Good evening comrades and welcome to your weekly mental health thread. The cheetah is happy to see you. How is everyone doing? Remember that self-care is self-defense. :unity:
Have you considered ordering one of those anime waifu body pillows? Joking aside, hope you find a comrade to cuddle.
Ngl, life is pretty shit right now. My wife’s grandmother, to whom she was very close, just died on January 2 from a COVID-induced heart attack alone in her home, and her whole immediate family who lives in the area has COVID too (and almost certainly gave it to her when they spent Xmas day together, but are in complete denial about it). My wife and I had to drive seven hours to come clean up her house and set up funeral arrangements. The rest of the family can’t do anything since they’re in isolation. The grandma had been deeply depressed throughout quarantine since she lives out in the country and already felt isolated, and it shows from the state of her house. It hadn’t been cleaned in months and had one of the worst fruit fly infestations I’ve ever seen when we got here. We’re through the worst of it now, but honestly, it’s been a god-awful 2021 thus far. Thanks for letting me get this off my chest.
Thank you for sharing with us! That sounds like a lot to deal with, I hope the rest of your 2021 is much better. :heart-sickle:
I started reading Feeling Good by David Burns, a book about cognitive behavioral therapy and identifying and defeating the cognitive distortions that the depressed mind conjures up.
I cannot recommend this book highly enough to anyone experiencing depression, anxiety, lack of motivation, or suicidal thoughts. It is literally the handbook on how not to be a depressed person.
I have thought about killing myself every single day for years, and this is the first time I've ever felt this kind of hope and optimism about my psychological prognosis.
It's not just some new-age self-help hokum, either. Clinical studies show CBT to be at least as effective as antidepressant drugs, if not moreso, and this book is just a manual on how to do CBT on your own (I still talk to my therapist about it weekly).
Everyone should have this book, it should be provided at birth. I'm only a couple weeks in and I'm sure the excitement of trying something new will fade, and more dark times will come -- but comrades, for once in my life I am convinced that life is worth living through them.
Got a PDF of that book in my therapy folder here for anyone interested, I'm glad it is helping you so much!
Hey FYI it looks like your real name might be associated with that folder? Unless it's a pseudonym? I just don't want comrades to accidentally dox themselves.
Thanks for the recommendation. I've been looking for something like this.
That's good to hear! I recommend reading Buddha's Brain - it's a book by a psychologist specializing in positive neuroplasticity. I think you'll definitely like it if you liked Feeling Good. The author of the book, Rick Hanson, also has a pretty good podcast.
Congrats comrade, that's good to hear!
I recently got a gabapentin script for insomnia and anxiety. I also didn't expect much, but it's worked well for lingering opioid post acute withdrawal symptoms. It's just too bad it is being considered by more and more doctors as a drug of abuse, I fear these GABA acting drugs won't be very common place for these sorts of uses in the future.
Have you tried Kratom? It supposed to help a lot with opiate withdraw. Personally I don't have much experience with opioids but it did help me feel a lot better after having to take tramadol for a month. And I know there is fair amount of anecdotal evidence that it helps with much more serious withdraw.
Thanks for the suggestion. I have not tried Kratom, but I am on Buprenorphine replacement therapy, probably permanently.
I've read that it is supposed to be very similar to kratom as they are both partial agonist opioids with very low risk of causing respiratory failure. It has been immensely helpful in eliminating most withdrawal symptoms and cravings, but as I said some of them tend to linger such as insomnia and general anxiety.
I'd definitely prefer to be on kratom and not have to go to a bullshit clinic every month, though! Unfortunately Buprenorphine is such a potent drug compared to kratom that my tolerance would probably make that impossible.
Gender Dysphia and rejection sensitivity dysphoria aren't a good mix. I've been really struggling with actually changing my appearance or voice because being around other people is so anxiety producing I just get into a siege mentality to get through the conversation or whatever. And I don't really care enough to play dress up on my own. I've been stuck in early transition limbo for over a year. I should be starting with starbucks soon though, so I can get FFS in several months. Thats good
Haven't had any fried foods, energy drinks or alcohol in a week And have been trying to walk more. Don't feel as tired or depressed as I did at the start of last week, but a co worker was talking about having a family and that made me sad.
I've been alternating between feeling great and productive, and feeling like absolute depressed shit and I am really not a fan, the emotional whiplash is making it so I never feel 'normal'
I've been feeling like this for 1-2 weeks, and I'd really rather just be depressed for a while and come out of it than swing back and forth like this
Had no hot water today, the oil burner wasnt working. I burnt through the whole day trying to fix it. Now the oil pump aint pumping oil, either the line’s clogged or the filter I replaced wasnt the right kind. And I’m afraid I burnt the oil pump out.
