Carnatic

The last couple of pages have been a tough read... But also heartening that you've been strong and kept getting back up again. Look after yourself. Especially when meeting Z again. I'm sure Z has no intentions to hurt you but you should still build a little bit of protection around your heart, lest you inadvertently rush into something. I hope you and Z can have a future together, but it has to be when you are over her from before she left. The hole she left is no longer the right shape for her to just come back into your life and fill it again, life is constantly remoulding people and it has for you both. It needs to heal itself, not to say she can't help it heal but there's no quick fix. Be safe

Going back to writing about my life. It seems self-indulgent and cringy but I can do it here in the knowledge that while it is publicly visible, very few people, if any, people will actually read it. That's kind of a good mix of public enough for it to feel real, like it's out there and I can't change my story later, and private enough to not feel like I'm being too narcissistic. So I was 21 (the year was 2004) and I'd made some good friends through ten-pin bowling. The three years that follow are the closest I think I've probably come in my life to feeling 'normal'*. During this period I made some of my best ever friends, was as successful romantically as I've ever been and probably the closest I've ever come to being happy (though I've never in my life, not had depression). I'll probably get a bit nostalgic. I'm not really introverted, though I can come across that way at times, there's a combination of depression and social anxiety**. I found out at university that when I have a good reason to talk to people, little can stop me, I feel no anxiety at all***. Right from the start of my time with the bowling club I'm one of a few new members (though I have already met a few of the older members through my friend from first year, Mitch) so we all go out, socialise and get to know each other. *whenever I say 'normal' in my journal and talk about wanting to be 'normal', I mean like non-creepy, socially well-adjusted and neurotypical presenting. There's always an element of peer pressure to fit in but what drives me is just not so much fitting-in as having people treat me like I'm some sort of leper because I seem sketchy and maladjusted. Maybe people acted like that around me too much when I was in high school, and so I still feel even now that it's only becaue of a carefully maintained facade that people don't still treat me that way. Maybe I need to improve my language because that's not what most people thing of as 'being normal'. **related to what I said above, my main cause of social anxiety is this cautiousness I have, to make absolutely certain that I'm not being a creep and I'm not going to offend or disgust people before I enter into a social situation. ***a lot of people probably discover this when they first attend university. Jumping back a couple of years, in that first month you are thrown in with thousands of other people, all the same age as you and all living away from home for the first time and it just feels like social rules no longer exist. You get on the bus between halls and uni and by the time you get off you've learned three people's life stories and been invited to two parties, you make new friends in the queue to buy your course reading material, you go for lunch in the student union and you're not even thinking of if you can find a spare table, you just sit next to anyone and you hit it off immediately.

Well I don't know about everyone but for me, and for a lot of other people I know of. If you're going through a mental health crisis while at work and don't tell someone then the dip in your productivity will be noticed and you'll be asked to explain it... it's just fact, depression or anxiety or whatever you're going through occupies a portion of your mental capacity leaving less to do other stuff. Even if you're really good at fake-smiling and your demeanour is totally unaffected by what you're going through, the workplace is an environment that requires you to commit the majority of your attention and aptitute to the tasks assigned to you, so any dip in what you are able to commit will inevitably be noticed. If part of your mental capacity isn't occupied by depression then you aren't depressed in the same way that if there are no cancerous cells in your body then you don't have cancer. You could 'sandbag' I suppose, never devote more than about 40% of your capacity to work-related tasks in the hope that should a crisis occur, it won't be noticed... but that's really bad advice. Employers bend over backwards to tell us how concerned they are with mental health in the workplace and how compassionately they treat it, the last one who fired me sent me to an occupational therapist in my first week for an assessment, not because they thought I was depressed, just as a matter of course. So when you are taking longer than normal to do things, or making more mistakes in your work and your boss demands an explanation it's reasonable to think that being honest about your mental health problems is the best course of action.

It's not intentional, but sometimes, the mask just slips... or someone will come and speak to you, acting like they are concerned and want to help but as soon as you suggest that you are struggling with something mental health issue, their attitude changes and suddenly you're 'difficult' and 'a liability'.

