Tag Archives: sadness

Taking A Vacation From The Insanity

Posted on by
1

I’ve been feeling more depressed and frustrated than usual the last few days.  I think it’s because I’m spending too much time on sites like Facebook, twitter, and youtube. I’ve decided I’m going to avoid most socializing for the next several days and see if I feel better then.  It saddens and angers me that I can’t even have a civil conversation with a friend without having to sort through angry posts and memes.  I really hope these people aren’t that mean and angry with people in real life.  I hope they aren’t but then again many people have messed up priorities.

I would love to know when my friends and my countrymen became so angry and divided.  And why do they feel like it’s a God given duty to spew that venom and hate for the whole world to see.  You don’t live in an echo chamber.  People who don’t agree with what you post see that stuff all the time.  We usually don’t comment or respond.  We certainly weren’t this divided in the months after 9/11.

I also don’t understand why my countrymen are so obsessed with politics.  People didn’t used to be nearly this obsessed, at least not that I can remember.  Believe it or not, there are other things going on in life than politics.  Politicians are not gods.  I will say that again, politicians are not gods.  Stop treating them as such.

I imagine my friends on Facebook get tired of me posting about science and technology.  I have only a handful of friends who post on science.  But almost all of them feel a duty to do posts complaining about politicians or complaining about  protesters or complaining about people who complain about protesters.  Protesting, if done properly, can lead to change.  Look at colonial America, Ghandi’s India, and the Civil Rights protests.  Too bad there weren’t more people protesting the actions of the governments early on in Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, etc.  I am especially disgusted with some states trying to pass laws for harsher penalties for protesters.  There wouldn’t be as many protests if the politicians were actually doing a good job.  You want to stop protests, listen to the people and quit doing stupid things.  Even Jesus protested the abuses and hypocrisy of the religious and political leaders of his time and place.

While I will be going underground and not socializing much for the next several days, I still will be doing research and writing blogs.  My critics aren’t getting rid of me that easy.  I just have to unplug from the insanity for a few days.  Most people need to unplug from the insanity for a few days and realize that someone who disagrees with them is not evil.

Christmas and Mental Health

Posted on by
Reply

santa

I was originally going to do only one article today.  But consider this my two for the price of one sale. Christmas and the other end of year holidays will be upon us soon.  I didn’t put up any decorations and skipped out on the apartment’s Christmas party.  I don’t even do any shopping besides grocery shopping this time of year.  All the lights, bell ringing, too loud music, and too over the top decorations really give me bad cases of sensory overload.  Sometimes I can get sensory overload even driving in rush hour traffic.  Just everything moving too fast, too many sites, and too many noises I suppose.  So you can imagine how bad Christmas can be for me.

I’ll probably go to my parents’ house for a couple days but I doubt I’ll do anything with the extended family.  Once again too much sensory overload and no means to tactfully excuse myself from such overload.  I’m looking forward to the end of the holidays and the end of 2016 in general.  I really haven’t watched that much football this year as it has lost much of it’s appeal for me.  I just no longer enjoy watching it.  I did watch playoff baseball but really haven’t watched any tv outside of netflix and youtube since the end of October.

I enjoy the colder weather.  I’m happy for the longer nights and the decreased expectation that I always have to be going somewhere and spending time with someone outside of my apartment.  I enjoy spending time in my apartment with my books, my internet, my music, and my computer games.  When I want to talk to friends and family I can always call them over the phone or chat online and not have to be embarrassed or shamed if I want to end the conversation in a hurry.  I really have no stomach for small talk or gossip.  I guess I never have.  Sometimes I am my own best company.  I guess I adapted too well to spending most of my life alone.  Anymore I prefer to be alone almost all the time.  I haven’t had a roommate in over twelve years and I don’t see ever having a roommate again.  Whoever invented the rules for human socializing never took mentally ill people into consideration.

Yet, I couldn’t be happier with my current living conditions, especially considering I have to fight a mental illness everyday.  I guess that’s why holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas cause me some sadness in that I’m expected to socialize and engage in small talk against my will.  I really don’t like going to Christmas parties, especially with people who I see in foul moods most of the year.  I don’t like listening to Christmas carols, those songs don’t articulate my memories of Christmas from childhood or my feelings right now.  I don’t like going to the mall and fighting crowds just so I can buy a couple items for myself.  I don’t like being told to be jolly or of good cheer.  I hated being told how to think as a kid and I hate being told how to think even more as an adult.  I’ll feel however I like and just not talk about how I feel or think.

