This is a thread for my brain stuff, I guess? I'm going to start it off with a list I made of some thoughts/beliefs/behaviors that I share with some of my RP characters, because when my characters think/do these things I have no trouble calling it unhealthy and untrue—but when I think/do these things, I feel like it's normal, necessary, and absolutely true. Laying them all out like this might help with something, I don't know. Questions or comments or some kind of assistance from others who know more about this stuff than me is welcome and appreciated, even if it's just "talk to your therapist about (thing)." I am currently trying an SNRI for my depression and anxiety (been on it since 22nd of May); I am not on medication for my ADHD yet although I would like to be because it has worked very well in the past. List is sorted by character; some things may overlap. Spoilered for length, internalized ableism, and suicidal thoughts. Spoiler VT: 1. I will never be independent because the odds are stacked against me. 2. I would rather stay quiet than stand up for myself or others because confrontation scares me. 3. I am afraid that my life is never going to improve and that the only way out is to kill myself. NH: 1. The friends/partners I have are the best and only friends/partners I will ever have, because dealing with me is hard. 2. My boundaries are unreasonable. 3. I should not complain if my friends/partners treat me in ways I don't like or violate my boundaries—it's only fair, because they have to deal with me, and I'll never have better friends/partners anyway. 4. I have trouble making and keeping friends because I'm so hard to deal with. 5. I should feel grateful for the fact that my friends/partners are willing to put up with me. VB: 1. If I am not constantly self-aware, I will fuck up and do something awful. 2. I need to carefully monitor what I say so I don't say anything inappropriate or that might make me look bad. 3. I should plan for the future but I can't picture a future for myself that is both realistic and happy, so I'm just going to sit around and spend all my money on coffee. 4. I don't have real problems because sometimes I get through parts of life just fine, or very well. 5. People will automatically think I am stupid unless I somehow prove otherwise. QR: 1. I am actually a terrible, unlovable person. My relationships with others are all built on me tricking them into thinking I am likable. I am often afraid that my façade will slip and people will find out how awful I am, and then they will leave. 2. I will deserve love and positive attention when I am literally perfect. 3. Mistakes are unacceptable and I must never make them. If I make a mistake someone might realize that I am actually a bad and unlovable person. 4. Everyone else is better at dealing with life than me, because I am fundamentally broken and they are not. 5. Other people with problems deserve kindness and sympathy. I don't, because I'm pathetic and weak for not being able to handle my problems. 6. I am lonely but I am afraid that being too clingy with my friends will push them away, and that they will realize I am a sad lonely person desperate for social interaction. 7. I don't deserve the friends I have because they are better than me. 8. Criticism (of me or of my work), no matter how well-intentioned or constructive, makes me extremely upset. Even though I know taking criticism well is the only way to improve, I will pick out the worst bits and fixate on them for hours, wondering what's wrong with me. 9. I don't understand why any of my friends like me. LA: 1. My self-worth depends entirely on whether or not other people like me. 2. My feelings are unimportant compared to other people's. 3. If I inconvenience or hurt anyone in any way, I am a bad person, and the person I inconvenienced/hurt would be totally justified in ending our relationship. 4. I am responsible for fixing problems that have nothing to do with me (such as my parents fighting). The problem is probably something I caused anyway, by virtue of not being good enough. 5. I am desperate to know whether or not people actually like me and like being around me. The people I like probably secretly hate me. 6. If other people treat me in a way I don't like, I probably did something to deserve it. Alternatively, I am unreasonable for disliking that treatment—a reasonable person would not have a problem with it. 7. Someday I will die in some horrible fashion because I am too fucked up to live. I should kill myself before that happens. 8. It is unfair for me to be angry at people, and I am probably overreacting anyway. 9. I shouldn't burden other people with my problems, because they don't want to hear about it, and that would be an inconvenience.
A probably-not-true thought I'm noting because it's probably not true: Now that I have stopped checking my friend's vent blog, I think they are posting there about how much they hate me, and I want to check it because of this. I am still not checking it but it's tempting. A distressing thought that might have some basis in reality: My parents being nice and accommodating about my mental health recently is really weirding me out. I feel like I'm waiting for them to go back to the way they used to be about it: telling me that it's like I can't do anything for myself, that I tell them about my suicidal thoughts to manipulate them into not making me do chores, and that unless I shape up I'll be fired from every job and evicted from every living situation. I'm waiting for them to get angry again. Stuff in general: Yesterday I could have had a panic attack for no reason I can clearly pinpoint. (I say "could have" because if I hadn't focused really hard on calming/distracting myself, I'd probably have broken down crying/hyperventilating—breathing normally was already getting difficult.) Prior to yesterday, I have had one panic attack and two almost-panic attacks in my entire life, and this hasn't happened in years. Maybe this is because I've been really stressed out lately, but I've been stressed out a whole hell of a lot in the past few years. WHO KNOWS In addition, I have been having intrusive suicidal thoughts, which I believe are directly related to the trouble with my friend (since I have them when thinking about that friend).
