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Hi, how are you? Mental health support and discussion thread (September 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.
After a month where it was almost nonexistent, my body dysmorphia came back last night in what I can only describe as an "attack." A persistent, sustained obsession with how ugly and inhuman I appear to myself to be kept me awake through the night. It was torture. Seemingly triggered by nothing, spinning around and around, making up for lost time. The only thought that wasn't about my body that was able to break through to me was an unrelated snippet of a Mountain Goats song, and how JD delivers it here: "..made too much of it, but I drank it all." I clung to it like a raft. I don't know why.
This feeling will never go away so long as I'm in this body. I thought I had reconciled myself to that. I guess I was wrong. Today, I'm so tired I seem drunk and dissociative. All the same thoughts, now stagnant instead of swirling.
Just came back from the psychiatrist. I've been going to this guy for more than five years. He knows me. He is a good doctor. In the last appointment, he told me I was probably schizoid. He told me to read up on it, so I did. I also watched many YouTube videos and even read the relevant sections of a few reference books. Today he confirmed that, according to him, not only I'm schizoid, I'm actually the most patently schizoid patient that he ever had. I wanted to disagree, but I couldn't. Reading about schizoid personality disorder is like reading a description of myself. I estimate that only 5% of the classical definitions don't apply to me, 10% at the most. It's so accurate, it's ridiculous and unsettling. I am the things I am because I chose to be this way, right? I'm not a page from a textbook, right? Wrong. I absolutely am.
Fuck.
Thank you so much for the kind words.
I do wanna work on it, but maybe not in the way you anticipate. In my last visit to a psychotherapist, more than 2 years ago, I said something to the effect of "I'm here to learn how to live without a relationship".
Thing is, I don't really wanna be entangled in a group, community, or society as a whole. I have to, which is very different.
Since I was a teenager, I say things like "people are okay, as long as they're not in a group of more than three". I didn't have friendships with kids in the neighborhood, and, when I had the chance to make friends, suspicion and distrust were always in the way.
I truly believe that harmful group dynamics, groupthink, etc, are integral to the human experience, and those less equipped to perform the continuous "social drama" required to belong are often misunderstood, assaulted, humiliated, and relegated to a lower status without sentence or chance of parole. When we are not the target of hate and ridicule, we are merely ignored, and quietly pushed aside the discourse. Like someone that is invited out of a game because they failed to comply with rules that were never written, communicated, or explicitly stated in any way.
Online interactions with anonymity are the only circumstance where I willingly engage with large groups of people nowadays, because, in a way, here I don't need to be "a person". Of course, I am a person here, but the anonymity and the text medium allow me to present my thoughts in a manner that more closely resembles what I mean, and hostile group dynamics, while present, are more contained and easier to circumscribe.
I had no idea what this was, maybe I shouldn't have clicked through to that wikipedia article someone wrote about me...
I didn’t think my mental health could get any worse than it already was, but now so much more is going wrong with my life and I don’t know how much longer I can keep feeling this way.
Very happy to be alive. Otherwise, not so good. Terribly alone.
For the first time in my life, I feel like I am at "my normal". Its still new enough that I haven't processed it yet, especially since I've thought I've reached this point many times before. So really good, but still a bit overwhelmed by it.
I'm microdosing mushrooms. Previously 25mg every Tuesday and Saturday. Today I start at 50mg, but I'm also doing 300mg with a buddy in the evening for a little glow. Once I get used to the 50mg, I'll go to 100mg... and when I'm used to that, I'll take a break for a few weeks and restart back at 25mg.
Low-dose shrooms are awesome. I really don't like being drunk or high, so this is basically perfect. I can still do everything like normal, but I'm happier.
Unrelated song that is upbeat