Mental Health Thread • Page 326

Doing dishes while living alone makes me go fucking crazy. They're just stacking up and I feel incredibly overwhelmed.

 

Oh we’re not going to talk about my sink lol

if it makes you feel any better: I think that’s normal. Fuck dishes.

 

My sink is a fucking disaster right now hahaha I don’t want to think about it

 

I’m normally very ok with my communication with people being through text, chorus, video games but the second I have any health issues crop up, it becomes very apparent just how alone I am.

my daily schedule is basically work, go for a long walk and that’s it lol

 

I moved to a place that has a dishwasher and come to find out the dishwasher is broken and doesn't clean the dishes and quarantine happened so no one can come into my house because I have a weak immune system. So now my dishes are out of control and I know I need to do them because otherwise I can't eat anything, but I'm just so lazy and anxious I guess.

 

listen for full disclosure I let my shit go for so long that I just straight up threw out a lot of dishes/silverware and bought new ones lol

please don’t feel bad. Disposable dishes exist. New dishes exist. Don’t beat yourself up.

 

Yeah, most of us here are in a closer situation than the vast majority of people I know in “real life”. Even the people on my family or close by who are at high risk seem to basically be back to normal behavior and I’m not ready for that. I think that’s part of why things have gotten harder lately, because not only is time still passing with no change for us, but there’s less camaraderie or a feeling that we’re all vaguely in it together because everyone else isn’t doing it anymore. I’ve gone from feeling totally fine talking about staying at home to being embarrassed to tell a lot of people in just a few short weeks.

 

Idk how you all think about this but I find it so difficult to nurture friendships or any kind of relationships. I feel like, the more I let my guard down and open up, the more I get scared of the person I'm interacting with.

It explains the (too) many occasions I've overshared, be it on this place or elsewhere on the internet. Speaking to strangers is incredibly easier than taking the time to reach out to someone with a simple "hey how are you doing?". It's been the bane of my existence lol.

 

I can relate and I hate it, honestly. I find it so hard to make and maintain real, meaningful onnections with people, when that's all that I really want and think about constantly. It's a source of endless frustration for me.

 

I haven't let myself get close to someone in years, I tell myself it's because the pain of missing them when they're gone is worse than feeling lonely. And they always leave/move on. And Tbh I rarely even meet people that Iike.

 

ugh I feel this x 37399362

 

Did she definitely view the story, it's a bummer how some people don't care about that stuff but I can't say for certain that's what happened

Apathy has alienated from everyone and made me feel like a bummer scold

 

Part of me feels like the world is telling me I’m meant to suffer alone. How cringe worthy every dating app is, and how it’s near impossible to find someone who isn’t a drunk, doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drink and doesn’t want kinds. Still chatting with that one guy but this lockdown has made it hard to meet because places are closed. Hopefully soon. I worry that if we do meet he won’t like me. We’ve been chatting since around April (he also lives over an hour away). I’m super insecure and get more insecure every day I’m alone. I look in the mirror and I can’t picture anyone wanting to be with me. I’m a monster. I also can’t afford laser treatment right now because it’s over $600 and I’m going to need at least 4 treatments. I’m tired of being sad

 

There’s so much to unpack here I don’t even know where to begin and I’m also not trying to offer unsolicited advice to anyone— maybe you just wanted to vent, and that’s valid.
But it’s clear you’re hurting so much here and it weighs on my heart. I’m absolutely not trying to be mean and in fact am trying to be kind when I say that your self esteem issues will sabotage you. If you can’t see any reason that anyone would want to be with you- no one else will. Or you are opening yourself up to people who are lousy and might see “1” reason to be with you and since you’ve convinced yourself there are no reasons to be with you, that’s good enough. But you’re worthy of someone who thinks there are 1000 reasons to be with you. You are worthy of believing that there are 1000 reasons to be with you.
I also don’t want to step on any toes but are you in any therapy at all? I believe that overwhelming self hatred like this can be unpacked with intensive therapy.

 

man I really need to get back on the therapy train, I haven’t had an appointment in like 7-8 months

 

Oh shit me too. I haven't seen a psychologist in already one year and a half. It was tough to continue seeing mine while juggling between everchanging work shifts and using public transport so I gave up. I regret it honestly. Now that I'm unemployed, I don't have any excuses.

I do see a psychiatrist for my transition but it barely feels like therapy when it's more like a very quick mental check up, with me also reassuring him that I know what I'm doing and that I somehow have my shit together. Plus I see him every other month from now on so...

