What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

My only living parent has between one and five days left to live. The parent is unable to speak now and has had dementia for the last 5 years and will not recognize who I am if I go visit now in these final hours.

They live a few thousand miles away from me; it would be expensive to go and money is painfully tight right now with my partner unexpectedly unemployed and struggling to get a job comparable to the job just lost.

I’m somewhat estranged from this parent. The short version is this parent is a narcissist and really didn’t show up when I was growing up, or at any point in my adult life, or really at any point when it mattered. Despite this person being a really crappy parent, they exerted a massive gravitational pull in my life through many decades—basically, this parent loomed very large for far too long given the extreme narcissism, albeit much less so in the last decade or two. (Dementia and my coming to terms with it all and caring less and time and my having my own kids and my starting my own family all being some sort of salve.)

I have one very close friend who is telling me that it is critical to go before this parent dies because being present while they are still living will give me a kind of closure and unexpected resolutions that I cannot even anticipate now. This friend is quite adamant that going is critical for personal growth.

A different close friend says that going while the person is still alive is a complete waste and that I should go for the funeral instead where I can see other relatives and connect with my sibling and other relatives and deepen those relationships which (the friend says) will be a momentous transition point for us all, creating a better sense of family than any of us could have ever had while this person was alive. This friend insists that the healing and closure is identical pre-death and post-death, but that the extra emotional burden of seeing someone dying will derail me and never be able to be “unseen.” This person thinks spending money on two trips is foolish, so the one trip to go on is for the memorial. FWIW, My sibling is only going for the memorial.

Even if money were no object, I’m not sure I could emotionally handle going twice. I suppose I can, but that’s very time intensive and I have young kids myself who need me and for whom it would be a strain if I were gone for too long. I’ve already said it, but I have to say it again: money is really tight Going twice feels possible, but extremely difficult

I guess what I’m really trying to understand, if my feelings for this parent are presently ambivalence that grew over a decade or two from what was formerly extreme anger and hurt, is there something meaningful about going while the parent is still alive? Is there something important that happens before the person dies that is in someway healing or transformative or valuable? Is it more important to instead go when my sibling is going? Should I max the credit card and go twice? Should I risk infuriating and deeply damaging my relationships with my extended family and not go at all to save money? (This last option seems wrong, but it is a possibility, so I feel like it at least deserves considering.)

Friends of Tildes, what did you gain or lose from seeing a relative in hospice? What thoughts and wisdom do you have to share around moments like these?

Thank you in advance for sharing your stories. I’m sure your collective wisdom will help me make a better choice.

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

“Dopamine” has entered cultural conversations as roughly equivalent to “the feel-good brain chemical.” People talk about “dopamine hits” and “dopamine fasts” and “low dopamine.” In a recent conversation a family member talked about starting the day on his phone and scrolling feeds “because I’ve gotta get my dopamine up before work.”

There’s a seemingly widespread understanding that dopamine makes us feel good and that it can be used against us to make us do things we don’t necessarily like (like endlessly scroll feeds).

Is any of this accurate to how dopamine actually works in our brains? It feels like an oversimplification to me, but I don’t actually know.

It also seems odd to me that there’s so much focus on dopamine but not, say, oxytocin or serotonin (unless you’re a Billie Eilish or Girl in Red fan, respectively).

Is our lay understanding of “dopamine” efficient shorthand or pseudoscientific sleight of hand?

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

UPDATE: the surgery went well amd she is recovering now

I talked in the past about my mother here.

She's been diagnosed with abdominal aortic aneurysm and keeping an eye on it.

Now it's time for surgery because it's big and in danger of rupture.

She's already in the hospital and will operate today or tomorrow.

She is still frail and eating less since my brother's death. Weight is only 44k/97lbs. She is 74 years old.

I keep reading that the endovascular surgery is not that dangerous. Just a minor cut in the groin, but I'm really afraid due to her weakness. Doctor assured is OK and he is the best in town. Last year he did 25 of these and this year 15.

Guess I'm just venting and afraid. Lost a brother a year and half ago and now it's my mother.

Feels like I'm just living between tragedies.

