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baka of lathspell



Ed. op’s note: I was crazy when I posted this thread and my early posts in it are annoying; also I have a mental breakdown around page 9

baka of lathspell fucked around with this message at 22:58 on Jan 16, 2024

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baka of lathspell

or lol was there already a thread for this i have le memory lapse issues now as well

deep dish peat moss

I've been on Klonopin lately and it has made life alright + made me able to do way more because I'm not riddled with anxiety-nausea constantly

baka of lathspell

deep dish peat moss posted:

I've been on Klonopin lately and it has made life alright + made me able to do way more because I'm not riddled with anxiety-nausea constantly

i would be careful with this, there is no permanent pharmaceutical solution to anxiety. eventually you will need to come off it some which way

entry level tech: cheese does the good stuff. make cheez stringz your snack of choice

baka of lathspell

however tis true that all victories are victories & it may be a good chance to learn coping skillz in the meantime sorry i did not presume to presume that i know exactly wtf im talkin bout

Robot Made of Meat

deep dish peat moss posted:

I've been on Klonopin lately and it has made life alright + made me able to do way more because I'm not riddled with anxiety-nausea constantly

This sounds like a good thing. I hope it continues to help.


Thanks to Manifisto for the sig!

Ass-penny

yeah i need to get into therapy but :effort:

baka of lathspell

rear end-penny posted:

yeah i need to get into therapy but :effort:

same. :effort: is real with finding one that works/would work

biosterous




in addition to my meds, regularly reminding myself "slow progress is still progress" has been good and helpful for my brain



thank you saoshyant for this sig!!!
gallery of sigs


he/him

baka of lathspell

biosterous posted:

in addition to my meds, regularly reminding myself "slow progress is still progress" has been good and helpful for my brain

every step forward is a step forward regardless of if youre stepping back on the reg too

jareth is trying to eat frilly accessories now

cat mental health is mental health in somewhat of an unironic sense it counts thank you

im doing okay brutal night and morning lithium hits like a truck 5 mins after popping it

depression meds seem worth it but i dont want more drugs in my system than are already there

i was trying to think of anxiety copes mindfulness is okay i guess, meditation idk its like good for 5 mins after tho ime. maybe just therapizing yourself with music works the best like toe into ambient stuff that keeps a lil melody so not too boring. noise music is good if your head is just totalfucked

problem with most angst copes is that they're boring which sucks for attention depped sorts

cold showers maybe? then when youre freezing and uh moist lie down with book or computer even (wouldnt advise posting if like me you have posting anxiety). shiver the stress away

idk /essay

main prob with anxiety tho is usually having it at work idk the secret there maybe ask for poo poo as needed like lorazepams arent that bad

bad guy

baka fwocka fwame posted:

i would be careful with this, there is no permanent pharmaceutical solution to anxiety.

benzos are not a permanent solution but there are a whole class of drugs -- SSRIs -- which pretty much are.

bad guy

baka fwocka fwame posted:


i was trying to think of anxiety copes mindfulness is okay i guess, meditation idk its like good for 5 mins after tho ime. maybe just therapizing yourself with music works the best like toe into ambient stuff that keeps a lil melody so not too boring. noise music is good if your head is just totalfucked

problem with most angst copes is that they're boring which sucks for attention depped sorts

cold showers maybe? then when youre freezing and uh moist lie down with book or computer even (wouldnt advise posting if like me you have posting anxiety). shiver the stress away

i think you're getting it backwards. anxiety, like anger, is a movement emotion -- it's your brain saying there's a saber tooth tiger in front of you. the idea of trying to chill out and relax in front of a saber tooth tiger is nuts.

if you're anxious, move -- do jumping jacks for 7 minutes or take a walk or dance and sing a song loudly or do yoga or tai chi.

mindfulness does help but mindfulness doesn't need to be passive like just sitting there. trying to keep your balance while hopping around on one leg will keep you pretty dang mindful, and instead of telling your body "shut up you don't know what you're talking about" you will be saying "i hear you man, let's try to have a little fun with that"

