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Strategy for managing my self-hatred:  Find one little useful thing I can cope with doing, no matter how small, and do it.  Then if I can, find another little useful thing and do it.  Then if I can, another.  Etc.  If at any time I start feeling like I can't cope with whatever I'm doing, STOP.  Find something else to do, or rest.  When possible, go see the river.

I wish I wasn't a black hole of neediness and dysfunction.

I guess after my wonderful experience skiing, feeling so good about myself, it's not that surprising that I would have a backlash of crushing self-hatred and feelings of inadequacy. It's not like that has never happened before! Just have to ride it out and not take it too seriously.

"Schroedingers jealousy", what a perfect metaphor.  I can't think of a specific instance right away, but thinking about it I am swamped with a sense of YES, THAT, it happened to me all the time!  Like how as a child I believed that it was the ultimate birthday celebration to go to a fancy restaurant and a Broadway play. 

NKI, it's probably good for me to think about it.  But yeah, today is a better day for an ice cream party!  I'll think about it again next year   

< OOTS ice cream party. 

It really does look like that, I've seen the photos :-)

   

Happy New Year to all!     

Gabor Mate, who writes a lot about addiction, says that it can be helpful to examine what the good things are about using whatever it may be. What does it provide? He points out that in the absence of physiological addictions via their mothers, babies are not born addicted. At some point somebody tries something and wham! It has an effect they want to repeat. He also posits that no substance on earth can be described as intrinsically addictive, because there are many people who can dabble even with stuff like heroin and not become addicted. Therefore, in working out why we reach for whatever, we need to think about what we like about it. It has to be doing something that feels good or reducing something that feels bad. Once we truly work out what service it is actually providing we can give better consideration to whether that can be addressed by something else.

I guess you maybe could think about what cannabis does that ice cream does not.

 

This is interesting and useful stuff, NK.  I'm thinking about how I have at times in my life smoked cigarettes but have never been addicted to the point where I wasn't able to just decide I wanted to put them down and then do it.  And I know that some people have terrible addiction problems with klonopin, but I've had a low-dose scrip for that for 30+ years and the only time I've taken it even once daily for more than a week was after 9/11.  I attribute this not so much to my good habits and self-discipline as to the fact that those substances just don't do anything majorly exciting for me.  Cigarettes were more of a social thing for me, and klonopin is useful but only in occasional small doses to supplement all the other mental and physical coping methods I've developed to manage my anxieties.  It's very effective in that capacity without too much downside, but it doesn't give me any enjoyable feelings in and of itself, and gets evil very quickly if I take too much or take it too often. 

My remark about ice cream was sort of a joke.  I do love ice cream, but I've never been "addicted" to it the way I am or have been addicted to cannabis.  Ice cream was a too-frequent binge event for me but not a daily preoccupation.  And ice cream never helped me function.  Cannabis does in a weird way help me function.  It's something of a stimulant for me.  It doesn't always feel GOOD, but it makes me feel like doing constructive things.  I figured out a couple of years ago that I easily default to a state of freeze these days, and cannabis can kind of prod me out of that.  It enables me to feel my body more clearly.  It also helps with the suicide voices.  Again, it doesn't necessarily make me feel GOOD if I'm feeling that kind of bad, but it sort of changes how the badness feels, turns it more outward than inward.

The big downside is that the positive effects don't always last that long and my tolerance builds quickly, which leads to overconsumption which increases negative effects.  The main negative effects are that it can make me irritable and more easily triggered into fight-or-flight, it unbalances my appetite and makes it very hard for me to not either overeat or undereat, and it messes with my sleep.  So, yeah, lots of upside when I'm using it mindfully and moderately, lots of downside when I'm in tired old compulsive unrewarding use patterns. 


Yeccch.  I HATE thinking about this!

I have a cannabis habit.  Have for years.  It's not particularly helpful nor particularly harmful at this point after years during which I was in an endless cycle of it being one and then the other, but wow am I sick of it, sick to death of it being a more-or-less daily preoccupation.  Always thinking about whether I'm going to use it, how much, what form (vape or edible), whether it's going to be good or if I'm going to end up wishing that I hadn't.  A lifetime of this crap.

My relationship with cannabis changed two years ago after the floods when I abstained from it completely for seven months.  Since that long break, I have been less dependent on it, more moderate in my use, more able to take days off, less stressed about the whole thing in general.  Sometimes it seems almost like a non-issue, something I don't need to waste my self-discipline and self-care resources worrying about.  It's such a huge improvement over how I was with it years ago when I needed it just to get out of bed.  I'm truly thankful for that, but still every time I reach for it I long for a mythical time when I will be able to not even think about it for days at a time, and if I indulge I will properly enjoy it.  Hey, I managed that with ice cream, why not this? 