Hey Tildes,

Recently I picked up WoW again and I've felt a rush and focus I haven't felt for a while. I can play the game for an entire day. I feel nothing but guilt doing so. The one thing that gives me joy feels like something I'm not allowed to do at this stage of my life; I'm 35.

I'm in grouptherapy until march next year but I feel I'm not making any sensible progress. Others around me seem to open and loosen up, finding tangible changes that help their lives. Meanwhile I just keep resenting myself, dread doing anything that might even cost effort.

I feel I'm a fraud, a selfless good-for-nothing profiteer who blames anything but me. It fuels my self-hatred and my wish to self-isolate and act in self-destructive behavior. I also notice a growing bitterness as I get older.

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

Two weeks ago I decided to cut alcohol out of my life. I have a weird issue though where I don't feel I necessarily relate to other problem drinkers in support spaces online, and I assume would not in-person, because I feel like my habit was never particularly bad. I've never been addicted to the degree where I have to have a drink to function, I never used it as a crutch in social situations, or anything like that. I don't mean this to put anybody down, but I've grown up around alcoholics, and even count myself among that number, but feel I somehow never fell into the worst, and have a hard time walking away from where I was because of it.

To break down my cycles of drinking:

I started with a beer a day. I liked beer, then moved on to drink/include whiskeys and other hard liquors. I'd have 1-3 drinks a night most nights from when I was of legal drinking age and could afford my own alcohol, and have a pace usually of one an hour. I enjoyed the tastes, experimenting with different varieties, and just exploring what was out there from whiskeys, cordials, weird beers, meads, anything.

Then there came a point where I started drinking heavily infrequently but regularly about seven years ago, where half a handle was gone in a week and a half and I had no idea where it went. I didn't black out at all, but would later realize I was drinking it really fast. This continued, I would stop buying hard liquor, and then buy some, and drink it quicker than I should have, rinse repeat.

The thing where I feel conflicted is I feel like I was in control, in a sense. I really enjoyed the alcohol I was drinking and would sip on it over a few hours having glass after glass. For these heavier nights I would wake up with a mild hangover, but it wasn't an every day thing. I would occasionally mess up and drink half a 750ml bottle and regret it, but tone it back down.

As far as cravings, I would crave alcohol like I crave other foods/drinks, like "I really want some Johnnie Walker Black this week" similarly to how I would think "I want a coke." Then I would clear 375ml in three days, and realize I didn't have enough to enjoy until the next paycheck (I generally didn't buy liquor more than once a pay period because I was usually interested in being more intimate with one drink at a time). Similar to how if I eat candy bars regularly I crave them, alcohol is/was the same.

Part of this led me to take a long time to give myself permission to stop drinking. I decided two weeks ago that I just don't need alcohol and sort of just said I'd commit to it, do the "one day at a time" thing. No end time, just never doing it. I feel if there's a deadline, or any conditions to drink, I'll slip back into the patterns I had which weren't entirely self-destructive, but not something I wanted to live with. As far as work functions, I'll just get a soda, mocktail, or water.

As a result, I have also hit a sort of malaise about how different things aren't. I've had dry patches where I chose not to drink, and I don't have a huge recovery story since I wasn't drinking all the time anyway, but going through these sorts of cycles. I don't feel any different because I'm not healing, I'm not going through any withdrawals or detox, I don't have any behavior to feel guilty about, or anything. I feel like a bad alcoholic, in a sense, because I don't have much to run from beyond the problem of "one is too many, two is not enough." I also feel self-conscious about not drinking alcohol, because I'm worried about how to answer if asked why.

I guess, to a point, I'm reaching out because I feel a little alone on this. I'm not sure how to navigate my not-quite sobriety (I still use cannabis edibles on rare occasion, and kava quite frequently, but not regularly). Has anybody else been in a similar situation? How did you navigate it internally?

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

Whenever I come up north to visit my parents my stomach liquefies, my skin breaks out, and my pain and inflammation flare up. Part of me wonders if it's the water? But I've been here for 3 weeks and there's no adjustment.

I leave tomorrow, thankfully, but damn is it a lot to contend with when trying to be present for my parents. There's a lot of baggage from growing up with them, but our adult relationship is solid. Also, my dad has some serious chronic health issues, so I want to be here when I can to help out and spend time with him and my mom, but damn does my body hate it.

