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Lifestyle The Mental Wellness Thread

Late january 2026 update

i've deleted all online-based mental health support groups from my life, including HealthyGamerGG, Reddit, and all Discord groups not related to Smogon.

Smogon is without any doubt the final online community I will take part in. Anything else will be in real life - I'm currently learning German and I spoke in public in German last week, i want to learn theater, do a professional reconversion, and possibly add another language like Spanish.
If/when I quit competitive Pokemon, I won't sign up on other forums, engage in conversations, and so on. It's just no longer safe for me, and if I need to find out info from a forum or something, I will lurk instead.

I have been left behind, and until last year (honestly, around the same time I came back to Smogon), I've been an incel in denial. Maybe that's when I went to a pragmatic mindset and eased on the "I give up" mentality. Of course I continue to go through negative mind spiraling and I could do better financially wise, but I cannot afford to expose myself to negative communities anymore, it's not good for my mental health.

And I also found some rl people i could actually relate to, so we can go from there. I knew them for quite a bit, but last week I had pretty profound discussions and i figured out that if others can live life so can i.

edit feb 11th: yea i'm not feeling well anymore. because i cut off the internet, i can't talk to ppl anymore and open up there. i'm now pretty much alone, by myself - before this, i had some illusion of understanding and online friendships, but i've made the decision to pretty much wipe out all places of mental support, because i'm a puer aeternus that needs something completely different rather than just surviving.
these are the consequences - mental health issues, mind spiraling, headaches, and worries for the future. They appear especially during evenings when I'm by myself, so basically when I'm at work more or less and doing evening shifts.
now I'm like Roman Reigns at WrestleMania 41, with his ula fala and no one else by his side.
 
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i am coming out on the other side of a lengthy tumultuous period. my mother took her own life when i was two years old, and my father was an abusive alcoholic. i have no siblings. i did not understand the depths of my trauma for most of my life, as i had been conditioned by my father to accept life as it was and to not expect things to ever get better. as i do not remember my mother i had become convinced that there was simply an absence in my life, not genuine tragedy and loss. this led to crippling self-loathing for my numerous failures to acclimate to the world around me. why was everything so difficult? it must be a problem with me.

my father passed away when i was in my twenties, almost exactly a decade ago. i was working as a stylist in tokyo at the time, but was able to return to my home country in time to watch him die. this engendered a confusing mix of emotions: relief, guilt, sadness. he was the only thing i had in this world other than my own self, and when i lost him i was left untethered and deracinated. his passing afforded me some theretofore unseen financial freedom, and suddenly i could do almost anything. there is a scene in an early simpsons episode where a colony of ants is kept on a space shuttle, and when the glass breaks one of the ants says 'freedom! horrible, horrible freedom.' this was my perspective.

i went back to tokyo and tried to persevere, but nothing felt right. i was no longer accountable to anyone, so i just played path of exile and shirked my responsibilities and my nascent career. the world had always terrified me, hence my running away to japan to avoid having to become an actual adult, and i saw no real reason to engage with it beyond the bare minimum. eventually i had to return to my home country to handle something with my father's estate, and then covid happened. i was adrift, and so i turned to cannabis. this, as you can imagine, was a mistake. it was my first experience with the drug, and my copious consumption of it triggered a psychotic break and my first ever manic episode. i am not able ot articulate the depth of feeling that that this experience triggered; i did not realize that i had been depressed my whole life, and this manic episode was my first experience with happiness. it was like thirty years of unfelt joy bursting from my being. everything felt real for the first time. my delusions quickly escalated, and by the end of it i was convinced that i was an alien bodhisattva sending myself messages through time.

thankfully i never tested my limits while manic, as many tend to do. over the course of my recovery i have met multiple people in wheelchairs who jumped off balconies and bridges while convinced that they were immortal. the manic episode lasted about three months, and it was quite thrilling. of course, i eventually learned that the crash is always commensurate with the rise. when i crashed, it felt like the end of the world. i was in and out of the hospital, pleading with the staff to protect me from my suicidal ideations, which were ramping considerably. they eventually diagnosed me with schizoaffective (schizophrenia with bipolar) and threw me in a group home. for the next few years i basically did not exist.

