#only problem is its hard to let yourself do anything when you have ocd

[meebspace]

u know like. with OCD in general, it's soooo easy to constantly be asking yourself "what can I do to be better", searching for things you can find to agonize over and analyze to the point of making urself sick. and no matter what, the answer to that question will literally always be "nothing as long as you're treating yourself like the root of all evil"

[dearestaeneas]

I think, as a writer, writing for yourself is the most important thing you can do when you create. I’ve been working on the same story for years and finally come to terms with the fact that even if I’m published and famous one day, no one will ever read this book as much as I have, so I better make it something I like. I think that’s important. But I do think there’s a conflict when you share yourself through your writing- sometimes when I write for myself I’ll have the thought, “I hope people like this if I post this,” and it makes me worry I’m not doing it for myself anymore. I imagine this is universal. All this considered, I’m hesitant to share this story. It was for me. But! It’s my birthday and I have been suffering from chronic writer’s block, and I suppose I can always delete this later. Here’s something I wrote after seeing @neil-gaiman on April 28.

⭐ 

I saw my favorite author today. I sat in my seat, clutching my purse, jiggling my legs with excitement. My cell phone sat in my lap and acted as a technological pancake, flipping front and back, front and back, its glowing face counting the minutes. Any minute now. I saw my favorite author today.

He came on stage and he told stories, shared works published and un, taking breaks to answer audience questions. I devoured his words, applying them to myself. Why, I’m an aspiring writer! I’m looking for my voice! Write, write, write, he said. Get your heart broken. Live. Write, write, write. I saw my favorite author today.

I have a hard time living in the present. As I sat in my seat, clutching my purse and jiggling my legs, I made the distinct point of paying very close attention. I wouldn’t let my mind wander. My mind wanders sometimes. I have what they call Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and it isn’t wanting-all-the-colors-on-the-shelf-to-match-up-nicely. I’m very detached, and I don’t think the way I suppose an attached person does. I don’t think the OCD has a direct relationship to the detachment, but I do obsess over being detached. They’re married, I suppose. I saw my favorite author today.

I had to pee toward the end. Felt my back teeth floating. That was a phrase I learned from one of my favorite author’s books. It describes the feeling well. This sensation presented a problem, but none I wouldn’t be able to deal with. You couldn’t have paid me to leave that room. I sat, squirming in my seat, devouring his words. There was only one small problem. A teensy, tiny problem. Barely anything.

The problem was this: I was alone in the theater. There were people, sure, but I knew they weren’t real. Not even the woman that stood up and made an announcement about how she had reverse engineered something that would solve all bipartisan issues was real. Not even the two friends who had so kindly picked me up from my apartment and let me ride in the backseat of their little car. No, none of them were real. I knew this because I could see Them.

They were in the corner of my vision. The seats to my right were empty, not even filled with Not People. That’s where I saw Them. They sat perfectly still, but They faced me, at three-fourths. They perched on the folded up seat, like a monkey. I may have seen wings, I may have seen claws, but Their posture was perfectly primate. I ignored Them. I accepted They were there, and I ignored Them.

My favorite author continued to talk. He read a story about igloos. I liked it. They disappeared out of my vision for a while. That was okay. He read a story about the Holy Grail after answering some questions. A lot of the questions were from teachers. That was okay. He finished with a few more questions, and then read a short story offering advice, and comparing writing to making a chair. Throughout the show, I teared up. After all, I was seeing my favorite author.

At the end, the Not People stood and clapped. They started to file out of the theater, and he pretended to walk off stage. I was going to join the flood of exiting bodies. And then they stopped.

“Did you enjoy it?” I heard him ask. He was back onstage. The Not People were gone. It was just us. Me. And my favorite author. “Yes,” I replied. He nodded. “I want to be a writer,” I said. He nodded again. We stood together in silence. The theater remained empty. “Where did They go?” I asked.

“They were never here,” He replied simply.

“Not them,” I corrected. “Them.”

He smiled. He stepped off the stage and walked toward me. He’d looked shorter on stage. I could see he was several inches taller than me now. “Do you really want to know?” I expected the question to be somewhat mischievous. It wasn’t. It was sincere, and a little sad. Did I want to know? I’d like to say I was being driven by a higher power, by some great drive for a divine reason, but that would be a lie. I was simply curious. Maybe that was why he told me. Maybe it was the simplicity of my interest. Do I really want to know? “I don’t think I have an option,” I said. He considered this a moment before nodding and offering me his hand. We walked together out of the empty theater.

“Are you scared?” I asked as we continued down the empty street behind the theater. “Are you?” He responded. I thought about this as we walked silently, hand in hand. “A little,” I said finally. I looked up after saying this to see him nodding slightly. It didn’t have the wisdom in it I expected. It was simply a nod. “A little.” He answered a moment later. We walked on, both a little afraid.

They were in the windows of the old bars and warehouses we passed. Our conversation was light. I behaved myself. I imagine it would be uncomfortable to hear someone gush about all you’ve done to change their life, how it’s your fault there’s another writer in the world. I imagine that’s a terrible burden. I admitted to him that everything I wrote was dedicated to him in a way. I don’t know how he felt about that. I hope it was a nice thing to hear. He made me laugh, and he listened politely when I spoke. We talked about books.

We were in front of the theater again. Our brows furrowed at the same time. We’d been walking in a straight line. They watched from the bars and warehouses. We reentered the theater. The Not People were back, waiting politely in the corridors. We reentered the theater, where we saw ourselves. “Did you enjoy it?” He asked, for the first time. “Yes,” I answered. We watched as he walked to me, as he offered his hand, as they walked through us into the world. They’d be back.

The show restarted. We sat together, watched it through. I clapped at all the same parts. “Is it weird?” I asked as the Not People exited the theater backwards, as he left the stage and climbed backwards into a car somewhere outside. “Most things are,” He shrugged. I shrugged, too. That was fair. They flitted around the room. Mostly They climbed on seats and studied. It was okay.

“Does it ever stop?” I asked as the lights in the theater turned off. I stood, offering my own hand this time. He smiled and took it. “Not for us.” As we walked out of the theater, I smiled. “This was nice.” He smiled, and nodded, and I was in a line. The show had ended, and I was in a line. My two friends spoke. One of their friends had come up to us. I listened politely as he talked about his job, how he was offered free tickets to the show from multiple friends, and chose the one he hadn’t seen in the longest. I thought that made sense.

I bought two books. One of them was a book I read illegally, if such a thing was possible. I started to read it in the school’s library, and then the school year ended. To solve my problem, I would go to different bookstores and, remembering my page number, read until I thought I looked suspicious. I did that until I finished the book. I enjoyed it. I figured if I was ever going to pay for the book, I may as well get it this way.

On the way to the car, I talked to my friends about a horror musical that had made some questionable casting choices. I didn’t tell them I had spent so much time with my favorite author. We drove, and talked, and talked about space and John Wayne and billboards in the South. We reached my apartment, and I thanked them, and made them promise me to text when they got home. I walked out the back door to my car, to get my water bottle. I didn’t want them to see they’d dropped me off in an inconvenient place. It was nice of them to drop me off at all.

As I ate my dinner late that night and prepared myself for bed, I realized I couldn’t remember any of the show, except the parts I’d become detached momentarily for. It stressed me. When I finally fell asleep, I had a dream about my favorite author. Or, he was there. We took a photograph together. It was nice. We didn’t talk, but that was okay. We’d spent a lot of time together the night before, and it wasn’t necessary for us to speak in the dream. We were still speaking, we are speaking. We are walking hand in hand through an empty street, being watched by dozens of pairs of eyes, we are watching ourselves speak and offer whatever comforts we can. Everything is so goddamn weird. That was okay. He told me it would never stop being so goddamn weird. That was okay.

I met my favorite author today.

[littleoddwriter]

Damaged | Dan Torrance x Male!Reader

Whoo, another vent fic! I’ve been writing on it for a couple of days now and decided to quickly finish and upload it before my next zoom meeting, lol.  If you should read my ZsaszMask fics on Ao3, you will recognise that the title and subject matter are the same. That’s because I’ve vented by giving Roman my problems before. But the same problem is still plaguing me. By now, I’m legitimately scared of showering each night. So, yeah, vent fic. Which is gonna be rather specific again, ‘cause OCD and neurodermatitis.

summary; Your wounds on hands and wrists are distressing you, new intrusive thoughts appear and make it even worse. Dan is there to reassure you and just be the wonderful boyfriend that he is. 

notes; TW // Contamination OCD, Self-Harm (unintentional and implied intentional); Intrusive Thoughts (rather graphic! Be cautious, please); Bleeding wounds on hands and wrists. Male!Reader; Emotional Hurt/Comfort; Neurodermatitis; Cuddling; Showering; Reassurance. 

It had been a nice day. Dan had a day off. You were home, too, but you had some work for university that you needed to get done. That work was quickly finished, though, and so you ended up on the couch together, watching some movies and just enjoying each other's company for the rest of the day. It was nice. Relaxing.

Eventually, late evening was approaching and you still needed to take a shower. It was so set in your routine, on top of medically needed, and also forced upon you by your OCD, so that you couldn't wait till morning. You hated it. You didn't want to leave Dan's side, nor did you want to shower as it was. "I can feel you're stressed. What is it, sweetheart?" Dan asked, pulling you out of your head. "Just... Showering?" You replied, a little unsure if he would get it. "Right, right," he murmured, pulling you closer and pressing a kiss on your forehead. "Is there anything I can do?" "No, I don’t think so. I'm sorry. And if I put it off any longer, it's only gonna get worse." "Alright then. I'll be right here when you get back, okay?" He kissed your forehead again, then your lips and then he gave you a little nudge to make you get up. You tried to calm yourself while you got everything ready for the shower. You didn't have to look at yourself. You were pretty good at looking up to the ceiling or just closing your eyes, when you were showering. Yet, you weren't sure if any of that would help that day. No thanks to your OCD, you excessively washed your hands too many times a day to keep count of. On top of that, you were suffering from neurodermatitis, so your skin was even more prone to splitting open and getting bloody and raw from washing it so much. And at the moment, your wrists and the backs of your hands were full of little open wounds - some even a little bigger - and dry and angry red patches of skin that looked like rashes. It all hurt a ton. Burning, pulling your skin open with each movement, stabbing pains and so forth. You wished it wasn't like that. You really did. It was upsetting. You felt like people would look at your hands and see how broken you were. How beyond repair you were. You hated it. Eventually, you got into the shower and started following your routine. It went well until you caught a glimpse of your wrists, both such an angry red, the wounds standing out like they were actively trying to get attention from people. Suddenly, your mind's eye was filled with these images. You got them a lot. Self-destructive. Hard to resist at times. Yet, those were new. They showed you how you would turn the water to its hottest level and just stand there until it scalded your skin, starting to burn it off even. They showed you how you would take a knife and just slice it all off, getting rid of the evidence. It was utterly distressing. You didn't want to do any of this. You didn't! It wouldn't make your problem any better. It would make it worse if anything. You knew that. You also knew you wouldn't follow through with it. At least you hoped you wouldn't. You weren't so sure anymore, when you noticed that the water was pretty hot already, almost unbearably so. Had you turned the handle after all? You quickly turned it to make the spray lukewarm, finished off with your routine quickly and got out of the shower. Drying yourself was hurried, so was putting on your clothes. You did your hair a little and washed your hands again, like you always did. Then you pulled the sleeves of your sleeping shirt over your hands. Out of sight, out of mind. Or so you had hoped. The thoughts, the images; they were haunting you. They played in the back of your mind, over and over again, distressing you further. You got back to the living room, to the couch, where Dan was still sitting. Immediately, his attention was on you, when you entered the room. His face had concern written all over it. So he probably felt your distress. Fuck. With a sigh, you sat down next to him again, pressing into his side. You couldn't talk, you realised, as you tried to tell him that you were okay. It would have been a lie and he would have known it, but he knew not to pressure you and to accept your lies sometimes. Dan wrapped his arms around you, pressing your face into his chest. It was calming. Reassuring. Grounding. His hands were rubbing your arm and your back respectively, soothing you. Can I do anything for you? You closed your eyes, when his low, soothing voice rang through your head. You tried so hard to think, to see past the hurt and intrusive thoughts, if there was anything he could do. But you came up empty-handed. You always did. Shaking your head, you whined. You were so fucking exhausted. Tired. Broken. Subconsciously, you had started scratching your wrists. Your neurodermatitis was triggered by distress, your skin was itching and prickling all over, but your wrists were the worst. They were burning with it. Dan put a hand over the one you were scratching yourself with and stopped it. He took your hand into yours, intertwined your fingers and squeezed it gently, reassuringly. It's okay. Should I get your lotion? You shook your head, getting up yourself instead. You needed to wash your hands before putting your lotion on them anyway. So you did just that. It hurt. Your open and bleeding wounds burned and stung. So much, so that you were forced to squeeze your eyes shut and exhale forcibly to push down the pathetic whine that tried to escape you instead. Afterwards, your sleeves were pulled over your hands again; both as to not see them and to be able to cuddle back into Dan. You hated the lotion on your forearms and hands. It was a thick, sticky layer that didn't help you in the end anyway. Dan put his arms back around you, going back to rubbing you soothingly. You noticed that he had put in one of your comfort movies without question. In thanks you nuzzled his chest, kissing it briefly. You were so tired. You would have loved to just go to sleep and leave everything behind yourself; but you knew you wouldn't be able to find any rest if you were to go to bed in such distress. When the film was over, the two of you got yourselves ready for bed and crawled under the covers eventually. Dan was spooning you from behind, one arm around your middle, the other under your neck, pillowing your head. Your legs were intertwined and one of your arms was griping onto the one he had wrapped around your waist. "Do you want to tell me what upset you?" He whispered softly, gently kissing the back of your neck. "New intrusive thoughts," you answered shortly, a frustrated sigh leaving you. He nuzzled your hair on the nape of your neck with his nose, pressing another gentle kiss on your skin. "Would you elaborate on that or would you rather forget about it for now?" "I don't know. It's just... It's about the wounds on my wrists and such. I- I'm fucking damaged, Dan. Anyone who sees these wounds will know I'm beyond repair. I just want it all gone. I want them gone. I want the skin off of me. That's- That's what these thoughts- images rather - were about. And I don't know what to do because they're so hard to resist, even though they'd only make it all so much worse." "Y/N, let me say that you are not beyond repair. Nor are you damaged. I may not be able to fully understand this particular problem you're facing, now, but I'm determined to help and support you through it." Swallowing thickly, you squeezed the arm you have been gripping the entire time, wordlessly thanking him. "And listen, darling. We'll find solutions for you, alright? I'm here and I'm not going anywhere. If you need me to shower with you, I'll do just that. If you need to talk to me before, during and - or after, I'll be there to talk to you. Even when I should not be home and at work instead, we can always talk over the phone, okay? If the thoughts should become too much and you're afraid you're gonna follow through with them, I'll be there for you and help you, okay? You're not alone, I promise you." A pause. "You're such a strong man, you know? Each day, I am so proud of you. You've come so far, despite every stone that's been placed in front of you - and you keep on going. I love you, y/n and I admire you." Tears were shining in your eyes and as so often, you couldn't fathom just what you've done to deserve an understanding and amazing boyfriend, such as Dan was. "I love you, too, Dan. Thank you. I- I'm sorry. I don't know what else to say. You take my breath away and make me speechless. You know how proud of you I am - each and every day for fighting so hard, for surviving like you are. You truly amaze me, my love," you responded softly, your voice breaking a little on every other word. Dan squeezed you tightly, pressing against your back and kissing the back of neck once more. Go to sleep, my darling. I'm here. I'll protect you. You heard his voice in your head again, smiling softly as you did. Then you nodded and closed your eyes, getting comfortable. Your mind was mostly quiet for the first time this evening. 

[beautifuldarkmind]

tw // s*lf harm, su*cidal ideation (sorry)

Hey, it’s the creepy NHS anon here.

Thank you for responding to my ask! I’m sorry you had such a rough time getting a diagnosis. You shouldn’t have had to go through all of that. Honestly it sucks that the NHS is so reluctant to diagnose anything mental health related.

When I was 14 I thought I had depression and anxiety. I finally convinced my mum to take me to the doctors when I was 16. The doctor was super nice. She tested my thyroid function just to make sure nothing else was causing my feelings, then referred me to CAMHS. That was…an interesting experience. I remember asking my counsellor to diagnose me, but then at the next session she said she couldn’t, that it “wouldn’t be helpful” because I was still growing. Now that I think about it, one of the days I was at school and during a class I was furious for some reason. I even said to a classmate that I was willing to fight anyone who got in my way. Despite my mum disagreeing with me, I cancelled my appointment that day. (My mum was worried they’d stop my sessions all together if I cancelled, but they didn’t.)

