Let’s hope today is better than yesterday.
This post is for casual conversation if you don’t feel like making a post of your own.
Let’s hope today is better than yesterday.
This post is for casual conversation if you don’t feel like making a post of your own.
I just started with a new therapist on Wed. I’ve tried quite a few over the years but I always end up stopping because it’s hard to really see how it was helping. Hopefully this time will be better, but who knows? I’m also still trying to find the right meds, but man it’s hard to tell if it’s doing anything.
For a more lighthearted topic: Does anyone else have trouble going back to games after a while? I’ve played various games over time that have patches, so sometimes after not playing them for a long time, I want to try playing again. However, a lot of the time, I get into the game and… I’m just too overwhelmed by new stuff and stuff I have forgotten that I end up just stopping. The feeling is something like “I don’t remember enough to know what I’m doing, but I would probably be bored if I completely started over and learned from the beginning again.” There are quite a few games that I wish I could try again, but I’m stopped by this feeling.
Hopefully your new therapist is a good fit! For myself, I had to learn how to be truly aware of what I was actually feeling and how to adequately communicate that to others. That may not be the case for you, but I spent most of my life believing that I was fine, calm, and collected; turns out that my baseline is what most people would call “stressed the fuck out.” Going to a psychologist and receiving my formal diagnosis was a eureka moment, and suddenly everything that I’ve struggled with for decades finally fell into place. I was so skilled at masking that even I didn’t realize how heavy of a psychological and emotion burden I had been carrying. I’m doing much better now, but still working on not being stressed out all the time.
As for your video game problem, that sounds a lot like me, especially with long narrative games like RPGs. Often I’ll play up to the last chapter of the game and decide to do all the side/optional content before taking on the final boss, but then I get bored, frustrated, or realize that I’ll need several dozen more hours of grinding to finish everything, and walk away. I was right at the final boss of Final Fantasy 12 when I stepped away and didn’t go back for five years. Ended up having to start all over again so that I could remember why I was there.
Yeah. Figuring out my own emotions is definitely one of the more difficult aspects of this. Like you, I did a lot of masking in school and being constantly overburdened by work just felt like what we were supposed to be doing.
Now when dealing with the therapist or psychiatrist, I never really know what to say. How do I even remotely attempt to observe my own emotions? This goes well beyond any tool for measurement affecting the system, this is trying to use the tool to measure itself, but it’s also self conscious.
Like if it’s really obvious I get it. There are times I’m super down and there are a handful of times when I’m pretty happy. But everything in between is some murky fog and I can’t see where I am. The act of asking myself if I’m feeling better prompts a reaction that either amounts to deluding myself that I’m ok (Which could just be regressing to how I was in school) or convincing myself that there’s no change because it’s not obviously better.