I'm so overwhelmed by life. By feelings for which I have no outlet. I used to cry too easily and now I cannot cry at all. I think it would help if I could cry. Cry or scream or even vomit maybe. Something. Anything to release this feeling of being stuck, of being trapped, of being stuffed full of doubt and pain and discontent. Like a junk food binge without the junk food.

Optimism very much feels unsafe.  Optimism triggers impatience, which gives me the exact same bodily sensation as fear does, a sort of jolting twanging clench in my lower gut.  What a familiar feeling that is that clench, caused by all manner of things, but most problematically, caused by feelings of hope and positivity. 

NK, I have so many issues around food that it never occurred to me that there might be issues related to having sit-down meals with my family.  My mother was ragingly eating-disordered, had a terrible relationship with food and hated to cook, while my stepfather had previously been married to a gourmet, so I can well imagine that there was subterranean stress around dinners with my family when I was living with her.  I'm pretty sure that dinners with the family when I lived with my father and stepmother were better, but it's hard to remember.  I've always assumed that my problems with food stem from malnourishment as an infant, obesity as a teenager, and spending my early life observing my mother's aforementioned raging eating disorder, but there probably IS more to it than that.  What do you know, another set of mysteries to grapple with!

Feeling good feels unsafe.  I'm trying to rewire that.  Not much opportunity to work on that today, I'm afraid.  I didn't sleep well last night and today I'm low as can be.  That's probably a backlash from yesterday's conscious effort to nurture the positive feelings and stirrings of optimism that I experienced a few times in the past week, but I will not allow it to discourage me.  Even though it hurts.  Even though everything hurts. 

Thank you for the hugs and good wishes, friends.  Lately it feels like every day is a tough day, but I wanted to share that I felt good for a little while this morning after I worked out.  It didn't last for very long, but it was a distinct feeling of happiness and optimism.  I think it went away while I was eating breakfast, which makes me wonder whether a supplement I'm taking or something I'm eating for breakfast isn't agreeing with me.  I'll have to pay some attention to that going forward.  In any case, I want to make sure that I take notice when I have these clear moments of positive feeling so that I can hope for them with remembering that they do happen. 

 

Bach, my experience is that somatic work can very easily be triggering. And sometimes violently triggering... I've been working with vagus nerve and parasympathetic stimulation for two years now. For me it's working. Here's a good introduction if you're interested:
Pradip Jamnadas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irn3cFHmK-Y

Just a suggestion, ignore it you don't think it's a good idea for you.
 

Chart, thank you for sharing this video.  I've been doing vagus work for a while too and finding it helpful, and this video had some techniques in it that I was not familiar with.  I have a very limited attention span for videos, but this guy was pretty fun to listen to.  I'm going to check out his stuff about gut health because that's also something that I struggle with.

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After my success on Saturday night, I had a very good day yesterday.  I felt better than I have in ages, and was even able to acknowledge and appreciate that feeling without fear.  That was amazing.  I was hoping it would last for a while, but I had bad dreams last night and woke up this morning in my usual low state.  Disappointing.  Still, though, after a long period of no good feelings at all, yesterday showed me that it's still possible and gave me a touch of hope that I've been lacking.  I'll take it.

I'm in a flashback and I overstimulated myself with physical and somatic exercise because my body is so unbearable to be in right now.  I did those exercises sort of frantically because I had such a strong urge to try to "fix my mistake" (an interpersonal communication that I didn't handle well), which would 100% have made the situation worse.  The exercises did conquer that urge, but the flashback is still happening in my stomach and I have to just tolerate it for now because I must neither overpush the buttons nor automatically turn to a pill.

Life feels absolutely unbearable today. I feel worthless and miserable, an irredeemable screwup. I'm so tired of being me. Last night I went to sleep sincerely hoping that I would not wake up this morning. Though I knew I would, of course, and of course I did, too early and insufficiently rested.  It took me ages to get out of bed, but eventually I did.  Now I want to take mass quantities of klonopin and go back to bed, sleep for a week like I did after 9/11/01, but even if that was an option, it wouldn't be an answer, and even if it was an answer, it wouldn't be an option.  There's no escape from myself.

Have to stop whining and do some work.