Dr. Honked

eat it you slaaaaaaag
this is how i manage anxiety:

pause for a moment and be curious about exactly what feelings there are in your body. what does it actually feel like? is there tightness anywhere? does it hurt?

then say to your body, "thanks for the information, but i don't have any use for it right now"

try to be genuinely curious and genuinely thankful. it's not easy - it takes quite a bit of practise. it's super effective though if you can get good at it.

most important: don't be annoyed at yourself or feel bad about feeling bad. don't look for reasons why you might be feeling bad - you can always find them, and it's pointless. your brain just makes them up.



thanks deep dish pete moss and Plant MONSTER

deep dish peat moss

I only got the klonopin for one month because I'm trying to find a job and get insurance again, and job hunting right now is incredibly stressful. But literally my first day on it I sat down and re-did my resume posted it on ziprecruiter. That was just last week and I already one First Interview at a place that would be a weirdly big career move for me and they moved me on to a second interview, and tomorrow I'm going to go meet with a guy who owns a fairly large local family-run furniture manufacturer who reached out to me about basically overhauling his entire business from b2b into direct-to-consumer ecommerce. And in both cases I was anxiety-free and didn't sound desperate and actually asked them critical counter-interview questions about why I should work for them and what they can offer me which I think in both cases was a power move, and I quoted salary expectations that were like $25k more than I usually would have and neither one was put off by it.

But yeah I know benzos are not a daily solution and I specifically asked my psych for just a short term rx because I don't want to be on them daily. They have shown me that I was dealing with way more anxiety than I thought I was though and identifying it that way should help in the long run even when I'm off them.


I've never had good experiences with SSRIs but I've never taken them long enough to get over the "wow these are making me feel suicidal" hump

deep dish peat moss fucked around with this message at 17:24 on Jun 20, 2022

Kaiser Schnitzel

Schnitzel mit uns


bad guy posted:

benzos are not a permanent solution but there are a whole class of drugs -- SSRIs -- which pretty much are.

20mg of citalopram has made a big difference in my life over the past 3? months. glad i got the drugs. I didn't realize i was having tiny panic attacks all the loving time until...i wasnt. it's really nice to not be terrified of everything all the time, and has given me some space to work on some of the changes i would like to make in my life. I still worry about things, but i don't ruminate and obsess about them nearly as much, and wow i have alot more free time now that im not googling about my imagined toe cancer or whatever.

it was a lil rough at first but im glad i stuck with it. Never had suicidal thoughts or anything, but insomnia, funny tummy, occasionally feeling like my skin was on fire, fun stuff.

e: mostly quitting caffeine helped a whole lot too. I miss my good tea and i still have it sometimes, but turns out decaf is fine. didnt realize how much caffeine was really making me nervous until i stopped either.


https://i.imgur.com/R8ctked.mp4
ty Manifisto for this wonderful sig!


Kaiser Schnitzel

Schnitzel mit uns


i saw some comedian make a joke about getting really in shape from lexapro masturbation and it was really funny to hear 90% of the audience give a slightly confused chuckle and the other 10% give a very hearty and knowing guffaw.


https://i.imgur.com/R8ctked.mp4
ty Manifisto for this wonderful sig!


Goons Are Gifts

Kaiser Schnitzel posted:

i saw some comedian make a joke about getting really in shape from lexapro masturbation and it was really funny to hear 90% of the audience give a slightly confused chuckle and the other 10% give a very hearty and knowing guffaw.

I just gave one of those guffaws reading this post lol


teen witch
currently climbing out of the wreckage of what has been officially diagnosed as a “depressive episode”. the past month has been a teary blur, and I will accept welcome emptiness than this perpetual motion powered self hate machine known as my head.

