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Hi, how are you? Mental health support and discussion thread (March 2022)
This is a monthly thread for those who need it. Vent, share your experiences, ask for advice, talk about how you are doing. Let's make this a compassionate space for all who may need one.
I'm not going to go into much detail. I'm a complete wreck. You can guess why. I'm taking a break from "social media" (the social part, specifically) -- Keeping Tildes and Twitter; left, deactivated or put myself invisible on most comms systems. I'm sticking to a core group of friends.
Fun fact, I bought a watch on the 23rd. This morning when I woke up, it fell off my wrist and I had to remove a piece of the armband to readjust it. I've lost 4kg in 5 days.
Hey, at least I'm not stuck at my old weight anymore.
I'm now getting better, not worse, so I am not too worried anymore. But this has been a fucking strain. I've aged 10 years in a week.
I'm feeling a lot of different emotions at once, and I'm starting to feel a bit numb.
For the most part, I'm just starting to feel extremely unhappy about certain things in my life.
Right now the biggest thing is probably work. Traffic has risen to pre-pandemic levels except they're probably slightly worse now because of the current phase of highway construction, and so it's going back to hour-long trips, one way. We only get, what, 12 hours of daylight? Why must I waste away 10 of them?
Lately I've been getting physically affected by work. It used to be that I got headaches. Now I just get super tired. Coffee used to help but doesn't. And it can get really scary because that sleepyness follows me when I begin my hourlong trek towards home.
I'm getting increasingly bothered by aspects of work that were previously welcomed distractions. I'm tired of dealing with phones and having to deal with customers. I kind of just don't want to deal with people anymore; when people are happy with me and praise my efforts to help them, it basically just goes over my head. And when people are angry at me (usually irrationally so), it just hurts all the more. And then you get the people where you mess up and they're not angry but you can tell by their voice that they're just disappointed in you. I don't know why that hurts so much.
And even without the people aspect, I'm just tired of having all of these mixed responsibilities and interruptions. I'm tired of having projects take a week when they should have maybe taken 1-4 hours total. Right now I'm getting to a point where I'm almost done with something, come back over a weekend, and I have no idea how I was originally supposed to build on. And most of the projects that I've been getting lately are ephemeral in nature because they have to do with marketing.
When I get home I'm not even sure how to relax. There's so many options, but most of the stuff I want to do is engrossing and that somehow ends up being a bad decision; I get engrossed and then my free time disappears and then I have to go to sleep so I can get to work on time. I don't even bother doing any projects as recreation because they either start to feel like work, or I will have to put it on the backburner so long that I can't get back to it, or I will forget part of my plans so it will turn out badly.
Right now the thing I'm enjoying the most is something I originally thought was going to be a burden; studying Japanese. I hate rote memorization but the fact that I'm testing and having measurable results is somehow becoming more enjoyable than it's ever been for me. And honestly I think that a large part of it is that I'm not the one responsible for doing any planning or research for them.
I have another cruise lined up in about two weeks and while I'm looking forward to it, I just kind of feel like I don't know what to do with it. I signed up for it basically entirely because it was cheap and didn't think at the time that I would need a vacation at this time. Now I see that I desperately need it. But the thing is that I don't really want to 'do' anything on this vacation. I just want to not work and not have any expectations for a while.
I think I need a change in career too, but I'm too paralyzed with how bad my job searching experiences have been. I'm best suited for a programming job, but all the tech-related companies in my area aren't great to work for. I'm also terrified about running out of money; I kind of feel with how bad the economy an inflation have been that I don't know how expensive it is to live anymore, and that if I don't have a regular income everything I have saved up will just simply disappear and I'll have to get rid of everything and start my life again from the beginning. The only family I can rely on if I fail is my husband and the last thing I want to do is to become a burden to him.
I guess I'm just frustrated with almost everything in my life and I kind of feel like screaming.
In the general, I find this specific thought very interesting. I sometimes like to view myself as someone I need to take care of, and sometimes that idea extends to viewing myself as a separate human being. So, when I read that line, I asked myself "have I ever been disappointed in someone before? what would it take to be disappointed in someone else?"
I don't necessarily think I have been fully disappointed in someone. Maybe my father? But come to think of it, I wouldn't use the word disappointed. Maybe I don't like him or agree with how he conducts himself, treats me or treats others... I can't really say I'm disappointed in him though.
I guess I could be disappointed in an outcome. But I don't think I could say I'm disappointed in a specific person...
I don't mean to ignore the rest of your post. It's extremely understandable. For now I'll say that I hear you.
Not great. Slept badly this past week. Staying up late to read people's stories and check news. Worried sick about a few friends and acquaintances in Ukraine.
I've been feeling it psychosomatically. For the past week it's felt like someone has had their hand wrapped around my heart, their fingers between my ventricles, squeezing. I teared up randomly on the BART yesterday. Despite a stoic online persona, I'm actually very sensitive. :/
To be functional again I need to somehow tune out the outside world and focus on my "circle of influence / control". But I cannot bring myself to look away even though I personally cannot do anything significant about the situation.
