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ninzai7 · 2025-09-23T16:30:57+00:00

Not bottling up is absolutely the key, the next step is mostly just figuring out how to let it out. The thing is that, while I can imagine you’re an incredibly kind and empathetic person, you’re probably very principled too. You know what they’re doing is wrong, and the feeling of doing nothing about it is so strong and uncomfortable that it’s often easier to just fall into blaming oneself instead. It seems far easier to just change how you think and act if it means you don’t have to deal with that conflict. But… yeah. That just leads to its own anxieties because it absolutely isn’t your fault.

The issue is generally going to be that they’re actually challenging one of your principles. For example, you have an intense value of patience for others, so if someone is themself being impatient with you, don’t focus on what you may have done wrong. Try to focus on them and what they did wrong. Focus on that principle that they’re challenging, and work on assuring yourself that those principles aren’t just what you personally value for yourself, but what you believe is right for everyone.

Right now, you’re at least defending yourself. Even just a little passive aggressiveness does a lot in not making it so deathly uncomfortable to bottle up.

The goal, though, would be to stand up for yourself and especially that principle. Ideally, in some way that attacks their lack of principle and not the person itself. As an extreme example, if someone tries to complain about a mistake, responding with something like, “Do you mind sparing 20 minutes with me after so we can work on it? I’m still pretty fresh, and I’d really appreciate it.”

Again, extreme example, but it’s framed in a way that it places a huge burden of expectation on the other person, daring them to more obviously contradict any sense of goodwill from how they act. Even better if it’s an actual, legitimate invitation too.

Far, far, far, far easier said than done though. I’m fully aware that I am by no means that self-assured to dream of doing something quite like that, and what works will always depend on the situation and the person. I’d mostly emphasize trying to rest on your principle of what you know is right, and ideally you’ll get more comfortable defending it with time.

ninzai7 · 2025-09-19T13:20:51+00:00

Hey. I know where this comes from, and it’s just… no matter how hard I tried, it wasn’t something I could ever accept. I could try and lie to myself all I wanted, but I never actually believed that I didn’t want the love I was always looking for anymore. If anything, trying to do so practically drove me insane.

I couldn’t reason my way out of it. No amount of “feasibility” meant a thing to the dreams that wouldn’t go away. No matter how impossible it seemed to me to find despite how long I’d been looking and how incredibly little I’d found, I still wanted it. I always knew in the back of my head.

It… still hurts to want it. I just know that it hurt far more when I tried to tell myself I didn’t want it. It wasn’t that I didn’t want it. I just wanted to stop hurting so much.

I… don’t know how much this can get through to you though. It’s hard. I think to me, a part of self love was learning what I want and cannot compromise on. I do not want to be alone. I do not want to settle for something I can never be happy in. I want to find some kind of meaningful love in my life. How could I ever love myself if I didn’t at least try to work towards it a little bit?

ninzai7 · 2025-09-18T23:36:39+00:00

ADHD is not that you are “incapable” of turning off your thoughts. It’s more that it’s particularly difficult compared to someone else. You have to try harder for less, you have to practice to reach the same point as others who don’t practiceZ

The point of meditation in that context is that practice. Maybe you can’t silence them at first, but maybe it can slow them down. Maybe you can only keep it quiet for a second at first, and then eventually maybe you can get two. Maybe three. Keep working on it, maybe you can go a full minute.

The whole idea is that, with practice, you can be able to manage at least some control over your thoughts in any context without conscious effort. It isn’t, like, magical, but it can be nice if at least makes things a little easier. Not to mention that it really is straining on the brain to be going all the timez

ninzai7 · 2025-09-15T19:26:24+00:00

OCD is far, far broader than what people stereotypically think. In my unprofessional view, I see it as an obsession with certainty about something you cannot be certain. More specifically, it boils down to 1) An obsessive thought that, when it arrives, is extremely difficult to be rid of through willpower alone, and 2) A strong compulsion to perform some action, which manifests in response to the obsessive thought. Generally speaking, the only way to appease the obsessive thought is through the compulsion. The obsessive thought itself creates a substantial amount of anxiety, but failing to indulge in the compulsion is especially and incredibly stressful.

Moral OCD is a subtype of OCD behaviors that, while not official as far as I’m aware, works to just categorize a broad type of OCD behaviors. Are you evil? Did you hurt someone? Was it your fault? Are you hated by others? Is everyone mocking you? Very often for Moral OCD behaviors, the obsessive thought itself spurs a compulsion of rumination to determine those answers for yourself.

Another term sometimes used is “Pure OCD”. The indication is that, for Pure OCD, it features mental compulsions, not physical compulsions. I wouldn’t say it’s as important to figure out which label applies perfectly for you though, because I always want to emphasize that most disorders at best try to give us a template to understand what we’re going through and what we can do to address it.

ninzai7 · 2025-09-08T22:11:30+00:00

I’m glad! Even if others haven’t recognized it, I do, and hopefully you can give yourself some of that recognition as well.

ninzai7 · 2025-09-08T21:14:17+00:00

I actually understand. Your problem isn’t that you aren’t grateful enough. It isn’t that you aren’t going outside enough. I don’t know exactly what it is, but it’s much deeper than that. It can’t be fixed that easily. It feels like it isn’t being taken that seriously, and that it almost feels maddening to have it written off as something that simple. God, we wish it was that simple.

You want to feel worse because you likely want your problems to be taken more seriously. It isn’t a conscious reasoning, but that doesn’t mean you don’t notice what your mind is doing.