I’ll enjoy the holidays regardless if I do it in traditional ways.  I can socialize, but I can do it for hours on end if I have some intelligent conversation.  If small talk comes up I’ll be ready to leave after twenty minutes.  It can be kind of tricky being mentally ill around the holidays.  It can take a few years to figure out what works and what doesn’t.  It certainly took me several years to figure out what to avoid and what to do to ensure a smooth holiday season.

Trying to Break the Cycle of Depression and Loneliness

Posted on by
1

I spent a couple days at my parents’ house in the middle of this week.  It’s the first time in weeks I left my hometown.  It was good to get to see my parents and a few extended family members.  My cousin is back from the coast with her baby.  I’m glad I got to see them.  It was good to finally get some good face to face interaction with other people.  I had almost forgotten what that was like.

I’m glad the election is over.  But I am saddened and disappointed that some people just won’t let it go.  We have people on the left protesting and we have some people on the right mocking the lefties for protesting.  Never mind that many of these said righties were buying extra guns and stockpiling ammo and watching ‘Doomsday Preppers’ reruns after the last two elections.  I saw some people mocking the fact (which is probably hearsay if anyone bothered to look it up) that some colleges are making mid term exams optional because of the election.  FYI: many colleges made final exams optional some semesters in the 1960s because of Vietnam War protests.  My father’s college was one of these said places.  So this is nothing new if it’s even a thing.  My God, you normals are acting insane about this election.  I have a mental illness.  What is your excuse?

Needless to say all of these tense emotions are making it more difficult for me to get back into socializing.  I want to connect with other people so bad I want to cry over it.  But most people are content to either moan or gloat over the election that it’s impossible to carry on any kind of conversation.  I am very angry that this is what my fellow humans have come to.  I can’t even relate to most people anymore.  It’s lonely.  And it looks like it’s going to be lonely for a long time.  I don’t understand you normal people.  And at this point I don’t want to anymore.  Quit arguing and fighting and acting stupid already.

Voting and Politics with Mental Illness

Posted on by
Reply

IndependenceDay2

I got out and voted this morning.  I didn’t have to fight a long line as I went in the middle of the morning.  I did the online registration earlier this year.  I found it intriguing that in some nations a person is automatically registered to vote when they get their driver’s license.  I saw that some countries have their major elections on the weekend or make the day a national holiday where everything is closed.  Regardless of the results I did my civic duty for now.

I have to admit this was the meanest and nastiest election I can ever remember.  I imagine there were parents explaining to their kids that this wasn’t a typical election cycle.  At least I hope it doesn’t become the new normal.  This has been a real stressful and unsettling election for me.  I have had to increase doses on all my medications just to deal with the anxiety and depression.  I hate how divisive and hateful this election was.  I have had to block friends and even stopped talking to friends and family over this.  I even quit talking to people I agree with.  Many normals were insane about this election.

Too many normal people have for the last eighteen months acted like the election is the only thing that is going on.  Seriously?  I just quit watching the news because that was all that was being reported.  One of the reasons I got to studying science and tech advances on science web pages was I wasn’t hearing about the state of science or technology on the regular news channels.  I also think that science and tech advances will benefit humanity far more than any elected politician.  It’s no comparison.  I think normal people are insane and out of touch with reality paying so much attention to the election.  Most politicians are lawyers and business people by trade, not scientists or engineers.  A politician doesn’t know how to build power plants. A politician can’t figure out how to grow more crops with less water and pesticides.  It wasn’t politicians who figured out how to build houses that won’t fall apart during earthquakes.  We are electing people to represent us, pass laws, and set budgets.  We are not electing Santa Claus who will make everything we desire come true with pixie dust and magic.  We really give politicians too much praise when things go right and too much blame when things go bad.  Too bad there wasn’t a Mt. Rushmore type monument dedicated to inventors, scientists, and humanitarians.  I’d visit a place like that.

In short I’m glad this election is going to be over soon.  Thank God.  I’ve seen enough nastiness to last me several election cycles.  I only hope that 2016 isn’t a preview of future elections.

 

Social Media Hiatus and Recovery

Posted on by
2

1964774_443177475822906_1840970712569486523_n

In an attempt to help speed up my recovery from my bouts of depression and hopelessness, I’ve decided to avoid all social media in addition to regular news casts.  I’m now two days into this and I notice a positive difference already.  I’m less stressed and less despondent even after a couple days of media blackout.  I just got so tired of hearing nothing but bad news that I decided to unplug and drop out for at least a few days.  I will still be posting blog entries to Facebook and twitter because my posts automatically post to these anyway.