Stay strong, friend.
Stressed. I've been unable to focus on work lately with all that's been going on in the world. All signs point to further escalation.
I worry about my wife's family in Russia. While it's nothing like what the people in Ukraine are going through, as they are safe in Moscow, they're poor and in poor health. I know that sanctions are going to make things much worse for her elderly grandparents. With the banking systems cut off, we have no way of sending them any money or support. While I believe the sanctions are wholly justified, I pray that the war ends soon. Not just for the people of Ukraine, but for the people of Russia as well.
It's interesting the effect this has had on all of us. I'm a huge pacifist, always been anti-gun, always spoke out against the military, always avoided defense contracts at work, etc.
I've never in my life wanted a rifle in my hand until a couple of days ago. Had I gone through conscription, I'd already be signed up to Ukraine's foreign legion.
I keep thinking: If this has had such an impact on somebody like me, imagine what it's doing to others.
Something just came to my mind right now, and with everything that’s going on right now I do have to say that this has nothing to do with that as of right now. And I only say that because that’s what’s on most people’s minds right now.
I was watching a video with a psychologist who said “you actually need to sleep 50% of the time you’ve been deprived in order to get back to a baseline, functioning cognitively and behaviorally the way you did before.”
And I started thinking back to the past few years. More recently, all of 2019 I didn’t really sleep. Both the Spring and Fall semesters of 2019 I pulled a lot of all-nighters. All together it would be the equivalent of a month and a half, maybe two months. That may be an exaggeration but it took a toll on my mind and my body. And I felt those effects immediately. But there was this collective effect on my baseline. In the summer of 2019 I was able to sleep and that got me back to a little bit more of a normal but that went out the window just a few months later. These all-nighters would also happen a lot in early 2020. Even before the pandemic.
And then the pandemic hits, I get addicted to Twitter, and I’m still not sleeping. Finally, eventually, I quit twitter in October of 2020 and I start sleeping. A lot. I was unemployed and out of college so I had literally nothing to do. I would sleep 10 hours a day, minimum. It wasn’t unusual for me to sleep 12-14 hours. My life was basically sleep, watch movies, sleep. The more time went on the better I felt. The more like myself I felt. And for a while I thought that was solely because my mind was getting rid of all the toxicities from being extremely online. But after hearing that, I now realize it’s because I was finally sleeping after nearly two years of depriving myself.
I very clearly remember a moment in early 2021 where I finally “woke up.” Where I felt like myself again. And I’ve posted about coming back around and re-learning who I am. And now I know that that was the moment that I finally caught up with my sleep. I finally went back to my baseline.
I am wondering if something similar is happening to me. I used to go to sleep fairly late, but these days if I stay up past nine I start losing consciousness. I have things I'd like to do, games I'd like to play, but most days I find myself coming home from work, spending an hour or so studying for class, and then when I start working on leisure things, I just fall asleep.
My best friend for thirty years died of brain cancer the other day. I found out about two hours before my wife started surgery( it went well.) During the surgery I was going back and forth between my wife's mom about the surgery. And at the same time, I was going back and forth with my friend's wife. It was rough. I found out the last time we zoomed, his gutteral yell 'bye' to me was the first thing he had said outloud in a long time and was last thing he said. He died a week later, the day after his 46th birthday. Overall, I'm doing so much better than I would've expected. He was in bad shape and is better off now. Sometimes I feel like I should cry but I'm not really sad either, it's really weird. I used to be really close to his family but I haven't seen them in about fifteen years. One of our previous roomates called me to ask if I was going to the funeral, I hadn't thought about it, but it hit me I really don't want to. It seems like a terrible fucking idea to fly to the other side of the U.S. to see the person I've experienced the most with's corpse with shitty make up on, and then sitting in a hotel alone waiting to fly home. Seems really selfish but that's how I'm feeling.
Wow, thank you for this. It really hits close to home. Thank you.
I'm glad that relating my own experience was helpful in some small way. Sorry for your loss.
I hadn't even thought about calling his parents, which I haven't decided if I will or not. But I do think that that's a good option. I wonder if they still have a home phone, I still remember the number. Your experience was very helpful and not just in a small way. So fucking thank you.
It's hard not to be doom and gloom about COVID. I'm high risk according to the CDC - I'm "physically inactive" due to my chronic illnesses, and I can't change that without making myself sicker. I'm also higher risk for post viral issues based on my medical history. My partner is also high risk for several reasons according to the CDC. And my parent are older, of course.
I need to see doctors in person, but many here don't require masks anymore. I'm not sure what high risk people are supposed to do. Wear an N95 and then hope the seal holds when we walk into a room full of sick people, apparently. Thanks CDC. Really comforting to be told on the one hand that I'll likely have severe outcomes, but on the other hand I don't deserve to be able to go to the doctor safely.
That's all I'm asking for. I'll keep avoiding stores, grocery shopping, restaurants, movies, whatever. It sucks but I'll do it. But now I have to avoid doctors, too? Great idea, to make chronically ill people avoid medical care. /sarcasm