Ah, whoops, the helping bit.
But, I found talk therapy pretty effective myself.
Yea, but that's still trying to be productive at least. Everyone's problems and solutions may be different, but I can still appreciate helpful suggestions a lot more than "It's all in your head. Be happy!"
And some of those people may genuinely think they're helping by saying it, but all it does it validate some of the paranoia and depression by making me feel stupid/unimportant/vunerable. And then it gets worse.
I was in therapy a while ago, a few times, with varying degrees of success. Finding the right person. And not mentioning it to my mother (I don't live at home, so that's not a huge issue). While she let me go to therapy in high school, she actively discouraged it. And not too long ago she was telling me that my sister talked about wanting to be in therapy for stress and she was putting it down and "that never helped you right" and "they don't do anything except ruin families". Her brother/family had a bad experience with one when she was younger, so that's pretty much permanently colored her view of them. While she may mean well, she's a bit of the "you're fine. You don't have any reason to be sad/stressed. Just relax" sort.
It's simple, really. You lack Slack. You worry about what other people think of you. You worry that having a good time is somehow BADWRONG. In many people, this leads them to join religious groups that frown on fun entirely. In others, it leads to the situation you find yourself in.
That sounds about right, and I'm not quite sure how I ended up here (better than the no-fun religious groups I suppose, if only by a margin). I mean, I KNOW it's good/okay to slack/have fun/think about me sometimes, I just don't know how to keep that moment of clarity and stop beating myself up about it. In some senses I don't care about what people think about me (or at least I've convinced myself of that) but on the other hand, I obviously COMPELTELY do. In those ways, I can kind of see the surface of the problem - I know some of what's wrong and why it shouldn't be - but I can't actually put it into action/do anything about it. It had seemed like things were getting better, but now...And that's it, I'll fine, rolling along (or so I think) and then one little thing brings the whole thing crashing down.
That's the EASY part. The hard part is doing something ABOUT it. My advice is to work with a therapist, combined with some exercise. Assuming you can AFFORD a therapist. If you can't, talk to Nigel, who may have some information on how to find publicly funded therapy.
And that's just it. I feel crazier for knowing that I'm being all crazy and not knowing what to do about it. Exercise probably would help a lot. I'm not horridly out of shape (try telling that to my brain) but sitting around being a sad sack isn't helping anything except perpetuate the cycle. I do have insurance, so I would imagine it should cover therapy? I'll have to look into it, but if that turns into a dead end, I'll ask if Nigel has any suggestions. I think it's getting to the point where therapy is probably needed, at least for a little bit. Since, at least what's making it worse is the bottling up and playing the same stuff over and over in my head.
If this turns out not to be an option, then there's The Cure. That should be considered a last resort, of course, as it tends to turn you into a 44 year old, bitter old man that hates everyone and spends all his time NOT giving a shit what most people think. That does, believe it or not, have some downsides.
I don't know about that - I always wanted to know what it was like to be a 44 year old, bitter old man
Again, thanks all. I really does help to vent and get actual feedback