I’m unshowered, i’m cold, but somehow this weird satisfaction of attempting mixed with this defeat as I wait for my dad to come fix it and find out what went wrong.
I dunno, it felt good to work with my hands again.
little update
You know how sometimes you discover you were really close to solving something, except you needed to know one little tiny detail to get it to work? But you actually knew the detail and didnt see how it connects to what you were trying to do?
For the future, if you have an oil furnace, the blower has a little photo sensor to tell if the spark lit the flame.
If the blower sees the light of a flame, it continues to feed oil, activating the pump.
Good so far.
If you shine a flashlight at the sensor, it tricks the blower in the same way a flame does.
Knew that.
I just had to shine a flash light at the sensor while bleeding the oil pump. Eventually it’ll suck out all the air and oil will start coming out into the little canister like a soda bottle you had at the bleeder valve.
Once just oil and no air or frothy oil comes out, close the valve and your done. Take the flash light off the sensor, replace the cover you removed to get to it, and your enjoy hot water in your place.
If you needed this, i probably saved you some money and time getting a service guy to do the same thing. Now that i wrote it down, I wont forget for next time.
Just be careful and if you dont feel confident or willing to do it yourself, hire a pro.
Feeling like shit. I've been without a job for a year, 2020 was absolute dog shit for me. The latter half of 2019 was shit, my girlfriend left me and I barely managed to recover from that. The next year was absolute fucking shit because I got stuck inside my home, jobless, with my mom (whom I have a not-very-good relationship) and my sister (whom I have a less-than-ideal relationship), I couldn't study because it turns out that virtual classes are definitely NOT for me so I lost an entire year worth of studying and I can't find a job because I feel horrible, I have social anxiety and I hate the way I look, it's crushing.
Everyone around me is making at least some kind of progress, except for me. Everyone is doing something, but not me. My mood is below the floor now, it fucking sucks. I'm 27 and I feel like I just wasted "the good years".
those arent the good years anymore, those have been deferred to our 30's now
Uh...what's the fulfillment schedule on that supposed to look like? At 31 now and would like a refund for items not received if possible.
I relate to this a lot. Late twenties, had a really shit year, feeling like the good years are behind me. I try to fight against that by focusing on the things I can control. I try to get enough sleep, eat healthy, meditate, write a journal, get some activity every day even if it's just walking, practice self-compassion, listen to self-improvement podcasts and so on. Most things are out of our control but not all of them. Hope you have a good week, keep us updated! :unity:
Feeling like depressed shit. Spent all yesterday just sitting on the couch for hours alternately scrolling through twitter, c.c., facebook, youtube, twitch, steam, switch games, finding literally nothing that looks halfway interesting or worth engaging with. Going to bed and lying awake for hours. Feel like I'm so good at pretending to be okay it's prevented me from actually being okay. I've got so much practice I hardly know how else to act.
Here it aint so good. Lockdown has sapped all motivation from me. I feel lonely, and I feel like I barely have energy to get my usual hobbies and daily tasks done. I feel mentally exhausted without doing much, yet I then get self-critical cause I didnt get enough done
I relate hard to this. I got in decent shape this year until August when I just started to have no energy. The exhaustion while doing less is getting to me, I get home from work and don't do anything and then feel guilty because I didn't work on music or read as much as I said I would. I just moved too so I'm super isolated. I try to tell myself it's all temporary but I see friends in other countries doing normal things and I get so mad and sad about how stupid we are in the US.
What really makes the feelings feel worse, is that Im working from home. And yet I cant even get that done. And with the friends in other countries, or even the same country as where I am doing normal things and I get really resentful, cause Im sitting here lonely, and finding it more difficult to reach out, at the same time there is all these fuckers going outside, ignoring restrictions and making sure that this bullshit continues even longer.
That's almost word for word what I'm going through too. I waffle on hating Americans and not blaming them for the programming to be doing what they're doing. I think the latter is just to keep myself from being consumed with cynicism and hatred. I'm so tired and overworked and desperately looking for another job because mine has such built in precarity that I can't emotionally handle right now.
Cheetahs are my favorite animal. They are so majestic and are born with mohawks.
My local subreddit has gone from being pro-BLM and antifascist to whining about broken windows and begging the mayor to let the police be more brutal
