I’m not doing so great. I feel sick, but I don’t think I actually am. I feel tired, but I definitely managed to sleep. I have a scratch on my face, but my cat did that because I took too long to wake up and feed her.
A great thing that has come from writing more openly about mental illness and how I’m a consistently depressed and anxious little bean is that other people have also told me they can relate, that we aren’t alone in our mutual issues. So, that being said, I just have a question that has been on my mind a lot this week.
Does anybody else react to stress and seemingly terrifying situations with a sort of emotional paralysis. I’ve been putting myself in a lot of situations that don’t exactly help my anxiety, and after a few days of those things constantly being on my mind, I’m finding it laughably difficult to stand up, stretch my legs because they’re numb from sitting on the side of the bath, and keep working. I’m emotionally exhausted, but there is still some more to do.
A problem posed by the stigma against talking about mental health is that everyone suffers alone. How can we realize that so many of our peers are depressed and anxious too if nobody feels like it’s ok to talk about it. To that effect, I’m trying to talk about it because I spent way too time feeling like I was weird and broken because depression had pushed out a lot of my personality to make room for hating the personality I didn’t have anymore.
It was, to summarize years of self-loathing and confusion, pretty tiring. So, rather than just silently wondering if this time I’m uniquely messed up by my own cocktail of bad experiences. I wanted to ask. Does anybody else see a hard conversation on the horizon and just… stay where they are and wait for the opportunity to fade so it’s not completely your fault you didn’t take it?
This bathroom has seen some emotional shit.
Non-Euclidean Sofa 
I’m getting better about it – I used to never be able to speak up about anything hard without having a total breakdown. Now I can bring some stuff up and talk it out – mostly petty stuff, like being annoyed that someone didn’t do something the way I prefer it done. Big stuff is still pretty hard for me, though. I hate being seen as the bad guy and my brain weasels will always tell me that I’m being the bad guy, that I’m being mean, for bringing hard stuff up… even when it’s stuff that everyone would be better off in the long run for having addressed.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I definitely have some of the same problems. I’ve got this totally irrational idea that any indication that I don’t agree with something, even if my reasons are valid or correct, means I’m causing unnecessary conflict and am being the absolute worst and most aggressively terrible person alive. The only way I’m learning to get around it is to find weird ways to make myself speak my mind when I need to, generally that means indicating in advance that I have something to say so I can’t just fade out of existence like I want
LikeLiked by 1 person
> I’m causing unnecessary conflict and am being the absolute worst and most aggressively terrible person alive.
Christ, yes. My inner monologue is basically a constant loop of “you’re an asshole, you’re too much”. I ask my partner to load the dishwasher and then spend the next six hours thinking about how I’m an asshole for asking him to load the dishwasher too often. He’s currently unemployed, for context. It’s not like loading the dishwasher is something he doesn’t have time to do. And it’s not like he’s ever been anything less than happy to oblige. My brain has just decided that asking for any kind of help with anything for any reason is tantamount to terrible failure.
Stupid brain weasels.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yeah! I hate this kind of warped way I think about people thinking about things that come from me. Like, do they hate me if I ask for something, and do I have this weird concept of how much effort things take if I’m not the one doing them. It’s so strange no being able to connect the minimal effort I’d have to put into something with the amount of effort they’d have to put in. Loading the dishwasher isn’t that hard–and is neat if you really dig packing–but it’s weirdly hard to imagine that other people would have the same experience.
In other news, if you see a spare brain on Craigslist or a street corner somewhere, let me know. Mine is clearly faulty
LikeLiked by 1 person
Well, I like you a lot, but the FIRST spare brain I encounter is going in my own head. I’ll definitely alert you to any subsequent spare brains I find, though. 😉
LikeLiked by 1 person
I guess that’s reasonable. I’ll keep working with my old one until another one comes along or I can upload my consciousness into a vacuum and finally realize my full sucking potential
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’ve definitely felt that way in the past, I think now I’m better at opening up and confronting things. Even now though, there are still situations where I’d rather just hop in the opposite direction lol.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It’s definitely a difficult thing to deal with. This is why I love the internet. We can move away from anything we want because the internet is functionally infinite, but we can also confront with low stakes because of the relative anonymity and distance. Ugh, why do I ever have to go outside when there are computers
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ha, yeah. I wish we could just enter a virtual world and socialize (or not) through there.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Definitely
LikeLiked by 1 person
I go through this too, unfortunately. It becomes incredibly hard to function at all, let alone to do so well. I always refer to it as “apathy”, but that’s not quite the right term. “Emotional paralysis” is much more accurate, I think. Unfortunately, I don’t really have any practical advise. I usually end up isolating myself for a few days and then force myself to do a tiny bit of interaction, even if it’s entirely online in nature, every day until the mood passes.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I used to just call it apathy too, but you’re right, there’s just more there than not caring. It seems like everyone just develops their own ways of dealing with stuff like this, and I’m slowly getting my methods down. For example, realizing someone else has to use the bathroom has really gotten me moving before.
LikeLiked by 1 person
emotions are overrated. physical sensations such as pressing an iced coffee smoothie against your cheeks and running the heater with the windows open (cool/warm combination) are much more preferable
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hmmm, there’s probably some merit here. Might replace the coffee with iced tea though
LikeLike