Seems to be unpopular to admit in this post, but I use food delivery apps. Yes, the fees are ridiculous, but I can afford it. I don’t do it every day, but I do at least once a week.

I hate cooking and I hate dishes. It’s never pleasant. No, I can’t personally make something at home “better than most takeouts”. If you can, good for you. It’s not for me and I’m lucky that I am able to get takeout.

Honestly, I don’t know how in the world one human is able to keep up with working 40 hours a week, cook, dishes, laundry, clean, etc. It’s all too much for me. Hell, the state of my laundry has been insane the last several weeks.

Do you get to see a lot more stars out at night there?

Seems kind of silly…but the downtown started this tradition years back in coating the entire facade of the buildings in Christmas lights…not in a gaudy, cheesy way, but one single color per building. One shop would be blue and the shop next door would be red, etc. It started to become “known” in the area that this town would have the most lights ever in the downtown. They basically made a festival every year about it and more and more visitors seemed to come from out of town. And as time went on, more and more business neighboring the downtown started taking part. It looks amazing at night…every single building entirely lit up in a different color. I haven’t seen it in years…I guess it’ll be almost 10 at this point.

Ok but wtf is this image it’s tripping me out

Agreed, @sprigatito_bread@lemmy.world. Get a job. Any job. Ideally one that could pay a bit more than minimum wage and/or one tangentially related to the field you want to go into. But you can’t afford to be too picky. That’s step one.

Step two, move out. I know you said you don’t have friends. You don’t need them. But you need to find a roommate because you’re unlikely to be able to afford to live on your own.

https://www.reddit.com/r/roommates/comments/1fipamp/best_roommate_finding_apps/

This reddit link has some ideas/websites to try for step two. It’s not an exhaustive list on how to find a roommate, but it’s a start.

My cat doesn’t seem to treat me any more loving when I’m having a visibly hard time lol.

But it’s ok because likes to be close anyway.

Check out the mental health community that MonsterTrick posted. It’s fairly active!

Hi, friend. I know you have a zillion thoughts running through your head.

You DO matter.

You aren’t harm others from being mentally unwell. People either are going to support you or they’re not. Unfortunately most people don’t, but your existence itself and being in pain does NOT cause hurt to others. YOU are the one who is hurting, and you are projecting that thinking that your hurt is telepathically harming others. You aren’t.

You are a human being who is hurting. You are a human being, not a monster. You deserve love and acceptance. I’m sorry for the things you have gone through. You do not deserve that. You deserve to walk this earth and have your own slice of happiness out there. You DO deserve that.

I don’t have solutions for you, unfortunately. The classic advice is “see a professional”, but that’s only so helpful in the moment and with whatever capacity you have for that.

It’s weird because while I have had radically different life experiences (no abusive partner, no stalking… generally a much milder experience), I feel like I identify almost word for word with what you’ve written about the mental side of things. Feeling like a burden, feeling like you don’t deserve things, talking to AI instead of humans (can actually be helpful for venting lmao), thinking you are harming everyone by existing (bro that was a core belief of mine I shit you not), etc.

You are not alone. Many others have walked your path and managed to get out to the other side. I guess I have no real useful advice to give so I apologize about that.

One thing that has always helped me was to know that life will change. I hate change tbh. And when things are going good, I hate that I know they will eventually change. But you know what? When you’re in a bad spot, change will still happen. Will it change to be worse? Maybe. Will it change to be better? Also maybe. Change is inevitable.

Stick with us a bit longer, and know that you are in good company.

Goddamn I feel you, bro. I learned recently that the world is filled with assholes. Nothing you say or do is going to make people treat you like a human being if they weren’t going to to begin with.

This realization helped me internally to no longer hate myself, but I’m a bit stuck as to where to go from here. I guess I’ll be chatting with my therapist about this sort of thing tomorrow.

What’s your scenario exactly?

Hey listen, man. I know you’re freaking out rn (hopefully you’re freaking out less so at the moment), but you’re not necessarily gonna get out on an involuntary hold. Providers DON’T really love doing that. Be honest and tell them you have some degree suicidal ideation, but don’t say you have a plan to do it off the bridge right now. They don’t commit patients solely for suicidal ideation unless they are stupid. Most patients coming in for psych help feel this. It’s relatively “normal” and not something they are quick to “throw you in the brig” for.