Yeah the JKR stuff brought me to my lowest point in a long time, even if I did calm myself a little bit since. I was so focused on discussing and arguing it online that I forgot to eat last night, and was still anxious and basically paralyzed when I woke up this morning. I suddenly had the urge to publicly come out but at the end I wasn't ready to face the potential questions or lacks of acknowledgment, especially from the apolitical and potentially 4chan-y edgy crowds in my Facebook feed (just speculating, I lost faith in too many acquaintances a few years back).

I'm still thinking of making a publication or simply reposting some stuff even if I'm almost sure no one is going to read it anyway. I barely use social media nowadays or I think I don't know how to use it as a positive tool anymore? I adopted a very cynical and defeatist attitude about it these last few years. But idk I feel like I'm hurting myself and others by staying silent. Perhaps it's a fear of endangering myself but then constantly staying in a safe space or a bubble is also detrimental after a certain point.

I think the most telling thing for me is that I barely have anyone to talk about my transition or political issues I have strong feelings about IRL and it takes a toll on me.

 

So. Sigh. I don’t know how to phrase all this succinctly so it’s gonna get long. Apologies.

A few weeks ago my step father reached out to me via text to tell me I needed to reach out to my mother more and let her know I miss her and love her. I was taken aback because I wasn’t aware there was an issue. I know I’m not always the best communicator, but I also know my family knows that as well as they know that it’s a two way street. As I am a terribly insecure person, I immediately reached out to my mother to ask if everything was okay. So she agreed to come over for a chat even though we’ve been adhering strictly to social distancing measures for the last few months. We went for a walk, she asked me how I was doing, and I was honest and told her I was thinking about reaching out to my therapist because I was feeling very depressed due to absolutely everything going on and it had been a while. She was silent and then launched into what she wanted to tell me.

Turns out that no, actually, everything is apparently not okay. For Mother’s Day this year I had contacted my wife’s side of the family - as well as all of her coworkers and friends - and had them send me videos wishing my wife a happy mother’s day because she was feeling pretty lonely and depressed. I edited the clips together and then had our four and a half year old son narrate the video telling her how much he loves her and laid it all over clips of her and the kids playing together. My wife watched it and cried and shared it on Facebook.

And that is what my mom told me she was upset about. She was hurt that I didn’t include my side of the family and said that it obviously made it look like the people in the video were the only people my wife cared about. I was shocked and just kept apologizing because it wasn’t my intention to make anyone feel left out and I was only trying to do something nice for my wife. My mother then told me it wasn’t just that video. Every year for my kids’ birthdays I compile all the photos and videos we took over the last year and I edit them together into these really long videos to commemorate the last year of their life. My mother told me she felt that she wasn’t featured in the videos enough and that hurt her feelings. Again, my son is turning five in October so apparently my mom has been harboring this resentment for years now.

For some context here, my parents got a contentious, life altering divorce when I was thirteen and it was awful. I was very angry, lost, heartbroken, and resentful for a whole lot of reasons. When I came out the other end of it years later, I felt like the one person I wound up being closest to throughout all of it was my mother, surprisingly enough, despite how angry I’d been at her for so long. I felt like I could always confide in her and trust her with my feelings. She always told me I was her little “peacemaker” in the family and that she never had to discipline me because all she’d have to do is look at me and I would fall apart and apologize immediately.

And that’s what I was doing as we walked together through my neighborhood. I didn’t know what else to say other than “I’m sorry” over and over again. She said she was hurt and disappointed that I was unaware of her feelings - because she knows I’m sensitive - and therefore figured my obliviousness meant I was being thoughtless and that only hurt her more. I just kept apologizing and asking if she was okay and she said she was fine and told me to make more of an effort to communicate with her in the future.

Then she went back to my house, played with my kids for a bit, said her goodbyes, drove home, and then I promptly had a panic attack in the kitchen while my wife did her best to help me breathe and calm down. It’s the first one I’ve had in three years now. I spent about a week after feeling ashamed of myself for it. I’ve also now spent the last month being afraid of my mother and I don’t know how to process this. I feel like my illusions of my safe relationship with my mom have been shattered and I’m pretty heartbroken over it. Reason being that I’ve had fallouts in the past with every member of my family except her and I could always turn to her for advice, knowing I was safe.

Then a week and a half ago my little sister posted a supportive thing about Black Lives Matter on Facebook and my dad responded with All Lives Matter. My sister and I got into it with him over it until my sister had enough and simply deleted the post. She then texted him privately and he responded right away. I texted him privately as well. I decided to be very open and honest. I told him some things about deeply personal events that happened to me growing up; events I’d never told him about before. I explained to him why he and I weren’t friends on Facebook and that part of it had to do with him getting into online arguments with both family and also close friends - ones that happen to mean a great deal to me because they literally saved my life...which is something he also never knew. It was a very long, personal text full of things I’ve always wanted to tell him but was too nervous to say. I did it though.

