i don’t care how cheesy it sounds, sometimes when you’re suffering you really need to stop, sit down and have a conversation with yourself. no fighting is allowed with yourself. do not frame yourself as the problem. do not let your insecurities interfere with your thought process. be careful with them.
have a conversation with yourself as if there were two of you- facing each other. you’re hurting for a reason. you’re behind for a reason. you don’t care for reasons. returning to our bodies and understanding why can drastically change our relationships with ourselves, seriously. where does it hurt? your heart, why? because of heartbreak? are you repressing tears? can you wait any longer for something to come to you? are you afraid of something? are you distancing yourself without realizing?
sometimes i needlessly hurt without thinking about why- because thinking is something you do and i don’t want to do anything. i’d rather my head go blank than think of myself, to centralize myself, to deal with myself. but those steps are so crucial to improving the relationship i have with myself. if i can find ways to understand myself, i can find the origin of the hurt. it always trails back to something.
Tag: mental health
facts
I was realizing recently that my need to be the best at everything I do is really just a desire to find some position where I can’t be judged.
This is also why I procrastinate.
I love both you girls for the same reason, is what I’m saying.
you gotta strongarm urself into feeling secure Failing Correctly, like: having thoughtfully tried without panicking, putting in a rational amount of effort without blindly causing more problems than you solve, asking for help, and recognizing and recategorizing tasks neurotypicals give you that actually ARE impossible and which they just want to see you put some mild effort in at, and won’t judge you poorly for not finishing/will judge you more highly for having nobly and loyally picked away at NO MATTER YOUR RESULT because they told you to.
A lot of RSD task problems just need a different perspective; most people suck and can’t get anything done. They display respect for superiors and win points by doing THEIR best, even if it isn’t useful let alone perfect, because what they’re demonstrating is compliance–they can be trusted to do what they’re told. They might have been mostly (horribly, painfully) imperfect or useless on this or that task, but they prove by “"trying”“ that, in the future, when conditions are right, they’ll get something done THEN without squandering luck or resources. It inspires others to provide for them better next time because they’ve actually won, in turning in failure or imperfection, by showing that they exerted reasonable and sustained effort and didn’t give up. It isn’t about just the ONE task, which usually isn’t RSD-style life or death or shameful-exile important.
You can fuck up every task you’re given for a long ass time and you’ll keep getting chances if you keep “trying” reasonably and sub-catastrophically, because your shortcomings will be attributed to an unfortunate lack of support from others (not trained right, lack of access to correct tools/materials/software) so long as you bring YOUR part, a patiently iterating “effort.” Displaying THAT is unassailable and judgement-proof, especially if you ask for help/clarification when convenient for others a lot!
Something that may come as surprising to folks whose needs and comfort levels are already catered to by the world around them, is that “coping” is exhausting.
There are a great many people who are perfectly capable of adjusting to certain situations, be it a matter of social interaction, or physical disability, medical conditions, or whatever the case may be. Through trial and error we have discovered tricks and methods that allow us to function in a society that wasn’t created with us in mind, and we’re very good at making it look like we’re getting along just fine.
But it’s tiring. Always, constantly having to be vigilant and on-guard while everyone around us takes everything in stride, and then no one understands why, at the end of the day, we shut down. Because we were able to “get by” throughout the day, suddenly our unwillingness or inability to cope is no longer valid.
It’s like carrying a 20 pound weight all fucking day long. Just because you can doesn’t mean you don’t need or deserve a break. And then when you finally put the weight down, everyone around you scolds you and chastises you, accuses you of being lazy, insists that you’re just “faking because it’s convenient.”
This is why it’s so fucking unbearable living in a home where everyone chooses to disregard your limits and your comfort levels. Family members will say, “I’m not going to cater to your needs, because the ~real world~ won’t cater to you and you need to get used to that.”
Consider: People who struggle and cope through everyday life are already painfully aware that the “real world” doesn’t give a fuck about us. This is why we develop coping strategies that allow us to function. This is why when we finally come home, when we are FINALLY through with the “real world” for the day, we just want some goddamn compassion. We just want the people we live with to place value on our needs, comfort levels, and limitations. We want the people who say they love us to demonstrate that love through doing whatever small thing they can do to ensure that when we’re in the comfort of our own homes, we can actually be comfortable instead of having to continue carrying around that weight that we’ve been forced to hold up all. day. long.