If you have panic attacks, you should ask a provider about propranolol. It’s technically a blood pressure med but it also is given for panic attacks! It will decrease your heart rate and blood pressure which will make your heart stop racing and help you to stop panicking over it. You just take it when you’re panicking and wait a bit for it to kick in to calm down. Honestly might help you a ton! It’s not an addictive, feel good med like benzos at all whatsoever.

Baseline anxiety they might want to give you an SSRI and do therapy, but you don’t necessarily have to commit to that right away if it’s too much or too expensive to deal with rn.

What country are you in? If you’re in the US, I used some service called ZocDoc to find mine. I don’t think I even had to make an account to log in or to view stuff, just when you were actually gonna make the appointment. I called out of work one day because I was feeling really shit and decided to Google a psych provider.

Yeah it’s fucking daunting like you said. But with that website you can literally fill in the day you want to be seen and it will pop up with plenty of dates and times with a shitton of different providers. I just picked whatever was available same day and someone was actually able to see me then. I was surprised at how quick it was when it had never been that quick or simple before.

Now, this person ended up as a psych NP, not a physician. I think you’re not going to find a physician available on these websites. Idk if my NP is shit or not, but at least she has been seeing me and she was able to refer me to a therapist.

Idk if this wouldn’t work with your insurance tho. I think the website maybe tells you the insurances that the providers accept. My insurance is kind of shit so it didn’t entirely matter who I picked.

Anyway, best of luck, man, you got this.

Why do you keep posting Patreon links???

Taking a break, obviously.

Same! Literally always greets me at the door with nonstop meowing! Hell, sometimes I even get this response when I walk into another room and then walk back in!!

Are you ok at least? I know you said you were trying to get out of an abusive relationship?

I mean I’ve never had an issues with attention so it just doesn’t make sense to me. Obviously I have emotional problems, but that would be my only “ADHD trait” which is shared by many “conditions”. What other traits do you have?

Yeah some of my online friends seem to think I have a lot of trauma. But the weird thing with that is like… doesn’t literally everyone? Why would some be more effected than others? Some people are horribly abused and it makes sense…but many of us have a lot “milder” traumatic experiences.

I have been consulting ChatGPT (lmao) and it seems that guanfacine is the most common indicated thing for emotional dysregulation in complex trauma. I had never heard of it before.

Yeah thing is I’m totally fine when I have no triggers. But when I do, I go from 0 to 100 and have a hard time getting out of it (whether it’s an activated state more damaging to the self or a low energy state where I have a hard time physically walking or moving). I think my baseline leans normal to slightly depressed.

How do you feel about taking so many meds? I’m already a bit turned off from meds. I have always been of the opinion that while some people really do absolutely need them that a lot of people are over medicated.

After my negative experiences I kind of want to stop trying meds but I’m afraid to get off them after my last experience. I had a reaction in SSRI withdrawal that severely threatened my job. And now my provider has me on lamotrigine, but research that I’ve done seems like it does nothing for emotional dysregulation.

Do you know how much I would have loved to be blunted on SSRIs lol? My issue is too many and too strong emotions, so feeling less would have been helpful!

Oh and why are you taking both guanfacine and propranolol? They both seem to cause a “body calm”, so it seems odd you’re prescribed both.

Sorry for the long response lol

I appreciate this post and I think it’s really something to be said. We wouldn’t be who we were without our experiences, both bad and good. If we didn’t have these, we would be boring automatons. Our experiences are important to know and remember and grow from.

First, I am not a believer that trauma and hardships make anyone stronger. I think people throwing out that phrase are just using some flowery shit in the futile hope to believe that trauma doesn’t permanently affect us in a negative way. Fact of the matter is that it does. But that’s what makes each of us unique and that’s ok. It’s ok that we are all different and it’s ok that we have struggles.

What has helped me in life when I’m in a hard spot is knowing that change always occurs. It’s an inevitability in life. Sometimes it’s a change for the better and sometimes it’s a change for the worse, but it will change. And remembering that it has the chance change into something good like it has before is what helps me stay here in dark times.

This isn’t helpful, but I have always found this phrase so funny for some reason.

Honestly this panel kind of confuses me.

So the person saw something…be it the perceived “answer” to their problems or something simply to be curious about.

But in seeking truth, they temporarily made their life significantly “worse” before it got to the same place as before they tried?

I don’t really understand. It seems like that means that you shouldn’t try to better yourself because it just makes things worse. Once they get better again, you will be back to where you started and not improved from the initial baseline.

What am I missing about this cartoon?

What?