What could cause this? Soon as I head back home (way south) things clear up and even out. This can't just be trauma related stress, can it? Could it be tied to the climate difference perhaps? The water? The city pollution?

I live in a very remote place in the desert, whereas here it is very humid and city. I know y'all probably can't give me an answer, but does anyone here have similar experiences, and if so what do you hypothetically link it to? I just want a normal shit, my skin to not have crazy rosatia and flaking and itching, and to not be in constant pain from my underlying health issues when I visit my parents.

I mentioned it to my dr today (rheumatologist) and he didn't really say much in response. So that's no help.

Preface #1: I know the first response with something like this will be "go see a therapist" - I have been in therapy for over a decade now. There are a lot of things it has helped with (specifically trauma-focused), but nihilism is not something I've been able to get help with. The help has ranged from things like "focus on the micro over the macro" (which I think is probably the best advice, but also can be boiled down to "don't think" and I can't not think), to "find religion" (for me at least: religion doesn't breed hope, hope breeds religion), to "I don't know how to help, I can't relate to that" (...not all therapist are good).

Preface #2: I know the quick response to "life is meaningless" is "so make your own!" but I absolutely despise that logic. If everything is meaningless, than that means making your own meaning is meaningless. It's self-defeating in and of itself. That said, I don't really care about "meaning" anyway. I personally view things as "irrelevant", as if you dig deep enough you get to a point where everything is relevant to nothing. And the conclusion to draw from that is: "it's irrelevant that everything is irrelevant" - similar meaning, but checks out logically significantly better to me. But this has it's own problems that I will go in below.

Preface #3: I know the quick response to the inability to enjoy things is "you don't enjoy things because you are depressed." What I'm positing is the inverse, "I no longer enjoy things, and it's causing me to be depressed." I'm very much not saying the former doesn't happen and I've gone through time periods like that. What I am saying is that the latter is also true, and I'm sure that other people who have dealt with depression for decades understands both "My depression is causing this to happen" and "This is causing my depression to flare" happen.

To give quick context for myself: I had become a nihilistic atheist by the time I graduated elementary school; I had a rather traumatic childhood and my official diagnosis is (C-)PTSD and all the offshoots that come from it like depression and anxiety (Bringing up as I recognize myself these are thoughts that, according to the DSM/ICD, would be from someone with mental disorders). This led to things like dropping out of high school and becoming a mute hikikomori. To make a long story short, in my late teens I got to a point of either suicide or completely revamping my life with the belief that enjoyment could be found via actually being social (friends and dating) and proper self-sufficiency/money. I chose the latter for one simple reason: there was nothing to lose, so just trust the process. It took over a decade of constant self improvement, but I became a sociable person part of different clubs and hosting my own parties/gatherings with a very active dating life. I also got my degree in comp sci and have done quite well for myself with that. And a lot on top of that just in terms of trying to make the most out of life.

Unfortunately, none of that actually helped. Having to mask to be able to be social/date is exhausting and frankly people suck, and wasting life working 9-5 one of the most depressing things to me. The reason I bring this up is because I did really fucking try, I tried the stuff that everyone says brings happiness - but it don't. And it's all just so irrelevant.

Over the last half decade or so, I just can't bring myself to care about anything. And I mean anything, even super simple things. I'll talk to people or listening to a song and think "why do I care what you have to say?". I'll watch a movie or read a book and can't keep focus because seriously who cares about these imaginary things some person thought up? People I know die and I'll just think "yeah that happens." And the absolute worst for me was when it came for knowledge. Because knowledge was the thing I always cared above all else. But what does "knowing things" matter if "things" don't matter to me?

Which brings me back to preface #2. Everything is irrelevant, but it's irrelevant that it's irrelevant. Except that society demands relevancy to justify ones own existence within it. It's not possible to live an irrelevant life and be part of society. I personally really only see two options: reject society or embrace absurdism.

Speaking strictly personally, I do not see rejecting society as a means of living an enjoyable life. Mostly because I know it will lead to me living out of my car again, spending my time embracing hedonism via drugs and alcohol to fuel escapism until the end comes. And if in the end I'm just going to fuel escapism, why not just escape to begin with?

