These past few weeks (month or so? Almost 2 months now, damn) have been pretty stressful, I've had exams, fell behind on series, my executive dysfunction has been pretty high, stuff like that. And I kinda feel like that's... a good thing? At least a part of me does. Which is weird. Like, on one hand I have this normal feeling of "I want to have less stress and just be better at stuff!" that everyone has, but on the other, some part of me is saying "Good, this way I can relate more to what people I know go through! I wish I felt even crappier every so often!" And I just like... what the fuck, brain? Is... are you... what? How does that even make sense? Why would I possibly... just... I have no idea.
It doesn't sound like you really want to feel worse/be more ill, you just want to connect with others on what you see as a deeper, more meaningful level. That's a profoundly human urge and there is nothing wrong with it. It does sound super alarming to experience though! Perhaps it would help to think of other ways that you can connect with and be with people who have similar or greater struggles. That way these sort of intrusive thoughts won't be quite so alarming; you'll have alternative ways of achieving the same goals.
Heyyyyy I get that! It's sort of fucked up, but it's more or less a logical response to fucked up situation. Someone I loved had a painful psychotic break, and for months I thought that unless I was suffering as badly as she was, I was evil. That sympathizing her and loving her meant being just as hurt as she was. Obviously that was crazytalk and I more or less got over it, but the feeling of 'I should be hurting as much as you' never quite went away. And of course when people around you have loud mental health emergencies and you're having a quiet mental health emergency, feeling worse can be weirdly validating. Because you're feeling bad enough to deserve help and compassion, it's bad enough that it matters.
Sometimes I have this and it is kind of...distressing? My life already sucks enough. We don't need it to be worse. Still like Beldaran said it could just be in part that you really want to understand others more. Which in itself is fine. Though this sort of feeling is distressing. Still, you can perhaps make the best out of a bad situation here. Take what you're learning from your feelings and apply that shit. Yes it sucks and no it's not good to purposely hurt yourself to learn more, but if life is going to kick you in the shins you may as well weaponize its own bullshit against itself. Do you also get the thing where you wish you were worse off because you just REALLY want people to understand how fucked up your thing is? It's very hard having OCD and depression for me at times because many people I know just don't take it seriously. And so sometimes I wish they were worse so then people would go "Oh. He's serious about how bad this is." Both fucking suck.
I'm feeling like that's basically what's happening. Do you have any suggestions on stuff I can do? That makes... a ton of sense, it's nice to know I'm not the only one with these weird feelings. I don't think it's the second one. What Beldaran said really makes a lot of sense to me. Though not so much... understand? But definitely relate. Like for example, I have a friend whose depression on an average day is a lot worse than a really bad day for me, and sometimes I feel like... I can't really be as good a friend if I don't go through the things as bad as she goes through.
Ah. Yeah that makes sense. I certainly get that at times, though the second thing I mentioned tends to be the more common "I WANT MORE MISERY" thing for me. As far as advice about intrusive thoughts go...I personally apply my meditation thing to them and sometimes it helps a lot. Basically focus on the thought. See what the thought and feeling are and how they are related. Puzzle out why it's there. Then just kind of set it aside and go yep that sure was a thing. Or at other times when things are bad I do something very repetitive to keep myself focused on something else entirely. Usually for me it's recitations of prayers and such just because that's really easy for me to do over and over. I don't really have any other advice, sadly, and it's more general to the concept of intrusive thoughts as a whole. That and I know this doesn't work for everyone. Still it is what I have noticed helps with intrusive thoughts for me.
It's weird, because sometimes I don't... feel like these are intrusive thoughts? I mean, looking at them logically, they must be, but they're... hmm. You know what? Let me make a new thing about it.
Well I guess in a weird way if you don't feel they're intrusive and they're not making it hard for you to function then they might not be intrusive. At least not on the scale of say my weird thing with swallowing coins. Either way I do hope you can figure it out and get comfortable with it soon.