OK, you're starting to sound like one of those who believes mental health issues are make believe, or that people suffering from depression just need to 'toughen up'.

I was never late... but it can be hard to keep things hidden when you work in an open office. I know I could ignore the culture I mentioned, I have done on numerous occasions in the past but my point is that whenever I have, I've paid the price.

I have been through CBT several times, think a standard course of CBT is twelve sessions or similar. CBT is the only form of therapy available locally and while I have given it everything I have each time, I've just been thus far unable to unlock that part of my brain where I can intervene in my negative thoughts. Part of the problem is that I haven't ever been able to adequately explain my feelings, and also that going to therapy feels like a positive step and makes me feel optimistic in the moment, but paradoxically that means that when a therapist does see me they always see a generally positive, happy, relaxed and optimistic person who already knows and understands all the techniques that we're covering in therapy and who just appears to have a vague notion that something isn't right but whose life isn't especially affected by this. I'm quite stressed out with work at the moment. The pandemic is still impacting my income heavily, it has sucked all the capital out of my business and created a catch 22 where I need investment to get back on my feet but have nothing left to invest because I had to spend all that money on the costs of business while bringing no money in. I have a couple of potential jobs lined up, but that is in no way assured as a combination of unreasonably demanding deadlines on requests from potential clients before I can actually get work from them and equipment issues when putting together bids which I can't afford to spend my way out of are making it difficult. I feel trapped a bit in the culture of 'fake it till you make it' where everyone pretends to be super successful, super positive and super happy no matter what. The times I have managed to drop my guard and open up have always led to negative consequences, I've been fired from jobs by employers who lost faith in my ability to do my job as soon as I opened up about mental health and I've been through an abusive relationship with a partner who saw me as easily exploitable, so I guess that with each of these negative experiences the subconscious buttresses that support the wall I build around my emotions grow stronger.

I've met enough people with similar (not identical) attitudes in real life to know it's perfectly possible. Going off the fact that he's liked both of my posts (in this and the previous thread) that were critical of him, as well as other more scolding posts, he's actually quite proud of his attitude and these threads are nothing more than brags about how much of a player he is. I'd wager the only thing he genuinely wants to change about his situation is to try and make girl 1 as attached to him as girl 2.

That works for you and that's fine, but like you say, you don't speak for all women. I am sure it's a bit of a stereotype as well, that there's some kind of good judge of character gene on that extra X chromosome. Taken literally, if it were true then no woman would ever have been in a relationship with an abuser or anyone who was simply a jerk and we know that's not the case. I'm not saying you shouldn't do what works for you, but out of curiosity, how do you know if your instincts are always right? I'd assume a fair proportion of guys after the first date and you feel that something is off, you never see or hear from again. Or do you hear stories about him later that confirm your suspicions? Not that you should do something you feel uncomfortable with because someone on the internet questions how you come to your conclusions, I'm just interested in what people do differently to me. EDIT: you've kind of answered this anyway while I was typing so I wanted to add that, I'm not saying you shouldn't do what you felt was right and it's good to hear you're happily married now.

The way you feel right now is part of the abuse, and very common for people after abusive relationships. I don't know how that changes, it can be like your brain has been rewired, but you're not alone. If you just need the reassurance you get from writing down those of your memories that you can of things that took place in the relationship so that people can reassure you you weren't the one in the wrong then you could start a journal on this site.

The first girl treats you the way you treat the second girl, you're perfect for each other. Stop stringing second girl along and just be honest with her. If you're not happy with how much attention first girl gives you then I suggest you take a break from the dating scene to reflect on your life.

I think you've heard wrong about women. It's a bit of a stereotype that women have some kind of sixth sense about people, and some women may themselves encourage it but I think it's a bit of a myth and see no reason why it shouldn't take a woman a couple of dates to decide if they like someone or not.

