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In an abstract sense I agree with you; what's important when bad things are happening is to do work in order to prevent the bad things from happening.
But as a practical matter, human emotions condition human behavior. When people are furious, they can be motivated to do very powerful things. When people are sad, that can sometimes happen too--although in other cases it can have a depressing effect where they fall into helpless despair. These negative emotions are very important.
If we try to treat emotions and behavior as two completely discrete things, it is easy to be confused. Imo we need to understand them as inseparable, and the more we understand this, the more we can use our understanding of our emotions to inform and improve how we act in the world.
I can say personally that negative emotions like anger have helped me, in many many ways, to work harder towards the kind of life that I want for myself and others. It has been a very good thing!
Hope everyone in this thread is doing okay!! Remember to ground yourself. If you see yourself spiraling or having a lot of anxiety or bad thoughts, remember to breath and focus on physical senses such as sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell!!
Refer to hotlines and local resources for help as well!!
this is a really sensitive topic for me that I haven’t felt super comfortable talking about but I seriously need to get this off my chest. A couple weeks ago, I lost my irl best friend to suicide. I still remember vividly, I was getting some work done and was told the bad news by his parents over the phone, and I cried probably for the next 2 days. That shit really hit me hard. He was doing fine, on the surface at least. He was always the charismatic one out of the two of us and even helped me get my gf of 2 years now because of his open demeanor and ability to crack you at of your shell. He never had any run ins with literally anything and was a genuinely amazing guy and I seriously have no clue why he took his own life.
I guess I feel… angry? Like he left me behind or something? He was my only friend pretty much since he was the connector — the one who brought everyone else together. After his passing, my grades started slipping, I quite sports all together (although to be fair had a nasty shoulder injury so I couldn’t do much anyways), and I just lock myself into my room and sleep or something. His death really took a toll on my mental health as well. I’m back in what I was in a couple of months ago. I’m not getting amazing sleep (again I never did anyways, I’ve always been an insomniac) and I’ve deeply considered taking my own life multiple times.
Aside from this, I tried talking to my parents but they weren’t much help + in my area it is pretty hard to schedule something with a therapist. On top of that, I kinda just feel scared to reach out. I know it sounds kinda stupid, but it really is something wrong. The only things keeping me alive are probably my dogs and this website + the friends I’ve made on here.
I won’t leak my friend’s name for privacy reasons but we all miss you man. Any advice to how I can get some help would be greatly appreciated, love yall
So, I need to ask a question. Am I the only one here that genuinely hates the holidays and the winter season and all that other stuff? I really did think this December was going to be one of the better ones in recent memory for me but the past two or three days everything’s just completely falling apart and I just wish it would all end. The holidays, I mean. I feel like I can blame a number of things. I was never the best about actually remembering to take my anxiety and depression medicine every day, but I also think my counseling, religion in general, an ongoing job search, and recurring family plans all play a factor as to why this is my least favorite time of the year by far. But yet, all I can do in good faith is blame myself for causing the majority of my own problems in some form. The past few years it’s been getting to the point where if I ever even consider having a family of my own, I’m starting to consider just never doing anything fun or “festive” (yeah, right) during December for at least the foreseeable future, and I’m getting especially close to abandoning religion and spirituality outright.
So, I need to ask a question. Am I the only one here that genuinely hates the holidays and the winter season and all that other stuff? I really did think this December was going to be one of the better ones in recent memory for me but the past two or three days everything’s just completely falling apart and I just wish it would all end. The holidays, I mean. I feel like I can blame a number of things. I was never the best about actually remembering to take my anxiety and depression medicine every day, but I also think my counseling, religion in general, an ongoing job search, and recurring family plans all play a factor as to why this is my least favorite time of the year by far. But yet, all I can do in good faith is blame myself for causing the majority of my own problems in some form. The past few years it’s been getting to the point where if I ever even consider having a family of my own, I’m starting to consider just never doing anything fun or “festive” (yeah, right) during December for at least the foreseeable future, and I’m getting especially close to abandoning religion and spirituality outright.
I don't think that I'm going through the same sorts of things that you are, but I'll second a general dislike for this time of year. For me, the holidays mean hectic plans during the time when I most want to relax, and I live in a place that gets battered by snow during the winter months, which inflames my anxiety about driving. I just tank it until January, when there are far fewer things going on and also the NFL playoffs.