I’ve had depression of one flavor or another since I was thirteen, but I’ve also learned to cope with it the older I get for the most part. now currently with the label MDD, and that works for me. unfortunately I have the orbiting satellites of anxiety, PTSD and ED, a recent edition to my mental illness galaxy.

seeing a psychologist again tomorrow, to plot a plan out for therapy. been in and out of it since the first grade.

meds? currently the loathsome Zoloft and I’m low key hoping I can maybe *possibly* wrestle a Wellbutrin prescription, as that worked best for me, but it isn’t commonly prescribed in Sweden. I’ll make do with what I’m given but I want to avoid any drug seeking flags on my medical records, even if it is for loving Wellbutrin.

I’m not particularly ashamed of my head problems. I dislike having to sort my life around it, like a bum knee or an unusually specific allergy. But really the most irritating thing I’ll deal with is how others deal with it. Disbelief, pity, patronization, weaponization can be usual reactions. I do appreciate the moments of solidarity with others, though.

e: I am weird with this modern day crop of mental illness memes. sometimes they’re funny but sometimes it’s tooooo much maaaan. I will joke about myself however.

Bojack Horseman has made me cry. I love the Smiths. i can’t rewatch eternal sunshine of the spotless mind because I will finally cry hard enough to permanently damage my tear ducts.

teen witch fucked around with this message at 20:47 on Jun 20, 2022

biosterous




i always find it kinda funny when talking to an acquaintance and mental health comes up and as soon as someone mentions "i've got X and i'm taking Y" everyone else is like "oh yeah i'm on Y too lol" or "yo i've heard that Y also helps with Z, which i've got, so i'm seeing if i can get on it"

and it's so much better than it was even like five years ago



thank you saoshyant for this sig!!!
gallery of sigs


he/him

alexandriao


Dr. Honked posted:

this is how i manage anxiety:

pause for a moment and be curious about exactly what feelings there are in your body. what does it actually feel like? is there tightness anywhere? does it hurt?

then say to your body, "thanks for the information, but i don't have any use for it right now"

try to be genuinely curious and genuinely thankful. it's not easy - it takes quite a bit of practise. it's super effective though if you can get good at it.

most important: don't be annoyed at yourself or feel bad about feeling bad. don't look for reasons why you might be feeling bad - you can always find them, and it's pointless. your brain just makes them up.

Yeah I got rid of my intrusive thoughts by doing this

Basically, the rough method of action is that:
- You have intrusive thought
- You have STRONG BAD reaction to intrusive thought
- Brain presents the intrusive thought to you MORE because of that strong reaction
- Eventually you have conditioned yourself to have intrusive thoughts

(Fun side fact: If you have epilepsy you can classically condition yourself to have seizures😬)

So the key to stopping intrusive thoughts is to create a disconnect between the reaction, and the intrusive thought. You have to re-train your reaction, if you can. For me it was just stopping, noticing that I've had it, and taking a second to comfort myself mentally.

By "Comfort myself mentally" I mean like:
- pause what I'm doing if possible
- close my eyes
- just give myself a breath, in and out, slowly
- just think something like "It's ok"
- other comforting poo poo I can't remember (literally just do whatever works for you)
- resume

It's important to give yourself time to yourself to recover, but it's also important to move on reasonably quickly, too. You're not making it TOO special, you're just calming yourself from the anxiety, giving yourself a breather, and then carrying on.

It's the same kinda thing if you mess a note when you're practicing an instrument or something like that

alexandriao


The last two or three weeks have had me ruminating on, and mourning, a depth of relationship that I can never develop with someone who I loving, utterly and completely adore to the depth of my loving soul, with someone who is around my age but has... a lot less time on this earth than me.

We are still friends, but for fear of opening scabbed emotional wounds, I can't actually tell them how deeply they have impacted me and how much our little slice of time together meant to me. At least not for a long while, anyway.

And... that's ok.

