How I Deal

Hello! I'm back again for a short post or two today. The past couple of days my anxiety has gotten the better of me, and I haven't posted anything. I said previously that my character flaws would be the topic of a post later on. Seeing as it's gotten the better of me I figured now would be an OK time to talk about it.

In 2012 I manifested schizoaffective disorder in the form of multiple paranoid delusions and a big, long outburst on social media. I had my moment of clarity eventually though. Since then I've been having severe social anxiety and depression. Situations where I would normally be fine are terrifying to me sometimes. I get scared that I might be saying the wrong thing, and might anger people. I also worry that what I'm doing might be yet another byproduct of delusional thinking. This causes me not to say anything, or do anything. I've had moments where I just sit there looking at my computer screen for several minutes petrified to do anything.

I've had cognitive behavioral therapy though. That's what I want this post to really be about. I don't want to just cry and whine on the internet about my problems. I want to help people by talking about what I've been trained to do to make the situation better. This doesn't work 100% of the time but it does help out.

When I'm feeling depressed, or experiencing anxiety in the form of bad thoughts I've been trained to do thought replacement. Instead of just letting the same old wheels turn in my head I collect a lot of different more positive subject matter that I force myself to think about instead of focusing on bad thoughts. Like I said this is still not 100% because sometimes I can't turn off the bad thoughts no matter what I do. It sucks I know but at least it's better than nothing.

Another thing that I've been taught to do is to occupy my hands with something productive or fun. I'm a gamer so usually this part is easy. Lately though it still isn't enough for me. Sometimes I'm just too depressed to do very much. I take long naps and sleep for most of the day. This is an example of something that you shouldn't do. I just feel down because I lost my partner of 7 years late in 2015. I know I should probably be over it by now, but I'm not. Sometimes it makes the days hard. At the end of the day you have to give yourself a pass sometimes. Nobody's perfect.

I'm going to break this recent cycle today though as I'll be forcing myself to play a few new games so that I can talk about them in my MMO romp posts. I'll be playing more D&D Online, and I'll be playing another game I found on steam: Age of Conan Unchained. So far it's been fun, but I'll have more on that later. So for now take care, and just know that at the end of the day nobody is perfect and you're allowed to take the time you need. Hopefully my writing this helps at least one person. See ya around!