I don't think that I'm going through the same sorts of things that you are, but I'll second a general dislike for this time of year. For me, the holidays mean hectic plans during the time when I most want to relax, and I live in a place that gets battered by snow during the winter months, which inflames my anxiety about driving. I just tank it until January, when there are far fewer things going on and also the NFL playoffs.
I won’t mention exactly where I’m from on the Internet, only that you’re likely not too, too far from me state-wise if you being a Detroit Lions fan is anything to go off of. For better or worse, apparently Christmas is supposed to be much warmer and wet… again… this year, and I think I can speak on both of our behalves when I say that we would much rather take things at our own pace.
By contrast to the winter, the summer months are usually the best time of the year for me and my mental wellness. I want to look into seeing if I might have some kind of seasonal depression, but regardless of if I ever got a diagnosis for something like that there’s still the religious/spiritual side of the holiday season that I go back and forth on constantly. Nonetheless, for the sake of this whole thread, really, I feel like we’re all in this together to a certain point. We all deal with our own inner demons, so to speak, but the best thing I can remind myself of is that we’re never truly alone.
this is a really sensitive topic for me that I haven’t felt super comfortable talking about but I seriously need to get this off my chest. A couple weeks ago, I lost my irl best friend to suicide. I still remember vividly, I was getting some work done and was told the bad news by his parents over the phone, and I cried probably for the next 2 days. That shit really hit me hard. He was doing fine, on the surface at least. He was always the charismatic one out of the two of us and even helped me get my gf of 2 years now because of his open demeanor and ability to crack you at of your shell. He never had any run ins with literally anything and was a genuinely amazing guy and I seriously have no clue why he took his own life.
I guess I feel… angry? Like he left me behind or something? He was my only friend pretty much since he was the connector — the one who brought everyone else together. After his passing, my grades started slipping, I quite sports all together (although to be fair had a nasty shoulder injury so I couldn’t do much anyways), and I just lock myself into my room and sleep or something. His death really took a toll on my mental health as well. I’m back in what I was in a couple of months ago. I’m not getting amazing sleep (again I never did anyways, I’ve always been an insomniac) and I’ve deeply considered taking my own life multiple times.
Aside from this, I tried talking to my parents but they weren’t much help + in my area it is pretty hard to schedule something with a therapist. On top of that, I kinda just feel scared to reach out. I know it sounds kinda stupid, but it really is something wrong. The only things keeping me alive are probably my dogs and this website + the friends I’ve made on here.
I won’t leak my friend’s name for privacy reasons but we all miss you man. Any advice to how I can get some help would be greatly appreciated, love yall
Hi Linux. We don't know each other but let me state the following: you have every right to feel equally angry and mournful toward your friend's loss. I sure would be angry and yet heartbroken too. You have my condolences.
Death is a complex thing, and the holidays are a very... amplifying factor. We tend to think of those we've lost, what we haven't done, for some people it brings out loneliness, etc. For when there are opportunities to bring joy, oftentimes sadness can rear its ugly head too. Your parents may not be very well-equipped to discuss this subject, either due to a lack of experience with it or due to it being uncomfortable for them, whatever have you. So while I'm just a random stranger on the internet, I'm going to give you a few minutes of my time to say something:
He would never want you to follow in his footsteps. I know that if you were truly friends then he would not want you to suffer. I'm sure he would be touched to know how much you care about him, and certainly, you should take your time to process what he means, meant, and will mean to you going forward. Because you WILL make it through this if you simply eliminate that as an option, and I certainly hope you do.
But because I deal in honesty, I have to clarify this right now: you will NEVER truly know what he was thinking. Ever. Nobody could tell that story but him, and unfortunately he chose not to tell it. Please know that whatever pain or anguish drove him to choose to leave this world is over now, BUT the cycle of pain must not continue with you or anyone he knew, even if everyone in his life is understandably going to be rocked by this tragic event. Maybe this sounds performative, but please forgive him, and yourself.
To end on a positive note, even in this tragedy, consider what a blessing it was for you to have had a friend that means so much to you that you could feel so strongly about his passing. Consider how he would feel knowing how much you cared for him. That is perhaps reason enough alone to keep on going.
And then live. Live because your friend would want you to experience whatever he felt he couldn't, but predominantly, live for you and the loved ones that still want and need you here. Live because there is an inevitable death for us all anyway, but when it comes for you because it's your time, have the courage to say that you lived a wonderful life and that you took the time to feel and experience all it had to offer you. You are not the first to feel this sort of pain, and I regret to say you won't be the last. But have the understanding that this is a part of the human experience, as absolutely soul-wrenching as it may be, and the grace to understand that it's a messy one.
