Mental health

Akiva
Posts: 531
Joined: Thu Nov 26, 2020 4:30 pm

Re: Mental health

Post by Akiva »

Sometimes you know the plan is going to fail before you even start.
Reel on a repeating loop
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Eliahad
Posts: 1548
Joined: Wed Nov 25, 2020 12:36 pm

Re: Mental health

Post by Eliahad »

Then it's not the best plan. Make a new plan. Try again. Keep going.
Akiva
Posts: 531
Joined: Thu Nov 26, 2020 4:30 pm

Re: Mental health

Post by Akiva »

I keep Going ‘cause I have no choice.
Reel on a repeating loop
Akiva
Posts: 531
Joined: Thu Nov 26, 2020 4:30 pm

Re: Mental health

Post by Akiva »

Seething with self-hatred.

Things don't get better.
Reel on a repeating loop
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poorpete
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Joined: Wed Nov 25, 2020 2:59 pm

Re: Mental health

Post by poorpete »

Got the usual election day high anxiety. I'm going to do my best to ignore the news (it's all what-ifs at this point) but it's still tough even though I know it's better if I just let-it-go.

Then I assume I'll have post-election day anxiety as I try to figure what it's like in this "new normal," and find my footing. But man, would I love for elections not to send my fears through-the-roof.

Just prepping for my therapy session in a few hours, see what I can figure out now.
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poorpete
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Joined: Wed Nov 25, 2020 2:59 pm

Re: Mental health

Post by poorpete »

Here's an article talking to me

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog ... thing-else
3. Open your heart.

Now, here’s the thing: Sometimes things do go terribly, horribly wrong. A loved one dies. We lose our health or our home. Our partner leaves us. We elect despicable politicians who enact horrific policies. And the deepest truth about our well-being is that it doesn’t have to depend on what happens to us or around us.
Woah
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Phoebe
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Joined: Thu Nov 26, 2020 2:57 pm

Re: Mental health

Post by Phoebe »

Hellooooooo OCD!
Greetings!
Here's how it works:
Some kind of anxiety is swirling beneath the surface. We don't know what it's about and it doesn't really matter.
One becomes unable to do anything without checking it twice, mentally reviewing it to infinity, rewriting it constantly, etc.
Not going to rewrite this! Je réfuse!!!

Then you start to get a little bit sick. You think of the many thousands of reasons from the mundane to the serious that may be involved. You test yourself for COVID. You did not have it
This doesn't matter!
Your brain reviews in great detail the smiling and innocent and hopeful faces of all the people you have come and contact with over the last 24 to 48 hours. You assume that you simply missed the COVID with the first test but you really do have it, and by the time you find it out all these people will be at risk of suffering and dying.

Granted they chose to be around you without anyone wearing masks. But you could have chosen to wear a mask. Why should your care for other people's safety depend on whether they take this initiative?
You know better. You know we should still be masking with COVID at this level in the community. You play fast and loose with the lives of others and don't even care - You particularly review in your mind the sweet and smiling faces of the older people you saw recently. You remember all. Which ones will die?

Please keep in mind I'm not totally crazy because one reason this is happening is that shortly after meeting with me, and 500 other people who didn't have masks on when we did, One of my acquaintances died of COVID earlier in the pandemic. The OCD brain calmly and rationally tells itself that one of the 499 maskless or unvaccinated people probably got the job done. It then replies equally calmly and rationally to itself that you are still ethically culpable.
But I've never even had COVID?! you may protest.
It laughs at you. You have chills. Your teeth hurt. The blob of cancerous growth on your knee throbs painfully.
You are also a bad person now because you care about whether your little tiny knee hurts, and meanwhile you have a friend suffering from bone cancer and your spouse is surely also dying of some kind of mysterious cancer that we just don't know about yet.
You are also a failure as a parent. You review your failures on the list. It's a long list.
You are smart yet can accomplish nothing. You are a border collie trapped in a cage of its own making. Your useless life rolls inevitably forward towards Doom and never once in this timespan will your house actually be clean and organized.
You neglect your loved ones.
Your selfishness is epic.
You can't even fold the socks together right.
But if you were going to be cold from the universe to to your misdeeds as a liver, why did you have to take so many other people down with you, like all the people you ran into today?
It's an endless circle. It's the circle of life.
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Phoebe
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Joined: Thu Nov 26, 2020 2:57 pm

Re: Mental health

Post by Phoebe »

I like this, she said, sitting on her fingers because the post above has so many typos. God will probably strike me down if I don't fix those typos.
Self-care, the people say, self-care.
Search box: How not to worry?
This is the picture these f****** give you. Don't tell me the AI is not mischievous:

Image

This man or woman is pulling hair out of its temples. Is it a worm being pulled from the ear? What the f*** I'm very worried about whatever is coming out of this person's head. Very worried about it.
Bonus: I've temporarily stopped worried about who I've killed with the case of COVID I haven't tested positive for yet but that Shirley is killing people as we speak, nope I'm not going to fix your typos phone, and I'm just watching this image over and over and trying to figure out what that stuff is. Are they brains? Is it sludge? Is it the tapeworm of worry, which is black and comes out of your brain unlike the other kind?
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Kyle
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Re: Mental health

Post by Kyle »

It sounds like you're having an intense anxiety episode, not actually OCD. I've been clinically diagnosed with OCD and it's not really what you're describing. But I don't mean to minimize what you're going through because it sounds terrible, and I can understand what it's like to feel trapped in a circular thought pattern that you can't get out of.
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Phoebe
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Re: Mental health

Post by Phoebe »

I see what you mean - these are the "O"s and not the C, which is less attractive. ERP helps with the C but the only thing I found that helps the O is deliberate hypnosis, or accidental interference. Last night the happy accident was vomiting phlegm and having to catch it to protect the carpet. After that, it was like, game over, Lysol has entered the arena! It's hard to differentiate the legit use of Lysol from the C's.
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Kyle
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Re: Mental health

Post by Kyle »

Sorry. For real, I'm not trying to diminish your experience, but I thought I would put it in a different context and did so clumsily.
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Phoebe
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Joined: Thu Nov 26, 2020 2:57 pm

Re: Mental health

Post by Phoebe »

No no, do not worry - It is helpful to look at it from different angles and see what work best as a result. For some reason just when you no longer are expecting weird s*** to pop up like this, It pops right up! Cage match: brain against brain! And it's the same brain!
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Phoebe
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Joined: Thu Nov 26, 2020 2:57 pm

Re: Mental health

Post by Phoebe »

I don't really care for fame or being less than anonymous. I prefer to flit along unseen. But. But...
I just read a notification from Google maps and realized, this is going to be my legacy of impact on the world. More people will read and respond to and care about and be changed by my Google reviews than anything else I will ever say, write, do.

Not sure what comes next. I ponder... For real... Writing popular books. At my age.
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