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Right. I remember learning about introspection in school and thinking “wow I wish I could stop doing that”
The older I get the more I realize the phrase “ignorance is bliss” is tragically true.
If ignorance is bliss, why aren’t more people happy?
-a bumper sticker I saw once
Apathy is bliss*er
I’ve spent most of my lifetime improving my self awareness to help with mental health problems at the recommendation of professionals.
Now I’m just very aware of why I’m depressed and anxious.
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What do you need?
Not OP, but based on my experiences, I need a home.
Not a house full of people (that may or may not understand the things I try to express), but a genuine home. A place where I don’t constantly wonder what I’ve done wrong or how other people want me to live according to their own tendencies.
I often think of the (misattributed) quote by Robin Williams character in ‘World’s Greatest Dad’ : “…the only thing worse than being alone, is being with people who make you feel like you’re alone.”
I’m tired of feeling like I don’t belong, like I was a mistake. I’m tired of feeling like a burden and a curse. I just want to feel halfway normal.
My ex said that pretty often. She just wanted to go home and home was nowhere.
She was diagnosed with BPD, and oh boy was life a roller coaster for the last few years of our time together.
I won’t go into a big spiel about everything I went through, but I need to tell you this.
She was miserable. For all of the years we were together, she was miserable. I found out that she cheated multiple times and then I’d be her favorite person again and everything would calm down and go back to normal. She left me at least once a year, but she’d come back and try to work it out.
She never got her drivers license (in a rural place a person is entirely dependent on other people without it). She’d make a plan and then say she didn’t feel like it and I’d just enable her to lay there because I understood not feeling like it. I like my routine, I don’t like to break it.
From my point of view she was helpless and from her point of view she was a burden and a curse.
When our relationship ended, she met a man who wouldn’t just enable her to lay there. He said, “Bullshit, get up, get ready. You’re driving.” She got her license, she got a house, she got everything she wanted. When it seemed like everything was going great, she was diagnosed with cancer and dead within two years.
She spent most of her life with the wrong person and that directly contributed to her misery.
It wasn’t easy for us to split. When I found someone else, she went nuts and got committed by her mom after she pulled all of her hair out and beat her head into a wall.
I didn’t know just how badly people can negatively influence and impact each other until we split and got around people who have influenced and impacted us positively. I thought we were both just helplessly childish and lazy.
My point is that life is short. It ain’t special. We ain’t special. The problems we have are often right in front of us and we don’t see them. It’s impossible to think about how things could be if this or that change were made where and when. We can speculate, but we can’t know and that makes us terrified to move when we should be moving. Big moves are also traumatic for everyone involved and sometimes it seems impossible because we don’t want to cause or feel pain.
I know it isn’t simple, but I also know that home is out there.
My ex was strange. Sometimes she’d miss me and send me a message full of understanding and she’d talk about the growth she’s experienced, and sometimes she’d message me to remind me that I was the source of all of her misery.
The results though, what I could tangibly see, were bigger than the trauma and bigger than our feelings.
We went from being children who slept until 1PM so that we could avoid our lives and other people to getting up and getting shit done. We crippled each other. She didn’t get to keep what she’d achieved for herself for very long.
Make the changes you need to make sooner rather than later. Meet the people who will lift you up sooner rather than later.
I know it’s hard. I probably couldn’t have done it without being forced.
I don’t know. I’ve lost the point now but, if you read this far hopefully you got something you can use. If not, I’m sorry if I depressed you further.
And I said I wasn’t going into a spiel.
I could write a 10,000 page book about all that though. I’ll never go a day without crying just a little. It was a lot, and we should have split a lot sooner.
I’m not saying to put blame on the people in your life. They’re just as lost in this world as you are. I’m just saying that sometimes you just gotta go because things aren’t working for anyone involved.
Take care.
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I actually understand where you’re coming from. I broke contact to all my family a long time ago, best decision I could have made. I personally was really lucky to find people, mostly online but a few offline, like you describe.