I hope the mods will forgive me double posting as I feel that the message I wrote above deserves to be put separate from the one I'm about to write, just based off the tone of it all.
By contrast to the winter, the summer months are usually the best time of the year for me and my mental wellness. I want to look into seeing if I might have some kind of seasonal depression, but regardless of if I ever got a diagnosis for something like that there’s still the religious/spiritual side of the holiday season that I go back and forth on constantly. Nonetheless, for the sake of this whole thread, really, I feel like we’re all in this together to a certain point. We all deal with our own inner demons, so to speak, but the best thing I can remind myself of is that we’re never truly alone.
While seasonal depression is not uncommon, I've found that generally the summer gives you ample opportunity to take care of your physical and mental health(yes they are linked) with longer days, more sunlight, and generally more social activity. Winter can be cozy and all that like they advertise, but in comparison, the early pitch-black darkness, the cold(and occasionally snow/ice) limiting outdoor opportunities and such make it much easier to not only feel lazier, but also just less active overall.
I also think that there's an implicit "guilt" that comes with not feeling happy during times you "should." Some people deal with depression around their birthday and choose to keep it low-key or not even mention it. Others find the holidays hard for that same reason, whether they are deeply religious or not. I think it has to do with not meeting the expectations of others when it comes to big events, as if you have to "perform" to that standard even if you're not really feeling up to it.
If you feel that being tested for a diagnosis would help you, more power to you, but what I think is most important is to reverse engineer what helps you feel better about yourself during the summer and try to aggressively attack that in the wintertime. Do you feel lonelier during winter? Be more intentional about meeting up with other people, or try some new event out. Not physically active often? At least try to go outside, even for a walk. It may not be perfect, but even a small boost is better than nothing, right?
I got a lot more dependent on my parents as I got sick and get really bad panic attacks when I stay alone for extended periods of time. I needed to move back in to my parents in June after living by myself for around 2.5 years. It was alright for the first couple of months but my mother becomes increasingly aggressive and controlling as the days get shorter and she spends more time at home. She also gets much, much worse the older she gets. For context, she has MASSIVE issues with differentiating between herself and her children. She always takes our clothes without asking and when I moved out, I didn't have the opportunity to really live by myself. I gave her the keys to my apartment in case I ever lock myself out or something. But she took the keys to infiltrate my home and to "clean up", went through my stuff all the time and rearranged everything from time to time. She never understood how much it unnerved and angered me to come home to new furniture or for the place to look completely different than before, she always thought I was crazy for reacting this way. I also originally intended to cook and shop for myself, but she always brought food and shopping bags, despite me telling her over and over for the course of 2.5 years to not do. She always said I am not able to do that myself, despite the fact that I've been and only stopped because she always did that despite everything
She always had a lot of control on me through guilt and shame. Told me I was a worthless son because I never visited her (I visited her every other week, she wanted twice weekly), because I didn't go to every family trip with her, because I always followed my own head and always do things just to spite her. And she also ensured that I wouldn't take the keys from her by saying how only an asshole would do that
Ever since I came back, she would consistently read my documents, open my letters, ask me why I go to doctors so often despite being healthy (everyone recommended me to never tell my parents of my sickness, as they would only make things harder), asked me what I talk with my therapist and why I always talk shit about her during my therapy and why I go there when I only become more insane despite the therapy. I once came home and put my backpack by the entrance, she had a panic attack because she thought it meant something (I don't know what) and told me that she can't take my state anymore psychologically and that I need to tell her about everything in my life from now on. She did not let go of that for hours
She now really wants to go somewhere for New Year's Eve. I told her I don't want to go there on Monday. She had a panic attack, started crying, talked about every bad thing in her life, talked about how her life is a living hell, how she prays every night that she hopes she won't wake up, how she had to sacrifice everything for her children, how I need her because I can't stay alone and because of that she couldn't go anywhere all year and had to cancel several trips because of solely me (I did not know of any of this) and that she will either kill herself or kill me if I don't come with her. She also told my siblings that I promised that I'd come with them and they all took vacations. I spent the entire day today going through several panic attacks from my mother and though her constantly telling me how much of a worthless piece of shit, how much of a liar and a failure and a disappointment I am and how she regrets having ever set me into this world. That she hopes I would die soon so she can get some rest. This wasn't the first time she did this, she also did this when I was a small child. But she was never this aggressive and driven
I don't know anymore man. She always fed me and she supported me financially when I needed it, she took care of me when I was sick, she did a lot for me. But she's so instabile. I got her a psychiatrist appointment a few years ago when she threatened to kill me 4 years ago, she never went, she says she can't change and that we need to deal with her. She's also never, ever satisfied with me. She always complains and complains and complains no matter what I do, even when I do what she wants
I am so fucking tired. She knows how much of my life she ruined and she knows that I know and she's bitter about that. She says I always blame her and make her look like the worst in front of my therapist because she knows that this is just the truth. I have no idea how she will progress, shitty behavior just becomes worse with age on unreflected people from my experience. I need to get out of her home, panic attacks are genuinely preferable to this shit
About 6 years since I first posted in here. Those 6 years were a period of my life that I have been putting to rest, and I'm going to continue that wrapping up here. Honestly, writing this intro up, my first thought will be just, to try and summarize what happened. That will help my internal organization.