One thing I have noticed is inspite my vacation from news and social media, my life still goes on.  All life still goes on in fact.  Some things I’m probably happier not knowing quite simply because there is nothing I can do about it.  While I may not be happy with any of my elected officials, it’s not like I get an extra vote for every time I post to Facebook concerning the elections.  The U.S. Constitution never said anything about uber informed people getting extra votes.  On election day, I’m just going in and casting my votes and that is going to be that.  I’ll live with whatever the results are.  And I’ll still pay more attention to science and technology endeavors than I do to politics or popular culture.  Unless the Kardashians figure out nuclear fusion or cure cancer, I couldn’t care less about them.

While I may be unplugging from social media, I’m still keeping informed on things like science.  I am finding out the lights are still on and there’s still food in my pantry regardless of what nonsense a political figure says or whatever some troll writes.  Some pundit says something about the election, so what?  Nations are rattling their sabres and talking about wars, will my worrying prevent war?  I can only control my own life, what I see online, and how I choose to react to it.  And that is all I need.  Sure I’ll miss my friends during my hiatus from social media, but it’s probably for the best for the next several days.

 

Trying To Pull Out of Depression

Posted on by
4

It’s been a rough last several days for me.  I’ve been feeling quite depressed and hopeless for much of the last two weeks.  I still don’t cook much as I’ve been eating mostly fast food for the last two weeks.  That’s probably part of my problem right there; I just don’t have the motivation and energy to cook lately.  I’ve been sleeping probably twelve hours a night for the last two weeks.  Anymore I have to force myself to get out of bed and get out of the apartment.

Paranoia has been a problem too.  I usually spend most of my days in my apartment doing internet searches or reading books because I’m scared of people anymore.  I am afraid of them and my paranoid voices tell me that most people are stupid and not worth dealing with.  The voices also tell me that people are violent animals who don’t know how to settle issues without violence.  And then I go on Facebook and see violent news stories in my news feeds and people’s posts advocating violence against anyone who doesn’t agree with them.  After months of a steady diet of negativity which I didn’t seek out, I’ve become despondent and hopeless.  There are times anymore I don’t have any hope for the future of the human race or myself.  Sometimes I can’t figure out how we as a species have made it this long.  I hope I’m just paranoid and reading too much into news stories and people’s comments.  I really hope it’s the paranoia that’s going full power and not the way people really are.

With not cooking for the last couple weeks, I really don’t have a healthy diet.  No doubt I’ve gained a bunch of weight in the last few weeks.  At this point I really don’t care if I ever do lose weight and get physically healthy.  Losing weight isn’t going to cure schizophrenia.  Losing weight isn’t going to get rid of my depression.  I have no desire to work or date again.  I’ve seen what messes both those arenas are and I want no more part of them.  I really don’t care if I ever get healthy.  I’m tired of fighting a losing battle.  I’m tired of always having to watch my back.  I’m tired of people being mean and angry all the time.

In an attempt to try to help myself recover from my current depression, I am going to attempt to avoid Facebook for the next several days.  I’ll still have my blogs posted there as I’m on an automatic post to Facebook set up.  It’s just depressing to see people snipe at each other and myself over the most trivial of matters.  I’m depressed with how messed up most people’s priorities are.  At least their posts indicate their priorities are out of wack.  I guess I never completely learned that who people are online is not always who they are in real life.  That’s another lesson I missed while in school that most people seem to have gotten.  I’m just going to lay low and try to avoid social media until I’m feeling better.

 

It Pays To Stay Silent Sometimes

Posted on by
4

1964774_443177475822906_1840970712569486523_n

I’ve been having problems with trolls on my personal accounts the last few days.  I don’t understand why complete strangers act as if it’s their God given responsibility to harass and torment people they don’t agree with.  It got especially bad last night when I was talking with an old friend of mine and I was getting trolled by one of her friends just because we didn’t agree on some things.  Can’t even have a conversation with a friend without being harassed it seems.

Anyway last night, mainly out of frustration and depression, I wrote an anger laced blog entry but fortunately thought better of posting it.  Once I got that depression out of my system I decided I wouldn’t post the entry.  I learned about this strategy years ago from an old Dale Carnegie book.  I was angry and hurt but posting that entry probably would have made things worse.  I got my words out of my system, spoke until I had peace, and then trashed the entry so I couldn’t post it.