This is a very useful point.
a mess
this is THE BEST explanation of this aspect of mental illness i have ever seen
Because traumatized people often have trouble sensing what is going on in their bodies, they lack a nuanced response to frustration. They either react to stress by becoming “spaced out” or with excessive anger. Whatever their response, they often can’t tell what is upsetting them. This failure to be in touch with their bodies contributes to their well-documented lack of self-protection and high rates of revictimization and also to their remarkable difficulties feeling pleasure, sensuality, and having a sense of meaning. People with alexithymia can get better only by learning to recognize the relationship between their physical sensations and their emotions, much as colorblind people can only enter the world of color by learning to distinguish and appreciate shades of gray.
Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
(via yesdarlingido)
(via yesdarlingido)
Not sure if this is useful to anyone, but I had a big breakthroughs in my idea of self-care recently when I applied a phrase I use to combat negative self-talk – “Would you talk to a close friend that way?” – and reframed it as: “Would you care for a friend that way?”
Imagine my friend came to visit and she got hungry. Would I say, “Wait five hours until I’m done with this project and then you can eat a granola bar?” No, I would not. Would I say, “I’m don’t have time to go grocery shopping for you, so why don’t you spend three days straight eating this years-old Ramen I found in the basement that one of my old roommates left behind?” No, I would not. If her clothes got dirty, would I say, “I’m too lazy to scrounge up some quarters so why don’t you wear these ill-fitting clothes from Goodwill with holes in them?” No, I would not. If she had a day off, would I say, “I can’t be bothered to find something good for you to do; why don’t you just sit on the couch reading depressing internet articles all day?” No I would not. And if I were at a party, and she was tired and feeling uncomfortable and wanted to go home, would I say, “Stop being such an awkward loser, stay here and smile at people so they don’t think you’re rude?” No, I would not. A person I treated that way would be justified in wondering if she was my friend at all.
But, needless to say, I treat myself that way all the time. Once my friend has all her basic needs taken care of, sure, we can go for manicures and massages after. But that’s not the point. The point is making sure she’s fed and washed and clothed and comfortable; and I don’t think I’m the only one who has a whole lot of trouble even getting to that point.
pretentious illiterate (that’s their username, not an insult) on Metafilter (via gazztron)
God fucking bless the “worried well” who seek psychotherapy. They can mostly keep their lives/jobs/families running, but want an increase in their mood or quality of life, and come to me for a tune-up. They talk about existential questions and childhood dreams and personal fulfillment, and worry that they’re “whining” or “taking up [my] valuable time.”
I like them for them, of course; I find their lives and worries interesting and valuable, and enjoy the work we do together. But also?
They make the more “serious” work I do possible. People with the greatest need for therapy are frequently the least able to pay for it. When one of my clients loses their job and benefits, they need therapy more, not less. And in private practice I can only afford to keep treating them for free if I have enough people on my caseload who are paying me full price. My ability to volunteer at a homeless shelter and talk to them about grief and trauma is strongly dictated by how many upper-middle-class people pay me $200 an hour to talk about optimal job performance.
And emotionally, it is an honest fucking joy sometimes to get out of a session with someone whose childhood abuse makes their entire life difficult, and spend an hour talking to one of my worried writer clients about anxiety management and creativity and nothing too deeply painful.
So if you’ve ever paid a therapist but felt self-indulgent or whiny or like your problems “weren’t serious enough”: please know you’re valuable and important. Not just for yourself (though you are), but because your presence in that therapy room makes a lot of other things possible.
i was tense because as someone who has trauma in her history but looks to a lot of people like “worried well” (to the point it took me years to be properly diagnosed with PTSD, ugh) i expected bashing from this post
THANK YOU for doing a very different thing ❤
I mean, once upon a time the worried well had confession with priests, or village elders/wise old men and women, or shamans/people in touch with the spirit world to listen to them and advise them on how to lead a happier, wiser life. Now that we’re a secular society that treats shamanism etc. as superstition, and locks old people away? All the worried well have is self help books, psychotherapy, people they know in person who are probably no wiser than they are, and talking to people on Tumblr. Of all these options, psychotherapy seems the most likely to actually help. Going to psychotherapy when you’re not severely mentally ill fills an important need that society isn’t otherwise filling, so it’s not shameful to go.
Also, the boundary between “worried well” and mentally ill/traumatized can be blurry sometimes. At one point I was in therapy for severe depression. But now, with my lower grade trauma, social anxiety, excessive shame, and just Needing Someone To Talk To In Order to Deal With Emotional Stuff And Reflect in General? That’s “worried well” compared to a lot of people here on Tumblr.