Fast toward to recent years and I’ve been on and off attempting to get a diagnosis. Last year (so when I was about 18) I asked to be referred to the autism clinic, and thankfully the GP accepted, but the clinic is still closed and even when it’s open I’ll still have to wait, possibly several years. Then I made another appointment (different GP) to be referred to a psychiatrist. She refused, saying that GPs are trained to deal with mental health issues. I brought up OCD, so she asked where I got my information from. When I told her I researched it online, she just brushed it off and then did the typical depression/anxiety test and she said both were severe, then said “take some drugs” (which is didn’t because I didn’t trust taking drugs prescribed by someone who did a 3 minute yes/no type quiz without actually fully exploring my issues).

I spoke to a different GP just over a month ago to get a fit note for my Universal Credit. It was supposed to just be to make adjustments to what I was supposed to do, but he didn’t ask what the note was for, so he marked unfit for work. Which is great because that’s secretly what I wanted but feared being judged by people around me for thinking I needed that (particularly my parents). I mentioned that I thought I could have OCD and CPTSD, and he didn’t deny it but he simply said CBT helps for both. He then asked if I was currently doing CBT and I said I’d done it before but I quit. (That’s a whole other story but tldr I really don’t think it was for me, or at least the “therapist” wasn’t.) He said he would send a self referral link.

Fast forward to a few days ago and I had another appointment with him to discuss my fit note (because it only lasts for a month and you have to go back to renew it, which sucks). He asked if I had referred myself to CBT and I said I hadn’t yet because I didn’t want to, and he said “please do that for me” in a somewhat stern voice. I then brought up BPD and I think he said he would refer me? Honestly I was a bit overwhelmed because he called 40 mins early and I was in the car with my dad, so I was super weary of him asking questions about what I was saying to the doctor (but he didn’t). He then brought up PD support groups, which I’m considering doing, but you have to call up the place and I literally hate phone calls. Oh, speaking of which, all the appointments from the autism one onwards were all on the phone, so not only was I struggling to process what they were saying to me most of the time, but I was also so anxious that I couldn’t articulate my feelings properly. :)

Anyways, I am 20 now, which I only mention because I feel the same as what you mentioned. My brother is married, my childhood crush is married, my friend who I introduced to my friend group who then proceeded to discard me is getting married. Everyone seems to know exactly what they’re doing. They all have friends. But not me. I haven’t had friends since I was 14, and even then I don’t think that friend group was entirely wholesome. They made me feel like an outcast, like I was weird, that I needed to be more like them and not be like me. Which has probably contributed to me having a very vague sense of identity. And I feel like I’m still 14 and yet everyone is expecting me to behave like an adult. I’m supposed to know what I’m doing with my life even tho I literally cried in the shop when I was pressured to choose between 2 pizzas.

I have no support system. My own parents seem very dismissive of my problems, equating everything to social anxiety. When I’m stressed out of mind to the point of feeling suicidal, my parents say “that’s just life”, which…well, feeds into the feelings. For years I’ve felt stressed. Then if I’m not stressed I feel absolutely nothing. And if I’m not feeling empty I am angry, sometimes for no reason. And if I’m not angry, I am curled in a ball trying to bottle up the urge to self harm and batting away suicidal thoughts.

It’s like I have a huge chain pulling me down underwater and everyone else is in the beach drinking cocktails or something. Sometimes I thrash and try to get people to notice, but people think I’m just having fun. Other days I just feel like letting the chain pull me down.

Please forgive me for rambling and probably not having a very consistent train of thought in this post. I have a tendency to blab on about my “problems” (if they even are that), I guess as a way to connect? Idk. This post makes no sense.

I hope you’re having a good day. <3

- 🌸✨ (in case I send another ask again, but I’ll try not to because I don’t wanna bother you)

So sorry you're going through something similar. My GP sounded exactly how yours was, the typical anxiety/depression test and then just throwing those at you.. they dont seem to be trained in diagnosing and they dont want to hear anything more either. It's honestly almost impossible getting a diagnosis through them, the system here is really messed up... its just disappointing and seems to be failing so many people including you.

It does sound like you're going through a hard time, it's not nice especially when you feel a loss of self identity, you dont even know who you are and just feel lost in life. I think that was definitely the main point of realising something was up.. I had a VERY distorted view of myself and others around me and that was why I'd often self sabotage everything and then I'd feel so empty and angry at the world and just explode...

If you can go privately then do so, therapists are not able to diagnose and they will usually tell you 'we don't like to label' but even without a diagnosis you can still see if you can access DBT therapy. Amazon also has lots of DBT workbooks that I've used and its helped me to really understand myself!

If you often feel invalidated by your parents then that is known to cause BPD or borderline traits, especially if you've been suffering with mental illness in childhood and they tried to claim that it was nothing....you mentioned anxiety and I was told the approach my parents may have took to my severe anxiety is what brought on many of my symptoms of BPD. You start to feel ashamed of yourself for feeling that way because your caregivers make it seem like the issue isnt important and you feel as if your feelings dont matter also because that is how you have been made to feel.

I'm not saying this is definitely the cause but in my case I was told that the constant feeling of invalidation may be why I have such a warped idea of myself and why I cannot regulate my emotions. I was never told HOW to regulate or shown how to, just told to ignore my emotions and now I dont know how to deal with them😀

but yeah I'd really recommend taking a look at some of those dbt books online or reading more into it so you have a better understanding of yourself. You've already taken the first step and that's identifying that something may be wrong so you are self aware and clearly want to change for the better 💕

I hope everything works out for you, it's not nice feeling this way but you've got this 🥺🙌

[smallnico]

(Since you said you also struggle with it) Do you have any tips regarding not letting your anxiety-induced control issues making you a bad friend? Or being controlling of others?

sure! sorry for the late response btw, i’ve been swamped and haven’t felt really able to compose the long answer a question like this kind of deserves. as with all advice-based asks i receive, mind that i’m not a professional, i only speak from my own experience and from things i’ve learned during counseling sessions for my own mental health. ultimately, depending on how severely the issues you’re talking about affect your wellness and relationships, you should try to find a professional who can learn more about your personal experiences and guide you on a more personal journey of self-reflection and self-improvement. but i can definitely give some general tips, and will do so!

i think, in order to learn how to keep control issues in check, we all need to understand the nature of control. 

control is something the universe will never let us have in the abundance we need to feel safe. there are things in our lives we can control in certain situations, like what we have for dinner, or what colour our walls are, but there are situations where these things are out of our control too -- say you’re having dinner at a friend’s and they’re making the dinner, or you live in a rent-controlled apartment with a landlord who likes beige on tan. being able to control something in a messy situation gives us a sense of stability and certainty, because no matter what other unpredictable thing happens, at least we know what colour the walls are. at least we know what we’re having for dinner. it’s an anchor in a panic attack. when we feel like the world we know is crumbling around us, at least we have something to hold on to.

of course, with control issues inevitably comes the question of just how much needs to be under control in order for us to feel safe. severity varies. say someone has ocd, for instance, and absolutely needs to check their purse for their wallet and keys 20 times in order to feel control over whether or not they’ll be locked out of the house. say someone has long-developed abandonment issues and absolutely needs to know where their friends are at all times, so they know those friends are coming back. the hardest thing for anyone with control issues to accept, regardless of their severity, is that we cannot have control all the time. to a certain degree, we can’t always control even our own actions, our emotions, our successes and failures. we may gain control, but we will lose it at some point, and it’s scary when that happens, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing. it’s just a fact of life, and it’s one that every single person in the world has to deal with, regardless of whether they have control issues. 

control is safety. control is sitting in a chair. losing control is the chair being yanked out from under you, whether by another person, by an earthquake, or by any means. suddenly we’re falling, we don’t know if it’ll hurt, and we’re just scrambling for anything to get us back in that chair, if it’s even still there, maybe injuring ourselves more in the process. but accepting that the chair, by whatever means, is gone, means we land on the ground. we get our bearings, we examine the ground, we examine our own pain -- are we hurt? is it bad? is it fine? -- we learn about where the chair went, and then, if the ground has stopped shaking, we stand up again and figure out where to go from here. losing control is scary, but letting go of the need for control frees us to adapt to new situations, examine new feelings, learn what’s really causing the problems in our lives. after all, if someone pulls a chair out from underneath us, the chair isn’t the problem, the problem is the person. they could’ve asked permission, but maybe they wanted to see us fall.

to wring this extended metaphor dry, say the person does ask for permission before taking the chair. they need it for something, but we’re using it. it’s comfortable. it’s our only chair. but this person is being considerate towards us, they’re asking us to make a sacrifice. remember, the chair is a feeling of control, of safety. how big of a sacrifice are they asking of us? really, it depends on how badly we need the chair. and when we think of control (this time more broadly, we’ve successfully escaped the metaphor) as something inherently temporary, something we don’t absolutely need to find happiness and safety, it becomes a lot less of an ask when our friends tell us to back off a bit. it also becomes easier to conceive of a world where we don’t need stability to make our own certainty. 

and speaking of which, there’s another part of your ask that’s catching me. i don’t know the term of art for it, but when you say “anxiety-induced control issues make you a bad friend”, you’re labelling. the more we call ourselves something, the more we start to identify with it -- the more we insist that a certain bad/flawed action makes us a bad person, the more we identify ourselves as a bad person, and the less agency we assign to that bad/flawed action. if control issues make us bad friends, then being bad friends means we have control issues, etc. etc., and ultimately it becomes harder to separate the bad habits from our self-perception, and those habits then become harder to unlearn because suddenly we’re carving something out of our identity. we won’t be the same person anymore. we don’t know this new person, and the unknown is scary. then, we blame ourselves for our inability to overcome our “””inherent flaws”””, and we’re a bad person, we’re a bad friend, we’re never going to get better, we’re trapped here alone while the world rushes past and forgets us.

i hope i don’t need to tell anyone that that’s a problematic mindset to work oneself into. if i do, it is. and it really may not seem like that slippery of a slope, but once we get used to the holistic paradigm that People Are What They Do, the harder it becomes to forgive and love them in spite of their flaws, and that includes ourselves. making mistakes does not make us mistakes -- it makes us human, and that’s just how it be. not to sound too much like a therapist, because again it isn’t my job and i have no training, but the process of self-reflection and self-improvement becomes a hell of a lot easier when we stop blaming our souls for our behaviour. when we give in to our control issues, we’re acting out of a desperate need to stop feeling afraid, vulnerable. but fear, like all emotions, is temporary. it’s also part of being human. we can’t stop feeling afraid -- and it isn’t our fault that we can’t stop feeling afraid -- but we can, through certain physical and mental actions, be there for ourselves while we wait for the fear to go away on its own. i recommend any material on mindfulness and self-compassion by a woman named Kristen Neff for more on that kind of thing. but i digress.

some more specific situational tips for not lashing out at friends that i’ve personally used in my life:

- accept and then embrace that losing control and lashing out is going to happen every now and again no matter what you do. the pressure to be perfect is so unhelpful in recovery situations that it frequently actively and remorselessly makes those situations worse. again -- making mistakes is okay. you’re still on the right track, and it’s better for the train to arrive slowly after a long and shitty journey than to never arrive at all. - ask your friends to tell you when you’re making them uncomfortable. pick a safeword, something uninflammatory -- mine is “buttercup” -- and the hardest but most necessary part: when your friends use the safeword, don’t punish them for it. it isn’t an attack, they don’t want to hurt you, it’s just your cue to step back and take a nice bath or make a sandwich or wrap yourself in a blanket and practice some deep breathing. trust that the fear will be over soon. - after a lot of practice, you may find yourself recognizing your own behaviour and stepping back automatically. my friends almost never “buttercup” me anymore, because i don’t find myself reaching for control when i’m anxious -- i find myself closing my computer and making some hot chocolate and running a bath. taking a break. exercise works really well here. - this one’s kind of risky because of the self-destructive coping mechanisms a lot of people turn to to solve this problem, so tread carefully and compassionately. if you really need control such that you have to wean yourself off of it, do it like you’re trying to quit smoking. find a nicotine patch -- a smaller thing to control, like cleaning your room, washing a dish by hand, baking a cake, organizing your bookshelves. whatever works for you, just make sure you aren’t hurting yourself. the intention here isn’t to create a new problem for you to solve to distract from the old one, or to test your self-control. it’s specifically to feel a progressively smaller sense of relief to teach yourself just how inconsequential control can be in the grand scheme of things. that it can just be one of many positive feelings. after all, when cleaning your room comes with the benefit of being in a clean room, it’s not all about control, is it? - talk to your friends about the problem. try to ask first if you need to vent -- sometimes people aren’t in a good place to be vented to, and they deserve to be able to say ‘not right now’ without it being a huge deal -- but more importantly than that is that you talk to your friends about control issues when you aren’t actively spiralling. talking about what’s wrong in a considerate, self-compassionate, reflective way is obstructively hard to do when you’re in the middle of it -- at least, until you’ve had practice. don’t be afraid to ask your friends for help practicing self-reflection when your need isn’t urgent and they’re available. - don’t teach yourself to put your head down and deal with a lack of control. if it’s something you hate but put up with, then a lack of control is still, emotionally, a problem that needs solving, only now its presence inspires misery. think of what i said way earlier in this response: we have control way less often than we have it, just naturally. what you do instead of learning to tolerate that, is you learn to appreciate surprises. unpredictability is one of the most fun things about getting to know the world -- you never know what it’s going to do next, which means there’s always something new to explore. by teaching yourself to look for things to love in surprises, mistakes, unforeseen circumstances, not only does it change the world you see into a kinder and more fun place by default, it also provides the contrast you need to recognize when a situation really, actually is that bad, and something needs to be done to fix it. sure a storm knocked the power out and i can’t finish that assignment by the due date, but i know my professor isn’t a total asshole, so i’ll just let them know what’s up and in the meantime, look for ways to pass the time. i don’t know when the power’s going to come back, but now i have lights and heat and a book, so i’m good. the problems i actually have are the food in the freezer and the possibility of flooding. ultimately, we do what we can and accept what we can’t. (plus, it’s a lot easier to find somewhere moderate when you aim high and are okay with not getting there. you’ll probably never go “yay! the inexorable forces of chaos are at it again!”, but you might learn to laugh off missing the bus, which is already pretty great.) - at the very least, appreciate that you’re not responsible for other people’s decisions. ultimately, that’s their call, and accepting their call as their call means you don’t have to feel like their bad decisions are your fault. there are literally no downsides to this. if someone else decides to blame you for their bad decisions, they’re wrong. the only thing you’re responsible for in that situation is how you decide to respond to it. (and again, it’s okay to make the wrong decision. really, it is. all that matters is you be compassionate to yourself, reflect on the damage caused, try to fix what you can, and resolve to learn from the situation.) - look up kristen neff. really, do it. she has a couple of pretty great ted talks on youtube. 

i, for one, find comfort in not knowing all the answers. paradoxically, embracing uncertainty and unpredictability makes me feel more secure, because i know that next to nothing is under my control, and if something unpredictable happens, i’m comfortable knowing i wasn’t responsible for it. i can’t know everything, and trying to know everything is a recipe for a panic attack, because it means i’m going out of my way to pile onto the list of things i have to keep track of or else it’s my fault if they go wrong, regardless of if there’s anything i could’ve actually done. i spend so much energy trying to stay in the goddamn chair that i completely lose track of everything in my surroundings that actually matters. grabbing for a sense of control at all costs completely blinds me to real problems and real contentment, which then makes me feel even less in control than before. it’s a no-win situation. better for us to embrace that control really isn’t worth all the fuss and go on with our lives.

i hope this could help, or at least offer some perspective!

[sometimesiwrite]

Dump It Out

A scene for two—originally written as Man (M) and Woman (W) but could be any gender with some textual adjustments. I wrote this years ago as an exercise to challenge myself to write conflict (I’m very bad with conflict. Writing it, or engaging in it) and I’m pretty proud of what came out. Enjoy!

Content notes: Coarse language, arguing with ex, ex lives close by, alcohol, smoking, discussion of cunnilingus/inability to climax, brief reference to infidelity, the general angst of trying to stay on good terms post-relationship.

Scene1:

M and W. Apartment living room. A ticking clock is heard.

W: So.

M: So...

(Pause)

W: That’s it? “So”? That’s all you’re going to say to me?

M: I guess so.

W: ...Can I have my book, please?

M: You’ll have to be more specific, there were so many books.

W: Come on, don’t—

M: On the stairs, on the bedroom floor, in the kitchen, on top of the TV under the TV…

W: I forgot how petty you are…

M: In the bed, let’s not forget. Christ, I think you spent more time with those books than you actually spent with me. In bed.

W: Well, maybe if you had bothered to brush your teeth before you came to bed it would have been a different story.

M: And here I thought true love was supposed to defeat evil and transcend bad breath.

W: Well, the storybooks were wrong.

M: I don’t know, it depends which stories you read.

(Pause)

W: Can I please have my book back?

M: If you can find it.

W: What?

M: If you can find it, you can have it.

W: I thought you had it.

M: I do.

W: But you don’t know where it is?

M (lights a cigarette): No clue.

W: Come on, I know you have it.

M: Clearly not since you keep asking me for it.

W: Well, I don’t know where it is, though, do I?

(M shrugs)

W: Oh my God, you don’t have it. I swear if you tossed it—

M: I haven’t done anything with it since you lent it to me. Can you please stop rifling through my things? My things that I have in specific places for a reason.