With a mental illness feelings of anger, sadness, and anxiety are going to be stronger than the general population.  I have to remind myself of this on a daily basis.  Some things that other people may forget about after a few minutes I’ll agonize over sometimes for hours.  I have also been known to remember slights and hold grudges for years.  I’m sorry for this.  It is one of the curses of having a good mind and a mental illness at the same time.

In short, having feelings of frustration and depression is part of having a mental illness.  Sometimes a person needs to vent.  One of those ways is to write it down long handed and then trash the notes.  Another is through counseling where you vent to the counselor.  They are trained to deal with strong and unpleasant emotions, far more so than average people.  By writing down your feelings and fears or talking about them with a professional counselor is a safety valve way of expressing your feelings with as little damage as possible.  Harsh and unkind words cannot be unspoken and anything written on the internet is practically irreversible.

 

Being Alone With A Mental Illness

Posted on by
3

Image

It’s been months since I’ve had any kind of normal for any real length of time.  But I think I’m entering a phase of normal in what has been traditionally a tough time of year for me.  I am still diligent about what I eat and I still make an attempt to exercise daily.  I have started lifting arm weights a week ago.  I can feel my stamina from lifting weights begin to rebuild even after only a few sessions.  I feel pretty stable mentally for the most part.  And when I do feel flare ups coming on I make it a point to isolate and avoid people.  I would definitely hate to have a mental breakdown around someone who doesn’t understand mental illness.  In my apartment complex we had an individual who got belligerent with a fellow tenant and it got so seriously out of hand that the police became involved.  I have had my problems in the past and I still isolate and avoid people when I feel the mental illness coming on.  But fortunately the police have never needed to be involved with my problems.  Which is a good deal as I have an unhealthy paranoia about the police to begin with.  I just don’t trust them or any other authority figures.  I’ve had too many bad experiences and too much paranoia to trust anyone with any kind of power.  Makes life tough but I don’t any other kind of life being available to me.

I still don’t get out of the apartment complex much as I fear dealing with irritable and short tempered people.  We now have an overabundance of irritable and short tempered people living in my complex.  I have decided that I no longer want to deal with that kind of nonsense.  It’s no different than the kind of nonsense I dealt with in high school when I was dealing with my angsty peers who had a complete lack of empathy.  I don’t feel sorry for the people who live in my low income apartment.  Anyone who ever said there is virtue in poverty has never lived in HUD housing.  I face the same cross section of jerks and losers as every other social class.  The only difference is I can’t run away from these people.  No one knows how tough it is to be really smart but have a mental illness that prevents you from working.  It sucks.  I can’t even do the day rehab and group activities offered because most of it is at such a remedial level I feel like I’m back in grade school with those programs.  I can’t interact with normal people because of my mental illness and lack of a family.  And I can’t interact with mentally ill people because I am usually much smarter than most of the people the outreach programs for mentally ill people were designed for.  I am mentally ill but I am not stupid.  Stop treating me like I am stupid.  I would give anything to have someone I could interact with locally who had some kind of intelligence.  I am just tired of always having to discuss the weather  or politics because that is all most people can deal with.  I am tired of having no one to talk with.  I am tired of being always alone.  I am tired of being the only smart person I know.

 

Career, Family, and Mental Illness

Posted on by
Reply

I always wanted to have a great career in the medical science field.  I loved hearing stories about scientists like Einstein, Curie, Pasteur, Edison, etc. even as a small child.  One of the earliest books I remember reading was about Louis Pasteur and his ideas about germs.  I wanted to make good discoveries that would benefit people.  I wasn’t so concerned about becoming rich as long as I was making a positive difference.

As much thought as I put into my future career as a child I didn’t put much thought into marriage and family.  I figured I’d probably follow the same path my parents and grandparents did, meet someone a couple years after finishing high school and get married a few years later.  But I ran into problems with the beginnings of my mental illness while still in high school.  It was my best friend who suggested that I may have a serious mental illness rather than traditional teenage moodiness.  Turns out she was right even back then.

Since I was struggling to figure out the nuances of my mental illness and trying to keep my grades up in college, I swore off dating entirely the last three years I was in college.  I probably could have dated some but I thought I needed to devout all my time and energy to getting through college and my outside reading.  I also didn’t feel right about burdening a woman with my mental health problems while I was trying to figure them out for myself.