I've struggled a lot with loneliness, and had to conquer my own share of mental health bullshit spawning from that loneliness. And... BYOB means a lot to me, it's helped me through some extremely rough times, and it makes me happy that you are all here :)

baka of lathspell

bad guy posted:

benzos are not a permanent solution but there are a whole class of drugs -- SSRIs -- which pretty much are.

bad guy posted:

also a good post

good posts thank you. ssris probably confirmed for being best class

thank you everyone for posting

what alex said about conditioning yourself to have seizures ive been thinking about

watching trippy videos with flashing lights and pretty colours has always felt healing to me. i was wondering if its like microdosing or something

terrible day for self care today also tbh

Heather Papps

hello friend


i'm bipolar, been diagnosed and on meds since i had my initial psychotic break, live here on byob!

this winter has been a poo poo, i had a rough depression time that is slowly lifting and i'm trying to get back into the swing of things more or less successfully.

some thoughts: if your brain won't shut up use your body. therapy is good and helpful but is a tool to be used not a lifestyle to opt into. medicine is good, even stuff that drs don't prescribe but be careful with those. i'm on olanzapine to prevent or mitigate the manic episodes and as long as i take it it works. marijuana has been very helpful in managing my brain but i do not see a point in my future where i'm off scripts permanently. no big deal. i wear glasses every day, same sorta thing.

coming back to byob and making sometimes funny posts with smart funny people has been good therapeutic activity. it goes without saying but clearly everyone posting here uses comedy as a tool to manage themselves and i think it's one of the most productive ways to process negative feelings.

i love you have a good day be nice to yourself.



thanks Dumb Sex-Parrot and deep dish peat moss for this winter bounty!

baka of lathspell


i meant to say microdosing ect not microdosing acid or whatever btw

e: i forgot i should edit out the rest of that stuff & then couldn't for a bit, tmi

baka of lathspell fucked around with this message at 02:27 on Jun 22, 2022

Sherbert Hoover

Working hard, thank you!
I don't know if it's ADHD or depression because I've been diagnosed with both, but my main disease is the one that makes me not vacuum and stuff


this sig is protected by Simsmagic!

GODSPEED JOHN GLENN


I put my thumb up my bum and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth.


I also have adhd and depression, but I really wish my body would stop twitching and tickling and jerking uncontrollably all the time. It's embarrassing

GODSPEED JOHN GLENN


I put my thumb up my bum and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth.


Tickling = ticking. Ticcing? You know, motor tics

Goons Are Gifts

personally, i enjoy tickling a lot

<snipped for privacy, sorry future goons that might want to read this! You can pm me though I just don't want this to be googlable>

what I'm saying is, im the joker

Goons Are Gifts fucked around with this message at 09:25 on Jun 24, 2022


Sherbert Hoover

Working hard, thank you!
from what i can tell you are a stand-up dude :byob1:


this sig is protected by Simsmagic!

teen witch
you are absolutely a stand up guy. at least Comedy Central 30 min special in the early 2000s worthy.

frump truck

hello... again!

I have depression! depression club :respek:
I manage it with therapy and an NDRI (wellbutrin). I started out on an SSRI and it helped for a while but then eventually made me unable to feel any emotions at all, which was not really a good thing.
I guess my (unasked for, basic) point is that if you feel like a specific med is not working for you, don't be afraid to call that out. As far as I understand it, even the different SSRIs have profoundly different effects on people despite the same neurological mechanism and nobody really knows why.


Dr. Honked posted:

most important: don't be annoyed at yourself or feel bad about feeling bad. don't look for reasons why you might be feeling bad - you can always find them, and it's pointless. your brain just makes them up.

this also seems like great advice. I thought I was going through a depressive episode this weekend (absolutely no energy, self-isolating, terrible mood) and beating myself up over it and two days later it turns out i am just sick lol

baka of lathspell

thank you everyone for continuing to share

frump truck posted:

I started out on an SSRI and it helped for a while but then eventually made me unable to feel any emotions at all, which was not really a good thing.