A related idea (which I’ve had before) is that if you do have a serious trauma, you’re wasting your/the therapist’s time if you aren’t talking about the most traumatic thing possible every single moment of therapy. But sometimes you’re not ready to go there, and that’s okay. Sometimes, your work or family need you to focus on more minor problems, like anxiety management or writer’s block. And getting unstuck on something like that can make you feel so much better about yourself, and more capable of change in general. I would think that could only help you deal with the serious trauma.
Thank you for writing this, @star-anise.
*cheerful neurodivergent yelling* Curb-cutter effect! Curb-cutter effect!! CURB!! CUTTER!! EFFECT!!
What are the symptoms of ADHD besides hyperactivity? All I’ve been exposed to is stereotypes of what it’s like to have ADHD and I want to learn more!
well here’s what it’s like for me
- feeling like you need to Do Shit All The Time
- like, literally every second
- if you aren’t stimulated for even a second you’re incredibly bored
- boredom is literally painful
- it’s worse than death
- worse than e v e r y t h i n g
- feelin that sweet Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria™ any time you get teased or insulted
- when you’re listening to music you always tune it out eventually
- not picking up on social cues At All
- actually, what are social cues?
- can’t regulate attention
- not interesting = not worth paying attention to
- hyperfocus for hours
- “wAIT ITS 4 PM WHAT THE F U C K”
- did i forget to eat again
- The Thoughts go from point a to point g in less than one (1) fuckin sentence
- *someone says a thing* what *person repeats thing* what *person repeats thing again and you still don’t hear them but dont ask what again in case they think ur weird*
- or, alternatively
- *someone says a thing* what *person starts to repeat said thing; you reply less than a second after they start*
- using subtitles all the time so you don’t have to go back twenty times to determine What The Fuck someone said
- “sorry i tuned you out for that entire sentence can you repeat that”
- needing e x t r e m e l y s p e c i f i c d i r e c t i o n s
- EXTREMELY POOR VOLUME CONTROL TBH
- tfw that thing u were working on falls apart and u cant redo it bc u already did it and that would be boring
- long blocks of text are Extremely Hard to Read
- ur fuckin brain works 12 times as fast as everyone elses. for every ADHD person it’s somethin different. for me it’s puns. ill choke on my own laughter at a pun an Entire Second before anyone else even gets it
- RAMBLING
- The Leg Bounce™
- Disassociation
- that ADHD feel when you
- ^^ that one is a True Marker of an ADHD person. only ADHD people understand.
Reblogging because I think this is super helpful
!!!!! PSA that the hyperactive stuff on here (always needing to Do Something, ccaann’‘tt bbee bboorreed, etc) can wind up masked almost totally by maladaptive daydreaming, which, when you think about it, is actually a marvelous way to begin INSTANTLY doing something interesting without even having to get up and go somewhere else. Once you internalize your need for stimulation and start watchin’ the ol’ headmovies, you might LOOK like a very patient person who has no trouble sitting still when it’s required or staying on-task for extended periods of time despite setbacks and delays, but only from the outside. Inside there are tabs open with music videos and etc. playing, and you’re probably glancing back at reality only when necessary. You might look at sensation-seeking symptoms like hyperactivity and think “can’t relate” when, really, you’re just ready to return to your interior hyperactivity at a moment’s notice.
@ everybody who can’t just slip out of reality when boredom threatens and who has to instead find something to entertain themselves with irl, my heart goes out to you and everyone around you because holy fuck
I wonder how many writers and other creatives are ADHD. I mean, that whole “Occupy the brain with invented narratives, characters, dialogue, and wotld-building” thing was my refuge as a child, and has become my happy place as an adult.
I’d write all day, every day, if I could arrange my life for that. Coping technique turned profession. Unfortunately, the Day Jobbe sucks up most of my creative energy, alas.
Others out there like me?
I had a teacher in high school who pulled me aside one day and thanked me for being so attentive in class, and all I could think was, “bitch I am on year three of a Harry Potter OC fanfic, I have not heard a single word you’ve said in weeks.” So, yeah, maybe.
(A couple years ago I turned up positive on an ADHD screening, but I wasn’t jittery and I don’t forget appointments so my therapist said nah, probably not. But I’m finally getting my anemia treated, and I’m starting to wonder if maybe ADHD comorbid with depression and iron deficiency, compensated for by years of refining my note-taking and planner systems, doesn’t explain an awful lot.)
Just so you know, ADHD and ADD are no longer separate diagnoses- there’s just ADHD, and subtypes (primarily inattentive, primarily hyperactive, combined). That means there’s tons of us ADHD people who aren’t hyper physically and may even struggle with fatigue and brain fog pretty badly.