I have had flare ups on family members and close friends.  They were painful for me and no doubt painful to those who were catching the force of my breakdowns.  I would much prefer to have a mental illness that would allow me to break down and uncontrollably sob and weep.  But my illness, being what it is, doesn’t allow that.  I haven’t cried in over ten years about anything, not even at my grandparents’ funerals.  Unfortunately the way my mind is wired I have breakdowns where I’ll yell at and curse even those I care about the most.  And I refuse to put a girlfriend or wife through that.  I especially refuse to have a psychotic breakdown around children.  My brother has four kids, aged twelve, nine, seven, and five.  I haven’t had a breakdown around them and I avoid them when I am feeling shaky.  I have had to not attend Thanksgiving and Easter in years past because I was fearful of having a breakdown around my brother’s or cousins’ kids.  As it is I am the uncle who treats the kids essentially the same way I do adults and joke around with them.  I don’t want to ruin that.

I don’t have a wife or girlfriend or kids because of my mental illness.  It’s bad enough dealing with it on my own.  I refuse to take my problems out on anyone else if it can be avoided.  I know myself well enough that I know I would be a bad and unstable husband and father because of my schizophrenia.  That’s why I won’t marry or even date.

Dealing With Depression

Posted on by
3

It’s been a rough last several days for me.  Spent most of the weekend at home and dealing with bouts of intense depression.  Finally had a break down on Sunday night.  Got into serious arguments with two of my best friends.  Sent one of them a really nasty message over Facebook and another I yelled at over the phone and hung up before he could say anything.  Summers are traditionally a tough time for me.  And I think the bad seasonal aspects of my mental illness are beginning again.

It also doesn’t help that most people I know are in foul moods already.  A week’s worth of nothing but news of shootings and violence would put anyone who pays attention in a pessimist view point.  I have spent the last several months trying to get people to be happy about the good things that are going on in the world and in their own lives.  But I don’t think I’m making any difference.  If anything I think telling people the good news going on in science and technology advances and humanitarian endeavors only make people irritable.  I don’t get any encouragement for trying to encourage people.  That’s probably what led to my last meltdown.  I wish I could just shut up from trying to encourage people. But that is not my personality.  Never has been.  Seeking and sharing knowledge is what I do.  It has also gotten me in lots of trouble over the years.

The reason I spend so much time trying to tell people good news is because I heard nothing but bad news the entire time I was growing up.  My teachers told me that acid rain was going to kill all the forests and poison the oceans.  But that never materialized because as some adults were weeping and gnashing teeth over problems, other adults (namely scientists) were actually doing something to solve those problems.  We developed better pollution controls.  The ozone layer depletion was a big deal in the late 1980s.  We got rid of chemicals that were causing said depletion and now the hole in the ozone layer is starting to heal.

The problems that people project into the future too often assume that people aren’t going to adapt.  In the 1960s it was overpopulation and famines that would end civilization.  Now the birth rates in most developed countries are not even replacement rate. I also saw a report that said there are now 2.1 billion people in the world who are overweight.  That’s almost one out of three people who are eating too much. The United States isn’t even the most obese country in the world anymore (at least not by percentage). Then there were the concerns of nuclear war and communist scares.  The first movie I remember watching from start to finish was ‘Red Dawn’ as a five year old.  I was expecting the Russians to invade any day for weeks afterward.  The scare the whole world was going to go communist was at the forefront of my childhood in the 1980s.  Didn’t happen.  People are now worried about terrorist groups abusing their religion and that the world will be completely radicalized in term of religion.  If anything, as the internet continues to spread, people will become less dogmatic about religion.  It happened in Europe, North America, and is happening in East Asia.  I certainly became less dogmatic in my religious, political, and spiritual views since I got easy access to the internet.  And I am not the only one.  This is a trend that isn’t likely to reverse.  The internet is one of those game changers, like the printing press or gunpowder.  We still have only scratched the surface of what this easy access to information can do.  It is one of the reasons I stay optimistic even with schizophrenia.  In fact, except for the flare ups, I am hopeful overall.  It’s that one percent of the time that causes me probably ninety five percent of my problems.  And last night for a few hours was one of those times.  I’m sorry I took out my psychotic break on my friends.  I would prefer if I could just break down and sob uncontrollably.  But that’s not how I’m wired.  I lash out when I’m in pain, sadly at those that care about me the most.