might seem.

I still fuck up on the self-awareness sometimes. I try not to, but it still happens. Either way, though, if things are less than grand RL, I know to stick as much to solo project problem-solving stuff toward the same ends, and to the very tiny handful of folks I know very well if I RP at all, since they know me well enough to be able to say: check yourself (without me flipping out on them/feeling WTF about it and knowing they're looking after my best interests).

It will probably be a while before I'm playing much anywhere, if at all, for the above reasons. (And that was before almost dying twice and the tens of thousands of dollars in hospital bills that preventing a round three of that has looming for us now -- not a great thing for people who don't make much money; it's super fucking scary, actually, and it's going to take something just shy of an actual miracle to handle it. I have no idea how we're going to pull this off.) I'm OK with this, though -- the not playing part, anyway -- since I know my limits enough to know it's for the best.

[ThatGuyThere]

@surreality said in Mental Health and Grown Up Stuff:

The other thing, if time allows, is a 'challenge hobby'. I joke about collecting too many weird and usually useless skills; this is partly why I do it (and why I am not really joking about that). I

One thing i have noticed that has helped my mental health is oddly enough reading old text books. I saved some of mine from college and I have found when I take the time to read a chapter a day, my brain feels more engaged then it does when I don't do this for a while. To this end I have started picking up the random ones I see at used book stores.

[Monogram]

Today was a good day. I know only started medication this week, but I have already noticed a difference in how I think and perceive things. It could also be a placebo effect on my brain, but the constant anxiousness and that particular tightness in my chest isn't as noticable. As if things are more manageable now. Aware of them, but they don't control or rule how I act and react. It's a good feeling.

I logged into my MUs for the first time in ten days, just to see if I was comfortable enough with doing so. Catch up on boards, just say hi to people. It was a good feeling and to myself, as if I had taken a positive step forward in the right direction.

I don't want to jump right back into RPing, not yet, but at least able to log in and poke at things lightly, I feel good about that.Like what I've been doing has been having a positive effect.

I feel calm and comfortable. It's not a feeling I've had in a very very long time.

[Cupcake]

They tell you it takes for the medicine to build up in the system, but I noticed a distinct difference in about a week. I do want to caution you - when I started, I actually experienced a massive anxiety attack, but I stuck with it and within a week, I was downright euphoric. I literally didn't know what it felt like to not feel depressed and anxious anymore until then. But this doesn't mean you will have the same anxiety experience - brain chemistry is like snowflakes. We are all snowflakes! I'm glad to hear it's working, regardless. You're doing great.

[Auspice]

So I don't go out much.

For a variety of reasons (busy with work/school, physical health, lack of things to do...). But I do, every couple weeks, go to dinner with a group of ladies who also happen to be knitters, like me. I was introduced to them by a long time (17~ years) MU* friend.

My anxiety and self-image issues being what they are, I've had myself convinced they only accept / put up with me because of her.

Today, we had dinner planned. Said friend had to bail because she was sick. Normally... I'd bail, in turn (as she's generally my ride). Today, I made myself go. Paid for the Uber to get there, even.

...and had a great time. I didn't have a single flare of anxiety, either. It was just a nice dinner (that satisfied a craving; I've wanted tacos for daaaaays) and one of them even gave me a ride home.

I call this a #win because of the lack of anxiety. I was expecting it to happen, even braced myself for it, but it never came.

I honestly think with the depression handled by drugs that finally (fiiiiiinally) work for me, I'm able to better manage my anxiety (without having the two compound each other).

[TiredEwok]

@Auspice

I understand anxiety all too well so it makes me especially happy to read that you didn't have to deal with it and it sounds like you had fun as well.

[Auspice]

@Apu said in Mental Health and Grown Up Stuff:

@Auspice

I understand anxiety all too well so it makes me especially happy to read that you didn't have to deal with it and it sounds like you had fun as well.

