Good evening comrades and welcome to your weekly mental health thread. How is everyone doing?
I not to long ago created a thing and shared it online to some warm reception in that community. But I feel like I cant take any pride in it and I should be shamed because its in the realm of the lewd. But I want to be proud of it, it would be nice to feel like that for once.
Lewd is good and should be more publicly accepted. Do you think it's good and well made by your standards?
For having never even really dabbling in any erotica or anything, yeah I'm pretty pleased with it. I've even got people saying they would like more because of how much they enjoyed it, which blows my mind. I was raised catholic and haven't been even remotely "practicing" (or religious) in ages but it seems like that catholic guilt and puritanical squeamishness still have there hooks in me to some degree.
That's understandable, I think mental hangups like that can stay for us for a while. Sex positivity is super important, but it's not something that comes naturally in our culture.
For what it's worth if you share on this site I think people would be receptive. The volcel police thing it mostly a joke lol.
That sounds awesome! For me, that's what draws me to the fanfic community so much - everybody's sharing their creativity for the love of it, and you (mostly) get such a warm reception too. Even/especially the lewd stuff :P In general, making other people happy with your creativity is one of the best feelings in the world imo.
The American school system and its consequences have been a disaster for my mental well being
My unemployment got extended into at least May, so things are doing okay with me
The fact that everywhere around me is going into the Red Zone of infections is something that I am just going to do my best to ignore while hunkering down in the Ol' Bunker
I've recently become worried over how much time I spend online and how terrible it is for my mental health when I'm scrolling through umpteen hot takes about the pandemic. So as I'm on break till the end of the year, I decided to curtail my online time a bit by reading a (short) book a day. I've read 4 books so far and I'm actually really pleased with it! It's a little exhausting and I couldn't keep it up year round, but otoh it's really pleasant to spend the evening reading instead of browsing youtube/Twitter/Reddit/here. I hope I can keep up reading every evening at least, my addiction to my phone/computer is beginning to straight up irritate me lol.
This is great , healthy behaviour comrade. Social media under capitalism is toxic as fuck and reading is hella important.
It's so silly, my realisation came from listening to this recent musical, Octet, which is about internet addiction. Went into it thinking it'd be kinda funny, went out of it thinking oh god way too much of this hits too close to home. :') Well, cutting down is a work in progress...
Maybe audiobooks while you're doing something physical? If you wanna get into reading I mean. I mostly audiobook during the periods of my life when I can't concentrate on written books (e.g. during a lot of the pandemic haha...)
Oh it's cool you don't have a smartphone!
This is a v location specific solution, but my library actually has audiobook devices you can borrow along with the book. They also still do CDs, if you have a CD player. Obv the selection is way more limited then, but that's something to look into maybe? Or I guess you could get a super cheap MP3 player and just load pirated audiobooks into that.
That sounds great! I'd also like to read more and browse less. Do you have any book recommendations? Short fiction perhaps.
All books under 300 pages:
Earthlings by Sayaka Murata - Japanese book about a woman who rejects society so completely she views herself as an alien from another planet simply observing humans. CW for parental abuse and sexual assault though.
Prosper's Demon by KJ Parker - Fantasy novella about a kind of asshole demon exorcist whose latest job requires him to exorcise the greatest genius in the land (a da Vinci kind of guy)
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol - I have no idea why I have the stereotype that classics are mostly dry and boring, this is a bizarre and hilarious story about a dude conning people in rural 19th century Russia
Piranesi by Suasanna Clarke - Bizarre fantasy book about a person trapped in a mysterious house. It's like a kinder House of Leaves.
Dark Matter by Michelle Paver - Horror story set during an Arctic expedition in the 1930s. The main character is not as rich as the other members of the expedition and it definitely gets to him, which I thought was a cool move on the author's part.
1177BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric Cline - Non-fiction about the Bronze Age collapse
There There by Tommy Orange - Following the intertwining lives of multiple Native American characters, as they are getting ready for a pow-wow. I'm not American and I know really little about Native Americans, especially in modern day, so this was really interesting to read. (Also enjoyed the horror book The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones for the same reason, but that's 310 pages :P)
Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss - Set in Northern England, a girl is taken along by her dad to an anthropology course where they try to live like "the ancient Iron Age Britons did". Deals with issues of class, gender, and ofc "who's a real brit". CW for parental abuse.
Hopefully one of these appeals! I'm off to bed, but if you (or anyone else) wants a more specific rec I could try to think of sth tomorrow morning :D I love reccing books to people lmao
Thank you for the reccs! A lot of interesting stuff there. I've got a few short reccs for you:
Generation X - Douglas Coupland - it was written in the early nineties but I was surprised how it still resonates today, for example stuff like climate anxiety, conflict between generations and trying to find meaning in a vapid consumer society.
