It feels like you’ve just been coping your entire life. That’s enough to get by, but maybe not to get to where you want to be.
Existence is suffering. Life is hard. Life is pain. But life can bring joy and life can be worth living.
We want a pain-free life, but that’s not really realistic. So, our strategy in life should really be one of pain management. To manage our pain, we need to understand it and where it comes from. An avoidant coping strategy gets in the way of that.
sure - I’ve thought about how to respond to this. It is difficult to explain to people without chronic, lifelong, persistent depression (and anxiety is all wrapped up in it in ways I can’t even explain) and a history of severe abuse and PTSD what it is actually like.
Some days I’m technically “fine.” A normal person might call it a glum mood or irritability, or sadness (an emotion that actually rarely occurs for me anymore) but for me it’s barely perceptible. I only notice the really bad dips - to the point where I’m in bed for days at a time, stuff I know I enjoy brings barely any satisfaction, if any at all, people I love I can’t stand to be around, I don’t feel like doing anything except sleeping - it’s difficult to explain to friends, family, employers, etc. and maintain some semblance of a normal life while this is constantly going on. It’s also exhausting.
So yea, being a bit avoidant can be helpful sometimes. When stuff’s piling up on me and is too overwhelming in my current state to deal with - retreating to fantasy games, alcohol, poker, whatever, can be quite useful because by the time it has passed there is a bit of urgency in dealing with it all and I snap to action. The problem is, in the last year or so, I’m very much losing this war of attrition slowly. Each time I’m not quite snapping back how I used to. I’m very tired, emotionally and physically. There’s other stuff too that I’ve just dealt with as long as I can remember.
For instance, my therapist asked me about different kinds of movies I like or something and she mentioned some genres and all I could say was that horror/thrillers didn’t really do much for me and she asked why. I thought about it for a moment, and replied “I see way worse things than that every night so it just doesn’t really do much.” So of course she dug into that, and I kind of casually explained I’ve had severe nightmares and/or night terrors (the terrors are way worse because you don’t remember what happened and you have a feeling of terror that can last for hours after the event) since I was an extremely young child. It may or may not be wrapped up in the depression but it lends itself to all sorts of sleep issues, which makes the depression worse, etc. Alcohol was pretty adaptive here because you tend to dream less when you drink before bed. Now, I wouldn’t these days describe the dreams as bothersome - I barely notice them, and when I do, I’ve become extremely adept at lucid dreaming, and in fact the nightmares give me some really good novel ideas sometimes - but they are there and they are persistent and they are extremely vivid. That alone would be intolerable to a lot of people and it’s just something I deal with. There’s tons and tons and tons of really miserable shit I just tolerate.
My knee for instance. I can’t do anything about it right now, I just have to cope. Earlier this year, when I had a bit of a crisis, it was centered around something I had realized in therapy - the odds were becoming almost certain that there is no “happy ending” or miracle cure for me. I’m very likely to live and die alone with this just being a thing (depression). At that time, due to all the stuff happening around me, I had decided that I didn’t want to accept a life like this, and I’d rather just die than waste away for my remaining 5-30 years or whatever. I’ve since changed my mind for various reasons, and decided that since this probably is going to be something I just have to live with, I best get to start learning how to live with it.
It makes me really upset thinking about it. Depression is almost always treatable. but for whatever reason, whatever I have got going on doesn’t seem to be. I’m really working on it but there’s pretty much nothing left to try and alcohol cessation was something I had described as a bit of a last resort or hail mary before. I already know it isn’t going to work, but if the goal is prolonging my life as long as possible, that has to be a thing that goes away eventually, and it may as well be now.
I do very much see this as a terminal illness at this point. I don’t know how or why it will kill me - I doubt by my own hand, but it tends to destroy your body in other ways even without you consciously allowing it to.
as far as “sources” of depression, these are a few of the things that came up out of nowhere in therapy last fall after my therapist urged me to dig as deep into my early memories as I could -
** Trigger warning depictions of physical abuse **
My very earliest memory, I could not have been much older than 3, 4 at the oldest because I know for certain i was not in school. My incubator had a drug habit (coke, weed) which I didn’t learn about until years later (I had tons of memories of feeling very strange and scared as a very young kid, later I realized she used to constantly get me high from cannabis, whether on purpose or from contact high I don’t know). Anyway, the place she always used to do this stuff was in the garage. I was a bit of a clingy kid due to some likely attachment disorder stuff (in kindergarten I would be in absolute terror if i was not in sight of an adult at all times) and it used to drive her insane. So, one day I tried to follow her in the garage I guess, and she slammed the door on me, and this is the moment where my memory begins.