i agree with the bold part here

GaG i sympathize with involuntary treatment woes

in my experience doctors are largely unsympathetic to callouts but it doesnt help that for all intents and purposes i am legally a crazy person no one should listen to. its also different here, psychiatric institutions wield incredible power over their patients where i am. patient rights advocacy is sorely needed here

better self care yday than the day before but i need to go easier on junk food i think

also started taking vitamin d

baka of lathspell

Sherbert Hoover posted:

I don't know if it's ADHD or depression because I've been diagnosed with both, but my main disease is the one that makes me not vacuum and stuff

GODSPEED JOHN GLENN posted:

I also have adhd and depression, but I really wish my body would stop twitching and tickling and jerking uncontrollably all the time. It's embarrassing

theres a theory that theyre so heavily tied that if you have one you like one hundred percent do have or will acquire or might as well have the other

teen witch
once I’m done with this round of meds, I’m going to see if maybe I can change over. Zoloft is ok and works but I’d like to experience pleasure and energy for once. would be cool and good.

had follow up psych appointment today and now I get to do a therapist hunt in the city. reeeeaaalllyyy hoping I can find an English speaking one, as yeah, I can speak Swedish, but I feel it cannot accurately convey what’s going on in the poison tomb known as my mind.

sad brain dump feel free to skip
I have to play hostess this weekend and I am dreading it, honestly. I’ve yet to escape the “I am a toxic piece of poo poo” mindset and frankly I’m just scared I’ll hurt more people. I don’t want to be close to anyone ever again.

so I’m going to put my self hatred into the less dangerous but equally troublesome people pleasing habit and power through this weekend. if I make everyone happy and cared for, well-being be damned, no one can be upset at me and leave. and if they do, it was my fault for not trying hard enough. if you even as so much as think about attending to your own needs you will lose those dear to you, you selfish rear end in a top hat. so live in constant fear that if you don’t make others happy, they’ll dump you like the garbage you are. have fun!!!!

I know the vast majority of all of this is bad brain wiring and things that are wholly out of my control. and yet somehow this is my fault. all of it.

Goons Are Gifts

baka fwocka fwame posted:

GaG i sympathize with involuntary treatment woes

in my experience doctors are largely unsympathetic to callouts but it doesnt help that for all intents and purposes i am legally a crazy person no one should listen to. its also different here, psychiatric institutions wield incredible power over their patients where i am. patient rights advocacy is sorely needed here

oh my treatments were all on voluntary basis, I never got to the point where a doctor felt the need to actually force me to do something, worst case was when a doctor highly recommended me to do something, but that said, I was not an easy teen to treat for sure and actually I am not sure I am an easy patient to treat now honestly, i know quite well how a secure ward looks like though because I've been there a couple of times when I had to wait for a bed to open up in a regular one when I was a teenager and naturally I know a lot of patients with a lot of terrible stories to tell, both from the perspective of someone who is ill as well as someone who is treated. It's makes me incredibly mad to think how bad some systems, some hospitals, some nurses, some doctors, some therapists are and what damage those can cause on those who are the most vulnerable (I've been in one terrible place and left after a week because lol wtf), but at least I have seen enough places to know that the majority is decent and they just try to do their best with virtually no budget, no recognition, mostly fear and rejection from the outside world. Plus, if you meet just one good nurse, one good therapist, one good doctor, even if it's just for a limited time, that one person that really matches with you in therapy can change your entire life and set something in motion that, with a lot of work and a lot of effort, can give you a future that is not bad, as hard that is to believe

One famous saying I got to learn when I was 19 or so and I was in another inpatient stay for like two months or so was "It's not us who are crazy, it's those outside who are crazy. We at least are here to get help, those outside are not"


Goons Are Gifts

teen witch posted:

once I’m done with this round of meds, I’m going to see if maybe I can change over. Zoloft is ok and works but I’d like to experience pleasure and energy for once. would be cool and good.