Some more exciting ADHD things include:
– I have lost this thing. When did I lose it? Where did I lose it? Did I ever have it in the first place?
– ‘I’m calling because you missed yo-’ FUCK
– the overwhelming need to be stimulated combined with getting tired of everything quickly and lacking physical energy/ the ability to concentrate
– saying offensive or inappropriate things and then when people are like ‘what are you thinking?’ being like ‘i honestly could not tell you’
– your brain is like one of those shopfront windows with all the TVs playing different channels. at least one of them is a song.
– ‘okay you can’t leave the exam hall until 1PM, so if you finish early you’ll just have to sit there’ haha death would be kinder
– poor emotional regulation. feelings are Very Hard To Handle By Yourself and you might break things when angry, hurt yourself when sad etc
– step one: join club or society. step two: learn everything there is and volunteer for as much responsibility as possible. step three: lose interest completely and ghost or quit, ignoring desperate/confused emails and hating yourself
– “something i thought has distressed me, but i can’t remember what. let me sit down and unpack the last five minutes of mental conversation.”
“!!!!! PSA that the hyperactive stuff on here (always needing to Do Something, ccaann’‘tt bbee bboorreed, etc) can wind up masked almost totally by maladaptive daydreaming, which, when you think about it, is actually a marvelous way to begin INSTANTLY doing something interesting without even having to get up and go somewhere else. Once you internalize your need for stimulation and start watchin’ the ol’ headmovies, you might LOOK like a very patient person who has no trouble sitting still when it’s required or staying on-task for extended periods of time despite setbacks and delays, but only from the outside.“
HAHAHAHAH omg I should have seen this 15 years ago
ADHD is reading the first post in this thread, skipping all the commentary, and rebloggingbit anyway
My input is ADHD is TALKING CONSTANTLY AND UNABLE TO STOP
As someone who’s been maladaptive daydreaming since I was 3/as long as I can remember
It is EXACTLY why I write/draw/get so passionate about stories
But it’s also why as a kid no one saw blatant ADHD- I can be patient and calm but my mind is constantly on high speed daydreaming and creating and writing and it can still be very hard to focus/cope with mental exhaustion
Putting something down because you’re done with it and have it CEASE TO EXIST. You don’t put away the jam that’s less than a foot from the fridge because your mind has already moved onto something else.
Getting an idea and having it be The Only Thing You Can Think About for the next however long it takes for you to go to sleep and (hopefully) reset.
some of the stuff on that list looks more autistic than adhd, but they often coexist. i’m the poster boy for adhd and also the more verbal and sensory kind of autism, and they really bleed into each other. am i failing to absorb any information from your ted talk because i’m glitching out from adhd, or because i’m losing speech processing from autism?
all i can do is take my concerta and see whether the situation improves. if not, it was probably autism. 😛
Do you ever notice yourself getting bad again…like, you know you’re not doing work that needs to be done, you know you’re not cleaning, you know you’re not taking care of yourself…you know all the things you need to do to start trying to feel better. But you just can’t. And you’re left feeling like shit bc you thought you were getting better but here we are
This 💯
RECOVERY. IS. NOT. LINEAR.
notice yourself slipping,
be tender with yourself,
and get back to workit’ll all be okay
elphabaforpresidentofgallifrey:
does anyone else have those moments where they just fall in love with being alive? like, maybe you’re in art class with soft music and you realize that this peaceful feeling is a part of life that you love and you want to just keep forever, and there are so many other parts of life too that are so wonderful and maybe existing isnt so bad after all
is this what being not depressed is like
no, this is what recovery is like. this is what being depressed is like, and it’s why we stay. because even when we’re sure this is it, this is the last day we can put up with it, this is the last hour, the last second – some part of us remembers these moments, and thinks – what if tomorrow has one of them.
i used to joke i have bad days and worse days. i almost never do well. i feel like i keep barely a nose above the water.
but in those rare, rare, rare seconds where the waves stop for one second and i catch sight of something other than dark, i see it. the way a rose looks after a rain. how my mother smiles when she knows it’s my favorite meal that’s cooking. my best friend looking over his shoulder to flip me off again. the bike i rode at 7 and crashed at 17. a little bug struggling with five little legs – but walking, walking.
recovery isn’t smashing into these moments and realizing it’s finally happened, what those people said is true and it “all gets better”. recovery is remembering those moments and deciding – i want them back. it’s looking for them. sometimes it takes hours. sometimes days. sometimes months without any sight of them. but you look, you search even when you’re too tired to keep your eyes open, because you promised yourself … tomorrow. tomorrow will be the day we find one. a four leaf clover we know is our sign, the rainbow, the wishing well – the way out.