W: Calm down, it’s just your obsessive compulsive disorder talking.

M: I’m not OCD, I’m tidy. There’s a difference. I like to keep all my books in one place.

W: You can push my buttons all you want, I’m just here for one thing.

M: You sure about that?

W: Why, did you hoard other things of mine that I don’t know about?

M: I know, to prevent you from turning my place upside down, we could look for it together.

W: Please for the love of God let’s not do this together.

M: Come on, it’ll be fun!

W: Uh-huh, just like the grocery shopping, and breakfast, and lunch breaks, and going out with friends, and going to the gym, and going to the dentist, and getting our hair cut, and going to bed. You’re right, how could I forget that every single thing in my life was a million times more fun when we did it together!

M: Can’t blame a guy for trying to foster a stronger connection.

W: You came with me to the gynaecologist!

M: It’s an intrusive process, I wanted to be supportive.

W: It’s private! You didn’t even ask if you could come with me, you just showed up.

M: I wanted to surprise you!

W: It was humiliating!

M: I was being a good partner.

W: No, you were feeding an obsession and it’s weird.

M: I forgot how hard you can pull away when you want to.

W: Yeah, because I like to do things on my own.

M: If by “things” you mean literally everything.

W: Can I just have my book, please?

M: It’s in the house.

W: But you have no idea where it is.

M: Oh my God, you’re so intuitive. It’s like you can read my mind. Whoa, get outa my head—

W: Fuck off.

M: I thought I had.

W: Yup. Almost. Now where’s my book?

M: Which one? The book you were fucking? I told you, if you can find it, you can have it. I’m not putting in anymore effort so you can cheat on me with half a tree.

W: This isn’t some game, just give me the book and I’ll get out of your precious space.

M: Mmmm such spacious space.

W: Damnit. Tell me where my book is.

(Silence)

W: Do you have any idea where it might be?

M: I think it’s... Okay, yeah,  sorry, I remember now… it’s definitely somewhere in the house

W: Well, are you going to help me look for it, or are you just going to sit there snarking into your cigarette while I go through your stuff longing for the day when your lungs finally collapse out of rebellion against your constant abuse and you slowly suffocate to death?

M: Wow.

W: Sorry.

M: That came out of left field.

W: Can I have my book back?

M: No.

W: Excuse me?

M: You don’t want it back.

W: Yes, I do.

M: Then buy a new copy. It’s not old, so it wasn’t a rare find. It’s barely flipped through, so you obviously didn’t use it that often (also, if you did, you wouldn’t have lent it to me in the first place).

W: That’s not the point.

M: Then what?

W: It’s my book and I want it back.

M: And you wanted to see me again.

W: Don’t be pathetic.

M: Oh, come on! If you really didn’t want to see me ever again for as long as I live — as you put it — you could have said, “forget it, I can live without that book” and never seen me again. This is classic you.

W: Excuse me? “Classic me?”

M: You want to talk about something but are afraid of being vulnerable and just saying, “Hey, honey, can we talk?” so you cook up some excuse to meaninglessly argue nothing until you can covertly segue into the thing you actually wanted to talk about in the first place.

W: For your information, even though it’s NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS, I have an audition next week, and I need one of the monologues from it.

M: So Google it! Go to the library! I mean, Jesus, if you want to see me, see me, but don’t bullshit around with an excuse. It’s impolite.

W: I have a bunch of notes in there from the last time I worked on it and it’s the only copy I have.

M: Oh.

W: Yeah.

M: I didn’t know that.

W: Clearly.

(Silence).

W: Could I bum a drag off that?

M: No, you cannot! I swear I only ever smoked half my own cigarettes. “Can I have a drag?/Sure babe, no problem” Then, five seconds later: “Can I have another drag?”

W: …Can I have a whole one?

M: Only if you keep it to yourself.

W: I’m confused on whether that was a yes or a no…

M: Go on, then, help yourself.

W: Thanks.

M: Probably yours anyway.

W lights a cigarette.

M: You still not inhaling?

W: You still drinking your whisky with mix?

M: Touché.

W: Thank you!

M: You always did have the best comebacks, babe. I’ll give you that.

W: You set ‘em up, I’ll take the shot.

M: Cheap shots.

W: Best kind there is.

M: Boy, you’re something else, you know that?

W: So you used to tell me.

M: I still mean it.

(Pause)

W: You’re not so bad yourself.

(Silence)

M: I’ll be back in a second.

M exits. W sits for three seconds. Stubs out cigarette. Rises. Leaves. M re-enters.

M: Well, well, well, look what I… found…

Lights fade to black

Scene 2 M and W. An apartment livingroom—different from, the same as, or similar to, the one previous. A ticking clock is heard.

A vigorous knock on the door. W rises, goes to the door, opens it. M pushes in.

W (facetiously): Hi, honey, nice to see you too, please, come on in, make yourself at home—get out of my apartment!

M: What the hell was that?!

W: What?

M: What do you mean “what”?

W: I mean, “what?” as in “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

M: Gee honey, where should I start. Maybe let’s start with you leaving my apartment without saying a single word.

W: You left first.

M: That’s an old card and you’ve already played it once.

W: Oh, come on. What’s the big deal?

M: The big deal is you don’t get to do that anymore. It’s common human courtesy to let someone know when you’re leaving their living space.

W: Why? Never seemed to bother you.

M: Oh my God, I’m not getting into that right now. It’s just something people do.

W: Like who?

M: EVERYONE.

W: Like I said, you left first. What did you expect.

M: I was out of town for five days. I came back; you moved across the hall.

W: No, you were gone for months. Sure, you were there but you weren’t there.

M: You know, I’ve always had trouble understanding you when you’re too straightforward. Could you be a little more vague for me?

W: Go ahead, snark it off. Avoid the actual topic by manufacturing confrontation that doesn’t need to be there.

M: Arguments are more fun than conversation.

W: Okay, fine, whatever! You win! Just try to keep your voice down.

M: Never bothered you before.

W: That’s because I was the one yelling.

M: Oh, what, so I’m not allowed to yell?!

W: No, not in my apartment.

M: Why should I give a fuck what I do or do not do in your apartment? You clearly don’t care what you do in mine!—Or who—Here, want a cigarette? Mind if I smoke?

W: I cannot believe you are being so childish about this one, meaningless—

M: —Mmmm the sweet smell of tar and rat poison—

W: —Minuscule lapse in social etiquette.

M: So you admit that it wasn’t normal.

W: Yes. Fine. Could you put that out, please? 

M: Then why did you do it? Why did you do it if it wasn’t normal?

W: Drop it.

M: No.

W: I wasn’t thinking clearly.

M: Not buying it. No one forgets to tell someone they’re leaving.

W: Wanna bet?

M: Stay on topic.

W: I thought I was.

M: Why?

W: I didn’t want to be there anymore.

M: And?

W: That’s it.

M: Nope.

W: Stop it.

M: You said you came to get your book.

W: Yeah.

M: You left without it.

W: So?!

M: So you couldn’t have wanted it that badly.

W: Maybe I changed my mind.

M: No. No, no, no, no, no, you wanted an excuse to see me.

W: God you’re pathetic.

M: Okay, yes. Yes I am, I’m pathetic. You didn’t want to see me AND you didn’t want your book. Se ya!

W: Let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.

M: It doesn’t close on its own.

W: Fuck you!

(Pause).

W opens the door without looking at M.

W: I wanted the book so I went over to get it; I started feeling weird and wanted to leave so I did. Now are you going to start acting like an adult and give me my book and maybe, just maybe, leave me alone?

M steps back into the entranceway.

M: See? What wasn’t so hard, was it? This is the one you wanted, right?

W: Yeah. Thanks.

M: Happy to help. Anyway, I’d better—

W: You want a beer?

M: It’s three o’clock in the afternoon.

W: Nevermind.

M: I didn’t say no.

W goes into kitchen, returns with beer for both.

M: Is there anything you want to say to me?

W: I don’t want to talk about things. Not right now, anyway, I’m too pissed off.

M: Why am I drinking a beer in your living room, then?

W: Because I don’t want it in my fridge.

M: And why’s that?

W: You bought it.

M: Then why didn’t you just throw it out? Pour it down the toilet?

W: Because I didn’t. Jesus, why does every little thing I do have to mean something?!

M: I’m just saying, why keep it if you don’t want it?

W: Listen. Stop it. Whatever it is that you’re doing, or hoping, or wanting, just stop it. Right now.

M: Tell me about work.

W: What?

M: You know, work? That thing you do to make money. I’m trying to make small talk, here, cut me some slack.

W: It’s shit.

M: Oh ya?

W: Yeah.

(Silence).

W: You know those little bottles of hot sauce they have on the tables there?

M: I always thought they were kinda cute. Made me feel like a giant.

W: Yeah, me too until I spent an entire shift refilling them and hand washing the caps.

M: Now, who wouldn’t love that.

W: Best part is, I went to take a shower that night when I got home and my bathroom still smells like cayenne pepper.

M: I thought you were going to find a new job somewhere better. What happened with that other place you applied to?

W: Apparently my tits aren’t big enough.

M: Your tits are perfect.

W: They told me I didn’t fit the “overall aesthetic standards”

M: Bullshit. And I should know, I’ve spent quality time with your overall aesthetic.

W: Knock it off.

M: I’m just saying, you’re a very attractive woman. I’m allowed to still think that.

W: Thank you… I hate this. It feels like I never get to be myself anymore, everything’s an audition for something.

M: Not everything is an audition, you know.

W: It’s easier said than done. Everything feels like a new role to play, like everybody needs something different from me.

M: You realize it’s not suppose to be that way with everyone, right?

W: What?

M: Well… Ah, I shouldn’t get into this now.

W: No, go on, say it.

M: When we were together I could never get you to follow… I could— never get you to, well, come with me.

W(offended): Well maybe if you bothered to focus on someone other than yourself—

M: No, no, no I tried everything. I don’t think you realize just how hard I tried to get you there.

W: Oh come on, it’s not like you never had any hangups yourself.

M: It’s biology, it happens sometimes—you know what, no, leave my dick out of this, he has nothing to do with it.

W: It’s not a person!

M: It may as well be, it feels just as confused and unsatisfied as I do with our current situation.

W: How?!

M: Do you have any idea how frustrating it is living across the hall from a woman you are still wildly attracted to despite the whirlwind of domestic dysfunction that follows in her wake? Every day, I go down to check the mail, and I can smell that you’ve just gone out. It’s like this cloud of you that hovers outside my door every time I go anywhere. Poof! There you are, and suddenly I’m having some Vietnam-style flashback and we’re in bed together and I’m stuck with my head between your legs and you’ve just got this vacant expression in your eyes and I’m trying to talk to you, trying to get some sort of response: more hands, less hands, faster, slower, a green light, a red light, anything. Do you have any idea what you’ve done to me? I’ve got months worth of Cosmo issues hidden under my bed. I’ve got seventeen tabs open on my computer about the complexities of the female orgasm and the importance of partner communication during oral sex (by the way, did you know that the Swiss have a completely different technique?). I now know more about the anatomy of female sex organs and hormone cycles than most med school graduates! If the police raided my apartment, I’d probably be put on some sort of registry!

W: I know how frustrated you were with the fact that I have trouble. And I knew you were trying hard because every single time, all I could feel was you wanting to get me off. It stopped being about us having fun and feeling good and just started being about how badly you needed me to have an orgasm so you could feel validated as a partner. And God help me, I tried to make it up to you, and I did a damn good job if I say do so myself.

M: Here’s a life tip for you: if you’re going to be with someone long enough for them to know your habits, don’t run lines when you’re trying to get him off.

W: That was one time—

M: And if you weren’t running lines, you were a completely different person. I would look into your eyes and see a stranger, you even felt like a stranger, it was weird.

W: It still worked, didn’t it? You got what you wanted, what’s the big deal?

M: Jesus, I wanted connection, I wanted for us to actually be together with each other. It was never about me just getting off to you—oh my God is that—What is wrong in your head that could ever make you think that that was what I wanted?

W: How much more connection do you need?! We spent every free second together. Every day. Every night. There I was, connecting with you.

M: You were always somewhere else, though. Somewhere in that book, in one of your monologues, in one of your audition rooms, with one of your directors… You were never just with me. There was always something or someone else in the room with us.

W: Well maybe I didn’t want to be the person who was with you.

(Pause)

M: You want to rethink the wording on that? Because that is one hell of a bomb to drop.

W: I don’t know.

M: You actually meant that.

W: I think so, yeah.

M stands

M: I’m going to leave now.

W: Okay.

M: Thanks for the beer.

W: You can take the rest, I don’t want it.

M: Dump it out.

W: Okay.

N: If you need to get anything else from my place, I’ll be at Tom’s for the next two days. I’ll leave the key in the mailbox.

W: I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you.

M: Don’t wear any perfume if you go in.

W: Can you stay for a bit? We can talk this out.

M: No, we can’t. I need to be alone right now. I’ll see ya around.

(W remains seated. M exits) (A few moments of silence) (Fade to Black)

[darkcherrywitch]

Behavior Exercise

Hi girls, guys and non-binary pals <3 

This is the scond fanfic i write, this one is inspired in a movie called The Road Within and hopefully my first series so please let me know if you want me to keep posting it, maybe is not as good as i think it is haha i’d really appretiate some feedback, also, english is not my first lenguage so please be nice i’m trying :( 

WARNINGS: 4k+ mentions of drugs, alcohol and mental illness. This fanfic contains sensitive topics like anorexia, OCD and drug addictions if you feel triggered by any of this topics please do not read it. 

“Nineteen, twenty, twenty one, twenty two, twenty three” You could hear Robert whispering a number for each mug whilst cleaning one per one with an anti-bacterial microfiber cloth he just bought yesterday. You take another sip of your non sugared coffee already cold keeping your gaze in your roommate who was onto an old baby blue wooden chair, his favorite, because it was easier to clean than the other ones “Twenty four, twenty five…twenty fiv-five” he stutters with a low voice almost like a secret he can only hear.  You put your mug down on the table knowing what is coming next, like every other morning, he just hated odds numbers.

“Five- twenty fiv-five” He keeps repeating walking back and forth all over the kitchen with his hand scratching his head pulling his blonde curls. “Hey, good morning” A deep British accent stops you from standing up and walking towards Robert making him stop as well. He looked at both of you just to switch his gaze feeling the pressure in the air as he continues to grab an empty plastic cup from the kitchen bar assuming he could get in trouble if he gets anywhere near the mugs shelf.

“Morning, did you have a good rest?” You greet with an awkward smile on your face. Harry moved in just a week ago so it is understandable he’s not fully used to Rob’s breakdowns as you are after nine years. You know Rob since secondary school; a catholic schoolhouse in Portlaoise where special and difficult teenagers were sent by his parents to make them better, doesn’t work pretty well if they ask you.  Robert and you shared some classes and weekly group’s therapy meetings, however, you only knew him as the schizo boy just to find out, years later, he does not suffer from schizophrenia but a severe ODC and constants paranoid episodes, it all got worst four years ago when he came home to find out his mom had left a day before the graduation  night, all she left was a note saying how sorry she was, a load of cash, a blue tuxedo he was supposed to be wearing at the dance and an empty home.

Four years ago

You lost count of how many minutes, maybe hours, you have been staring at the old pink dress your dad had bought you for tonight’s dance, it would be better if he could actually share the evening with you but it was too much to ask, you thought. It had stopped raining some hours ago but a loud splash outside your window snaps you from your deep thoughts about tonight, a rowdy cry followed the splash “SHE LEFT ME, WHY DOES EVERYBODY BLODY LEFT ME?” You ran to your window to see what was happening, and then, you saw Rob on a puddle wearing anything but his underpants and his navy blue tuxedo in his hands all covered in mud, just as him. He was  crying and screaming while Miss Gillen held him helping him for hurting himself  “MY DAD IS DEAD AND MOM HATES ME, I-I ‘AVE NO ONE, NO ONE FUCKING CARES ABOUT ME” He yelled at the sky escaping from Miss Gillen’s arms slapping mercilessly his face and pulling his blonde hair roughly.

You have spent almost a decade in that hypocrite househole where religious people pretended to know what was good and bad, and even worst, pretending they care about all of you. You knew people were lonely back there, after all, most of you were abandoned by your families, they just gave up on most of you and you were aware of that. You knew everyone there was ill, was broken and alone, new people came and then they left, some people have been taken to the hospital after a breakdown and they have never returned, it was hard to live in a place like that were you could share breakfast with someone just to wake up the next day with their bed empty and another casket full, that’s why you decided to not make any friends, carrying with other person’s problems could destroyed you just as much as losing another loved one, but when you saw him all covered in mire when just yesterday he cried in the middle of the cafeteria because he spilled a drop of tea in his pants something changed in you. You almost didn’t recognize him; it was the same guy who couldn’t even walk outside his bedroom without latex gloves, however he was there outside your room, broken and scared. He had no one and you knew that feeling.

