Personal Woes and Advice 4

[dehro]

My mother and I just had a heated discussion about, in short, that she felt shackled to me and didn't want to spend so many more years (two and a half roughly) living with me and feeling taken for granted. This seems to be mostly brought about by my parents' separation a few years back, and my father's subsequent move to Thailand where he is significantly less shackled.
How do I help the situation?

Verify if you are doing enough around the house or in general enough of those things that she considers a burden, specifically if they are done mainly in your favour. (Doing your own laundry? Doing chores so that occasionally she can just put her feet up when she comes home from work?
Be more interacting with her as opposed to not being around much or just holing up in your room? Take a little job that gives you some spare money that you won't depend on her for any longer? Be generally more vocal about appreciating what she does for you and showing more appreciation by acts and words...
Talk to her to determine if she is being reasonable in her expectations from you or isn't maybe projecting her resentment towards your father on you. Do this without animosity and in the spirit of collaboration. Try to find out if the source of her frustration is at all to do with you and not rather work related or due to the fact that providing for you two is robbing her of a social life or other outputs for her personal interests or personality.
These are all generic things, being more considerate being maybe the easiest and more immediately rewarding.
To give more specific advice would require knowing a lot more about you and your situation

[Iethloc]

It sounds like you're doing exactly the right thing, I hope you made your appointments with no issues.

I had my appointments a few days ago, now. I had a late birthday breakfast with my counselor and peer support specialist. We didn't end up having any time for actual counseling, but I still had a good time (and a very good breakfast!), and that still helps. I'll be seeing my counselor again soon to talk about how depressed I've been.

I did specifically talk with my prescriber about the disorganized thinking, but it turns out there's not much more I can do on the medication front.

Until my next appointment, I'll just have to keep carrying on.

[Asmodean_]

I need someone to talk to about something not spectacularly forum friendly. Send me a PM if you're ok at dealing with religion.

[Icewraith]

My mother and I just had a heated discussion about, in short, that she felt shackled to me and didn't want to spend so many more years (two and a half roughly) living with me and feeling taken for granted. This seems to be mostly brought about by my parents' separation a few years back, and my father's subsequent move to Thailand where he is significantly less shackled.
How do I help the situation?

Her feeling taken for granted makes more sense if you're actually living with her instead of vice versa. Whose place are you living in?

[Jon_Dahl]

I've been a bit down lately.

The students of a lecture course on British literature (Romantics to Modernist) had this Facebook group chat. A couple of days before the final exam the discussion started to heat up, which was only natural. I had prepared all my notes, summaries of my notes, found some supplementary stuff from the Internet that could be useful, made analysis of the possible exam questions and essay topics and spoken with students who already taken the exam and compared their opinions with what the lecturer had said. I was surprised, however, how much wailing and self-pity there was in our group chat. People said nothing worthwhile. I thought it was all a joke and asked people if they were joking, but then some of the students started joking for real. At that point I was asked to stop, but I didn't know what I had done wrong. I was trying to get some discussion going on that could be useful in the exam, but there was nothing but crying, joking and snapping.

Later on someone made a question that seemed like a very tentative attempt on good discussion. I jumped at the opportunity. But then one of the students asked me very rudely to share my conclusions and predictions. I was stunned. So there was no cooperation, no attempt to discuss about the exam, just a rude attempt to make me share all my hard work. I quit the group chat at that point.

What is wrong with people? I have to say that I feel pretty sad right now. I only have one classmate who studies like I do, but he wasn't in the group chat. He doesn't even have a Facebook account. Maybe I shouldn't have either.

[Ossian77]

Take this like a filter opportunity. Cool people in life, like minded individuals who share your drive and passion are hard to come by, even where you would expect to find lots.
Episodes like the one you described are a perfect chance to zero in on people you want to stay connected with, and let the rest of the mass become white-noise.

A trivial comparison. I love fitness. I would kill for a training partner who, like me, reads about nutrition, proper form, synergies with different sports, rest and recovery, but also the more mental and "zen" aspect of pursuing a wholesome mind in a wholesome body.

I go to the gym. There, everyone is lifting weights. In fact, I have gone to easily 12 different clubs as a member in the last decade. 99% of the people there are doing one of these things before they put any efforts into the training.

Chatting
Laughing
Texting/IMing
Calling on the phone
Sitting on the machines and reading a magazine
etc....

[Nai_Calus]

I haven't been able to actually connect with and enjoy RPGs ever since an incident at Gen Con in 2013(That I don't want to talk about, some of the people vaguely connected to it used to post on this forum and still might). I miss it but I don't know how to find the guts and motivation to get back into it. I've since just kind of lost contact with pretty much everyone related to the entire hobby and everything I used to do that mostly involved people from it. Used to be a heavy twitter user, post maybe five times a year now etc. I try every so often to do something vaguely related to it, was in a game online once that I got invited to but it died and I just haven't managed to work up the nerve to look.