Absurdism is mostly what I fed into while "turning my life around". But I do have issues with it. One is how much it feels like the "this is fine" fire meme; it recognizes the problem but then rejects that it's a problem. This is fine if "life" itself is not a problem and you are able to enjoy your time regardless (after all, the problem itself is irrelevant so yeah just reject it as a problem), but then that gets to my second and main issue: if you don't enjoy life, what defense against suicide does absurdism have? Yes there is the whole thing of "suicide just adds to the absurdity by claiming meaning is needed" but that's only if you are committing suicide because life has no meaning. I don't care that life is irrelevant, I care that life fucking sucks. Suicide then is not rejecting the lack of meaning, it's rejecting time spent unenjoyably.

I've been able to get through things being both meaningless and unenjoyable with the belief that things would become enjoyable. Now I'm nearly 40 years old, things have played out, and I do not buy into it anymore. Either life needs to be enjoyable, or there needs to be some relevancy to it. Which, I reject the later as even being knowable as a human. Which leaves the former.

Which then comes to the silly question, how do you just enjoy things?

I am able to recognize one of my issues with enjoying things: In order to raise my emotional floor, I have embraced being stoic. Things happen that are out of our control. Things are lost, hardships are had, people die. They are simply facts of life. The problem is that it also prevents enjoying things - enjoyable things are also out of your control, so do not embrace them for they will be gone. Which, moments in time then neither "good" or "bad", they simple are just moments in time. Every moment is simply some indefinite, irrelevant moment in time.

Which, kind of tied to that as well, but another issue I recognize: as I have understood my own trauma and how it's affected me, I've really understood just how much is deterministic in life. Which is especially sad in the case of trauma responses, and how much society basically double downs on the trauma (just easy eg of how "hysterical women" have been treated throughout history, but look at the overlap of BPD and traumatic childhoods).

But now these are not just moments in time, but determined yet irrelevant moments in time.

But that still doesn't preclude enjoying things. And I guess that's mostly what I'm for the search for in life, to figure out what things I actually enjoy/how to actually enjoy things I want to enjoy. Because enjoying life is certainly enough, but that requires life to be enjoyable.

And it's actually part of why I'm even posting this. With all the different ways I've changed my life and such, I've tried to look back at what was actually enjoyable. And long-form text communication is definitely the way I prefer to communicate (oh do I miss when 'social media' was forums). I also recognize the importance of being part of more smaller, tighter-knit communities compared to being a blob in a mass. So it's part looking for help, and part just trying to get back into posting on smaller communities.

But I also feel like I'm all over the place and I do apologize for that. I think to try to summarize to bring the points clearer...like I said before, life either needs to be enjoyable or there needs to be some kind of relevancy to it. So either how do you find relevancy/where am I wrong on that, or how do you find enjoyment (and I don't mean "try new hobbies until you find what you enjoy!" kind of stuff - I've already ran that gauntlet. I'm not asking where to find enjoyment, I'm asking how to feel enjoyment; how are you able to care about things might be a better war to phrase it)?

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

There is mounting evidence the long-term effects of continuously getting re-infected with COVID-19 is something you would very much want to to avoid.

For this reason I wish to purchase a well-fitting facemask with replaceable filters. I managed to find two but none of them have economically feasible delivery options to Europe (shipping, import duties):

• https://www.flomaskeu.com/
• https://openstandardindustries.com/

Is there a mass-produced alternative to these boutique COVID-specific face masks offering replaceable filters? I don't mind looking like a non-conforming weirdo or someone from a building site.

If anybody would like to weigh in with their considerations I would appreciate it a lot. Personally I find it very weird that the mounting evidence from the mainstream scientific community for the prevalence and seriousoness "long COVID" is not reflected in official COVID-19 guidelines, even in the relatively well-functioning European (by todays standards) country I inhabit. I understand the economy is considered sacred and that it takes precedence over human life but still ... ?!?

Your thoughts on masks and in the situation in general is much appreciated.

Risk of developing long COVID-19 is accumulative, meaning the virus persists in your body like HIV/AIDS:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8883497/

All internal organs are impacted by COVID-19:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2400189

Immune system is permanently damaged:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-023-01601-2
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adg7942
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-021-01113-x

Write-up from American doctors association with less science-heavy language:
https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/public-health/what-doctors-wish-patients-knew-about-covid-19-reinfection

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

I've been in therapy for ten years.