“Rumor has it you have your own place now” You said having a sit next to him in cafeteria two days after the dance. He looked strange at you “do yo-do you eat?” He answered you sharply but those comments didn’t bother you anymore. You smiled at him taking a sip of your water bottle “so, is it true?” You insisted “‘s not mine, ‘s me mums” he mumbled cleaning the spot of the table you just removed your hand from. “But she left” you say abruptly making him look at you, finally getting some strong eye contact, he kept silence trying not to cry, you leaned closer to him and whispered “when are we escaping this hole then?”.

Now

It’s been four years since you convinced Rob to leave that place, four years since you’ve been living together in that house his mom had left for him, and four years of the only caring human interaction you both have; you take care for each other and you could say it was the first time in ages that you haven’t feel lonely.

“Could been better if I’m honest” Harry replies with a cheeky smile “Of course it could have been better, it could have been better if you just would stop yourself from snoring the whole night” Robert cuts Harry off “Did you know he goes to sleep without taking a shower? and WE have to share room it’s just unacceptable, unaccepta- unacceptable” You can see Rob’s face turning red and his eyes looking at you almost popping out at the memory of last night.

“Oh I’m sorry, did my snoring muffle that boring music you sleep with?” Harry says without looking at him as he pours some orange juice to his cup “It’s not my fault you don’t appreciate quiet music you cheap ass Mick Jagger” Robert spits roughly making Harry giggle as he decides to stop the argue blowing him a kiss. He was cheeky and irreverent and you like that, Harry was like a new specimen like a new world you wish to explore, it was something you have never seen before, neither you or Rob haven’t met anyone like Harry, you feel excited about this new experience even though now and then you feel guiltiness for making Rob go through this, you know he’s not looking forward this as much as you are, in fact since Harry is living with you Rob’s stress levels has been higher than usual.

When you left the clinic you decided come up with a plan to keep both of you sane, you knew Rob’s money it wasn’t going to last more than a few months and his disability allowance was not enough for both of you, so you decided to get a job and attend to some free therapy session at a community center near Rob’s house, and that’s how Harry came into your life.

One month ago

What it seemed like a normal summer rain predicting its end becomes a dreadful storm within minutes. You make you steps larger covering your head with your old jacked which is completely useless as you try to rush Rob who is a couple steps behind you freaking out because his boots and the bottom of his pants are all covered in mud. There’s only a couple of blocks left to the community center where both of you attend to the weekly sessions that keep yourself sort of sane. You arrive to the center soaking wet and just in time to the session, however, you spend a few minutes taking care of Rob helping him to clean himself.

Both of you take a seat in the circle in the middle of the huge cold room; the therapist, Arthur welcomes you with a big smile understanding the weather was not something you could control or change. “So now that we’re complete…” he stand up and says looking at Rob and you “Are you okay, Robert?” he asks kindly to what Rob just nods “great, now I want to start this meeting introducing our new member, he comes all the way from London so I ask you to be nice and make him feel welcome”.

You were too busy taking care of your friend and cursing at the wind that you haven’t notice the new member of the group; a tall white guy with silky curls, they seem recently wet as well even tho he doesn’t look bother about it. Your gaze travels his figure from bottom to top; he’s wearing some old used boots, a pair of blue jeans and a grey hoodie. You notice his big and strong hands as he says hi to the group with one of them; both decorated with multiple rings, It’s not until your glance meets his big emerald eyes ornamented with some bags under them that you realized you are probably staring too much, as you try to look somewhere else you see he offers a smile at you; not yet a malicious one, not yet a kindly one, it was more like something in between; a cheeky lovely but arrogant smile.

“Hi, I’m Harry, Nice to meet you all” He says briefly without taking his eyes off of you he looks at the rest of the group smiling still just to sit down again. You could hear some distant and slow claps, probably your partners are just as confused as you; most of the introductions were followed by a whole crazy story of why are they there and even some tears and breakdowns but never just a cheeky smile and a breathtaking glance. “You probably want to tell us why you’re here Harry” Arthur says looking at him.

“’kay, if you want me to” He says rubbing his palms on his thighs looking at the ground until he speaks again “…I’m a sex addict” he looks up staring challenging at Arthur chuckling. Arthur looks quite annoyed he probably knows what the newbie’s here for, you’ve shared these sessions with some sex addicts they only last two or three weeks top, but you are pretty sure he’s just joking. “Probably just another junkie” Rob speaks up louder than he expected. The whole room is filled with silence for a couple seconds even you fell Harry deep gaze on Rob “Wanna bet pretty boy? can show you”

“Harry is here because he’s trying to keep himself sober and we’re to help him, okay?” Arthur interrupts quickly “He’s new in town so if you know about some apartment available for him would be a great favor”. The rest of the session keeps going pretty normal even though you can’t focus on any of your partners, you are too confused yet intrigued about the whole new guy situation; after that interaction you can tell Rob has been tense since then, on the other side Harry seems cool about it, you were expecting him being an asshole with the rest of the group as they share their week with you, but instead he listens carefully, looking attentive to each person who stands up, he even shares some advices with them, good advices. Robs is kind of right, he is a junkie, still he is not just another junkie, there was something different about him and you want it to find out.

“Hey, so the new guy is looking for somewhere to live” You say to Rob who was cleaning the snack table of the therapy room. “There are a lot of bridges he can live under” He replies without looking at you, he was too focused stacking some water bottles carefully. You take a piece of fruit and a bottle of water as you feel Arthur Gaze on you “I was thinking he can live with us, we have a spare room” Robert stops abruptly his stacking process just to give you a perplexed look “are you seriously suggesting me to offer my house to a bloody drug addict we just literally met just because he’s hot?”

“C’mon… I never said he was hot” Rob turns his face back to the table cleaning something else you don’t even see “That’s not the point, I’m not letting a stranger sleeping under my roof”  “You let me sleep under your roof, beside, we can actually use some extra money” you say looking for the new guy in the room “and he seems fun” Robert grunts rolling his eyes at the sight of you looking for him. “Robert, Y/N, we’re about to the closure would you please join us?” Arthur says from a distance. “take it as behavior exercise” You insist Rob with a begging look with both of your hands together “I’ll think about it” He cuts the conversation walking away from you.

One week ago

You make your way into de kitchen to find Rob finishing his cleaning routine; you overslept this morning understandable after keeping yourself with almost anything but water for the last three days. “Morning babe” You said weakly to your friend as he quickly reach a chair for you to sit “Hey, I made you some breakfast” He says as he opens the fridge taking out a plate with fruit and oats “There’s no need Rob, I’m going to be late to work” You say as you try to stand up  but he grabs your arm in order to stop you from getting up, you look at his hand wrapped around your arm and look back at him in shock; his germophobia doesn’t let him have any physical interaction with other people, he never touches anybody and freaks out when somebody touches him. Is the first time in years you’ve feel his touch; even though he’s wearing latex gloves as usual you can feel the warm emanating from his big and soft hand.

“You might take care of me most of the time but I’m not stupid Y/N, I know you haven’t eaten a full meal in four days, so please, sit down and eat your breakfast” He finally releases your arm as he walks to his room to probably change his gloves. The whole situation leaves so speechless that you don’t have any other choice to do what you’ve been told. You can’t remember a time when Robert has ever touched you or at least without having a crisis, definitely your relationship has grown a lot in those couple years and now it seems like he cares about you more every day and part of you couldn’t just let him down.  

As you keep eating your meal and thinking about your relationship with Rob a knock on the door snaps you out to reality and you hear Rob rushing to the door “no, no, you can’t leave the table until you finish”. He reaches to the door and takes a big breathe before open it just to find a pair of emerald eyes looking at him “Oh Hi, nice to see you again Pretty boy” Harry says after finishing his cigarette and stepping on it “Oh it’s you, what do you want?” he asks hiding half of his body behind the door. Harry smirks and shows him the black suitcase he was holding. Robert knew what he was there for he just forgot about it when he looked into his eyes. Today is the day that Harry moves into the house; after a couple endless nights convincing Rob of letting him stay today you got yourself a new roommate.

“Oh, right, come on in, I guess” Rob says opening the door wider for Harry to come in. “Take your shoes off” Robert adds without looking at him walking towards the kitchen “Normally I only accept to take my clothes off after a couple of drinks but for you pretty b..” “We don’t use shoes inside the house, that’s the first rule, it’s not a joke” Rob cuts Harry off abruptly facing him again “Okay, take it easy they’re off” Harry says without erasing his cheeky smile of his face “I think we didn’t even say hi properly ” Harry adds offering his hand to Rob, he has heard that he’s quite special to interact with but there’s no person in the world that Harry can’t just win over, he’s irrelevant and funny and just full of natural charm, everybody likes him and he’s aware of that but there is something in Rob Harry just feels attracted to, he likes to push his buttons it’s like a challenge and he has always loved a good challenge.

Robert stares at Harry’s Hand for a moment “I don’t do that” he adds looking back into Harry’s eyes “you don’t do handshakes?” Harry replies chuckling at Rob’s weird affirmation; who doesn’t do handshakes? “I don’t touch people” Robert replies almost yelling at Harry; his face started to turn red and his breathe is getting harder to catch. Harry’s afraid maybe he went too far but it was not his intention at all, he like to mess with people but not like that. “Hey, it’s fine, hi Harry”

You rushed to finish your plate as soon as you heard Harry’s deep voice coming from the door not because you feel excited but because you’re worried about Rob’s reaction, after all they didn’t have a great first meeting. You follow their voices that lead you to the living room; Harry was wearing some regular skinnies and a black t-shirt somehow on him that simple outfit looks like the most complex combination of clothing, a bunch of tattoos covered his arms making him look cooler than the junkie you see every Friday night. Robert raising his voice makes you stop staring at your new roommate and actually talk to him.

“Hey, N/Y, morning” Harry answers with a big smile on his face, you don’t remember his skins glowing as much as it does today it is hard not to stare at him. “Are you ready to move in?” You ask nicely as Robert tries to calm down adjusting his gloves and taking deep breathes “Yep, pretty much” Harry says pointing at his suitcase. You show him the place; is not too big it’s only a small one floor house with three bedrooms but it’s a way to make him feel comfortable. As you show him around Robert starts telling him the most important rules of the house and Harry only nods at both of you.

“So this would be your room” you say finishing the house tour opening the door between Rob’s bedroom and yours “As we told you before It’s not habitable right now, we need to fix the roof and most of the walls they’re almost ruined by humidity, we were thinking maybe with the deposit and probably your first payment we can like fix it meanwhile you can share room with Robert if that’s okay with you” You say showing him where the humidity has damage the roof “Sure, it’s going to be a pleasure” Harry winks at Robert who seems bothered enough already. You can see how annoyed Rob is by this new roommate situation, however, you know if he wouldn’t agree with this he would tell you, besides somehow it seems like he’s more anxious that bothered about it; he thinks you didn’t realize but you saw him cleaning his room twice last night a strange way to say he’s excited about the next day. Maybe both of you are excited about sharing your life with someone new, someone as special as Harry seems to be, maybe it’s just attraction, maybe it’s just Harry’s aura that makes everyone go a little bit crazy about him or maybe it’s only your mind playing tricks on you but at that moment you realized something in your life is about to change drastically and you quite like that.

Now

“C’mon Y/N you have to finish it” Robert says with his elbows on the table resting his head on both of his hands, you’ve been struggling to finish your meal for almost an hour now and Robert is more than exhausted now, you can see it and you feel bad of seeing those lovely green eyes so tired because of you but you just can´t finish it. “I can´t Robert I promise” You say pouting your mouth on a failed attempt of leaving the table. Harry just appears on the kitchen and watches the scene grabbing an apple “take it as a behavior exercise” Rob adds with an exhausted voice. “Behavior exercise? what’s that? Harry asks with his mouth full of the bite he just took.

“Back in the schoolhouse we had exercises to learn how to deal with our illnesses; they made us do things to get tour limits and they just acted like nothing was happening at all” you say playing with the food on your plate. “Once they made me walk with dirty trousers for a whole day!” Robert continues giving Harry an indignant look. Robs turns back at you pushing your plate closer to you.

“Interesting” Harry responds taking the seat in front of you; he search for your gaze and looks right into your eyes getting your full attention as he usually does whenever he’s near you. “C’mon Y/N you’re better than a plate of food, are you gonna let a couple of vegetables defeat you?” the room is filled with silence as he smiles at you and leaves the kitchen making his way out to the porch. If anyone else would say that to you you would throw the plate at them with no hesitation, but the way those words left his mouth like he knew everything about yourself plus the way he looked at you just made you believe every single of them. You look back at Robert who was already falling asleep on the table and continue to finish your meal.

Once your plate is empty you help Robert to go to bed and clean your dishes as you always do. You remember Harry’s outside and decide to make him company smoking your nightly cigarette as usual. He was laying half of his body on the wooden bench of the porch. He looks so lost in his thoughts you almost feel guilty about interrupting because as soon as you step outside he turns and smiles widely at you “How was your behavior exercise?” he say probably joking or probably actually concerned you never know what his intentions are, that man was a complete enigma to you. “Beat the fuck out if it” you say quietly as you stand beside him lighting the last cigarette of the pack. He chuckles loudly in responds.

After that you just stay there enjoying the silence and the smoke coming out of both of your cigarettes; the night is particularly quiet, the stars are shinier and the wind juts take the bunch of your thoughts and concerns with it. It’s nice to spend time with someone who’s not constantly asking if you have washed your hands already or telling you how disgusting is the habit of smoking. None of you feel the need to fill the lack of conversation at that moment; you are so focused on enjoying the moment that you almost don’t realize that out of nowhere Harry decides to break the silence with a question.

“Why did you let me stay in here?” He asks with a husky voice keeping his eyes on his cigarette “Robert thinks you’re hot” you respond after a couple of seconds and even though you are looking at the sky you can feel Harry smiling at your answer. “yeah, well, I don’t blame him” he says annoyingly turning his body towards you “but I’m sure that’s not the only reason why you guys let a good-looking junkie staying at your place, and if you do I’m quite concerned, I must reckon” you face him narrowing your eyes at his smart ass answer.

“Robert and I have this weird dream of make a sheltered for people in need, people who have been abandoned by their families like us, we saw a chance on you” you say letting the smoke of you cigarette fill your lungs and letting it out. “It’s like the biggest behavior exercise you ever had then?” Harry says with an adorable voice, one you’ve never heard before “You might say” You say smiling at him just to continue enjoying the clear sky above you.

[rehkhana]

how to untwist your mentality and have better control of your mental health

This is a guide for the people who have been in a bad place for awhile and don’t really know how to get out of it; this will be more directed at students, as school can be a lot of stress for people and can be what caused people to fall into a slump to begin with, but that doesn’t mean it can’t help if you’re not a student!

You have to remember its all about constant and consistent progress, you’re not going to jump from getting by to thriving in a day, a week, or even a month. You need to set very reasonable goals for yourself, and maybe even underestimate yourself a little at first so you don’t overwhelm yourself, it will only hurt your motivations and make you doubt any progress you’ve made so far. 

Remember, everyone crawls before they walk, walks before they run, and they have to keep running before they can work their way up to the marathon. Also, by no means am I saying that doing all these steps or making all these changes in your life will make depression or other mental illnesses magically disappear, but it can make it much easier to manage and have less intense affects on your daily life.

From what I’ve learned from trying to manage myself, there are five aspects that people usually need to work on to see an overall improvement:

Hygiene/Organization

Self Image

Fitness

Diet

Social Media Usage

Now all of these may seem either daunting or pretty superfluous, but they all work together and can make a huge change in people lives.

Hygiene/Organization

First off, hygiene and organization can make a huge change in people lives. Spending 15 minutes a day and tidying up your desk area, putting away pens and pencils, sorting papers into the correct folders, putting laundry away, cleaning up dirty clothes off of your bedroom floor, cleaning up dirty dishes, putting clean dishes away, wiping off the bathroom sink, anything that cleans up in a small way can make a huge difference on how you perceive your environment. Continually passing by something and thinking “I need to do this” or “I need to clean that,” can take a huge toll on your mental health if it continues to be an issue, as tasks build up and they become much bigger monsters than they should be. I know it can be difficult motivating and getting yourself to do these things, even if you know its beneficial to you. I understand the lethargy, but sometimes you just need to get up and force yourself to do it. Here’s what I started doing to get myself back on track:

Make yourself a habit tracker: don’t put every single task you want to make into a habit on there at once, because you’ll overwhelm yourself. Put two or maybe three tasks on there, and keep them on there until you do them constantly for 21 days or 21 times at the interval of your choosing. 

Once you get a task down for 14 days or intervals, add another task or habit you want on there. For those of us that have the problem of forgetting to shower or eat breakfast, this is perfect. Soon enough you’ll start building habits for the little things.

Don’t put huge tasks on your habit tracker; this is for small tasks that don’t require more than a half an hour of time at max 

For larger tasks, have a small planner. It doesn’t need to be extravagant, just something to get the job done. This planner is for your and you only, and it will stay that way unless you choose to share it with others, so remember that when writing down things you need to do or events you need to attend.