had follow up psych appointment today and now I get to do a therapist hunt in the city. reeeeaaalllyyy hoping I can find an English speaking one, as yeah, I can speak Swedish, but I feel it cannot accurately convey what’s going on in the poison tomb known as my mind.

sad brain dump feel free to skip
I have to play hostess this weekend and I am dreading it, honestly. I’ve yet to escape the “I am a toxic piece of poo poo” mindset and frankly I’m just scared I’ll hurt more people. I don’t want to be close to anyone ever again.

so I’m going to put my self hatred into the less dangerous but equally troublesome people pleasing habit and power through this weekend. if I make everyone happy and cared for, well-being be damned, no one can be upset at me and leave. and if they do, it was my fault for not trying hard enough. if you even as so much as think about attending to your own needs you will lose those dear to you, you selfish rear end in a top hat. so live in constant fear that if you don’t make others happy, they’ll dump you like the garbage you are. have fun!!!!

I know the vast majority of all of this is bad brain wiring and things that are wholly out of my control. and yet somehow this is my fault. all of it.


It is not your fault, you are not responsible for the thoughts your brain produces or the interpretation it offers you to confirm some random, arbitrary thought about what a bad person you are. That is the sinister nature of these problems, they work on the very root of what makes up being a human, it twists your perception and causes you to, again and again, relive something that you had to endure earlier, endlessly confirming something that is false but that has to be right to make something else make sense.

I like to think of it that way, whenever my brain tries to convince me bullshit like this: I don't trust myself when I try to do something good, so why do I trust myself when I'm telling myself that I'm doing something bad?
You are always good enough and you are always valuable, no matter what your brain wants you to believe sometimes.


Sherbert Hoover

Working hard, thank you!
it's funny how everyone here feels guilty for their bad brains but it's always such a pleasure to read your thoughts


this sig is protected by Simsmagic!

bad guy

i hope you have all seen everything everywhere all at once, which as convincing a portrayal of ADHD/depression comorbidity as anything i have ever seen and comes to what i think is a satisfying and useful resolution

deep dish peat moss

I've been doing really well but today I made the mistake of talking to my dad and got angry enough at him to scream profanity at him (for the first time in my life) because he was trying to tell me that my generation is lazy and it was "much harder" to get a good job or buy a home back in his day. That is I think only the second time in my entire life I've lost my temper w/ someone and yelled at them that they're a loving moron

I showed him the 876 email confirmations of job applications I have from the past year and told him that I only got six calls from all of them and that five of them did not pay enough to meet the minimum income verification required to rent the smallest studio apartment in the city. I pulled up census bureau data on home ownership, median home prices, average salary, etc. in 1975 compared to today and he just declared it was "wrong" because he made less than what they said the median earnings were in 1975 and that thought is just so dumb I couldn't control my temper anymore.

e: I think I'm okay now though, I was just raised to never show emotion and that kind of display of emotional outburst is new to me and still uncomfortable

deep dish peat moss fucked around with this message at 20:36 on Jun 22, 2022

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Heather Papps

hello friend


i know the feeling of regretting an outburst but that's a very reasonable thing to feel angry about.

Sherbert Hoover posted:

it's funny how everyone here feels guilty for their bad brains but it's always such a pleasure to read your thoughts

one of the most powerful statements about mental health issues i've encountered has been said a million times by marcus on last podcast on the left which is "it's not my fault but it's my responsibility."

i used to feel extreme shame and guilt over being bipolar because of the hurt it's caused people around me, and even now i'm not free from that guilt but i recognize the distinction between what i'm actually guilty of and what is a result of my disease. this guilt is good though because i know i can prevent the most destructive events by following a few fairly simple rules, and now when i have a slip up i'm mad at myself not so much for how i acted in those times, but allowing myself to get to that point.

anyways it is good to ramble about brain stuff thanks bff for the thread (did you know your SA initials also stand for best friend forever/was this intentional)



thanks Dumb Sex-Parrot and deep dish peat moss for this winter bounty!

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