Yeah I know I shouldn't, I don't know how to stop myself thinking negatively about myself and my life though. I can battle the negative thoughts with positive ones and be thankful for the good things in my life, but it's a constant battle, requires total focus all of the time and wears me out and I slip back into bad ways. It's easy but not pleasant, to just sit and think to myself that I've been dealt a bad hand in life, whether I'm bothering that I have no real skills or talents, that I fail at everything, that I'm pug-ugly, that even when healthy I'm still fat, that that I'm socially awkward and boring, that I'm not very considerate or thoughtful towards my friends, that I have a speech impediment that people mistake for a learning difficulty, and that everything I have in life has just been given to me and not earned. These are pervasive thoughts that I can't run from or repress so I have to drown them out with positivity, and some days I just can't, and don't have the positivity in me to beat it right now. I know that I'm lucky too, that I might not have been gifted with talent, intelligence, looks or personality but I have a caring family and I have friends who can see beyond my shortcomings and still want to be friends with me. When I'm feeling really down though, and I can't keep up the effort of thinking positively then the aborted attempt at positive thinking just lingers in my mind and turns to poison, all those attempts at positive thinking do is actually make me feel really guilty and ashamed of my mental health problems, like 'who am I, who has been given such a good life, to complain?'. It's so selfish of me to not just be happy. I also feel guilty for caring, feel ugly, that's vanity, feel sad about being below people, that's pomposity, and so on. I don't know really. I know that I shouldn't care about my flaws and that I should just love myself for who I am, but then that just feels like complacency. OK some things I can't change, but some things I can. Someone who lacks any outstanding positive traits isn't going to get far in life and that in itself can cause real unhappiness and if I'm not at least a bit dissatisfied with myself then I'll never get to change the things I can change. And I know too that someone will come along and say that I choose to think these things and that I choose to react negatively to them, that's true but it's just having the energy to choose any other reaction. It's like arriving after a long trek, at the foot of a high mountain, feeling ready to drop dead from exhaustion already and you can choose to climb the mountain anyway, or you can sit down and recuperate... but somehow recuperation doesn't feel good because you need to be at the top of the mountain. Somehow you need to get there, just not today. Ugh... this is a bad week. My brain feels like it is swimming in treacle and every positive thought feels like such an overwhelming effort that even my eyes start to lose focus and I almost forget how to read.

Not that I can think of, though both times I posted here I was away with family, so sleeping in a hotel bed. Did I mention that the other month when I was being a sadboi?

Hmm... As I write this I'm sipping on an Aperol spritz... But I am on holiday, and it's the only time so far that I've ordered a drink with lunch. I don't drink that often, especially since the pandemic started since I never drink when home alone. Cardio... Hmm does walking count as cardio. I normally do half an hour a day on the exercise bike, 5 days a week approximately, there'll always be a couple of days I don't manage to fit it in. Usually go for a daily 3 mile walk... If that counts. I don't tend to give hydration a lot of thought if I'm honest. I'm a poor sleeper, but that goes in phases, right now I'm not sleeping great because I'm sharing a hotel room with my brother and he snores, though to be fair so do I. Other than that it has been a while since I had a real bout of bad insomnia, I'm getting around 8 hours a night.

I'm trying to avoid going back on the meds, but right now I've only been off them for a few months. Overall I've maybe only spent a couple years total of the past decade not on meds. If I do go back on them I at least want it to be after a decent attempt to be well without them. Right now though, I just feel lost. I'll feel OK for a week or two, then like this for a week or two.

Are you suggesting I go back onto the meds then? Whatever you may think, the easiest way for me to avoid the lack of motivation is to not go onto medication. If I don't then the whole thing about motivation is a non-issue, but I have to deal with the painful emotions instead. I don't think I'm explaining myself properly anyway. From reading your responses, 'lacking motivation' doesn't mean what I think it means. Maybe I should just say they make me forgetful, or absent minded, or just overly content with the status quo even when I know the status quo isn't good for me, or they distract me from thinking about how I can better myself. I'm not sure if any of those explanations cover it better.

I'm still exercising if that's what you mean. But also that thread was an example of how I can say the wrong thing because I'm not good with words and give the wrong impression about my mental health. Changing how I look, I don't think is really going to make me feel better but also something about how I look makes me unhappy. I just don't like seeing myself, or being seen by others.