If you still have issues remembering and holding yourself to your schedule, talk to someone close to you and ask them to help you on your journey, or set up reminders on your phone or computer, put sticky notes around the house or apartment, anything to remind yourself.

Self Image

Secondly, and I believe this is the largest obstacle that everything else plays into, is your self image. Hygiene and organization play a large part into self image, as do the other three topics I will talk about soon, but overall there are some small (or large depending on how frequently these things occur or how closely you tie yourself to them) that you can do to improve your self image: 

Stop saying self depreciating things. An excellent guide on specifically this topic can be found here that was made by @colacharm and a few others.

Have an honest self reflection session. Do NOT just focus on your flaws but also celebrate all your positive traits. The simple act of self reflecting speaks great volumes about your character. It should be an informative session for yourself rather than a session for you to chastise yourself. 

For students, start de-associating your worth with your grades. Everyone fails, everyone falls, everyone has weak moments where they have to pick themselves back up. @study-fox made a great guide on how to deal with failure here. Even if you don’t get the grade you were hoping for in the end, it does not mean you’re less of a person or a bad student. 

Air out your issues to someone who you trust. Don’t just drop it on them spur of the moment, but ask them if it would be okay if you rant to them a little bit or have a serious conversation about yourself with them. This will let them know that this means a lot to you and is a serious matter. If they don’t want to or aren’t taking the issue seriously, just choose someone else to talk to or seek out other help. If you have a good relationship with one or both of your parents, they can be excellent support. High school counselors can be a good person to go and air out your emotions to if need be, and most colleges have support groups that you can go to as a good option. Even if you don’t go to school or have completed school, there usually is a support group in your area if you go looking for it. I understand for many money is an issue and professional therapy isn’t a viable option due to it, but there are still other resources that you can seek out:

Anxiety and Depression Support Groups here

Depression and Bipolar Disorder Groups here

OCD Support Groups here

Managing Mental Health in General here

Realize that criticism is not meant to insult you, but help you better yourself. This is a hard lesson I’ve learned and that I’m still learning. There will always be some people in the world that are out to get you riled up, but just realize that you don’t own them anything, not a single explanation or reaction, and just walk away or leave a situation like that. People who truly want to help you improve yourself and help you on your journey won’t try to upset you and will apologize if they do. 

One thing that can contribute greatly to self esteem issues and depression is feeling like you’re not doing anything or at least anything productive. Start a hobby of continue with a hobby that involves physical things or produces something that can be seen in quantity; art, writing, coin collecting, baking, cooking, ect. Even if you hobby is something that may not be able to be put into quantity, find a way to make it visible; if you have a passion or hobby of learning a language, start making physical flashcards. Having something to remind yourself that you are doing something can always help during the rainy days. 

Fitness and Exercise

Another factor that can affect your mental health is fitness and exercise. Now note that I’m not saying yoga will solve all your problems or that you should go out and become a gym junkie (although do so if you would like), exercise and physical exertion in general is an excellent way to relieve stress and pent up tension. While I don’t have the studies on hand, there have been studies linking cardio exercise to improved mood for up to 8 hours after about a 15-20 minute cardio session. Doing some exercise as simple as stretching out your muscles can make a big impact on how you physically feel and can relieve aches that have bugging you for weeks or months if you just stretch it out. Personally, just doing about 15 minutes of stretches a day has made a huge impact on how I physically feel and I’ve been having less issues with my shoulders and upper back because of it. For those of you that want to add a bit of physical exertion to your day but just can build up the motivation to do so, find it too tedious to do so, or just don’t have the time for a serious workout, here are some tips that may help:

If you have a Wii, pull it out and hook it up and play some Just Dance! It’s pretty fun if you like the songs you pick out on there and dancing to about 2-3 songs depending on how long they are will get in about 10-15 minutes of cardio, which is enough time to get in that mood benefit. 

If you don’t have a Wii or don’t have Just Dance, you can pull up the videos of them on Youtube or just pull up some videos of choreography to any song you want and follow along in the motions. The point here isn’t to become a professional dancer or even to become good at dancing, its to have some fun while getting in some cardio. 

If you’re not a fan of dancing, pull up some of those old 80s exercise videos, some of them can be fairly intense, but they can still make exercising pretty entertaining. 

If you’re more for just stretching out, put on some calming songs or sounds and just start stretching out. It doesn’t have to be an extremely long session or anything, it can be as short as 5 minutes, just something to releases some of the stress built up in your muscles. 

In general, you don’t need to go to the gym for hours each day to get benefits from exercise, just 15 minutes at home doing some stretching or something to exert yourself can have so many benefits alone. 

You don’t have to sit there and just run on a treadmill or bike for 15 minutes while staring at a wall. You can pull out a phone, tablet, laptop, or even flashcards and work a bit on studying, responding to emails, working on a paper, anything you want so you get two things done at the same time.

Diet and Nutrition

Now another important factor is diet. The saying “you are what you eat” has quite a bit of truth to it. If you have only an Iced coffee for breakfast, skip lunch, and eat a huge dinner everyday, your body isn’t going to have enough constant energy to keep you going all day and you will hit a wall. Also, what you eat makes makes an impact. Are you eating stuff that fulfills all your daily nutrient needs? Are you eating enough calories? Are you dispersing your food and energy intake evenly throughout the day or do you eat the majority of your daily food intake at one particular time or meal? You need to take note of your diet and see how all these play out in your daily life. My recommendation or this is writing down every single thing you eat every day for 3-7 days, depending on whether you diet is extremely varied or if you eating something fairly similar every day. Now, do not track calorie count, nutrient percentages, or ingredients in any of the foods until after you are done writing everything down; if you calculate all this during your tracking period, you will unconsciously or consciously change your diet to accommodate for nutrients you discover you are lacking or over-indulging on. After this calculating all this, figure out what long-term and permanent diet changes you are able and willing to do. I will make this comment also for my vegan and vegetarian friends out there, to make sure you buy supplements or vitamin fortified foods for nutrients majorly or only found in animal products, like vitamin B12, which is important in maintaining mental health. Now, here are some quick tips that worked for me. As a disclaimer, I am not saying this will work for you or is viable for you, but I’m sharing my own experience on what worked. 

Cut down on a lot of processed sugars. I don’t eat a whole ton of really sugary foods. I still eat things with sugar mind you, I still put a teaspoon of sugar in my morning coffee and eat chocolate every once in a while and what not, but I've cut almost completely cut out a lot of things like gummy bears, sour patch kids, soda, ect. Honestly a lot of my go to snacks have become Triscuits, dried fruits, yogurts, and granola and fruit bars. 

If you drink coffee in the morning, eat something before you drink coffee. Eating something in the morning makes a big difference in how you feel throughout the day, and caffeine suppresses your appetite, so drinking coffee before you eat anything will discourage you from eating or discourage you from eating enough. If you must drink coffee before you eat anything, cut down on the amount you drink before you eat, then drink the rest after you eat. 

Drink enough liquids!! Water is a necessity but honestly just drinking enough healthy liquids in general is key. I like to drink one glass of cranberry juice a day a long with one glass of milk in addition to all the water I drink. It’s crazy how just drinking one extra glass or day or just drinking enough can affect your system in amazing ways. I’d recommend the app Plant Nanny to remind yourself to drink enough water, its for both apple and android. 

Now, this is not something I’ve had experience with it so I’m not going to go in depth about it so I don’t mess up the facts or give anyone the wrong idea of how to deal with it. If you have an eating disorder of any kind, or think you may have one, or something seems off, please go here. I want every single one of you who read this post to be healthy, mentally, physically, and emotionally. 

Do not fall for fad diets! Everyone needs carbs, everyone needs fats, everyone needs enough food! Do not get sucked into thinking that ‘cleanses’ or ‘purges’ are good for you! The best way you can become healthier through diet is by creating a sustainable diet that covers all your needs, not by following one of these diets for a month or two and getting temporary changes or results. These do a lot more harm in both the long and short run than people realize.

Social Media

Now this one also contributes to of the above. Social media is a wonderful invention, it gives everyone a voice, lets everyone be connected, and introduces people to new ideas and things that they may have never known about. But given all this, its a tool that can very easily manipulate your mindset into thinking that you’re not good enough or not doing enough. I will never say to cut off social media, as its become pretty heavily integrated into our culture now, but here are some thing I would recommend:

Do not use social media at all for 1-7 days. See how much more free time you have, how it makes a difference, and how you feel while not using it. Use this time to focus on a hobby, focus on yourself, or accomplish some daily tasks you want or need to tackle. 

When you get back onto social media, purge your subscriptions and follows. Don’t follow or subscribe to anyone you do not enjoy seeing updates from or do not anticipate seeing updates from. You want all your posts or videos in your feed to be pertinent to you, so you spend less time searching or mindlessly scrolling in content. 

Do not be afraid to clean house with your social media. If you don’t really use one form of social media and only check it just to say you did, then just get rid of it. Recently I made an entirely new tumblr account because my other one was about 4 years old and it wasn’t giving me any positivity or joy anymore and I realized was just something I was clinging to because it was habit and a huge distraction from things I needed to do. I only followed a few dozen blogs on this tumblr to prevent me from being able to mindlessly scroll for literal hours and prevent myself from being productive. Sometimes you just need to push the restart button on some things to have good impacts on your life.

Conclusions 

Overall, I’d say take this guide with a grain of salt. All this advice comes from my own experiences and my own progress with my mental health. I still have bad days and bad periods, but overall they are less frequent and less intense since I started making changes like these. My experiences won’t be the same as yours, but I do hope everyone that reads this can find relief in their life and make some positive progress in managing their mental health. Here is some more resources that I’ve used in better knowing, understanding, and managing my mental and physical health: 

To be able to more easily identify emotions and emotional triggers, I use the Youper App, which is available on apple and android.

One category I didn’t touch on was sleep, which is also absolutely crucial. I personally suffer from quite a few sleep issues, insomnia and sleep paralysis being the most prominent, and I use the Runtastic Sleep Better app which functions as a sleep tracker and allows me to track disturbances in my sleep, as well as the quality of sleep I get each night. Its available on both apple and android.

Keeping a dream journal can allow you to more easily recognize what is a dream and what is not while you’re sleeping, which is immensely helpful for us who struggle with nightmares. 

I listen to ASMR a lot and I know its not everyone’s thing but if you haven’t listened to it I’d say try it and go into the experience with an open mind. I’d personally recommend WhispersRed ASMR and Gentle Whispering ASMR, they both have a wide range of videos that you can watch and see what works for you personally. 

Think of one thing a day that you appreciate or enjoy and write that thing down. Keep it in a journal or in a jar, just somewhere those writings will be safe, where you can go back and look at them on those days that are much worse than others.

Lastly, I will say trying to manage your own mental health is hard! Please reach out to someone or a group to help you in your journey. If you can afford a professional therapist then you’re golden, but I know some cannot so even just having someone there to give you support can immensely help. I hope this guide can be helpful to some! 

[alicezan-ncgred]

Bleeding Red

Preface: I’ve been bitching around the bush of this long enough. So, I’ve been really silent on a bunch of stuff that’s been eating me alive which has made me both inactive and unproductive. I’m going to get straight to the point, starting off with the TL:DR from my post on my main blog. Context: An anon asked me if I was alright because I hadn’t updated in a while.

TL:DR You probably didn’t ask this to hear about all the bad shit of my life so here’s the short of it. No, I’m not doing fine. I will try get next weeks post out on time and I’ll work on making up on the lost posts. Updates will return regularly, ‘ite.

Time for the thick and thin of it.

Insecurity and being shafted: I’m stoic, even at my worst I won’t say anything. I’ll push through regardless of my current condition and since I’ve gone years like this, it’s not hard for me to do. In my real life situation, I’m currently in a place of social isolation. This has lead to a somewhat near reliance on Tumblr to be my social outlet. This present many issues.

The main one is that I’m quite the isolationist. This has only been reinforced by many interactions throughout the entirely of my life. Because of this, I can’t say I’ve ever had anything really more than two friends at a time. While in a way this has helped me express myself so well through writing, it’s come at the cost of social skill. I don’t talk to anyone.

With this kind of issue you could easily imagine that the THREE PEOPLE (four now, but very limited) to ever directly talk ended up in a way shafting me. The first blocked and disconnected with me without warning or reason. At this point we’ve been talking to each for about a month and we hit it off very well and then one day, silence. Never heard from them again. That fucked me up hard when I finally realized what happened.

The second person left during the Tumblr P**n Purge. We were talking about how to contact each other on other platforms and then they stopped responding. I had already given contact to other platforms of which they pinged me in any way. Another person that I trusted massively on here just abandoned me and I’m still hurting from that. Wasn’t fair at all.

Then the third person was someone that I been following for a while. This person is actually the reason that I’ve been putting this off for so long. I don’t want them to see this post but they will. I got an ask from them that ultimately turned out to be misinformation. I said I wasn’t mad but I was. I was so fucking angry about it and I’m still kinda mad, but I didn’t want problems. I still don’t. I just didn’t want them to worry about it. This will come back later.

I try my best to be as inoffensive as possible. The problem with that is that much of the things I believe or enjoy are highly divisive. Hell, even my own identity can be seen as offence. I’m bisexual, non-binary (I’m currently still questioning this. I might actually be gender fluid but in the overall scheme, that’s worse than being non-binary), and nonreligious. I’m in a very religious area so you I’m still “in the closet” about much of this IRL. I though it would better online but with how much people are saying bisexuality doesn’t exist, or that non-binary isn’t a valid gender (or that being gender fluid make you insane and you should be locked up) and all the hate people who say they are this are getting, the very community that’s supposed to accept me, HATES me. I had a bi pride flag icon last year during Pride Month. I never doing that ever again. It was terrible.

I’m trying my best to come out of my shell like I said I would when I made this blog but it seems I’m just crawling further into it. People I think I can trust keep setting me up to fall, people I know in real life won’t ever accept my existence if they knew who I really was, and my own mental health problem and self loathing are eating me alive. But that isn’t the total of it.

Crumbling Pillar: I’ve always ended up in the position where things were thrown onto me. In which no one wanted to do, I was stuck with. Because of this not only do I have a severe distaste being around my family (beyond everything mentioned before hand) but I grew to have a negative out look on everything. This effect is still quite obvious in my writings, especially my poems. Out of the 14 poems on my poem blog @washed-soul​, only one has a happy meaning.

The one happy poem was called dreams. Under a metaphor it talks about how a demon kept me trapped in a dark space. I start to get better and nearly break free before I have a negative relapse back to my old ways. The poems ends with the demon putting a end to itself leaving the nightmare in which it was keeping me in to slowly fade away, letting one crack of light peeking through to become a window to a door until one day I walk free. When writing this poem, I never thought I would find myself rebuilding the nightmare but that’s where I am.

I’m done with holding things together that other people have placed onto me. Because of this, issues have began showing in my private life. Issues that should’ve been solved decades ago are only now being addressed. This change in the status quo of my life has caused many issues in my productive and mood. Between everything else I’m too tired to do anything.

Is that a reason, is that an excuse. No it isn’t but it’s the best thing I got as a reason. I’m doing my damnedest to do the best I can but of course, when it comes to the thing that matter I just fall short. Big fucking whopha my intelligence and capability does me if I can’t use it for anything that means a damn.

Meaningless Triviality: I’m a very emotional person. I’m very strongly bound to my emotions and if everything above hasn’t given it away, my emotions are very negative prone. But it just doesn’t stop there, it goes back into my memories. I can only honestly place 3 happy memories for certain that aren’t either A) a dream or B) me escaping reality through my mind. Besides that, almost all my memories are negative. 

People like to throw around the word Nihilist to describe themselves because today's culture is very, god while I hate to use this word, edgy. For those who don’t know a Nihilist is someone who views the world as being completely  meaningless and reject all religious and moral principles. I very truly struggle with this outlook of life. It’s a daily for me to berate myself saying “just kill yourself” or “I want to die” or just shutting down and crumpling up while say “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry” over and over again. Hell, I did that while writing this. 

I take things very hard, even the slightest transgression. I’m so used to trying to make things perfect and because people have the image that I’m the smart one, the mature one, the capable one, I’m left with the over hanging expectation of excellence. Almost no room for margin of error or being human. Since I’m the silent type, I put up no challenge and work to meet it. Only time I get any praise for anything too. 

I guess as a little self promotion to my main blog, for those that have read the very first few updates of my main blog @the-truth-behind-redacted, or read Defiance’s character sheet, while The Machine and Defiance are separate character, they both share the name Machine. That in part is a reflect of said above expectation. How ravenous and inhuman it can be all under the guise of something human. Those characters are the two sides to the same coin. 

Remember how I said I try to be un-problematical and how I try to avoid any potential conflict. In the first segment I told on how I lied about my feelings just so another person didn’t have to worry over something that honestly, in hindsight, wasn’t even really a big deal. But I also said how it consumed me in anger. I just don’t want to bother anyone over anything. It’s part of the reason why I am writing this post, as some way of a self enforced rehab program to get better. 