eventually, i had a chance encounter with a former friend from high school. she took one look at my situation and told me that i did not deserve to be there. something in her kindness triggered a sort of self-love that had been missing from my life, and i decided to try to make some changes. i entered into the schizophrenia recovery program at the mental health hospital in my city, sorted my shit out, and eventually got my own apartment. i am now a peer support worker, helping other crazies along their often arduous journeys.

i have two pieces of advice for anyone struggling:

1. you cannot get out of this by self-medicating
2. you cannot get out of this alone

i understand that i am luckier than most in terms of the friends i have been able to make. if you are less fortunate, you are going to have to rely on the system to an extent. you are also going to have to find a community of like-minded people, in person if possible, but online groups can help a lot as well. if you are in this thread, then your brain is your worst enemy. do not believe everything you think. you are probably not as alone as you think you are, and if you actually are, then you simply must try to effect changes in your social environment. i spent most of my life completely alone, thinking that because it was safe that it was also healthy. you must understand that 'comfort zone' vs 'danger zone' is a false dichotomy. between the two exists the 'growth zone,' and you must endeavour to spend as much of your time there as possible. i promise that you deserve it.
 
So you guys know that earlier post I made where I said I was going to basically quit competitive gaming? Yeah, well, I lied. But don't worry, it's good news? I've recently started trying to look at a handful of games in a new light, since I find that I have much more enjoyment with these games when I'm not necessarily competing at a high level but still have the ability to innovate in my own, unique ways and analyze a competitive environment's development over time. That's half the reason I find myself coming back, anyway. Sometimes I enjoy analyzing competition more than actually playing in it. What can I say? I've always had a knack for the numbers.

In other positive news, me and my family have started developing a new morning routine I've been slowly implementing to help myself feel better and more productive during the day. My current job search is still ongoing but I'm at a point now where all of my thoughts are much more organized as far as what I'd like to do and I'm slowly getting back into the habits of a better meal schedule, more physical activity, and a better sleep schedule, among other things. I also decided to see if I can make my posts shorter and more to-the-point from now on, for what that's worth. Overall, things are going very well!
 
I’ve been banned from the Discord server for going on about my problems. Here I am instead.

I’m getting mixed messages. People say say I should have an opinion and not worry about others. In the meantime, Internet personalities keep threatening those who disagree with their criticisms.

Maybe I should take a break from YouTube and TV Tropes. That said, I’m still scared that my likes and opinions are going to piss someone off.
 
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Recently I’ve been begrudgingly forcing myself to strictly adhere to some form of a routine or schedule throughout the week. It’s nothing serious, really. It’s easy for me to me to call it a list of chores, but it’s really just things that I normally do anyway and, supposedly, is going to help make me and keep me as a more productive person.

The problem starts when I look around at my friend groups online, because that’s where they do well over 90% of literally anything with each other which cannot be healthy. Turns out, young adults do in fact need reminders sometimes to do things and while it hurts my pride a bit to admit I need some kind of elementary school style chart to remember if I did things like clean my room or check my emails, what bothers me more is that my so-called “friends” aren’t taking me seriously when I try and have more important conversations with them. I have a hunch that they’re either lying or on denial when they brush off the importance of getting off of Discord for once in their lives and actually trying to stay useful around the house.

Am I venting about Discord and my friends simultaneously? …yes, that’s exactly what I’m doing. I’m conflicted about both of these things and while I keep trying to give my old friends more chances, people bragging to me that they don’t need a schedule chart isn’t a good look. Someone else gave me something to tell them: “But you’re not autistic. You don’t know what this is like.” But I’ve already decided I’m going to be the better person and not pull that card. I tend to be happier when I explain things to myself in context and see the positive sides of awkward moments like that do what they’re worth. Besides, I’m already probably thinking too hard into this anyway. That unnecessary aggression at the end of the second paragraph of this post was honestly more directed at Discord as a company than it was at my friends… what that platform does to people, man. Brutal.
 
Chico the Parakeet said:
I’ve been getting up at a good time recently and it feels great spending my time outside of social media. That doesn’t mean I’m any less scared but I feel comfortable being around actual people.
Click to expand...
I’m going to take this one step further. I actually feel more comfortable around actual people than I do being online these days. Whenever I am online, it’s out of guilt, spite, obligation, or some combination of the three. Real life feels more authentic positive in general, and as much crap as I give some of my friends, at least 90 percent of those problems can be traced back to Discord itself…
 
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