Dunno what to do.

[OPG]

This is an odd request imo, but does anyone know of a good way (barring that, the best possible way) to ask someone if they actually like you/aren't bothered when you talk to them?

[OPG]

Dunno what to do.

What made you really like the hobby, or what are some common denominators among your favorite memories during it?

[Grytorm]

I just really want to find some way to die right now. Nothing else to add to that really, except maybe if I was to pursue this seriously I should start by severing various connections so I can be even more alone.

[TechnOkami]

I just really want to find some way to die right now. Nothing else to add to that really, except maybe if I was to pursue this seriously I should start by severing various connections so I can be even more alone.

I hope you haven't gone through with it, and I hope you never will. We're always here to reach out to if you need someone to talk with, and there's always resources available if you need it more immediately.

Stay safe, please.

[Grytorm]

I hope you haven't gone through with it, and I hope you never will. We're always here to reach out to if you need someone to talk with, and there's always resources available if you need it more immediately.

Stay safe, please.

No I haven't. I feel not as bad now as I was yesterday. Sadly I don't think there is much to talk about

[TechnOkami]

No I haven't. I feel not as bad now as I was yesterday. Sadly I don't think there is much to talk about

You know, as long as you're alright, that's ok.

:thumb:

[FinnLassie]

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I'm hungry.

I don't want to eat.

I can't eat.

I'm not worthy of eating.

Eating is disgusting.

I can't eat.

I just want to throw up and starve.

But I have to eat.

[TechnOkami]

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I'm hungry.

I don't want to eat.

I can't eat.

I'm not worthy of eating.

Eating is disgusting.

I can't eat.

I just want to throw up and starve.

But I have to eat.

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Try drinking broth.

Broth is liquid, and you'd be drinking it, not eating it.

[FinnLassie]

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Try drinking broth.

Broth is liquid, and you'd be drinking it, not eating it.

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It's... still something that fills me and has a texture. It's disgusting. I'm trying to down some soup soon though but I'm not really too keen...

[sktarq]

Step one-Option one: drink a smoothie. And drink it strait in and down. Don't let it sit in your mouth.
Step one-Option two: eat water crackers or something similar. tasteless and mostly dissolve in your mouth
Step one-Option three: suck on/gnaw on a piece of jerky-just hold it in your mouth and use it to burn off nervous energy-see how long it lasts.
Step one option four: - quick pops - something small and quick like a bowl of nuts that popping one is quick and you don't have time to think about it.
figure out which one you are most comfortable with or switch up as you can.

Step two. If this has been going on more than three days (it is not part of an acute anxiety event for example) or when it hits that point - get help.
Set an ASAP appointment to talk to someone about it. Medical professional preferably. If i remember correctly you are in in university and they should specialists in just this kind of thing. Know in advance that appetite stimulants, anti nausea drugs, and concentrates are used for serious cases but these are for support they are not a cure. The cure is going to be from within your head, intellectually and emotionally. If you have a regular therapist use them ASAP - not being able to eat is the kind of event that should get you a priority appointment.

With your history with your family I'd talk to professional help before talking to them, don't feel like you have to talk to mom or grandma about this.

If you do this and are still having issues PM me.

Best of luck

[dehro]

Nutella by the spoonful...not sure that counts as eating if you don't want it to
But yeah, seriously...I'd talk to someone who can give you professional advice

[FinnLassie]

I know where to go, I know what to do. I just needed to vent.

[sktarq]

Great. Vent then go.
But go.
Knowing is the first step but you have to go through with it.
I'm not a fan of most of the treatment world but you need to deal with this stuff. If you are just back from scotland and it's been a day, whatever no big deal. By day three you need help.

Good beans. Eat some or use that knowledge to go get a boost.

[OPG]

The biggest piece of advice I can offer is to expect people you meet to be interesting/good people, and then focus on the aspects of those people that you appreciate about them. This will put you in a positive frame of mind, which others will pick up on and appreciate themselves.

The other advice I can give is just "Don't worry about it."

[TechnOkami]

Making friends can be an ornery thing.

Sometimes you just click with people and sometimes you don't.

Sometimes you know people under poor circumstances and then get to know them better and find out they're decent people.

Sometimes as you get to know a person, you start to like them more or less over time.

Sh!t's complicated yo.

[Eldariel]

I really don't know how people seem to just effortlessly connect with others and find friendships and relationships. My attempts just feel like getting kicked in the ****ing head over and over while somebody laughs in my face.