This absolute consumption of negative emotion has pushed me into a non human state before. I hit a point of absolute mental exhaustion and in such a self enforced bubble of actual hatred I became completely apathetic. I felt numb to everything. I watched and heard of terrible things happening to people, and felt nothing. I watched people lives crumble before them leaving them nowhere to go and LAUGHED. “Just another worthless pathetic worm on this rotting carcass of a planet being hit with the hard reality that life doesn’t care for them. What whimsical pathetic bullshit they deluded themselves with to think otherwise.” This isn’t an exaggeration on how I thought, this is what I actually thought. Which brings me too.

The Mandatory Sob Story: Roll your eyes everyone and get the tiny violin. I guess in order for everyone to exactly understand the place I’m coming from when it comes to mental health I’ll have to detail my experiences. I have a long standing history with mental illness. I have professionally diagnosed OCD, Bipolarism, Anxiety, Chronic Depression, and visual and auditory hallucinations. I take 600 mg of Seroquel a day as well as Amitriptyline when needed. I’m also still currently in therapy to deal with said OCD, Bipolarism, Anxiety, Chronic Depression, the visual and auditory hallucinations, as well as Suicidal thoughts, and my Nihilism. There’s a reason to why I’m so god damn familiar with mental illness and treatment plans.  

OCD and Bipolarism run in my family on my fathers side. My Father’s Father had them, my Sister has them, my brother most likely has them (however he refuses to see a doctor because he uses said possible mental illnesses as a get out of jail free card. He doesn’t want to be treated and he has FUCKING ADMITTED IT), my father has them, and I have them. I, however, have the misfortune of having it real bad. I said yes to well over half of all the total symptoms when I was being tested (I don’t remember exact numbers but I remember there being three pages worth of common symptoms) which was very worrying to the doctor. I was currently in an inpatient hospitalization program at the time for both suicidal thoughts and actions, and severe depression. 

On that, my graze in with suicide. Before I went into my first inpatient program I was contemplating suicide. I was sat in front of a mirror with a bottle of over the counter medication. It was an unopened bottle of ibuprofen, 1000 200mg tables. What I planed to do was down the whole bottle with benadryl and die in my sleep. I had the small box of benadryl got from the Kroger pharmacy and a hand full of ibuprofen poured out looking directly into the mirror. My suicide note was sitting on the desk on my room with an online copy on my laptop open.

I sat there for an hour in the dead of midnight complicating my life. I had lost all hope in the world, filled with hatred, anger, pain, and despair. I had no god or after life to look forward too, part way hoping that a Hell existed for me to burn in. I hated myself that much. I was close to taking the first handful before before I caught a glimpse of my own eyes in the mirror. In what was in a weird sudden epiphany I realized that I truly did become what I hated but not for any reason I told myself. I became the very bastion of negativity I sought to fight and rid of in what little friends I did have. That was what set off my path to recovery in spite of the medical system. I guess if people care I’ll make a separate post on that. 

Before I move on, I feel I should explain my history with the visual and auditory hallucinations. It should be no surprise that with everything else above, I also had extreme paranoia that led to me having very bad insomnia. Insomnia is, just like most other medical disorders like Depression, Self-harm, Anxiety, OCD,  Bipolarism, is romanticized to hell. Insomnia isn’t having one nights bad sleep where you got 5 hours of sleep instead of 8.

You know what Insomnia is? insomnia is being physical incapable of sleeping despite not sleeping in 2 to 3 day while your body suffers massive agony brought on by this. Muscle spasms and seizing, difficulty breathing, your eyes feeling like fire ants are eating them, and of course visual and auditory hallucinations. Now I already had issues with visual and auditory hallucinations even when I could get sleep regularly but the combined effects of my OCD and Bipolarism made this perfect condition of Insomnia, Anxiety, Paranoia, with the already added in disposition to hallucinations and I felt like I was actually losing my mind. 

My hallucinations presented themselves in three forms. Disassociation of reality, night terrors, or alterations of reality. Disassociation of reality often were complete black out moments. I would lose any perceived connect to reality and enter an episode of my mind. I can’t remember what they actually were but I do remember what it felt like. Cold sweats, anxiety to point where if I didn’t lock up I would vomit, actual physical pain, mind numbing fear, and intense fatigue. 

The second were night terrors often in the form of horrific “things.” I do remember these and most of them were as best as I could describe, forms of things that were vaguely human and formations of industrial machinery. The most vivid one I remember was of a long lengthy apparition that was for the most part human but many locations of it’s impossible physiology were rebar beams and mechanical sockets. It began when I was about to fall asleep and it was next to my window. The thing was making week groaning and gasping sounds before it violently slammed against my window breaking it then letting out a horrific howl that I can’t describe as it tossed itself out followed shorty after with the sound of bones breaking against the dirt. 

Now that might not seem so bad, exspecally with everything that is in horror movies or games now, but keep in mind that was fucking real to me. It was as real as the clicking of the keys of my keyboard as I’m writing this. As real as the chair I’m sitting in and as real as the wall in front of me. As far as my mind was concerned that thing, what ever it was, actually existed. It took me physical touching my window to make sure it wasn’t actually broken and checking outside to see if there wasn’t a body there. This isn’t the type of thing I talk about lightly. 

Finally there is the alteration of reality. This is very simply but it’s something that fucked with me hard. For very little meaning or warning, I would have trouble interpreting the world around me. My hearing and sight would be warped and there wasn’t any real way to tell what I was hearing or seeing was real or not until the episode was over. The way I got through these was the ultimate fake it till you make it. Obviously, very often I failed and this created issue in my schooling. 

Ending Message: I’ve been in a very bad state for a while now and as it is now, no signs of getting better. I also strongly believe my medications are being to fail me which I’ve been telling my doctor and therapist for over a year now but nothing’s been done. Mainly it’s my Depression but insomnia episodes are beginning and my own paranoia been on the rise. It’s gotten to the point where I can’t even look at a creepy image or thumbnail without having a very bad episode. 

I’ve managed to eat something today which was nice but my body is cramping hard. And to possible stave of a possible comment, I’m biologically male. Like I said I’m not in the best head space, or living for that matter. If this gets better, only time will tell. 

[fairycosmos]

hey you always give good advice and uh. so ive been feeling like a really bad person bc my ex and i's relationship ended when we realised things were getting Bad for me mentally and my constant anxiety (i have OCD) made me terrified i'd hurt them (not physically bc its long distance but like emotionally) and i think that's what Ruined it which is uhhh ironic i guess??? sbhgfd but it made their friends hate me and now i feel like i'm a bad person bc i Need everyones approval :(((

hey angel. i’m really sorry to hear about the break up. regardless of what you say or do next, losing someone you care about will always hurt, and it’s okay to just let it for a while. you don’t have to push the sadness away, you just have to try to deal with it in a safe way, alright? cry, write about it, talk about it. and listen. when you have problems with your mental health, and you’re going through a tough experience on top of that, your mind will try every single tactic in the book to convince you that you’re a bad person and that it’s all your fault. because that gives you a semblance of control, right? if it’s your fault, then it makes sense to a certain extent. but it’s actually far more complex than that. sometimes there is no simple explanation as to why things turn out a certain way. you can’t bully yourself into believing that you’re a problem, that you’re the only one to blame for everything. that’s not how it works. there are so many different aspects to the situation, and they all factor into why this didn’t work out. if the relationship did end because you were scared of hurting your ex, then that literally makes you the opposite of a bad person, in a roundabout way. you were trying your very best to NOT hurt them. you were doing everything in your power to prevent more damage from occurring. you were trying to save them from more pain. that’s not a negative attribute to posses. that’s not a mean-spirited thing to do. yeah, maybe looking back, there are things you’d do differently, but that’s the case for everything that happens in life. that’s how you grow. hindsight is 20/20, and all you can do is learn from the past. you can’t change it, and it’ll always be there, but it’ll never define you. and it won’t always feel as awful as it does right now. i promise.

as far as the compulsive need to be liked goes, it’s a really common issue, especially if you already have low self esteem. it’s something most people experience to an extent. but it’s also a trap. it’s literally impossible to be liked by Everybody. being liked by Everyone won’t add to your worth, just as being disliked by people doesn’t detract from it. what others think of you doesn’t edit who you actually are. your ex’s friends are obviously very biased against you, right? they’ve been influenced to see you in a negative light, so they’re blinded. you cant control how they think, or how they perceive things. they have an EXTREMELY one dimensional view of you, a multidimensional being. they only know of you because of your ex, and you are so much more than your relationship with them. seriously. none of this is necessarily a reflection of who you are, or who you’ll always be. their opinion is misguided and uninformed, so how can it be trustworthy? your brain will try to convince you that they’re right, but they dont know you, so they cant possibly be. i get it, though. it’s uncomfortable when people have something against you. it makes you feel itchy and like you’re guilty of something, or at least thats how it is for me. but if you look at your very specific circumstances from an objective perspective you’ll see that you haven’t done anything wrong. you haven’t done anything worth crucifying yourself over. it was a relationship that ended sadly for everyone involved. it’s not a crime. you both got hurt. 

and the bottom line is that your mental illness isn’t your fault. it’s not something you asked for, it’s not something to be ashamed of, it’s just a part of you. and while it may cause a lot of stress and anxiety, if your partner isn’t willing to attempt to support you (in this context), then maybe it’s better for you to just focus on yourself, and to attempt to move on. as hard as that is to accept, as impossible at it feels, it’s always an option. i know it’s not what you want to hear, and it’s not any sort of ideal solution, but the fact remains: the only way forward is through. it will get easier. the pain will ease up one day at a time. especially if you’re actively trying to take care of yourself. do you see a professional due to the current climate of your mental health? cause if you don’t, i’d really recommend doing so. that can be your first step towards making yourself a priority. it can be your regular doctor, a counselor, even your parents to begin with…….talking to people about what’s going on in your head doesn’t have to be a big deal. and maybe if you start to work closely with a professional, you can figure out why you feel so desperate to be liked in the first place, why your confidence is so low, what you can do to learn how to like yourself, how you can incorporate healthy coping mechanisms into your life, etc. all of that is within your reach. there are so many choices, so many ways to make this manageable. of course it’ll be a process, it won’t be an instant fix, but it’ll be a positive start. and that’s more than good enough.

i really hope you’re alright, and that you feel better about it all soon. i’m v sorry i couldn’t be of more help. but i hope you know, above all, that you deserve to be loved. you deserve a supportive, healthy relationship with others AND with yourself. and i’m fully certain that you’re capable of reaching out, and of trying to achieve that. i believe in you. i believe that change is guaranteed and happiness isn’t that far out of reach for you. even if it seems like it is. i’m sending you a lot of love. i’m always here if you need to talk, or if you need a friend. please feel free to message me anytime.

[hegglespeggles]

Mental Illness, the Honour System, and the Commodification of Human Beings.

Hi. I’m Peggy. I have a mental illness.

    People talk a lot about mental illness. It’s kind of a Thing. It pops up when a teen commits suicide, or there is a mass shooting, but especially at Halloween, where monstrous “psychopaths” and “schizoids” charge at us with their chainsaws from the dark corners of haunted houses and our screens. Particularly, a good chunk of the discussion tends to centre on how to integrate these mentally ill people, with their strange green-skin and their funny antennae, into our society full of humans. I find a lot of this dialogue to miss the point, so like every person with an opinion and a keyboard, I’m going to offer mine.

    I was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Major Depressive Disorder when I was 15. When I was 19, those were both were discovered to be manifestations of PTSD from an emotionally abusive and neglectful childhood. I was hospitalized at 16 for a suicide attempt (the most successful in a chain which started when I was 12) and have been in therapy ever since. With the right combination of medications, therapy, and accommodations from my university, I am in my second year studying Music at Western University and have a part time job. I also do musicals with the campus theatre society and do a bunch of writing and composing and occasionally, stand-up comedy. I spend my summers working at an overnight camp and I want to be a music therapist when I finish school.

    I tell you all of this for two reasons. One, that I am not some waif withering away from some romantic disease, like a modern-day Victorian heroine. I am not some tortured saint who is just too delicate for this world. I am loud, and abrasive, I love my friends and strangers with the same ferocity and I give great advice. It just so happens that last week I was also spending about 4-6 hours a day staring at a very specific chink on my balcony because my brain was shutting down and I had no ability to focus and very little awareness of what’s happening around me. (This is what the psychologist-types would call a “Hypoarousal Trauma Response” and it is just as scary as it sounds.) This is a very foreign concept for a lot of people, and before I finish this I’ll probably end up trying to explain it even more, because yeah, part of what makes this such a hard concept to grasp is that even those who suffer from it have trouble describing it. Lumping us all together is difficult for the same reasons lumping cancer patients together is difficult. In the same way that leukemia, brain tumors and melanoma are all vastly different from each other, I could no sooner fully grasp what its like to have OCD, or schizophrenia, but I’m going to accept that your melanoma has different symptoms than my leukemia. Please don’t ask me what I did to catch it, or if I’ve tried this herbal remedy, or tell me that you don’t think that my medication is a good idea, because its messing with my brain. I know it does. That’s the point.

    Secondly, please understand that those with these illnesses are under no obligation to prove themselves to you. I have had many a boss or professor push for details of my diagnosis, to the point where one professor asked for the nitty-gritty of my abuse. And hey, I get it, we all love salacious gossip and exciting backstories on the people around us. But the problem is that what is your fun real-life soap opera, or your next conversation topic for Girls-night-in, that same problem is the reason that I wake up screaming in the middle of the night, or hyperventilate, shake, and vomit until I pass out. It’s the same way that while Game of Thrones is fun to watch, no one would want to live there.  I am offering my issues up as a platform and case study for discussion, and so please, I ask you to pick and prod and ask questions, (As any of my friends will tell you, I have dangerously little filter,) but the people you meet and interact with in the world, you must understand that their struggles are their own bruises to pick at and not yours. These are issues that we struggle to talk about with ourselves, let alone other humans. I understand the desire to verify the truth, but that is a job for professionals, (with all due respect,) not you.

    And that’s the crux of the issue isn’t it? Mental illness is antithetical to our society’s method of dealing with the ill. It’s not a linear healing journey, and its not always a cold that you can muscle through. Submitting the proper paperwork and showing up for disability meetings and the fighting and clawing and demanding the help with is your right (the difficulty of access to which is its own discussion) is something which is difficult and frustrating under the best of circumstances, and is infinitely more difficult when the very nature of your illness is to convince you that you are an unworthy burden, sapping any focus and energy you had to do it anyway. Perhaps more frighteningly, it is an invisible illness. There is no way to tell if someone is faking it or not, and in our empirical, productivity-based society, that is a frightening notion: if some people, not for lack of trying or desire to do so, cannot function at peak efficiency most of the time, how do we measure their worth?

    I can feel your incredulity, but I mean it. We pay a lot of lip service to being well rounded and self-care, which to my delight is becoming more and more mainstream, but for most it’s a lofty dream, on par with being a Best-Selling Novelist, or owning a home in Toronto. But check some twitter bios, and go on some first dates, or a party with lots of people with people you don’t really know, and you’ll notice we define ourselves by our careers, what we do, not who we are. So, what do I say when I spend an alarming amount of time fetal on my floor this morning because I didn’t have the energy to get up, and even if I did, my brain is screaming how burdensome I am to any system with which I interact?

    See, we grew up in this culture too. We internalized that otherness and vague discomfort with mental illness too, often long before symptoms started manifesting. So, all that frustration and confusion at how we can’t just get up and do things, we feel that too. It all adds to the melange of confusion and self-hatred. On top of that, we see the same people who wear their neurodivergence like a shiny new thing which separates them from the normies who just don’t get it. Believe me, it makes me just as angry. I would do just about anything on this earth to be one of those normies. I believe in self acceptance and loving yourself for who you are, right now, but I also must believe in the innate human lust for self improvement, and that we all must take active steps in our lives to better ourselves every day. It’s hard, but it must be done. My illness is not beautiful, but it is also not a flaw. It is a part of myself which a work everyday to improve, and that involves taking hard, humbling looks at how I interact with the world and working hard to turn that into tangible change. Again, this shows us where that tangible change gets sticky: its different for everyone. For me, that means working on my trust issues. In order to tell my friends something as small as my age and birthday, I had to be at least five glasses into a case of boxed wine and spent the next week a broken shell of a human crying in bed as a result. In a culture which vilifies mental illness, and expects objective proof of things, where do I go from here? Surely, this is not my fault, as this was a misstep in an ever-present journey to be the best version of myself that I can be. Likewise, how do I, or anyone around me, know whether I’m faking it? How do my professors know that I am not just blowing off class because I don’t want to go?

    Now of course, I’m lucky. I am a white, pretty, middle-class woman who has a very agreeable personality. This means people are more likely to give me lots of extra chances and help me out. My family had the money to put me into therapy. I’m also lucky that I’ve had lots of experience pushing through the system, first trying to access support on my own when I was 13. This means I have no fear asking for accommodation, and I have the vocabulary to describe what I need. But what about people who don’t fit the key demographic for what we expect mental illness to look like? Or people who don’t know where to start, or think that they deserve it? What about men, who are just as likely to suffer from these issues but only a fraction as likely to seek help? And while we’re at it, what about people who will experience anxiety and depression without it being a full-on disorder? I am a rare unicorn in that I have the support I need, and the self assurance to speak up when I am not getting it. But why should someone in my position, which I stress again, is an almost impossible best-case scenario, be the only person who is allowed to access support to it’s fullest? Even with a well documented diagnosis and disability accommodations, I have professors and bosses who express disappointment in my inability to function. It leaves me wanting to scream “I know! I’m angry at myself too!”