and when you find one, they get easier. four leaf clovers always grow in the same patch, after all. and your eyes get sharper. you figure out what makes any small part of you happy. you figure out that you might not be happy, but it’s good enough to stick around to watch the way oil looks in puddles and how she always cries at new year’s. and it might not be blisteringly, soul-crushingly happy in the way other people seem to feel things – in that mind-numbing wordless joy that shines in them, that glow i’m so envious of, that effortlessness – but it will be like this, just quiet, a moment of rest, of the shouts dimming for a minute, a peace.
it’s easy to say “i’m depressed, i’ll never be happy.” maybe. i hope not, because i’m still looking. and in these moments i’ve rediscovered that i am funny, that i like the color pink, that kittens and puppies never fail me. in these moments i’m still depressed, still me, still fighting an illness that wants to end me. but i’m fighting. i seek these moments in every second i get because i’m here and breathing and after all this i’m going to be pissed if this gets the better of me.
maybe i’ll never figure out how to feel effortless and free. but i know that i feel love when the music is blaring and my hands are out the window and i feel love somewhere on the beach and i feel love watching salamanders wake up in the mornings. it’s not other people’s love, it’s far-off and it’s distant and it might not be “normal”, but it’s goddamn important to me.
i didn’t wake up better. i forced better to come fight me. i’ve been walking towards recovery since i was 19. five years later and no, i’m not cured, but i see a lot more of these moments. or maybe they were always there, and only now am i realizing what i got in front of me.
and when it’s been bad again? when i’m not even breathing? when it’s been months since i felt anything, when the stress is too much and the sky is dark and the moon in me has fallen silent? i say: hang on. tomorrow might be the day we find it. tomorrow might be worth the fight.
the best part about this? eventually, i’m right.
Like, I get that you and a lot of people find this helpful, but I don’t see it. I’ve had so many moments where it feels like I’m getting better and then nothing improves in the long run. I’ve heard of people having one or two depressive episodes and then getting over it, and I’ve heard of people never getting depressive episodes at all, and I’ve heard of people being depressed for more or less their whole lives, but I don’t feel like I ever hear about people being depressed for a decade or more than then finally making lasting, long term progress that makes the struggle worth it.
I do. I’m married to one of them. I know others.
And… Like, even some of the people who are depressed their whole lives are still, on the whole, okay with that. Anhedonia’s a bitch, but sometimes you find a way to derive value from things anyway. I dunno, man.
But I know a fair number of people that I know felt just like you describe feeling for, I dunno, a decade or more, and now they’re happy they made it through that. It happens. Which is no guarantee for you, and… I dunno. People link me to a lot of your posts, and I just want to say, I don’t think you’re doing anything wrong, I don’t think it’s your fault, and I think you deserve better, and I hope you find it.
*waves* seebs’s spouse here. depressed since early childhood. learned to do the thing @inkskinned is talking about in adulthood (after many much much worse coping mechanisms i won’t get into) and kept at it until i got really good at it. and that was it for years – i was depressed, but also sometimes very happy. believe it or not, the two states are not mutually exclusive. i didn’t have the energy to react strongly to good things, and sometimes i had anhedonia to the point where my happiness was very muted, but it was still happiness. i think if you look in the recovery or depression tag on my blog and you go back a ways you can find my posts about that.
and if that was all the better it got, i would’ve stuck it out and been – on the whole – glad to be alive.
but i’d kept trying various meds off and on over the years, and persistence paid off. i found the one that actually worked. it took two weeks to climb out of hades, like orpheus, holding my breath and refusing to look back. two weeks as the medicine worked its molecular magic on my brain chemistry. and then It Happened: a Day Without Depression.
i woke up and looked at the day ahead of me and was curious about what would be in it. i felt awake, i felt alive, i know that’s a cliche and doesn’t convey anything but i really felt like i was the one breathing, you know? finally MY lungs and MY heart and MY blood and bones, not an oubliette where i passed the time befriending rats and sparrows. not every day is like that now, but enough of them are that i’m a lot stronger on the bad days. i’m not so exhausted all the time.
more and more often, i look up at sunlight through leaves, or a firefly lands on my hand, or seebs gives me a big good hug, and i feel that bright upwelling joy that used to be so vanishingly rare.
don’t. give. up.
i swear if i’d lived unmedicated eighty years and only been depression free the last year of my life, it would still be worth it.
just moving along like everyone else 