Honestly? I think it was the first social outing in my adult life that didn't come coupled with some form of anxiety. And with people I'm still getting to know, too.

It's a huge, huge deal for me.

[Monogram]

I've notice for me, that splitting my time from a lot of things help. While I may not be prepared to get heavy into RPing just yet, I have found an outlet in having this new PC.

I started playing Guild Wars 2, at the suggestion of a friend(because she wanted someone to play with). I had never touched an MMO before, a fact that I was always proud of. I played for three hours today, and during that time, had zero interest or desire in doing anything MU-related. I consider this a win for myself. My medication made that desire decrease dramatically, playing something else to occupy my time made me forget about it entirely.

And it's a bit relieving. Knowing and understanding that I have a grip on it. That I control how I feel, rather than opposed to my brain driving and demanding me to log onto a MU because it fuels and feeds me those chemicals in my brain that I don't get normally.

It may of been a $1400 investment, but its the best investment I've made in a long time.

[Monogram]

I don't know if this is a downside to what I've been going through, but the longer I've been treated, it almost feels like you develop a kind of new self-awareness for your surroundings. To be given, or realize a newer sense of clarity that you hadn't really noticed before. And now that you have, you can look back and realize, 'holy shit, I was messed up'. And it's only been three weeks or so since I first started on this track to try and get help. Get better. But already, I see the things I had done, or had acted, or had said, and realize that whenever I'd wonder why I'd suddenly lose a friend online or people were cold, that it wasn't because of any grand scheme or assholishness, it was my own behaviour. It was me acting entirely erratic and off.

There is a guilt associated with that, especially when you realize it. I'm not going to sit here and blame it all on my brain chemistry, though I do think large portion does go to that. I wasn't me, I wasn't...right, I guess. And now, I feel as if I have a good deal of people to apologize to.

I realized this had come to head when I was actively being excluded out of things. And someone told me, who I thought had been a friend, was actively ignoring me and they felt like shit over it. I realized then that it wasn't just on them, but on me. I had caused a lot of this to occur.

I think I've come a long way from where I was. And I think admitting to it openly is something I need to do, not try and hide from mistakes I've made. It's all so sobering. On the same token, I also know I can't try breaking my back to mend bridges with people. Sometimes, you just can't. And if they can't accept that I'm trying to not be the person I was, or at least understand it, then I guess there's nothing else to be said.

At least I'm not torn up in knots over it.

[mietze]

Sometimes it takes time and space as well. You're doing fantastic, but it's only been a very short period of time. Sometimes NOT running after people saying "LOOK BETTER NOW LOOK BETTER NOW REALLY REALLY REALLY" and giving them space see if it it 'takes' does much more to repair a relationship than slipping into passive aggressivness or impatience for people to wipe the slate clean. Depends on the degree of damage though. A brief period of peevishness can be kicked to the curb for a restart almost instantly (at least for me). If someone has been personally and persistently destructive though, usually it takes me about the same amount of time they spent being so for me to let my guard down again.

Though I hope nobody's being rude. There's really no excuse to be anything other than polite, really.

[saosmash]

I'm glad you're taking care of yourself, @Monogram.

[Cupcake]

I try not to think of it as guilt, but revelation. Why did people treat me this way? Why did I feel these things? Now you know. And yes, the initial relief makes you feel like a completely different person. And in a way, you are.

I remember saying something to my psychiatrist: I had spent so many years not really knowing at all who Cupcake was, but now I'm really excited to get to meet her. I hope the journey is as exciting for you.

[Deleted]

Self awareness is part of it but even with medication and treatment many of the behaviors and thought processes are still there. It is a permanent struggle, at least in my case. I work hard every day to not manipulate people and to always show as much empathy as I can. I massively overcompensate in some cases but I would rather be too nice and considerate than not enough.

[Hella]

I've been pondering medication for anxiety, but the thought of it terrifies me (which is, of course, the anxiety guiding me). Good for you, for being able to take that step.