Recently, I hit a local minimum. I saw where the rest of the curve would take me, if I did not change somehow. It would end me early—maybe even in a few years or less.

And I saw what was holding me back.

I've had emotional scars accumulated from an early age. That kind of trauma seems to have a way of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy; my life has been replete with repeated traumas. I've been reliving those root traumas over and over again, in my own mind, overlaid atop later events that only found correlation due to triggering those old wounded emotions.

I understand this to be called "CPTSD" in more civilized parts of the world than where I live: the United States. (As far as I know, the DSM-V does not acknowledge CPTSD.) I digress.

In therapy, I had identified two deeply wounded "parts" of myself: one represented by an ostracized seventeen year old Exile who attempted in all but direct intent to end himself and the other an emotionally abused and rage-filled ten year old Inner Child.

Recently, I healed the seventeen year old part. I saw how it was hurting me. Its expectation, its fear, of exile fueled nearly half of my life. My therapist and I pushed on it. What was preventing me from changing?

It was the fear of what I would become without it. Would I lose my wife? Would I lose my identity? Would I lose everything?

But it was this or my life. So, in that moment, I made a choice.

Instead what happened was something unexpected. The Exile flourished. It was as though my teen and 20 something years had been rewritten: a Back to the Future moment. It was no longer The Exile. It was transformed into something else entirely. It became strong and confident. Tapping into that part, by choice, I now seem to be able face most situations that would once cause near panic with, instead, determination. I persevere. I even seem, at times, to flourish.

However, the rage-filled Child remains. He is more activistic. He still has the sense that he will be punished for some perceived wrong. When provoked, he doesn't feel anxiety from these imagined tortures, he feels rage.

In my meditations, now, I attempt to integrate with this newfound strength to then reach out to and show more compassion to the Child—to salve his fear and show him that we, together, as a being, are now strong. I am hopeful.

In these ways, I am remade.

I still recognize old pieces. And, yet, there is so much new, so much yet undiscovered, that I confound myself with what is now easy and what remains difficult (but difficult in new ways). I am increasingly kinder to myself, allowing more connection with others, particularly those I would once consider incompatible, and perhaps even beginning to become physically healthier.

I can see a light at the end of the tunnel. Or, perhaps, I am only now stepping into that light, after decades.

How have you become more than your past traumas? How have you transformed for the better? How did you accomplish it?

EDIT: I shared this in the hope that it inspires. There can be healing, though it can take years and much effort. I would love to hear your stories of hope!

EDIT2: Feeling self-conscious, this all was decidedly not a humble brag. I never imagined that this sort of abrupt transformation was possible. However, it was a culmination of literally a decade of therapeutic intervention and hard work.

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

So I've been dealing with a sprained ankle for the third summer in a row. This time, however, I have been told I cannot bear any weight on my foot. I need some help with exercises I can do. I spent the second half of April and all of May doing nothing (but my PT exercises) and am tired of it. I went into the pool yesterday to "swim" but the kicking action of swimming was too painful, so I spent 45 minutes just floating in the pool until my friends and I were tired of being in the pool.

For more context: I'm hypermobile and injure really easily, but am also overweight. I used to be a professional folk dancer, and still have a ton of muscle/strength from that, even though it's been 13 years since I last performed professionally.

walking, swimming, dancing, and hula hooping have been my past workouts that I've loved doing, but for obvious reasons, I can't do any of them right now. So any advice is greatly appreciated!

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

Thanks to an emergency that resulted in an unexpected surgery, I have reached my health insurance maximum out-of-pocket expense. For those with sane healthcare systems, it basically means that I will not be charged for any additional healthcare I receive for the rest of the year as long as it's covered (i.e. no cosmetics or "just for funsies"). I'm expecting a $6,000 bill in the mail, so I'm looking to take as much advantage of this as I possibly can, starting with some minor issues that I've been sitting on for a while.

I'll have to ask my doctor for their referral for anything, but I was wondering if there were any preventative healthcare services I should specifically ask for? I'm already going to be making an appointment for a regular physical - something I'm ashamed to say that I don't regularly do. I'm going to ask the doctor this same question but I figured I'd come up with a checklist just to make sure I don't miss out on anything.