oh my god this is so stupid If I'm not quietly freaking out because I'm convinced my friend hates me, I'm resenting them... for posting about a legitimate grievance they have with our friendship on their vent blog that they did not give me the URL to and did not know I had found. Because weeeehhh, they ~*~made~*~ me feel bad, and don't they see how hard I'm trying to be a good friend even though I have never given any indication to that effect? That is not how it works. What the hell. I'm trying to point out how ridiculous and nonsensical this is to myself by writing it out, but I don't think it's working. My head continues to be full of petty thoughts like "maybe I don't want to be their friend" and "I wouldn't mind if we never talked again," which are WRONG because I know this person is my very good friend, I love talking to them, and we have done some amazing collaborative stuff that I don't want to throw away because of some hopefully temporary stupidity on my part. I would honestly rather go back to feeling like garbage and a terrible friend and crying over what a bad person I am in public, because at least I wasn't being mean then. This is mean and shitty and I don't like myself this way. EDIT: This is what I was afraid of—the idea that if I don't keep myself in check through constant self-hate, I'll become a mean, nasty, entitled person who blames other people for their problems. I shouldn't be so calm about this and I really can't figure out why I am.
Thing 1: My therapist appointment is today, I actually have concrete things I need to bring up, and I don't want to go. I don't even want to get up to take a shower or eat. Is it depression or ADHD or laziness? ~*~who knows~*~ Thing 2: My desire to look at my friend's vent blog has gone from "I think they're posting there about how much they hate me and I'm worried about not knowing for sure what my friend thinks of me" to "I think they're posting there about how much they hate me, and I want to read it so I can hurt myself with it." Thing 3: I want to talk to another friend about what's going on with me, but we've been talking a lot lately (especially about serious stuff) and I think they need a break from me. Just in general.
Things I need to understand emotionally instead of just being vaguely aware of them: 1. Having an opinion on a subject that's different from my friend's opinion on that subject does not mean that my opinion is automatically wrong/stupid. It also does not mean that I have a differing opinion because I am inherently wrong/stupid. 2. If I produce content that my friend doesn't like, that doesn't automatically make me a bad person who should change the content I make to something my friend likes more. It is not a gesture of good friendship to only make content I think my friend will like. I should write original content for myself, not for my friend. 3. It is probably not healthy for me to view this friend as the sole arbiter of whether or not I am a good and right-thinking person, and they would probably be really skeeved out if they knew I thought of them this way. 4. I am probably not terrible enough to justify the way I keep trying to mold myself into somebody "acceptable." And a small thought: Maybe it would be better if I didn't have friends so I wouldn't worry about constantly pleasing and never offending them. Maybe it would be better to stop caring about being Judged(tm) by my friends. Edit for a thing: Me (in a post on my personal blog, followed by several of my friends): "And on a broader scale, I guess I just never really left my edgy teenage years behind, because I keep making more general awful things happen to characters. The [bad thing] in [my OC]'s backstory was entirely my decision; it was not pressed upon me like I’ve heard some GMs do because those GMs are assholes. It was my choice and I could have chosen not to do that, or chosen to have it not happen that way, but I didn’t. And the really terrible thing about it is that I keep thinking about the details of what happened when that happened–not because I like to think about it, just… I don’t know–and I am never, never going to write them down or tell anyone about them. It would be gratuitous. We already know what happened. Specifics are unnecessary and there is no need to describe what happened to [my OC] while he was being held captive by [the bad guy]'s cultists, because I am not writing torture porn. But I still think about it, even though it serves no good purpose whatsoever. Doesn’t make me happy to think about it. Doesn’t make me feel good. I just do. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯" Me (thinking to myself, months later): "Oh, shit, now that I have a quasi-secret dead dove writing blog [that is not followed by friends I think would judge me], I can write all the horrible details and specifics of [bad thing]. That's gonna be fun!"
The character thing suggests to me that you might do well with a therapy approach called Internal Family Systems. I used this book to start, but I'm also unusually good at doing stuff to my own brain; if at all possible, you should try looking for an IFS therapist.