    The best way to explain it is that it feels a bit like having your insides vacuum sealed to the point where breathing feels like trying to pull against the vacuum, being blindfolded and thrown naked into a pool of maple syrup which has thumbtacks at the bottom and trying to make it to some nebulous “other side” of the pool. Meanwhile everyone in your life is waiting on the other side of a door for you and you can hear them telling you that “you should be moving faster,” and that “you don’t have it that bad.” You also don’t want to be doing this, but you don’t know where the pool stops, how to avoid the thumbtacks, or how to move faster through the syrup. You start to wonder if the pool is infinite, is this just what your life is, and how you’ll ever accomplish anything.

    That’s why I need the support. Because its handy to get an extension on a paper when all of a sudden, the pressure of the vacuum seal is too strong, and I need to remember how to breathe. Its really nice to not be penalized for not going to a rehearsal because I was busy fishing a thumbtack out of my foot. And its difficult to describe what’s happening to me when I’m blindfolded, so I have no way to describe where I am. Everyone around me is waiting for me to get to the other side of the room, but they aren’t allowed in, so they can’t see that in order to do this, I have to traverse this surrealist obstacle course. My academic accommodation is someone telling my professors that my room is a bit more difficult than other rooms, and my therapist is up in the spectator gallery, talking me through it from the PA system. Medication is like a pair of flipflops. I’m lucky to have these things, but what about someone who doesn’t know how to work the PA system? Or someone who’s superiors think they’re taking a nap in that room? What about someone who doesn’t realize their room has a pool in it, and now they’ve fallen head-over-foot into it?

    This is why I’m about to propose a mildly radical thought: If someone says they’re struggling, believe them. Give them the benefit of the doubt, that they are actually doing their best. Yes, there will be people who abuse the system, but don’t you think that letting them go, is worth helping people who need it? Otherwise, we run the risk of throwing more thumbtacks in the pool of someone who is genuinely trying to meet you halfway. Likewise, these people are not delicate flower petals who just couldn’t cope with the difficulty of their room. They’re just as capable, and strong as anyone coming out of any other rooms. Maybe their syrup was a bit deeper, or there were more thumbtacks, or to this day they aren’t quite sure of the shape of the pool and they’ve tripped and fallen back in a few times. All that does is speak about their pool. Not them. They didn’t build the room, and they didn’t ask for this room so that you would pity them. Who would want to go through a room like that? All they want is someone waiting at the door and cheering them on, without hurrying them.

    When you live in a society that is timing how quickly you can get through rooms and how far you can get, it’s a wildly daunting task to not only believe that you can get through the room, but that doing so is worth risking stepping on another thumbtack, and making sure that you’re taking the air you need. For me, I don’t know if there will ever be a point where someone releases the vacuum seal, but that is something I can live with. I like so many others, am just desperately yelling to the people on the other side of the door to wait for me until I get there. I know I won’t be able to make it through with the times that other people have, and in our society’s way of measure success, that means I’m not as good. The only way to reconcile this is for us all to realize the differences in our rooms, and that we might not be able to directly compare times. Its frustrating and complicated, that there wont be such a clear one-to-one comparison of our successes, but isn’t it that much more rewarding to know that you’re actually be timed for what you actually have to go through?

    So, my professors won’t know that I’m not faking it. My friends are waiting on the other side, and they’re probably getting annoyed at how long they have to wait for me. All I can do, all any of us can do, is call out to them that our room is a little bit weird, and that we’re still trying to make it to the other side, but it’s going to take a while. I guess I just hope that the world takes us at our word.

[xtherachelhudsonx]

CONFESSIONAL #3

Title: All Good Things Must Come to an End

Location: Miami, Florida

Date/Time: June 12th, 2018

Summary: Rachel’s final words.

“Everyone thinks that I don’t appreciate the boost in recognition that this show has given me, but that’s not true.” The brunette said as she sat in front of the camera. “If anything, that’s the thing I’m most grateful for from the show. When this all started, none of us knew what to expect. I mean, let's face it, we didn’t know what people would think or even if they would tune in. You never know what to expect, and I think when we first started, the producers were really honest about that.” Pausing, Rachel shifted on the couch. “Before we started, Finn and I talked a lot about the show in general. I don’t think the question was ever are we going to do this but how we were going to do it,” she explained. “My thought process was that it was an opportunity for something exciting, but I also wanted to protect my family from any negatives that came along with being on reality TV.” 

“This experience was not what I thought it would be. Nor did it turn out how I wanted it to. When it first started, it seemed rather simple, but it’s amazing how complicated things can get.” Rachel said as she reminisced about the past few seasons. “It’s like a snowball effect, and when everything is out there for everyone to see, it’s that much more intense because everyone is chiming in with their own opinions.” The brunette added. “It’s like, I have a hard enough time making decisions myself, I don’t need the rest of America giving me their opinion too all the time. And you would be surprised what people have comments on. It’s unbelievable.” 

“Of course getting to share some really amazing moments with the viewers was exciting and something that I enjoyed. Like when Finn got the chance to play in the Pro-Bowl. That was a once in a lifetime opportunity for him, and I couldn’t have been more proud to stand by his side. It was those moments when you look at your family and see such happiness in their eyes that everything seems in place.” Giving the nod to the camera, Rachel took a moment to gather her words. “And I’m grateful for the support system I have received from the viewers. If we could just show you all the good times, I feel like it would have been easier but than again, then no one would watch.” 

Taking a breath, Rachel played with her wedding ring, “I think in the end though, the show got out of hand. It became more of an ego thing then just living our lives. Every interaction, every moment all of a sudden became more and more dramatic. A simple disagreement turned into World War III before our eyes.” Pausing for a moment, Rachel shook her head and laughed. 

“Of course I’m not saying things were staged or didn’t happen. I can guarantee every moment was completely real.” Rachel said with another chuckle. “But how we got to such an over the top point had to do with the show.” 

"And of course, there are always parts that I can only wish I could take back. You know, when you’re not filming, and you do something you’re not proud of, it’s very easy to forget it happened or not be honest with yourself. But when the tape is rolling, those same things you’re not proud of are memorialized for all the see.” She said explaining. “I don’t watch the show frequently, but there are some episodes I’ve seen and think to myself, I hope my daughter never sees this part of me because I don’t want her to think any less of me. And it’s for those moments that I can truly say I apologize for.”

“I’ve learned a lot about myself. I’m not above admitting that I’m not perfect nor is my life. Looking back at some of the episodes, I realized I don’t have to be so perfectionism all the time. It’s okay if the house isn’t spotless 24/7 or if there’s a dish left in the sink. People would send me comments, and they were never like, ‘Wow! Your house is always so clean’. I know it won’t happen overnight but I would really like to relax a little bit more on that kind of stuff. I think it would make Finn and my kids a little happier too. Hell! Even I’ll admit some of my OCD makes me look crazy!” 

Running her fingers through her hair, Rachel sighed. “When this show first started, I was pretty new to the Dolphin family. I just wanted to be this good wife and team player. I didn’t want to cause any problems, and I wanted to just blend in.” The brown-eyed lawyer remarked, “But I started finding that with blending in, there were rules and behaviors that I just wasn’t okay with. If conforming in that way meant being walked all over, I didn’t want to be a part of it.” Before continuing, Rachel bit her lip, “For me, it has always been about Finn and my kids. I know it sounds a little crazy, but I’m so thankful for my husband. He truly is my knight in shining armor. He saved me when I was in such a bad spot in my life. I’ll always be grateful for what he did for my kids and me. Because of him, my kids have a dad who is there for them and who cares endlessly about them.” 

“A lot of people have asked if I will ever be friends with Mercedes and the truth is, I don’t know. I’m not going to say no because there’s always a chance, but I’m not focused so much on making friends right now as I am on my family.” Rachel mused about, “In the same breath though, being on a team means rising above ourselves to make sure the team stays at its best. Do you think we’re the first football team where all the wives didn’t get along?! No way! And we won’t be the last either. I don’t think we will ever be back to the way we use to be. Too many things have been said, both on her part and my own.” Rachel said. 

“As far as the future goes with my family, I’m really excited to watch my kids grow up. Of course, I would love them to stay little forever, but I know there’s so much to look forward to. I would also really love to have more kids. Maybe work a little less and focus on that, who knows?” Rachel laughed. “I’m just really looking forward to spending time with husband and enjoying our family every possible chance we can.” 

Repeating the question to herself, “If I could go back in time, would I still do the show?” she paused. “I think that everything happens for a reason and that every experience can teach us something. This is no different. I still look forward to sharing my adventure with everyone, just on a smaller scale.” 

[diziti88]

Overthrowing Anxiety Review – A Method For Yor Anxiety Or Not?

This is Overthrowing Anxiety Review and we hope you enjoy another interesting review from Diziti.

This time, I received an email from Ann, a long time reader of Diziti. Let’s see her story.

“Hi Diziti,

My name is Ann, I’m 46 years old and now I’m living in Texas. This is my first time sending you a letter so I feel very nervous hm… I hope that my letter will get your attention =) As you know, I’m in pre-menopause. Recently, about 2 months back, I have always been tired and worried. I always feel restless without a reason… i had no idea where my anxiety came from and why I usually had to suffer it. The anxiety made me sleepless at night and I was so exhausted during the day.

One day my husband read about Overthrowing Anxiety on the internet. They said that this program can help eliminate anxiety but I don’t know about this program and whether this product will work for me or not. I know Diziti is a product review site that helps readers to have an objective view. So I want to ask you to review and help me with this product.

Thank you very much!! Thank you for the useful review posts in recent times.

Ann Green”

Thanks Ann for trusting and sending me this email. I have read your letter and I decided to write this Overthrowing Anxiety Review to help you check the quality of the product. This Overthrowing Anxiety Review is quite long because I have spent 3 days searching for information and references from various sources. Hope you enjoy it!

What is Overthrowing Anxiety?

Before going into the detailed review of Overthrowing Anxiety, Diziti will tell you what it is first.

Overthrowing Anxiety is an online program which provides you natural ways to control your anxiety from the root cause and help you have a calmer lifestyle. Moreover, through this program, you can determine yourself which type of anxiety you’re having. From Overthrowing Anxiety, you will know main sources of anxiety and the treatments to eliminate it. It discusses alternative therapies, healthy habits and exercises to practice at home.

The program has natural therapies so you don’t need to worry about side effects or something like that. However, you have to work really hard to reach the free-anxiety life gradually.

Well personally, I did not have much faith in this program. Anxiety is a quite common problem in the US and I know that this is a very serious problem. So can a digital book really help you find you causes and treat them? Let’s move on.

Who created Overthrowing Anxiety?

Christian Goodman

The program’s author is Christian Goodman. He is CEO and primary writer and editor at Blue Heron Health News – one of the best national websites of health. This is an online website which contributed lots of natural and alternative measures to modern medical conditions.

Goodman is not an official physician since he is not licensed. I searched all over the web for information but there wasn’t a lot of Goodman’s personal information. However, he seems to have lots of experience in the medical field. He is a highly-recognized natural health practitioner who has dedicated his career to teaching people how they can overcome their health concerns naturally. After being inspired by the iconic bird, he published a health news website on his own and named it Blue Haron.

Christian used to face lots of anxiety problems. But then he researched mass of information and finally he found some therapies which worked well for him. So Christian created this book to share his secrets to more people like him.

With his rich knowledge and experiences in this field, I think this is quite a reputable author. So, can he bring us a useful product?

What are Overthrowing Anxiety’s benefits?

From the oficial video, Diziti found out that you can get 3 benefits from Overthrowing Anxiety.

You’ll receive a set of activities which can help you melt away the anxiety gradually. Some of them are: Daily habits. One-off-actions, Self-care habits, v.v.

You’ll not only improve your physical health but your mental health will be enhanced as well. Mental health plays an important role in our life, if it’s not good, you won’t be productive.

Moreover, the ebook will provide you energy and motivation to live happier and healthier. You will feel that you are full of energy and you can do anything to get the life you want.

If the program really has these benefits, I think this program will be a useful guide book to many people. But if it’s just a scam? Let’s find out in the next part of Overthrowing Anxiety Review.

How does Overthrowing Anxiety work?

Overthrowing Anxiety Table of contents

So how does Overthrowing Anxiety help you improve your physical and mental health? The image above shows you table of contents which is divided into different parts. The whole part 1 will show you very specific causes of the anxiety and part 2 is how you get over it.

First, it will help you determine why you have to suffer anxiety, where it comes from and its consequences.

Then the ebook includes science-based activities to take control of stress hormones to reduce stress and depression.

And the tested methods will treat different types of anxiety disorder like Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), Panic Disorder, Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and Social Anxiety Disorder.

The given techniques are said to get rid of kidney failure, liver disease, heart disease and other issues. By applying these techniques, you will restore you mental and physical health.

With the way it works, will this book really bring you the benefits it says? Let’s come to the next section to find out more.

People usually have to suffer anxiety in their lives

What are Pros and Cons of the Overthrowing Anxiety?

After learning the video, I see that Overthrowing Anxiety has 3 Pros. They are:

The program can work with every person regardless of their age or sex.

The author put a simple explanation and clear points so that it will be easier to follow.

The proven methods in this program are risk-free to use in your routine and help you get rid of negative thoughts and stress.

So what are the minus points of Overthrowing Anxiety? Those are the 2 Cons:

This is a digital program so you can not find it at any store in the world. Every step requires an internet connection or international payment card.

You have to stick usually to the program if you want to see your desired results.

What do customers say about the program?

On the official website, I heard a story of Maurine Sandler, a customer of Overthrowing Anxiety. She used to suffer from anxiety attacks for 16 years. She tried so hard to avoid them but you know, anxiety disorder still affected her personal life and her job so much. But after experiencing Overthrowing Anxiety, she received much exciting new information in this ebook and then, Maurine told her journey to find her normal life for people who had suffered from anxiety disorders like her.

Maurine Sandler’s story and feedback

Besides Maurine’s feedback, I also searched for some more feedback from other large sites like Goodread, Quora or Answers. However, I couldn’t find any comments or ideas of other users on this program. I’ll update the customers’ opinions continuously in this Overthrowing Anxiety Review. If you know any comments on this program, either positive or negative, please let me know as soon as possible. I really respect that!

So, I think Overthrowing Anxiety is really helpful and it did help Maurine get over her anxiety problems. It set her free from her 16-year anxiety disorder with simple and understandable guides. It is not overrated when people said that it gave Maurine hope to save her life when she had experienced many ways and just received desperation.

Read more of Diziti’s latest review: https://diziti.com/overthrowing-anxiety-review-a-method-for-yor-anxiety-or-not/

[ragingreality]

As Christmas approaches

We are approaching the final days of October; the clocks change on the 25th of this month. It is an important time of year for so many of us. It is where the times are changing, speaking of changing, we are as of this date (19/10/2020) we are only 67 days away from Christmas day. For more obvious reasons, I think we can all agree that Christmas this year for possibly tens of thousands of people will be a very different one. With restrictions on people frequenting in households, the further fears of counties all over the country moving from tier 2 or even tier 3 if not another out-right national lockdown.

When you contemplate such a time as this, two questions spring to mind. The first is,

 ·       Is it inevitable?

 The second is,

 ·       Is there anything we can do about it?

 I do not believe for the more conscientious members of society doing anymore than what we do already would have to extend to; Not leaving the house for any reason, wearing masks indoors, not coming within’ 4 metres of each other for anyone living indoors, disinfecting every single cubic centimetre of space after being looked at let alone touched. You could see that for people who suffer from OCD from those who enjoy organisation to those who cannot sleep knowing that a fly has left a tiny footmark on the owner’s door handle.       This virus is almost the perfect storm for those who already paranoid about health and safety already, not just for themselves but for others. Of course, it would make great sense for more people to take extra, special, precautions to keep yourself clean and safe if you are going to go outside or to stay indoors. I mentioned before about the countdown to Christmas which is still filled with many questions of how people are expected to cope in this ‘insane’ version of existence. The biggest one is what will happen after Christmas in the year 2021. The last time I remember any extreme weather taking place before Christmas was in the year 2010, the infamous ‘Big Freeze’ it was called. Ten years later, even if we don’t get any snow till January, this will bring unexpected problems even if the virus does not claim more lives in that period than predicted, to begin with, the snow. Aside from disruptions in regards of transport it will make the whole business of reliance on fuel more important than ever, since even with the influx of unemployment, those in work will still need to get to their work, one way or another. Aside from working at home if possible, the next step would be staying indoors or out of the cold since I think that pneumonia would be the next biggest illness to avoid like the plague.