Trigger Warnings: Near-death experiences; brief mention of self-harm in an aside. There's one specific segment of body horror I hide in a nested spoiler.
I first came here to post about my depression. And I beat it. I still have depressive bouts, but these are ending skirmishes of a victorious strategy. That is something for celebration. But it has been a painful road. And also an unusual one.
A preface. An inextricable part of this road has been understanding myself, my priorities, and my world on my own terms. I struggled to find ways to describe these terms, so I created them. I call this description system, which is something like a conlang,
Ecalw. When this writing appears, now you know why it is there.
My depression came from me not finding sufficient meaning in my life, which itself came from me not understanding meaning; how to find it; how to create it. For this reason, this six-year period was
Layin Kayisteidaka, "The (Time) of Manipulating Meaning." The time where I learned how to do all that stuff, my way.
How did I do that? At the earliest stages, I knew certain things resonated with me, drawing out my care and preference. For example, certain ways of writing and vocalizing ideas, which you've seen already. Or certain pieces of media, like pieces of music. Or characters, which have long been key parts of my expression on this site. Or whatever. I knew 1) there was some kind of power in these connections, 2) that something inside my depressive self needed to change, and 3) that 1 and 2 probably related. There were things that affected me, and I needed to be affected, so it made sense.
I thought and I thought about what might explain and interrelate these powerful connections I had. I hunted and hunted for new material that might evidence new connections to me and to existing connections. In the peak of
keitoliya, "Capturing [Meaning]", I would find something I cared about it and just stare it at for a solid half-hour in pure meditation. There had to be some kind of pattern connecting and explaining these data points of connections.
I was right. I learned how to trace these invisible wires connecting these distinct nodes of resonation. In moving beyond specific nodes to connecting them together, in constructing the bigger period, I was able to increasingly abstract. Eventually, I traced them all to a single source: me. That may seem trivial, even tautological. Of course all the stuff I care about is united by being mine, and that my care comes from myself, and all that holds true for anyone.
But here is what changed. I realized that, by caring about things, I was expressing myself, expressing my will. I was generating meaning, what I was looking for. This process of generating meaning, once an unconscious background event, was now something I derived from first principles, something I was acutely aware of. A process pouring out my agency, and one subject to my agency.
I had solved a long problem for me: I needed change, but I did not want to be pushed by the world to change, an external force which struck me as tyrannical and destructive to myself. Now that I understood my force and control in generating meaning, I could construct new bottom-up relationships of meaning. These new relationships changed what was important to me, changed my priorities, and therefore changed myself. I could change myself:
Kaieia, "self-propelled transformation."
In taking control of my world of meaning, I took control of myself, and therefore took control of my life. Instead of floating around, I was directing. I graduated from a pre-adult to an adult. With my new understanding and my existing mental infrastructure, I developed more and more and never looked back, and that's where I am now.
This is cool, but my streamlining has omitted an important part of the story. Like for anyone, a strong incentive for me to care about things was avoiding pain and loss. In my numbed state, I needed accessible wells of caring. Pain and misery made accessible wells, especially after my learning improved and desired more material.