Satori in Paris - Jack Kerouac - an autobiographical account of the author's trip to Paris. He went there to visit some libraries and research his ancestors but instead got drunk, slept with prostitutes and got mistaken for a beggar while sitting on the street.
Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck - don't have much to say except that it's a classic
Also check out the podcast Overdue, it's a cool podcast about books, the hosts are great and have decent politics.
A pretty clear example of this is the The Truman Show delusion. It is pretty undeniable that socio-cultural reality effects delusions with them evolving (for the most part) from religious experiences, to radio waves, to microchip implants, and finally to reality television. To say that mental illness is just 'chemical imbalances' in the brain is to return to a sort of mysticism where every explanation is deferred; it is dogmatic and unscientific.
A more controversial example is the emergence of Dissociative Identity Disorder through a circuit of fantastical pop-culture representation in books and films, institutions in therapist seminars and official psychiatric bodies, and the ossification of the 'facts' of this new classification of people. All this together creates a double-movement of coding which works as follows:
- A particular interpretation of a vague, nebulous phenomena gains precedence, and, with time, creates an identity with specific, essential attribute and binaries. "This is what you are."
- A person begins to ascribe this identity to themselves, and in turn takes up these new attributes. "This is who I am."
This is of course not to say that mental illness 'isn't real' or whatever. Perception is no simple thing: affect is full of folly. But the expression of affect, and in turn its social circuit of interpretation is much, much more than something centered on a single ill individual.
Ian Hacking's essay Making Up People says it much better than I
Felt hyper lonely yesterday, better today since I'm talking to friends over discord. The holidays are generally rough since I've only got my family for company.
Not great, slowly being subsumed by nihilism. Everything feels a little more pointless every day but the only thing more pointless than living is dying so here I am.
That's the spirit. Embrace the absurdity of the universe, drink that cup of coffee, and never give the bastards an inch.
I'm not talking about life in general, I've already accepted that it's up to us to forge our own meanings in a meaningless world. I'm talking about me, specifically. I have major depression and it has robbed me of my ability to do really anything but post and be horny and drink too much beer. It feels pointless to be alive when you can't even try.
Not much to report this week. I had a shit week but I'm doing better today. I'm taking some time off work for the holidays starting from Christmas so that's cool. December is usually my favourite month because I like the holiday vibes but this year it has just been a big bummer. The struggle continues.
I'm not doing so great. Finally decided I need to check in to a hospital for inpatient therapy but I'm stressing out about two things: the emotional toll on my family, and the fact that I'm barely two months into a new job at a small company.
My family tends to take my depression personally so I've learned to just hide it instead of upsetting them. Was going to tell them this weekend but then my sister watched a documentary that involved suicide so it became very much not the time. So it looks like I'll have to keep it to myself until after the holidays.
And I have no idea how to ask for a leave of absence at work or how it's going to reflect on me.
It's really sad when you can't count on your family to support you. Sometimes you need to give yourself the kindness and compassion that you need. I've been there myself. Journaling helped me support myself when I had little outside support. I still do it every day. Good to hear that you are checking into therapy! Keep us updated next week. :unity:
I have relatively secure food and shelter, but nothing to do except watch the distant fires burn closer and closer. I am not well.
spoiler
I also get those thoughts sometimes. I think that everyone gets them from time to time. Haven't heard of that drug but now that I'm googling it, I'd say that you can get all of those effects by meditating. Have you ever tried it?
i think i'm falling in love and it makes me want to die. trying to play it cool but i think i'm the one who likes the other more and my anxiety is driving me nuts. getting hot and cold vibes and maybe i'm coming on too strong. definitely have a lot to learn about myself through this. need to learn to love myself first instead of another person to fill that void for me, i guess.
Just confessed my love to my best friend, after being single for ten years straight. She wants to comment on it in the morning. I'm damping the anxiety with scotch. Works surprisingly well so far if I drink more I just might find some sleep tonight.
A week on prozac and I'm calling it off.
I know it takes awhile to kick in but I have had every single fucking side effect listed from this shit and I'm supposed to be doubling my dose this week lol.
No thanks. No more demons crawling around my bedroom in my half awake states for me.
Good news is it got me over the week long no drinking hump that I've struggled to overcome this past year, so hopefully that is enough to get my head somewhat back together.
Prozac is just the first-line medication, and everyone tolerates it differently. If you can tough it out another week, go for that. If you can't go tell them prozac is hot bullshit and ask for something else. There are umpteen drugs these days and lots of them work on completely different biological paths than Prozac. It's worth sticking with the process until you mind a medicine that does what you want it too.
Good advice. Yeah I'll be sticking with the process, but no mas on the prozac lol. The side effects are just awful for me. Been tremoring all week and stuck in the bathroom for half of it.
I got the week off, but I'll probably only get one day to my self. My depression came back today. Don't have any reason to live. Might just get drunk every day this week