The second biggest is the ice. Encouraging drivers to take extra special care is obvious, though it is always possible for even the most careful driver to make a mistake and getting involved in an accident. It may not seem the most catastrophic thing in the world but there are accidents that are for obvious reasons, more severe than others. Falling on the ground as a result of an icy path; Broken legs, fractured hips. Especially among the older generation, though its just as likely even a man in his twenties to suffer from an accident like these. Which will and it will mean a further reliance on the NHS to cope with these accidents on top of everything else. Considering the arrogance of this country throughout this whole pandemic, looking as far ahead is the only chance we have at anticipating and preparing for these problems arising. Even if the weather does not escalate as bad as I am making out to be, there is no-way of telling and if we leave if to Johnson’s philosophy of, ‘Leaving it purely to chance’ a, ‘Red or black’ policy, the news will be ringing with the headlines, ‘How many people could have been saved?’ until it rings in our ears for years to come. So, is it inevitable that many more will die over the next 3-4 months? Honestly, I think that their will be, even if by a miracle the government acknowledged that these environmental factors could lead to a boom in cases in a matter of days. Obviously, it would be almost impossible to save everyone, a phrase that sounds as bad as it does but is quite unavoidable none the less. However, it does state that we can try to do something about all this. I am no doctor, but I and no doubt others can recognise what the best cases are to take if the fear of increasing infection rates becomes dire.

About 9 years ago, I had an idea about what to do with the snow and frost on our roads to help speed up transport and to possible remove a lot of the danger of the roads in the winter months. Having people sign on for a day or two as they were needed to sweep up every trace of snow possible. This could even extend towards gritting the roads to melt away the ice at an even faster rate by hacking away at the ice with shovels or brooms. This is only a rough idea and there are some obvious objections to this, up there with having trash and litter being collected, merely just to keep people busy. Yet with unemployment rates as high as they are with the effect of Covid, it does follow that trying to make use of a situation just to keep things running as best as possible. Since if a man presented labour to the council and the council in turn represented a wage to him, that would be another matter. By degrees if this happened all over the country, not only in making commutes easier in urban areas but even aiding farmlands in rural districts could make a great difference for our economy.

Why not even have a system in place, like filtering the water into a hydroelectric system to produce electricity? I know that this seems a bit to ambitious but at the present moment, there is seemingly nothing ambitious about the world we live in right now apart from those who have higher prospects and who can work though Covid and those who are largely unaffected by the virus. Think about those who have been thrown out of a job as a result of Covid or even those who are down from the very start. Whilst, once again it is not possible to save every single person, not trying to do something for those who need it the most disgraceful a thing to do to someone if we decided to remove one of his limbs on an inspiration that he is no better with or without it. Being ambitious means doing something bold, something interesting, something with great possibilities. Besides, think of how good it will look on a person’s CV when applying for a job and the employer comes across,

‘Did work to benefit society during the pandemic.’

Or

‘Hands on and very hard working, never wasting a moment of his day and prospering as a result of a good work ethic.’

[life-observed]

Musings from The Strangest Year on Earth

Confronting

2019 into 2020 was arguably the hardest year of my life in perhaps the most unspectacular of ways. There was no defining incident, no dramatic high point, just a lot of glowing embers waiting patiently for the wind to catch so they could burn my house to ash.

I am what one could call a chronic avoider. A runner, a hider and often (it felt), someone who lacked the ability to endure. The problem here, as you can imagine is that no matter how far you run, there is no getting away & the further I ran, the harder it was to turn around and confront the thing I was trying to outrun. I ran out of energy towards the end of the year, and when it finally caught up with me, I felt like I was out of options. I couldn’t run anymore, and I lacked the fortitude to fight. Lenka has a song called Trouble is A Friend. In it she sings, “I won’t let him in, but I’m a sucker for his charm”. The truth is, while I do not enjoy being depressed, there is something safe in knowing what to expect. So, I let it pick me up and hold me close to its cheek; large and looming, but strangely comforting in its familiarity. I had been here before, and all I had to do was wait it out until it put me down, and let me walk beside it, holding my hand until I inevitably started to get the itch to run again.

Seeing Colors

Depression is an old friend, but I had never seen it like this. For the first time, I started seeing colors in my mind’s eye; a way to give tangibility to the intangible. When it first caught up with me, I saw things through a grey fog. It was like I could see my life, but everything was grey and hazy. This I was used to. I was anticipating the slow return of color to the edges that would work its way towards the middle, and when it didn’t come, what was once an old, familiar place suddenly felt foreign and very empty. The loneliness I felt here was unparalleled. Not only had I spent the past year physically isolating from relationships I had held near & dear, now the one thing I thought I could count on was changing before my eyes. I started waking up and seeing the same scene in my head every day. A dark, angry orange sky over a cracked, dusty ground with no sign of life anywhere: dead trees and a stifling sort of silence. It was in this sky that I lost the ability to recognize my face in the mirror. When I looked at myself, it was the first time in my life that I saw a very sad stranger looking back at me. I removed pictures of myself from messaging apps, social media. I couldn’t stand to look at myself, so unrecognizable, so much like a ghost. Under this sky, I felt myself giving up.

Endurance

I say the following as a fact — not a cause for alarm. I have thought about dying a lot. It’s a thought that has come to me unbidden, even at the strangest times. One of the most frightening experiences was driving home after a wonderful two day vacation with people who I love and care for dearly, having spent the whole weekend feeling like I was trapped in a glass box. I could see things, hear things, but inside was quiet and airless. On the drive home, I remember thinking how much easier it would be to just open the car door on the highway and roll right out. I don’t doubt for a minute that I would never actually follow through, because the desire to no longer exist felt separate and removed from the desire to actually kill myself– I was just so tired. But I let it pass. At the very worst of it this year, it was no longer a given that I could just wait it out and land on my feet. Increasingly, the fear was growing that this would be the one I wouldn’t come back from. Right as I had started what felt like the final descent, my long time therapist reached out to me to say I’d been on her mind. And, at the end of my rope, I began what has turned into my longest, most consistent therapy work to date. I also went to a psychiatrist who diagnosed me with moderate to severe depression — and put me on anti- depressants which was terrifying, to say the least. I have never been great with consistency in medication, and again, the uncertainty of how long I would need them for was almost too much to wrap my head around. But what else did I have to do? Whether I took the meds or not, the time would pass anyhow. I surprised myself with how consistent I became with the medication, and today I am unsure how I would have fared had I not started. While it would be great to see an immediate shift in mood and circumstance, the truth is, what it did was lift the fog just a little bit at a time to give me a chance to catch my breath, to orient myself towards the way out. And before I realized it, 3 months had passed, and I was still standing — albeit exhausted and worn down but standing I was.

The Truth about Therapy

Endurance is one thing — we survive, swinging one day to the next until our feet touch some sort of solid ground, but what comes after? It’s like longing for a million dollars and then being unsure what to do with it when it lands in your lap. We rarely think about the in between that takes you from the depths to a relatively safer ground. Therapy is not just talking about your feelings for an hour. I find it neither comfortable, nor easy. If I have been to 20 sessions over the last 5 months, I have left 15 of them feeling worse than when I arrived. As a rule, I usually attend therapy until I am over the hump and then “get too busy” or decide it’s too much money and then fall off. It’s an avoidance technique, and I wasn’t quite sure what I was avoiding until I pushed through the first month.

Being in therapy has been painful and exposing — which is frightening to one such as myself who fears hurt and detests uncontrolled vulnerability. Strange as it may seem given the existence of these utterings, but here, I control the narrative. I can erase, delete and do anything I want with this piece. Real time vulnerability is a lot different. A working (and still not quite fully comprehensible) diagnosis for me is Social Anxiety Disorder with a little bit of OCD & Body Dysmorphic Disorder thrown in for some razzle dazzle. The SAD was easy enough to relate to, because the hallmarks of that disorder have run my life for as long as I can remember. The OCD was a little harder to accept and understand, because up until then, the only thing I knew about OCD was the familiar tropes you see in movies or books — hyper organization, rituals etc. The diagnoses aren’t really the point though. What I finally understood was: the behaviors & patterns that I have mulishly clung to for YEARS as a way to “protect” myself, are rooted in these disorders, and though they may be common, they are not all together normal.

Imagine then, being forced to look at your life and realize that you have years and years of learned behavior to undo. It is exhausting, and frankly, quite difficult. Habits are habits for a reason — they are second nature, even the bad ones. Especially the ones that you’ve convinced yourself are there to protect you and keep you safe. My thoughts operate in extremes — I am either immediately 100% successful at something and anything less is a failure. Though neither practical, nor possible, it makes the very concept of therapy difficult, because who’s ever undone a lifetime worth of warped beliefs in one session? The constant need for perfection & the subsequent failure to achieve the impossible is the albatross around my neck that makes it hard to celebrate even the small wins, because for me, it is all or nothing. It can be discouraging to go week after week, to spend thousands of dollars feeling like absolutely no progress is being made. Recently, I have found myself dragging to go, partially because I am terrified to see the things that still lie beneath, and partially because I feel like I am failing at therapy and therefore failing at life.

But I continue to go, because more important than enduring the storm with cracks in my hull is repairing them so I’m not springing leaks at every turn. The cracks are plentiful — some are beyond comprehension, some are heartbreaking, some are logic defying, & many days I am confronted with how these cracks rear their ugly heads at the most inconvenient times. I continue to go because I see the ways in which my unchecked mental illness has disrupted my life, and taken a toll on my relationships. I continue to go because though painful and some days heart-wrenching, it is the first time in years that I have felt the possibility of not walking around like a ticking time bomb, always one second from total destruction.

The Truth about Myself

So, what does this mean for me? It means that however dramatic it may seem, I have fought for my life, and continue to do so every single day. Some days are better than others — some weeks feel like a total regression and it’s hard to fight the impulse to engage in old habits. Sometimes I catch myself after the fact. The things I battle with are neither novel nor exciting, but still, they are mine. & while pride in myself is not something I am particularly familiar with, there is at least some satisfaction in knowing that the power to endure lies within me, even when I am certain I have nothing left to give.

Fear has run my life for as long as I can remember, and it would be an outright lie to say it no longer does, because I don’t do well with uncertainty, and fear has given me the illusion of keeping safe from the risks that come with being human and living vs. merely existing. Though I am still very much afraid of a lot of things, I have caught a glimpse of how having the upper hand over fear can pay off, even though I persist in my wrongness 9 times out of 10. Even though some days, I let my head get the best of me.

Yet still, I endure.

[come-join-themurder]

Obsessive - Part 24

Will Juice have the courage to tell all? What will he say to Clay and Jax? (This will be multi parts so check back for my next installment. As always, if you want to be notified of my updates just let me know and I will message you when I post new chapters) **Disclaimer: I do not suffer from OCD so I cannot begin to imagine what it is like. Any and everything that I am writing is what I’ve learned from people I know and the internet as well as asking advice from friends who know more about it than me. If anything is wrong or inaccurate of someone with OCD, please excuse my ignorance, as I said I am asking questions to help with the descriptions but I’m sure I will get something wrong eventually.

Juice Ortiz x Reader

(GIF isn’t mine) __________________

Juice stood, following after his President and VP, catching up to them as they passed the bar.. “I don’t think we should leave (Y/N) alone,” he spoke plainly, swallowing hard and trying not to seem guilty.

“She won’t be alone, Juice. I’m gonna leave one of the prospects outside for a while--”

“--No I mean…” Juice cut Clay off as they stepped outside into the parking lot but then hesitated when Clay and Jax stopped and looked at him, “... Look I just think there’s something more going on. Like maybe whoever this person is...they’re only leaving her alone because we are there,” he chose his words carefully, trying to keep the real reason under wraps. “Everything’s fine, Juice,” Clay spoke, “(Y/N) said nothing weird has happened for a while and she feels safe enough to be alone again.”

“I just don’t believe it's okay, Clay. I need to be there,” Juice urged. Clay and Jax looked at each other and then back to Juice, “There’s gotta be a reason you feel that way…” Clay reasoned and Juice shook his head in protest, “N-no its nothing I just--” “--Juice,” Jax interrupted, “I’ve known you for 5 years bro.” Juice could feel his heart rate accelerate.

“What are you not telling us?” Clay interrogated him, his blue stare penetrating. “Nothing,” Juice resisted, his apprehension was apparent, not only to Jax and Clay, but also to everyone standing around nearby watching the scene unfold. “Look, man, (Y/N) is tough. She can take care of herself and like Clay said the prospects will still be outside--” “--Yeah I know but that’s not enough Jax,” Juice interjected, sighing with frustration as he spoke. “What is your problem, bro?” Jax was genuinely concerned now, if not for Juice then for his sister; he could tell something was wrong. 

Chibs and Tig were nearby and had begun walking up to see what was going on as Juice began to speak again. 

“I’m just telling you if anything happens to her I’ll feel like it's my fault. I’ll feel like I should have been there to protect her. I need to be there to...to…” he trailed off, grimacing and rubbing his hand across his mohawk and down to the back of his neck as he looked down and kicked the concrete. “What’s going on Juicey?” Clay questioned, “Why would she need you there?” His eyebrows furrowing as he stared at the younger man. Juice didn’t speak in response, his mouth opening and closing like a fish as he tried to find the words he needed.

“Me and (Y/N)...” he trailed off, unable to finish his sentence.

Jax exchanged looks with Clay again and suddenly his concern was wiped clean and replaced with anger as he whipped his head back in Juice’s direction.

“Say it.” Jax’s snarl was fearsome. Juice swallowed, “It’s not what you think Jax, I--” “--You son of a bitch!” Jax lunged at Juice, grabbing him by the collar of his kutte and pulling him up to his face. Chibs and Tig rushed in to separate them, prying Jax’s fingers off of Juice. Clay walked a couple steps away, rubbing the back of his head, letting Juice’s words set in. “Aye aye aye! Jackie! Back off brother!” Chibs pushed Jax back as Tig stood between them and Happy and Bobby jogged up to figure out what happened.   “What the hell is going on?” Bobby asked glancing between an alarmed Juice and an enraged Jax.

Gemma, hearing screams from the parking lot, peeked out of her office door. Seeing the commotion, she ran out into the lot to calm her son and husband, reaching the huddle of men just in time to hear Jax’s answer to Bobby’s question.

“This piece of shit is the reason (Y/N) has been moping around the clubhouse for the last two weeks!” Jax spat, taking a few steps back and shaking his head, “I’m gonna kick your ass,” Jax’s calm anger was much more frightening. “Jesus Christ!” Bobby hissed, glaring at Juice.

Clay and Tig turned back to Juice who was now breathing heavily, a panic in his eyes as he stared back at the President and Sergeant at Arms. “What did you do.”

It wasn’t a question, it was a demand. Juice gulped and took a deep breath, catching Happy’s knowing glare, before shaking his head as he looked back at Clay. It didn’t matter what he said, he deserved what was going to come next.

“Clay,” Juice began, his voice wavering with anxiety, “I’m sorry. I...I fucked up...” he trailed off again as Clay came at him with a raised fist.  Tig, Clay’s only obstacle, didn’t stand in his way as he threw a punch that sent Juice to the ground with a thud.

“Clay!” Gemma shouted, stepping between her Old man and the younger biker. “Get the FUCK off my lot!” Clay pointed over Gemma’s shoulder, bellowing at the younger man who was still laying on the concrete.

Juice stood feebly as blood poured from his nose. Clay had busted it pretty good. “I’m sorry, Clay,” he begged, tears in his eyes. He stood unmoving as Clay walked away with Gemma and Tig, while Happy guided Jax to follow.

Chibs, Bobby and Juice were now the only men in the lot, save for a few crow eaters under the pavilion up by the clubhouse who were now whispering amongst themselves. Juice turned to his brother, “Chibs, I--” “--Ye need ta go,” Chibs urged him as Bobby shook his head in disgust, “Ye need ta get out o’ here for now.”

Chibs looked Juice up and down for a moment before shaking his head and turning to walk away, Bobby in tow. Juice was left standing alone in the parking lot, bloody-faced, crying. He needed something. He needed you.

You heard voices outside, the Prospect and another voice, Juice’s voice.

“Great,” you groaned to yourself, thinking your father must’ve decided to keep a patch on you for a little while longer. You turned the TV up and tried to drown out the noises coming from the front door when you heard the key in the lock and rolled your eyes, not even looking up as he walked in and shut the door behind him.

“(Y/N),” he spoke softly, his voice hitching and a tone of anguish caused you to look up at him. Dried blood was smeared on his nose, his eyes were already turning purple with bruises and he was shaking. You let out an audible gasp, refraining from your urge to get a towel to clean his face off as you stood and walked over to him, forgetting that you hated him altogether for a moment. 

As you were opening your mouth to speak he answered the question before you could ask it.  “Jax found out… and Clay,” he motioned to his nose, “then this happened,” he finished. 

You sighed, remembering that you were supposed to be mad at him you corrected your face back to stone cold and icy and pursed your lips. 

“Then why are you here.” you demanded, crossing your arms and glaring at him.

“For this,” he replied reaching out and holding the sides of your face as he pressed his lips against yours.