The antidepressants comment is a side comment though, I'm not on them right now, that's just the reason why I don't intend on going back on them. It's not a reaction to feeling sad that I have no motivation, it's just what the meds do to me, months can go by without me noticing.

I don't really have a reaction to my feelings, they just are... Feeling sad feels bad.

Yeah I know but it doesn't change how I feel.

Oh that was a typo, I meant to say appearance. I guess I don't put much stock into what I think, so what others think is more important, but even without actually knowing what other people think of me, I'd like to at least see a reflection of the person I feel like I am when I look in the mirror.

There's ups and downs, well not 'ups' exactly, but there are moments when I manage to forget about it all. Writing, if I can keep it up, might get me closer to having the words for what I'm feeling. I struggle to find them and always end up misrepresenting myself. I tend to go into too much detail and then the impression that it's all down to one thing I'm obsessing over. I feel uncomfortable in my own skin, I don't like being seen. I don't feel like my internal self and my outer casing really have much in common, and I know people don't always just judge a book by its cover but people also use their experience to be expressive and show off what they're all about.

I can't shake this joyless, hopeless, worthless feeling. It's like the edge of anxiety, staring into an abyss and knowing that's where you're headed, time feels like my enemy because I'm sinking and feel like I'm past saving. I feel lost and lonely and afraid. It's a feeling like you know something bad is happening, something akin to grief, there is a hint of panic and trepidation at what the future holds but at the same time nothing seems worth getting worked up about. The only thing I can feel is going to come in the future is more acceptance of how bad things are. I can't talk about it, it has no cause, my life is... OK. I might not be one of these people who is rich and successful and struggling to understand why they feel sad, but still... my basic needs are being met. My lifestyle my career, I lack stability, can never say if I'll still be earning a living this time next year but who doesn't these days? I struggle with self-esteem but it makes perfect sense to me why I should have low self-esteem, because I don't really have anything positive I can say about myself to counter it. It's not like I have any skills, virtues or achievements as evidence my low self-esteem is only in my head. I try and tackle my depression through various ways and means. I've been through CBT a few times, but it's just never really broken through anything and for all the therapy sessions I've been to, I'm still pretty bad at sitting in a room with someone and telling them how I really feel. I have a tendency to just shrug and say 'yeah, things aren't terrible, just feeling a little down is all'. I try and exercise daily, and get fresh air, go outside set targets... it has its benefits, I need to lose weight anyway, but I've never really felt it affects my depression. I socialise, I meet friends for coffee, go for walks, find activities to do. I'm a bit socially awkward, I never really feel as though I'm properly loved by anyone, I'm not quite a hanger-on but my socialising lacks substance, mainly because there's not really much I can bring to the occasion, I have friends with talents, mostly musical, sometimes artistic or social and they can bring something I'm just like 'not that bad of a person'. I did take anti-depressants, I don't really want to take those again, they have drawbacks even though they do work. I tend to lose motivation to do a lot of stuff when I'm on them, and gain weight as a result also I just stop trying to do better at anything and allow life to pass me by. Then when I come off them I'm older and even more depressed because more time has gone from my life with nothing to show for it. I'm not asking for advice by the way, I just wanted to write.

If you don't mind us asking, what are the arguments about? Do you argue a lot and are there any things (besides alcohol) that come up over and over? If you're arguing hard and often and she always comes to the conclusion that you must be drunk then perhaps it is the frequency of the arguments, or how emotionally painful they are, or that issues raised are going unresolved that is bothering her, and she blames alcohol because it's easier to blame that as a sort of external factor than to accept there are more complex problems behind it all. It's just a thought, because you didn't go into much detail about the arguments themselves and that detail might be relevant. I know that all couples will argue occasionally, but if it is just occasional then that also means her blaming your drinking is also occasional and therefore maybe is something that you can just live with. Is she fine with your drinking when you don't argue? Anyway TLDR; if you're arguing often enough that her blaming alcohol has become a problem to you then probably address why you're arguing that often in the first place.