My entire right hand got caught in the door. I started screaming, but received no answer. I still can remember the pain and what color the kitchen tiles were and the cracks in the door paint, it’s nuts. I get trembly just writing about it. Then, because the door wouldn’t close all the way, she forcefully closed it even more, trapping my hand even worse - I remember screaming as loud as I could for someone to help, not understanding why it was happening and being so afraid. I don’t have a clear sense of how long that lasted, but I was told by relatives later it was about 30-45 mins. Later this story was actually relayed to other people as a joke to her, like “oh I thought he just wanted to get in the garage really bad to see me, ha ha he’s so clingy isn’t he!” and I actually BELIEVED that for multiple decades and kind of brushed it off as an accident. However, one day I was baby sitting my nephew and he fell off the couch and banged his head pretty good. The sound of pain that came out of that kid was unholy and unmistakable and I am not even his parent. There is 0.00000% chance she didn’t know I was in extreme pain and almost 0% chance she didn’t know exactly why I was. Not only that - that wasn’t the last time I got my hand shattered in a door in a similar way. It happened 2 other times. My relatives were aware and did NOTHING.
Once I remembered this tons of other early stuff came up. Around the same age, for whatever reason, she used to take me along everywhere with her. Whether that was to see boyfriends when she was cheating on my dad, work stuff, errands, I don’t really know - but she took me everywhere and found me to be a nuisance and/or annoying so she just kept me locked in the car for multiple hours at a time. For years and years I’ve had this strange thing where I get a weird sense of terror in the car sometimes triggered by stuff I could never really explain and I realized it goes back to this, as well as my severe claustrophobia. I’d get so afraid every time she’d leave me and I remember times where it was way too hot to leave me in a car and feeling like I was suffocating for such a long amount of time. Desperately trying to unlock the doors and failing. Lots and lots of stuff like that. She was extremely neglectful, most of my childhood I never had enough to eat and was severely underweight. The house looked like hoarders and she blamed me for it. She blamed me for my dad’s divorce because I found out about her infidelity. Then, out of retaliation, she sold my car and had my dog put down after I moved out. She tried to kill me with a baseball bat once.
I could go on and on and on but you get the idea. A total monster. Thankfully, I’m pretty sure I was spared sexual abuse, although my therapist isn’t ruling it out, because she says I have a lot of symptoms there too (I was very publicly sexual from the age of ~5 and started masturbating a lot around that age too).
Anxiety is the weirdest thing. I’ll be a rockstar at work, and feel confident as can be about my interactions with others. Or at restaurants, I’ll engage with total strangers, but conventional and ritual-type stuff with family - that is kinda an obligation - is where I balk. Like what’s expected.
Man. Sorry this happened to you. That’s horrible and no kid should have to go through that.
I am not an expert, but please, dont discount the value of the work you are doing.
All this trauma was in there and having an impact. Clearly. Working through this shit and building new interpretations and linkages is difficult, but may allow you to come out the other side better.
I think it’s been suggested before. But have you considered MDMA therapy? My understanding is that it allows you to talk about and process trauma that you might otherwise avoid.
I tried ketamine in January and it provided me with a far, far too realistic feeling of death (I think I experienced total ego death) that was far, far less disturbing to me than it should have been, so I nixed that immediately.
I have done MDMA but it never did much for me. In a therapeutic setting I am a bit skeptical but I suppose I’d try it. I don’t have a difficult time processing the trauma, I have a difficult time not locking it away so it doesn’t become nearly inaccessible.
Like, even as I “realized” this stuff again, it wasn’t like I didn’t remember it - even if you had asked me about it point blank, I would have been able to acknowledge it happened and been aware that it happened. It wasn’t like “Oh holy shit that wasn’t a dream!” I was completely aware the whole time, it just never ever was able to come to the forefront of my mind. Attempting to re-live it like I have been since would’ve been extremely difficult if not impossible.
I’m sure there’s tons and tons of locked away shit like that in my brain, maybe worse stuff, but I don’t know the value in uncovering it. Now I can realize exactly what I am/was - a very mildly autistic kid, with possible co-morbid disabilities like ADHD, showed some signs of savantism that got ignored, that experienced long-term persistent emotional and physical abuse. On top of that, I was immersed in a complete cult-like religious upbringing til the age I turned 18 and left home and was completely self sufficient by 19, with zero idea how the world worked and severe mental health issues I myself was not even aware of.
