fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #6053 ]

[ SECRET POST #6053 ]

⌈ Secret Post #6053 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[Evan and Kaitlyn/Orphan Black]

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[Arknights; art by Gloomspiral]

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Notes:

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Anything goes. Change the subject to your question/topic and go.

For people who deal with depression (or other mental illness), what are your tricks for motivating yourself to get out of bed, go to work, live life when you are in a particularly bad period?

I give myself something to look forward to. Like, if I get out of bed and get to work, I'll buy my favorite food for lunch instead of the lunch I made at home. Or I'll ignore the chores and watch that movie I've been wanting to after work. etc etc. I'll also only listen to or watch things that I know or strongly suspect will make me laugh. Even if I'm too depressed to physically laugh at anything, my mood does lighten up. I make sure to keep to my sleep schedule, no matter how much I want to sleep immediately after work.

Sleep schedule is the hardest thing but the most helpful.

By personifying the depression and taking an actively hostile stance toward it.

It's a smug fucking asshole, and I'm not giving it the satisfaction of lying in bed. I'm going to do the thing just so I can I laugh in its face and tell it that it's lost.

nayrt - but oh I like that one.

This probably absolutely no help, but I just reached a state where I know deep in my depressed self that if I don't get up and do it nobody will, and things need to get done. It helps to have other living things depending on me: The dog needs to be walked. The plants need to be watered. But generally it's enough to just recite to myself "it will only be worse if you don't get up" type of stuff. Even if I'm just robotically going through the movements and not really there, at least I'm up and moving.

Work has never been a problem for me. I have a probably unhealthy work ethic (as in I never call out and work too much) but the upside is that it always wins the battle with the depression and anxiety.

I'm sorry you're struggling. I hope things get better.

Eventually I hit a point where I started saying "my partner deserves better." But it works for me because my partner is a very loving person so making one self better for their sake... it's not a burden.

DA - for years I did this, but substitute dog for partner. But now she's elderly and honestly doesn't need me to be up and about as much and I have definitely been back sliding on self care and healthy habits.

Re: Depression and motivation

(Anonymous) - 2023-08-03 02:09 (UTC) - Expand

Habit, and the knowledge that if I let myself call out every time I felt kinda depressed or sore or nauseous or whatever, I'd run through my sick leave and be out of a job. I have to be actively puking or have just stepped on a bee or have some kind of emergency to call out.

But on my days off sometimes I'll do the bare minimum of necessary life stuff (feed self and pets, do laundry, take out trash) and then just nap/eat junk food/watch comfort movies/read favorite books.

If I have the money, sometimes I'll preorder a book or order plants (I like to garden) that ship later, to give myself something to look forward to.

And I go for a rambling walk every evening unless I went for a hike or whatever during the day; it seems to help keep my anxiety below the "holy shit I'm doomed" level. It also counts as screen time since I read and poke around online on my phone, and if I'm lucky I get to pet a dog or cat or two.

It cuts into "get shit done" time, but if I went straight home post work or spent all day marinating in silly movies on my days off I'd spend way more time beating myself up for everything I didn't accomplish than actually doing anything productive. At least this way I get some exercise.

It helps that most of my depressive shit these days is hormonal so I tell myself "this happens every month and you cry and freak out and then it's over."

When I had/have horrible rl shit happening I just grit my teeth and try to remember I've already survived tons of misery so I can probably do it again.

The only trick that has worked for me is citalopram.

Read about this trick somewhere. I use app d-10 dice to start moving. So if I get 1-4 I can get on being in bed and browse internet. If I get 6-10 OH WE ARE ROLLING FROM THE BED. If 5 depends how bad everything actually is. When I start moving I start moving and it's manageable

I worked with/worshipped a war goddess when I was in the deeper parts of my depression the last few years and every time I got up to do something I likened it to going to war and taking back my body sovereignty. Worked every time.

I cut back on extra commitments. Work days I focus on work, commute, home chores, have space to be by myself and try to grapple with sleep.
Weekends, I know I will want at least 1 day to be free to not do anything. Just sleep, maybe eat, scroll my phone, maybe do a chore or something but I don't pressure myself.
Most weekends I allow 1 or 2 days where I make 1 or 2 social plans. Visit my parents for a couple hours, visit my siblings, meet up with a friend, call my best friend since he lives far away and catch up, if I'm not in a mood to socialize with family/friends I still make a plan to go grocery shopping or clothes shopping or visiting the park/library and just enjoy my time out. Sometimes I talk to strangers, most days I don't really. And I usually put a time limit on these social tasks, a minimum I know I can deal with and a max so that I don't overdue it and feel the burnout way after.

It really is a fine balancing act.
One time recently there was a 4 week period where a friend and I were feeling affected by our depression at separate moments so it was a lot of planning and canceling on each other.
It's nice to have an understanding friend and to be an understanding friend. Like, no, it's not that I don't want to see her, it's that the world is too much and I just want to be alone for a while. And then no, my friend isn't mad at me, she needs a break from the world and wants to be alone for a while.
It was lovely to catch up with her for a couple hours when we finally were able to hang out.

I think I might be somewhere on the autism spectrum. Also I definitely have depression. Anyway, what I do is make mindless routines. I get up, go to the bathroom, brush teeth, take meds, change, grab socks and put them in my pocket, kiss the husbeast while he sleeps, go to kitchen, put on socks and shoes, pack lunch, pour cereal, eat, fill waterbottle, get in car, drive same route, get to office, take a short walk, sign in, check email.