It can be hard. From the people around me, there are some who are extremely slow to connect and only build relationships with a select few. Then there are some who are extremely quick to connect and build tons of relationships on the fly. You certainly strike me as the type to build few, strong relationships and that requires you to find people who share many of your interests and have a similar mentality - that or people who complement you. There's nothing wrong with either type but generally people only have the emotional energy to really invest in few people - thus there's no real benefit to having an extensive network since either way your emotional investment lies with the few people closest to you.

You probably haven't found the right types of people with whom you'd connect. Given the type, it can be difficult to get through the surface. One good way is to find hobbies and groups that tie people doing that thing together; it tends to be easier with people with whom you share something. Of course, just initiating a casual chat with people in neutral circumstances can work out sometimes - but I wouldn't hold my breath. There are no rules for what works and what doesn't. In general though, common interests = good. Similar personality types = good.


Now, if we're talking about romantic relationships, it's of course even more complex. All my relationships have more or less been kinda bumbling into a relationship almost by accident. Certainly there has been interest on both sides but it's usually just that we just enjoy spending time together and suddenly notice that we'd like to be more than friends. The latest one was literally me getting to know a girl through dance, us both enjoying each others' company tremendously but being convinced that we are just dance friends and then one evening our physical gestures just got a lot more intense and when we went to sit down it finally dawned upon us that we had fallen for one another. I wouldn't recommend trying it this way if you actually want a relationship since these are one in a million, but there's a huge breadth of how things might come about.

[Eldariel]

I don't know, it's kind of odd. I feel a lot of the time like I can't seem to distinguish what's real and what isn't with regards to myself and how I relate to people. I can't tell if the indications I'm seeing that I'm trying to connect with somebody who isn't interested in reciprocating are real or imagined, and I definitely can't tell if I just have crappy self-esteem or if I'm simply very aware of my own shortcomings. And I can't tell if my difficulty making friends and developing lasting relationship owes to the aforementioned two issues or if it's mostly because I'm just not a very appealing person.

Psychologist mode for a second here. Your self-esteem and personal portrayal is everything in forming relationships. People with some self-esteem are magnetic. Those who radiate self-confidence without stooping over to arrogance are people others find incredibly alluring, and even faked self-confidence where none currently exists serves better than self-deprecation. Plus faked self-confidence can actually become real over time - you'll begin believing it yourself.

Note, you're a wonderful person with a lot of good things to go about you. That's something worth remembering. Focus on your strengths, not your weaknesses. Being aware of your own shortcomings isn't the same as dwelling in them or keeping them as your exterior. There's nothing wrong with being aware of them - it's certainly beneficial. But don't give them out as first impressions. A first impression is a lasting one. That will take a lot of punching through for anyone to reach you - and it'll be a miracle if you find someone willing to go through the trouble.

I've tried connecting on a basis of shared interests too, in at least one major case lately, generally to no greater avail.

I guess it owes at least in part to the fact that to an extent a lot of people at this point in their lives have a fairly set circle of friends and they're not really looking for more. But I don't really retain friends and until recently tended to actively detach from them after a period of time, so consequently I don't have that kind of network in place. Now I'm trying to play catch up and shake those old habits, but I don't know, it feels kind of too late. Not only are most people fairly entrenched in their own established circles, I think maybe I've kind of 'forgotten' how to really connect to other people.

That's true, at least on the surface. However, most of those relationships are only skin-deep; they may appear to be friends but in reality many of them are little more than acquaintances who happen to spend some time together. You'll have to find the people with whom you have mutual interests - generally there's room for one more particularly if you find something to connect over. It's essentially an effort-gain situation; if what you give them is worth enough the effort to make room for you in their lives, they will.

But there are also lots of people without that many active friends - they might just be harder to reach and get in touch with since they're also not really putting themselves out there. To that end, things like clubs and meet-ups can be very valuable.

Also, if you notice yourself having tendencies to detach from friends, it may be worth it to try and reinvigorate some old relationships you've found fulfilling. There's little to lose there and most people you didn't have a fiery breakdown with are still positively disposed towards you even if the relationship hasn't been maintained for a long time.

[Lycunadari]

How do you convince someone to try therapy who refuses to see that they have problems?

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For the last couple years my mum has always felt stressed, tired and struggled to get things done. While some of the stress is very understandable (my grandfather - her father - was very ill for several years and died this summer, and while my grandparents don't live with my parents, my mum still had to do a lot for them, and in the last months before my grandfather died she spent almost as much time there as at home), most of the things should not be as hard for her as they are. She's a housewife, and my father earns enough so they don't really have any money problems. My dad also does his share of household chores, and while I definitely don't want to trivialize how much work the rest of the house work is, it shouldn't be more than she can handle - especially considering that it's less work now that me and my siblings are all adults (my sister lives with my parents, but she also helps around the house). But she's always tired and has to rest after she did something. She sets herself goals (start losing weight, finish the bathroom that's still under construction after 17 years, do this or that in the garden etc) but she rarely meets any of them, and always postpones them (after christmas! for dad's birthday! when the new semester starts!). When someone tries to gently remind her of them, she gets upset. She's generally very sensitive to criticism, and very stubborn. She rarely sees when she is wrong. Also, even positive things, like birthday parties or planned vacations feel stressful to her. Sometimes she says she needs a few weeks just for herself without any responsibilities, but I doubt that would actually help.