To be quite honest I feel I should be graded on a curve, and if graded on a curve, it’s an absolute fuckin g miracle that I am not only alive but have done as well as I have. I can acknowledge and be proud of that, but unfortunately for me, to people outside of my head, I look pretty intelligent and very very much like wasted potential, on top of being good looking and having some expendable income (for now) - it tends to make people extremely angry that I barely try at anything and manage to get by. It’s understandable but I don’t know what to do about it. These people certainly don’t understand or believe me when I tell them how badly I struggle even with tasks most people never even think about struggling with - that are too embarrassing to even write about online - and it hurts a lot worse when they’re people that are close to me as well.
It’s not likely to ever change and it’s really difficult to cope with that at this moment. I don’t want to be like this forever.
I have to credit an incredible young woman named Jordan Turpin - who was the girl in that now-infamous case where the monster Turpin parents had horrfiically locked away their entire family for decades in atrocious conditions until Jordan was brave enough one night and decided to escape to save her siblings.
She’s probably my biggest hero and I got the chance to actually chat with her briefly on IG and tell her how much her journey means to me. She’s one of the bravest and most inspiring people I’ve ever heard of and her story was nuts.
Anyway, what shocked me awake on this topic was some new doc had come out about it and she and 1 other sibling had agreed to be interviewed and describe their experience - while it was far more severe than what I experienced, so much of it sounded so familiar, that my experience honestly was not too too far off what they experienced. Like on a scale of 1-10 if she had a 10 I would be a 7-8 and that was actually shocking to me, because everyone else describes it as one of the worst cases of abuse/neglect in this country’s history. The fact I’m even 1 or 2 epsilons away from that and was also completely seemingly unaware of it shocked me a lot. Stuff becomes “normal” in your head especially if you dissociated the fuck out of it.
That appears to have happened to my sisters. They report remembering almost nothing of our childhood. I think they are way better off that way.
The things were TRIPPY the turpins had described and how much they resonated with me. IIRC there was one segment where they describe munching on ice cubes to stave off hunger - that’s like, a core memory for me. At 15 entering highschool I was 5’10" and weighed only 98 lbs. I had to wear bulky clothing to hide it and stuff, lots and lots and lots of stuff like that. I wasn’t allowed to have friends or talk to anyone without permission and stuff. extremely isolating and abusive, so I retreated to books and video games, which is a big reason my therapist told me she long gave up the idea she could ever get me off of the video games - it’s been too integral to my coping since a really early age to even think about.
I’ve never tried ketamine. But my understanding is that’s it’s very different from MDMA.
Are you in touch with people with similar experiences? I.e. intelligent trauma kids who have kind of survived it?
Your experience is extreme. But not unique. There will be people who are at different stages on the journey who may be able to offer some advice.
Regarding coming out of it, I think you are right to accept that it will always be part of you. But dont discount the improvements that can be made by the work you are doing.
Again. I am not an expert. But my understanding regarding avoided memories and processing is exactly what you described. This stuff is there in your brain. But because it’s hard to think about. All the associations and interpretations and links are those of a damaged kid going through it, rather than that of an adult who can put some different perspective on it, I.e. realise it’s not your fault. Disentangle all those messed up emotions towards a parent that a kid is completely unable to think about properly but an adult can.
Just like the door thing. Kid-you thought that she didint realise. Adult-you has partly processed that and realised she did. Whether that helps I dont know, but at least you’ve had a chance to think about it from the perspective of an adult.
Regarding your therapist. Sounds like she is doing good work with you. But theres probably a marathon of this ahead of you to finish.
Again. Sorry this was your childhood. And I agree. Trauma kids who survive deserve a fucking medel for getting out of bed and going to work. Not everyone will understand, which is why you should try and find some who do.
thank you for this post and anyone reading this too btw. It is not an easy thing to bring up - not because of how I feel about it or anything, but mostly how it makes other people feel. There’s a lot of assumption and judgment and somehow like shame projected on to you over it - I don’t need or want sympathy, I want to get better and for people to understand where I’m coming from a bit more.
I think I wrote before somewhere but a mean question people have asked me thousands of times over my life is an exasperated “What is WRONG with you?” when I don’t even understand why they’re asking that in the first place til I go back and deeply analyze it and realize how different my perception of the world is from theirs and how different what I’ve experienced is. But how can I explain it to someone? Like I know I’m difficult sometimes. I like to fuck with people (harmlessly) for my own amusement, I’m hard to read and understand, I can have a bad temper streak, tons of stuff, just pick one. I try to do my best but it isn’t an overnight thing and I slip all the time. When viewed in light of my whole story, I think it makes far more sense to people - but you can’t just come out right away and say it, and often people will even be cruel about it and accuse you of “hiding” behind it and stuff.