Oh, I’m self-aware. Of all the negatives. It’s the positives I’m struggling to find. That’s why I’m taking to a mental health professional before I pull a Hemmingway in a truck stop bathroom.
So first of all, I’m glad you’re getting professional help because being self-aware and having the courage to reach out and tackle your demons head on is tough. Keep up the good fight mate.
But you’re going to have to be more specific when saying “pull a Hemmingway” because that fucker did a lot.
So you’re either going to rip a skylight out of a ceiling onto your head, accidentally shoot yourself in the leg whilst aiming at a shark twice, publish a Pulitzer prize novel, contravene the Geneva Convention, work for the KGB, be investigated by the FBI for obvious reasons, have several car accidents, cheat on your current wife then divorce then marry the other woman repeatedly, get mauled by a lion, or start hunting Nazi U-Boats with a machine gun and a handful of grenades.
I think he means the very last thing Hemmingway did.
Second to last is also not great.
Move to Idaho?
My dog (low IQ, not that self aware) is the happiest person I know.
Shits on fire and he’s like, This is Fine!
Huh
“You seem to have a very healthy way of dealing with your issues.”
“So it’s like I suspected, my depression isn’t a cognitive dysfunction, but a fully rational reaction to the state of the world?”
“Yes. I don’t know how you haven’t offed yourself yet.”
I mean a big portion of the mental health struggle is developing oneself into a thing that can handle more danger and calamity without breaking down.
This is very true. It takes a strong person to look at the world around them and understand that there are things they simply can’t affect and move forward. We can strive to be better in our own lives and improve the spaces around us. Sometimes (a lot of times) that’s all we can do.
During an interview, a former boss said, “You’re very self-aware. Like…maybe too self-aware?”
Me: “Even if that’s true, I’m not sure what I could do about it?”
Then it just fizzled. I did get the job though, for better or worse.
It is a problem when you live in a society where most people aren’t self-aware
They are self aware, but see their behavior as more of a price others bear than one they need to invest to improve
Eh, I think it’s more like 50% are mostly ignorant and 50% are mostly aware
Part of the problem? It is the entire fucking problem
Existential dread? Check. Poor coping habits through drugs? Check. Still a functional member of society barely getting by? Check.
PANIC ATTACK! Check check check oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck. I’m dying, I’m actively dying fuck me I can’t move that’s a stroke too right? Fuck my face looks fine and I can hold both my arms level fuck it’s a heart attack God damnit God damnit oh shit there’s no major pain though so why do I feel like I’m dying God damnit. Aneurysm! Damnit! Archer was right! Fuck fuck… breathe okay this doesn’t help but it’s what I’m supposed to do ok ok ok jesus its been ten minutes how am I alive? God damnit it’s a panic attack a real one not just bullshit anxiety like normal… ahhhhh fuck I’m still dying though this sucks it’s fake though… ok… ok… I can move again. God damn I’m fucking stupid. So stupid… This time I’ll go find a PCP to see a Psych…
See doctor, get meds, brains are scumbags, get better, get waifu, get kids, wake up every day like that one good day you had every two months. FeelsGoodMan
About the most accurate description of a panic attack without actually being able to experience it.
Same
I have so much self awareness than I’m afraid that talking to a professional I will sound like I’m trying to trick them into thinking I have a mental disease. To the point that I think I’ve convinced myself that I’m lying to myself about my mental problems. So I don’t, because I have a lot of respect for people I know who have actual mental disorders.
A good therapist wouldn’t judge you even if that were the case, so I’d say go for it if you really want to.
Plus, “I’m concerned that I might be overthinking symptoms X, Y, and Z” is a good enough place to start as any.
Image Transcription: Twitter Post
hugo, @toasteredbread
every mental health professional i’ve ever talked to has been like “you have a lot of self awareness” and i’m like yes i actually think that is part of the problem
Ignorance is bliss. So I’ve heard.
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It’s unfortunate how those doctors aren’t as self aware
