Being mentally ill is exhausting, news at eleven.

[apiphile]

I am still making active progress towards spring cleaning my thinking but keep running into some very ingrained thought patterns which are not only hard to undo but hard to challenge, as in they provoke a strong emotional reaction if I try to prod them

Comments

[redshira]

I think I've said this before, but it's incredibly interesting and useful when you post stuff like this because very often you're writing out my brainwrongs as well, and it helps me in my ongoing Battle to Be In Charge of My Own Brain and Not Treat Myself Like Shit. 95% of this post could easily have been written by me. So what I am saying is a) I feel you, bruh b) you're doing amazingly. When I think about how fucked up we both were in 2003, it's amazing we're both still alive and have managed to pin down our brainwrongs enough to be able to poke at them and know what they are and why they're there, even if we haven't managed to kill them.

[apiphile]

It's almost like we have the same brainwrong!

When I think about how fucked up we both were in 2003, it's amazing we're both still alive and have managed to pin down our brainwrongs enough to be able to poke at them and know what they are and why they're there, even if we haven't managed to kill them.

Innit tho. We're up against some heavily-ingrained awfulness, but at least now no one ELSE is trying to kill us.

[wolfy_writing]

Okay, now I'm having a brisk mental argument between "Say nice things about him and point out all of his good qualities!" and "That's likely to be stressful and upsetting!"

I'm also trying to work out how to not massively trigger you when I visit, as I get unpredictable headaches (including lingering all-day ones and short stabby ones which are often over in a few seconds), and have a drilled-in reflex to be very polite about rejecting help, because everyone Means Well and It's Only Natural they want to grab at my arms and snatch away my grocery basket in the name of helping, because Just Look At Me, Being All Disabled In Public. (The grocery basket thing has literally happened, as did small children screaming and crying. Grocery-shopping in Fiji was weird.)

"Other people have it worse" is weirdly irrelevant - you wouldn't tell me I'm never allowed to feel bad about things because you've had it worse. (I know, applying the same rules to the self as to other people doesn't feel intuitively right.)

[apiphile]

It shouldn't be so bad knowing that's a possibility rather than going in blind, tbh, and if you're likely to have a wild headache at Eurovision I can, y'know, not take that personally at all.

[wolfy_writing]

It may not happen, but either "Suddenly looks pained, but is fine less than a minute later" or "Looks fine-to-vaguely-uncomfortable, ends up needing to go away and lie down in the dark somewhere" is a possibility, and in both cases, it would be a headache. (Weirdly, I sometimes get headaches in a very specific spot, and am all "Why does it only hurt in a two-inch circle behind my left ear?" or "Who specifically gets right-forehead aches?")

[apiphile]

I get those ridiculous "please enjoy a highly specific stabbing head pain for no reason" headaches too, I wonder what they hell they are.