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

In the last year I've made significant progress in my relationship with food. A massive part of it was simply cutting down calories and a little more exercise. And so far it's been pretty good. I'm down around 13kg(30lb), I'm fitting in a lot of my older cloths and issues like back pain and sleep apnea are getting back in line.

But for a while I've hit a plateau and it's feeling like a bit of a regression. Looks like the big blocker is my sugar consumption. I can stave off the craving for most of the day, but at 2.30pm on the dot I can't help but reach for chocolate, soda or an ice cream. And then I keep reaching for them till the end of the day. It's been getting worse lately and that slipping feeling really sucks.

I've tried cold turkey, fruits, alternatives, gum and a few other strategies but they all never stick.

I'm curious if anyone else has managed to make the cut and if there's any tips and tricks that helped keep you consistent. It's one thing to clear out the house, but the stuff seems to be at arms reach at all times. And there's always the weird blackout time between "I should not eat that" and "why the hell did I eat that".

So I continued to wet the bed way past 7 and I have no idea why.

different family members chalked it up to different reason:

1. I am lazy
2. I am a very deep sleeper
3. I have a very anxious personality
4. bladder issues

Amongst other things.

One thing I can see being a cause was that I was not raised in a peaceful household. It was a very violent household. not in the sense of physical violence like broken arms and such, more as in lots of yelling and screaming and things like that. My family really didn't know how to communicate well.

But I was not the only child raised in my household and I was the only one who wet the bed.

Anyways, different thing were tried, things to supposedly "fix" my bladder. shaming, etc. Growing up, my family had to always wake me up at around 4 or 5 am and take me to the bathroom, otherwise there was a good chance I'd wet the bed.

I personally was getting worried that it was a problem I'd have forever and it'd be an impediment to my social life (as in no sleepovers and etc (not that I had had friends at that age anyways)).

But I did start to notice that once I got into high school, it started happening less and less. Still did happen, but just wasn't as common. Then, I remember the last time it happened was when I was either in grade 10 or 11 but I am pretty sure grade 10.

Then that was it.

It just stopped on its own.

Weird thing is, I changed nothing about myself.

I'd still classify myself as lazy and a very deep sleeper and I still have an incredibly anxious personality.

The only thing that changed is that when I am asleep, and as my bladder is filling up, something in my bladder (or my brain) instead of just releasing, would instead block the urine until I wake up in pain and go to the bathroom. The change really caught my attention when I woke up with a really full bladder like 2-3 years ago and I remembered how a little over 10 years ago (I am in my 30s), no way my body would've reacted to it by holding it in involuntarily until I woke up.

I tried doing a bit of googling to figure out what parts of the body are involved in the process of holding in one's pee overnight to try and see what are the possible reasons for the change to occur so late in me to no avail.

I am forever curious what happened in my body to make that change happen so late but not sure I will ever know.

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

I have tried and failed to journal many times in the past. I always find myself self-editing, avoiding writing certain thoughts or feelings and just overall not being as authentic or honest or genuine as I should be to actually get some value out of journaling. I wish I could get over this “self-censoring” habit because I love reading and writing and really think journaling could be a great outlet for me.

So, I ask, what tips do you have to help write? To help actually get your thoughts and feelings out on the page, without judging yourself or feeling self conscious or critical? What do you write? What do you find helps you write more honestly and genuinely?

Could really use some help and guidance.

Hey everyone!

Do you have any experience with time blocking? Do you use any apps to help or do you do it all manually in your calendar? I recently watched a video I found on Tildes by Answer in Progress (https://youtu.be/vYaNiC4kchg?si=zh02N4bStqAhBBAe) about attention span. I have heard a lot about time blocking in the past, but always thought I never really needed it.

However, recently I've been starting to realize maybe I'm not doing well mentally..days can slip by on YouTube, or a video game, and the things I wanted to get done get pushed back to the next day..and the next day, and so on..or things I was passionate about, things I want to succeed in that I am good at..just sort of slip away, and I stop doing them and lose my drive. So maybe I need to block time to get it done... I'm not sure. So I guess I can try Meditation and time blocking..

Anyway, anyone have some suggestions if they do this? Have you found that it helped?

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?