I’m perfectly fine to never fucking talk about it but i think it does help people understand a lot better why I am the way that I am. as far as dating and relationships go though? this stuff either ain’t gettin talked about, ever, or it’s gotta be someone who’s experienced something similar. I can get by as normal for a year or so but it becomes obvious after a while to anyone close to me that I have something very, very deep that is very very hurt inside of me and most well-adjusted people see the signs of that and run far far away, probably for good reason. I think I’m a pretty decent human being and I challenge anyone to find a single ex that will speak truly poorly of me, but if red flags are a real thing I’ve probably got a bazillion.
Since covid I think a big de-friending has happened because I’ve taken the mask completely off, for better or for worse. There is no separation between jmakin and me and whatever else I present to the world in the last month or so, it’s all one dude now, and there’s been a real noticeable culling on the friends side. That’s been good though, it turned out I did have a lot of shit friends. Some surprisingly good ones that shocked me too.
Do you have friends that are competent/aware on mental health stuff?
What about the girls you date?
This has been a big part of the success of me and Mrs Rugby. She had a bunch of stuff she was working through and anxiety. I was able to help her work through the shit as it came up.
Likewise. As my BP has become more of an issue, shes been great, and hardly blinked.
Using the middle section to jump off.
This is one of the challenges of dealing with mental health stuff. Navigating the fact that people with mental health challenges are often fucking assholes and exhibit a bunch of shitty behaviours. Now clearly this is often caused by mental health issues, but not always. Where the line? Do you need to draw one?
It’s one of those kind of situations where two contradictory things need to be true at the same time.
People act up because of their background. And it’s not their fault. They need kindness and understanding and support.
Also. People are responsible for their actions and you should hold them to that. In particular we should all maintain boundaries to protect ourselves.
With mrs R. It often meant a kind of “this is not okay. Also. I love you and it is okay” type convo. I hope you can find people who will give that to you.
when I fuck up I can only acknowledge and apologize. I always try to own up to things, often when I shouldn’t. That is all anyone can do really, and try not to repeat past mistakes. I think group A) you mention should be held accountable for repeating mistakes due to things that ARE under their own control. Like, you can’t blame your mental health or whatever for stuff if you’re also doing absolutely nothing to develop strategies to lessen the effect of it on yourself and others or taking advantage of resources available to you. They should receive empathy but not be enabled. Like if someone had really infectious disease that would kill them and decided not to seek treatment and it started affecting your life in a really negative way you’d definitely think about having a conversation with them about it and limiting or cutting off contact if necessary.
Man, the first time I ever tried ketamine, hoo boy. Powder form. I was at a party and had no idea what I was doing. You’re only supposed to do a bump your first time. Guy cut me out 2 long rails. Says do both of those. I’m like “you sure”? He says yeah.
Absolute k hole. Felt like I was sitting inside a key hole and looking up. Or maybe a deep pit. I made a plan to go outside. Felt like 5 minutes for every step. I stopped and celebrated every time a leg stepped forward. Finally made it outside to sit on a front stoop. Halfway back to sobriety a giant house spider crawls up the back of my neck and I smash it. Good times.
That’s sounds about as much fun as me watching 28 days later on mushrooms. Would. Not. Recommend.
this was prescribed by a doctor and I took it per their instructions. I don’t know what happened. They think I had a sensitivity or interaction with another med, but were willing to continue, but I declined.
for anyone that wants to know what I think death feels like - it feels peaceful. in a really weird way. for however many minutes or moments I just completely ceased to exist. I was there, and aware - but it was not me. I can’t describe anything like it.
I’ve seen “As Good As It Gets” tripping balls on shrooms. When Greg Kinnear ripped off the eyepatch that shit was devastating.
Super fun movie to watch tripping until that point.
My first mushroom trip, I went to a Catholic youth retreat. That’s a story for another day.
Yeah, everyone is different. I’m sure powder form (baked in the oven) is a different high too.
In the nineties, powder form was popular with party kids since you could delay your ecstasy high comedown with K bumps.
it was taken orally and dissolved in your mouth. I think that’s powder.
Well I dont know anything about that. The form I took was a liquid substance baked on a cookie sheet in the oven and then snorted.
Wow didn’t know MDMA therapy was a thing. The come downs are so bad you’d think it’d be incredibly dangerous for people dealing with mental health challenges.