My brain is engaged while driving but everything else is basically reflex. I'd be more depressed if I stopped doing this stuff because then I wouldn't do anything at all.

Also, anti depressants changed my fucking life. Before I got on them every little thing made me want to quit.

How did I make this routine while in the absolute depths? Idk. I guess I just followed the path of least resistance to get from bed to the office.

The hard part was making myself do things I enjoy. Eating good food and not just boxed mac and cheese, reading, practicing hobbies, talking to people. I'd kind of build one on top of the other. I have to text my college buddy. But I have to have something interesting to say otherwise I'm just bothering him. So I have to read a book and learn something. And so on. It didn't work *well* but I'm still here and still trying.

Does anyone else go through moods or phases where they just...don't have words? My brain is still chugging along like normal, lots of narratives and random thoughts and feelings and general chaos as normal, but it's like there's a disconnect between my brain and mouth and I just either cannot make myself talk aloud or I can't make the chaos in my brain form into coherent streamlined thoughts to express. It's a toss up of just feeling like talking takes up too much effort, or feeling like I literally cannot talk.

Lately this has extended to written/typed words as well. I have all these thoughts and impulses of things to write but my body just...doesn't do it. I'm having a hard time putting this into words, so I'm hoping someone maybe experiences something similar and can understand what I'm trying to say.

When I'm really sleepy, yes. When I'm exhausted I just can't pull words.

Re: disconnect between brain and talking? idek

(Anonymous) - 2023-08-03 05:40 (UTC) - Expand

Depending on how severe this is and whether it's a long-term pattern, but you might find the search term 'selective mutism' helpful. IDK why diagnostic stuff called it something that makes it sound like people are making a choice about the thing when they very much aren't, but still. I guess because from the point of view of a clinician, the person isn't equally unable to talk in all situations, with everyone.

If I were you, I would skip all the stuff where specialists talk about trying to force underage patients to power through their mental illness and look for where people who have this problem are putting the condition in their own words. The fact that it often doesn't automatically translate into a writing block, along with a speaking block, though? Only sometimes? Pretty characteristic.

Sometimes, yes. In my case it's either fatigue or trauma, when it's not fatigue from trauma. Though it affects more my talking, but I admit sometimes I'm thinking too fast and I skip whole words while typing. But while talking it just feels like I run out of fucks or I overthink things and freeze, that is, when I'm not just way too tired to muster up something to say.

for me it doesn't have anything to do with being tired, it's just that if my mind is the signal and my mouth/hands to type is/are the receiver, the line between them has been cut. the signals are firing but they're simply not making it across the nerve gap.

another way i experience it with speech is that i "know" that hearing myself talk will push me over the edge into sensory overload and so my brain simply won't.

ayrt

(Anonymous) - 2023-08-03 23:22 (UTC) - Expand

I decided to read 'Normal People,' because...well, I'm not really sure. Even though it's kind of zeitgeisty, it's still not my usual kind of books (I mostly read genre fiction and non-fiction).

So, first, wow has it got a lot of sex in it! There aren't, like, full-on sex scenes of the type you see in romance or smutty fic, but it's a lot more descriptive than I'd expect modern, critically acclaimed lit to be.

Second, however, is that I keep thinking about one of the criticisms it got, which was that it glorified thinness and restrictive eating. I remember reading a review that pointed out how often the author describes the main female character's eating habits, and her too-slim body parts, and the reviewer was like, "is she trying to say that only ultra skinny people are beautiful?"

Well, here's the thing: Marianne's eating habits, and her too-slim frame, are very clearly portrayed in the novel as symptoms of her trauma and self-loathing. She neglects to eat when she's been mistreated; when she convinces herself that she deserves to be mistreated. I find myself baffled how someone could read it and think Marianne's disordered eating is presented as a good thing.

I don't really know where I'm going with this. It's just something that's been circling around in my head.

SA

I suppose I should also say I find it overall to be a very sad, wistful book, with some passages that are achingly real. I can see why it got so much praise, even if it does seem sort of pretentious of the author not to use quotation marks.

honestly i think it's a little sensitivity over how much depictions of thinness are persistent, and also...when i was a teenager there were a bunch of internet forums, like pro-ANA sites, which would recommend books like this because despite the portrayal being about the negative consequences of bad mental health, it would end up validating disordered eating for people in the thick of it because of the descriptiveness.

i think you're right though that that shouldn't stop literary depictions of that type of mentality, but descriptiveness is one of those things where i don't think there's a consensus on the balance between depiction and glorification, because it will be validating for people who already have a warped perspective.

Going to be a rant.
So. I am a designer. I had a brief at the start of the week for t-shirt design. I asked client how eleborate this design is going to be since I am going on a vacation and I have several projects already with them (not counting other commitments). They: no, not at all. Just a nice stock photo and a logo.
So today I've got feedback. They want "tucan wearing headphones drinking from a fruit through a straw made from dancing worm". Photorealistic. Also I've got like a day to do it.
You know what. At this point fuck my job, AI can fucking take it.

Feel free to bitch about your work here too.

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[ SECRET POST #6053 ]

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Questions

Depression and motivation

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disconnect between brain and talking? idek

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ayrt

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Work venting