He never replied. I often envisioned what it would be like to tell him these things, and in my head it went a lot of different ways, but...I never pictured him just ignoring me. It hurt. Father’s Day is coming up now and I’m kind of dreading it. I feel like my family hates me. I know they don’t, and I am close with my sisters, but it’s just where my mind goes. It’s where my mind went when I was a suicidal teenager and college student. It’s a very familiar, lonely place to revisit. My wife has been wonderful through all of it and I adore my kids. She keeps telling me how sorry she is to watch this happen; how sorry she is to see it happen again and again with a clearer understanding each time of what it was like for me growing up.

I’m feeling very...heavy lately. I’m still working which I know I should be thankful for given the current circumstances, but it is truly soul sucking work and I am left emotionally drained at the end of every day. I’m just so tired. I don’t know.

 

I feel like this tweet sums this thread up nicely

 

I had to make the decision to no longer be friends with my only remaining friend and it just sucks. She has officially turned into a terrible human being and I can't be around her anymore. She said some nasty shit before and I kinda told her if she's gonna be like that we can't be friends anymore and she apologized and yada yada. Well she's back on her bullshit and is now being racist af so I just blocked her on everything and am just done with her. I felt kinda guilty and like I should tell her why I'm no longer being her friend but I just flat out don't even want to speak to her again so I didn't. Idk if that's awful but I kinda don't care. I just am going through so much rn and everything is awful so losing my only friend in the middle of it just really sucks. Plus the world is shit so all that's weighing on me too. And I whine about it all the time but it is just awful when you have no one at all who even remotely gets you. Like for reference almost my entire family is going off about how we need to be defending and protecting cops (wut?????) right now sooooo I don't really have anyone to talk to about any of the stuff going on at all. I just have never really had any friends who I can talk to about important things. It's all just kinda surface level BS and we'll like go shopping or to a concert or to a restaurant and that's it. It doesn't help growing up in and still living in a rural area where the vast majority of people are right wing assholes. I just have never had a group or even 1 person I fit in with and when important things go on, it really shows. And my grandma's health is not great and my whole family just doesn't think the coronavirus is a problem?????? So they all just go to their jobs at the grocery store and then go hang out at my grandma's house and I'm like yeah she's just almost 80 years old, had surgery like 2 months ago and is currently having issues WITH HER LUNGS AND CAN'T BREATHE but no big deal or anything!!!! I'm the only one helping her at all. I'm also dog sitting for my aunt while her family is ON VACATION IN FLORIDA right now!!! These people are seriously the worst. Like I kinda just hate everyone at the moment and feel more alone than I've ever felt so basically shit sucksssss.

 

Have my appointment with the Nurse Practitioner/psychiatrist thing tomorrow. not sure what to expect from it, but we'll see.

Have largely kept my anxiety in check, even last night when i couldn't fall asleep, but it hasn't been easy today. Thankfully it hasn't really fucked with me physically so far. Just sort of on edge from not sleeping well, having the appointment tomorrow, and finding out my grandfather is back in the hospital (for probably the millionth time). Also anxious about whether I'll get to sleep tonight and last night was just a one-off shitty night.

 

tbh the first wouldn't be a lie and it's definitely not helping this week.
hence the crying

oh i absolutely could, but jokingly I think they'd be like "you can be a bad one, we don't care just please watch them"

but to all these quotes...i just feel really bad lying, or even being truthful and saying no right now. both parents are trying to work as full time as possible, also move by the end of june or july, this week the mom is visiting her bro and SIL bc of a family death, and with covid i'm not sure how comfortable we'd all be if someone else was in the mix now too. i was asked to do full day or half day sunday and I was like no offense i'll take the half day.
i did find out that they'll be visiting their cousins for like 2 weeks i hope it's longer soon. idk when exactly but i know i can't wait!

just feeling very overwhelmed this week
i did make it home and in bed before i cried today though. slept for 2 hours and was a little disappointed/confused that it was only 8:30pm instead of am.

 

i tried microdosing recently and its been helping me cope without pharma meds. getting the dose right has been tricky though. if i take too high of a dose i get really sleepy like i did when i started anti-depressants, but for the most part the results have been on par.

 

Had my call with the nurse practitioner. Obviously still need to find a therapist (there's potentially one like a 5-min walk from my apartment, i just wanted to make sure this call was done and i knew what it would do before moving forward elsewhere).

Gonna start taking prozac, which she went with after i told her it's what my sister is on (guess what works well for an immediate family member often can be just as good for another).

 

I was on Prozac for a few years. I won't try to steer you away from it because it did help for a while, but I'm just going to warn you that it probably will lose its effectiveness. Granted, it took like... 4 or 5 years to get to that point so it's nothing you need to worry about now. But just something to keep in mind.