To continually experience meaning, to understand it, to be affected, I actively threw myself into personal misery after personal misery. I surgically sniped at and drilled into all my insecurities, weaknesses, and fears. Self-conducted mental surgery,
nalagastws silw, was in fact a frequent metaphor. To be clear, this was a strategic action to obtain benefits - it was not self-harm, despite being self-inflicted and in some ways harmful. Nevertheless, my active and eager pursuit of deep pain terrified me. Near the end of it all, I made a 1-5 "pain scale." 3 was the level of hearing myself screaming in pain inside my own head, and it was not uncommon. 4 felt like my bones were breaking. It was uncommon in a day-to-day sense but frequent enough to become relatively routine. Despite this pain, I was utterly undeterred, because I knew I was on the right track and I cared more about winning this goal over anything. This isn't bragging. That part of me was, while of immense long-term usefulness in that context, also a horrifying truth I learned about myself.
Beyond just the lows, it was just. So much work and time and effort. I was pursuing an intense professional path for much of these years, including the deepest parts of it, and juggling this process while also trying to excel there. It was like pursuing two intense professional paths at once. My determination gave me intense energy reserves, but I would also overwork myself from time to time.
This overwork reached one particular nadir. One day, my mental infrastructure just, shut off, instantly, at an arbitrary time, like the plane of myself had crashed and was burning. It felt like I was dying. All I could do was see in my head some austere representation of my essence, and an eerie purple pit in the earth, filled with some lurid pink and purple substance. I was sliding into the substance, and all I felt was, if I slid in, my essence would be obliterated forever. It took all my drained energy just to remain sufficiently, not fully, "above water." It was a demonic experience. Many times before I've processed pain through painful distortions of my cognitive self, a subset of me generally processing meaning through mental spacialized visualization, but this was utterly a new low that has not been equalled. Within the month, I had an "actual physical running for my life from a source of possible actual physical death," but that experience kinda bounced off me in part because I just went through that sort of conceptualized experience.
stabbed through the eye; my house burning down; being shot and killed; my metaphorical heart burning away;
Fiyan Albatateyllo "having my life energy stolen,"
Talhannaistakw "having been given to the adversary,"
Kankuwlemanteyw "going away with Lady Death," stabbed with needles; a baseball bat hitting my metaphorical heart and breaking it like glass; my spine replaced by a metal rod; blotted out by black flies;
Vessailentemw (i.e.) infested with worms;
Lepallantaitakamw (e.g.) fading into butterflies; burning in an electrical fire
Those six years were a time of immensely productive learning, but it was often sad and, though I didn't really process it that way at the time, lonely. I had a couple people I could trust and talk to, including an attempt at therapy, and I occasionally did, but it was really hard for me to solicit effective help. The big picture I present to you is something I have slowly cultivated and refined across 6 years, and not something I really understood for most of that time. I was trying to figure all this stuff out from the bottom - effectively understanding each individual link in the chain as it came was hard enough, let alone overcoming my fears about talking about it to someone else, let alone bringing it into a form they will understand, let alone connecting all that together to ask for whatever help I needed.
Some intertwining themes of my current phase, so far, are translating my knowledge to make my life happier, deepening my bonds and understanding of other people, and becoming more in tune with my emotional state and emotions - especially my happier ones. The current path remains hard, but more for professional reasons than intrinsic ones, and I'm happy for that, with a lot of hope for the future.
Hey guys and I hope you have a happy holidays / new year
January 2026 update here, I'm not sure if I'm ever going to use Discord or Reddit again. I like to think I removed both platforms from my life last year - Reddit in the spring and Discord around December. Now I'm happy I got to use the latter, but I still think it's a stop gap b/c I need better friends in real life.
Unfortunately I think that stuff like discussion on Smogon tiering actions, for example, lead a lot of people to believe that the metagame, competitive play, and the world in general revolves around them. I myself fall for this quite often, and it's not cool to win arguments on the internet if only to shift away attention from your real life issues.
I started reading In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust in November (about 30% completed) and Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan in December (completed book 0 The New Spring), I also want to read The Dark Tower once i finish / am tired of reading Proust. Despite using a rather difficult style of prose I still remember Swann's story about love and how "non-romantic" it was. Great read if you want to learn more about 19th century France.
2026 will be the most difficult year for me personally, but i'm looking to also make it offer a lot of great things to me. I'm gonna head back to the gym next Monday, and down the line join language exchange groups, host local events, and meet new people. I plan to continue playing mons in my leisure time and hopefully qualify for low tier suspect tests (zu venusaur pls)