Naturally, this is taking a toll on our family. My dad rarely says anything, but I know he's not happy with the situation, and occasionally my parents will fight because of things like the unfinished bathroom. I'm sort of the "universal listener" in my family - when my mum is unhappy about something my dad said or did, she'll tell me, the same with my dad about things my mum did. That's always been the case, but the last couple of years it has gotten worse and I have a hard time trying to be supportive of both of them and trying to mediate. It's not a good position to be in as a child.

I don't want to be an armchair psychologist, but I recognize a lot of my own problems in my mum, and I have clinical depression, am in therapy and on meds. So I know how hard things can be, how it feels to always be tired, and I know how much therapy can help. I've tried talking about it with my mum before, but she brushed me off, saying she doesn't really have a problem* and what use would therapy be to her? I don't witness that much of the problems at home, because I'm not living with my parents, but my sister does and she said she's close to sending them to couple counselling. But that would cause even more drama, so we should give mum another "chance" to get better herself before that is really needed. But she can't do it alone, and I doubt anyone in our family can give her the help she needs, she needs professional help. I just don't know how to get her to accept it.

*The closes she got to admitting that she does have a problem was when I had a mental breakdown and fought with her over the phone, because she absolutely doesn't understand that telling your mentally ill kid to just "pull yourself together" is not helpful. Somewhere in there she said something along the lines of "I can't always support you with everything, I have problems on my own!". But at that time I obviously didn't think to use that as an opportunity to tell her to get help for these problems.

[Griffincat]

12 days ago, my only remaining friend from middle and high school died at 37.

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Horribly, of multiorgan failure brought on by 24 years of un and under treated diabetes. His body could no longer tolerate dialysis. He found a way to commit suicide in a socially acceptable way because he refused treatment for his kidney problems; he told me this when he knew he was terminal. He had been suffering from untreated depression for as long as he was diabetic.

I hadn't realized until after his passing that he was really my only link to a good ten year chunk of my childhood. I couldn't go to the services, and I wouldn't have been welcomed there even if I was able to get to them.

[sktarq]

How do you convince someone to try therapy who refuses to see that they have problems?

Short version is is to point out things you've said to us.
But it is not likely to help.
For some people help is not something they want. And you can't change that. You can try to convince people that things they want more than the not wanting help.

And if you manage to push someone into help then it prolly won't work anyway. It is hard enough to make it work when you do want it to.

[Lissou]

12 days ago, my only remaining friend from middle and high school died at 37.

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Horribly, of multiorgan failure brought on by 24 years of un and under treated diabetes. His body could no longer tolerate dialysis. He found a way to commit suicide in a socially acceptable way because he refused treatment for his kidney problems; he told me this when he knew he was terminal. He had been suffering from untreated depression for as long as he was diabetic.

I hadn't realized until after his passing that he was really my only link to a good ten year chunk of my childhood. I couldn't go to the services, and I wouldn't have been welcomed there even if I was able to get to them.

That sucks :S Why wouldn't you have been welcome? I'm sorry for your loss.

[Griffincat]

That sucks :S Why wouldn't you have been welcome? I'm sorry for your loss.

Put delicately, there would have been (and were) a lot of his former lovers at my friend's services, and they all labor under the mistaken impression that I am one of their number.

Also, my friend's father was there and we might have come to blows. He did nothing to help him with his illnesses, married a woman who pretended he had no children after he was widowed by my friend's mother and went along with the pretense, and spent nearly no time with him during his final, month long hospitalization when he was too sick for hospice at home.

My friend and I had a long, yet often complicated, relationship. In many ways, we knew each other better than anyone else ever did.

[Florian]

Today, one of my cats died.

That does not seem to be a very personal woe, but that tomcat was my very own "Little Bear" and I loved his creativity to try and kill me, I´ver got the scars to prove his worth, besides him longing for my affection and sitting on my lap, purring loudly, to show his affection.

"Little Bear", I found you sick and dying in a gutter, took you in and pampered you way beyond what the doctors gave me as your life expandacy, the both of us got half a century out of the two years the doctors have given us.

My "Little Bear", you died of terminal cancer on the route to the animal doctor, sitting on my lap, looking into my face, your eyes breaking.

My dad died while we had an estranged phase and you were there, my "Little Bear". My mum is dying a slow death and you were there, you small furry monster.

Normaly, I don´t cry. For you, "Little Bear", I do.