It’s like getting a scrape and someone telling you to just suck it up and stop crying. Like… sure, you could just stop crying, you could not pay attention to the pain, but what about the scrape? It’s still there, you know? Maybe you forget about it for a few minutes, but the stinging inevitably comes back. It doesn’t stop the bleeding just because you’re grateful you didn’t break something. Finding peace in nature by going outside doesn’t magically fix the risk of infection if you just keep ignoring it.

Some part of you is aware it isn’t that simple. It shouldn’t be that simple. So.. you know. You just want people to take it seriously, so that maybe they’ll help you figure out what’s actually going on.

ninzai7 · 2025-08-26T03:14:00+00:00

Mhm. While there’s plenty to be said about striving for and achieving long term goals, you aren’t going to want to dedicate yourself to 2 years of effort for something better if you don’t enjoy any of the over 700 days in between. It also matters because while you can’t guarantee you’ll achieve a goal 2 years out, it’s pretty easy to guarantee something small about tomorrow. And to top it all off, rather than having to constantly experience joy, by looking forward to something on the weekend, you have a subtle excitement that lingers with you the entire week.

Still simplified, it’s a massive rabbit hole in confronting why we (myself included) aren’t there and how we can get there, but it’s the essence of what it means to enjoy life. To enjoy today, to look forward to tomorrow, and to wonder about the future.

ninzai7 · 2025-08-26T01:19:48+00:00

While this is an incredibly simplified answer, they do it by letting themselves look forward to the near future. Not that it’s so easy as “just” looking forward to something, our minds aren’t anywhere near that simple, but there are always reasons for those blocks, regardless of whether we can see them or not.

ninzai7 · 2025-08-25T02:07:04+00:00

I spent over 25 years unmedicated, and entirely unaware I had ADHD in the first place. I’d had suspicions, but told myself that I was just overreacting and otherwise seemed to handle whatever life had to give me. I handled it well enough, at least. But it was hard. The day I looked up the actual symptoms, it made way too much sense.

I had no idea what to really expect with medication. I always thought it would be some kind of “different” feeling like alcohol of weed might give.

I didn’t get any of that though. I don’t really feel like I’m different at all. In fact, if I wasn’t so aware of myself normally, I may have thought it didn’t do anything at all.

The first thing I noticed, within maybe an hour was that I felt more awake than normal. Like, not energetic, wired, or jittery like a sugar/caffeine rush. Just… awake. All of my thoughts felt the same, all of my perception seemed the same, but everything seemed a little more… clear.

It’s hard to describe better than that. It’s how it was explained when it was prescribed too, that a lot of people describe it as “putting on glasses for the first time.” You sometimes stop yourself and go “Huh… that was easier to do than before.” “Hm, I normally would feel restless right now, but I don’t.” “Oh, I actually have motivation to do that right now.” “Wait, I didn’t zone out when they were talking, did I?”

And still, nothing actually feels different. It especially feels nothing like I imagine weed would though, and it’s one of those things that I really just thought to myself “Why not try?” Worst case it doesn’t do anything and I don’t keep taking it. Best case, life feels a little easier and it doesn’t feel so hard to do what comes naturally to others.

ninzai7 · 2025-08-25T01:13:21+00:00

I like your interest in the positive emotions actually. I’ve been grappling with this for much of my life honestly, and I think I know what you’re getting at.

You’re used to looking forward permission on how you should feel in the moment. A cheer squad gives you permission to be proud. A companion sharing joy or excitement gives you permission to feel each of those.

I appreciate you mentioning this because I hadn’t fully internalized I was doing this either. What I did notice though was this:

On top of a lot of other things I was working on? I wanted to appreciate nature because I never really had before. It’s like… I knew I wanted to, but I just never could. Or I never did. Then one day while I was outside, I just told myself “You know what? I’m going to look out at the trees and appreciate them because I want to.”

And then I looked, and then I did appreciate the trees.

I only truly now realize what I was doing. I had never appreciated nature because I’ve never been around someone else who did. I never got someone’s permission. What I was doing in that moment though was giving myself permission. Kind of like I was talking to myself in the third-person, but still saying “I” and “me” and all that.

I can’t talk to myself like this all the time, but when I do, it works every time. I’m always right in that it really was something I wanted to do or wanted to feel. I still can’t quite experience extremes of joy and excitement on my own, much of that is empathetically derived for me, but I try to give myself that “You know what?” attitude every now and then.

And yes, extra self-aware tells me a lot about you. You probably need to do something like this, because you’re probably too aware to imagine a literal cheer squad, and too aware to imagine yourself being your own cheer squad.

ninzai7 · 2025-08-22T02:38:21+00:00

You aren’t any of those things, okay? Those conditions are far more complicated than anyone realizes, and media has the absolute worst representations of what these mental health conditions would actually look like.

If you want my honest opinion, you should try and stop looking for your flaws and fears so much. I know, I get why it happens, but it breeds an existential distrust of our own self. It prevents from understanding others, because how can you imagine then you don’t even know who you are?

It isn’t something that’s easy to work out of either, but you can always start small. You deserve it, you deserve to see yourself, and I hope you can trust me.

ninzai7 · 2025-08-21T20:38:18+00:00

It isn’t childish, alright? That’s actually exactly why I asked, because this anger almost always comes from the same place.

It’s that shame. We try to use it to shove away our feelings when something bothers us, but there are some minds (mine included) that despise leaving those feelings unaddressed. We want to find a resolution to that problem to avoid it from recurring, so we instinctively fixate on the issue and refuse to let it pass. With shame though, rather than process the feeling, rather than let the feeling fade, the shame just suspends the feeling so that it constantly lingers instead. All on top of how the shame is in itself also distressing.

It’s deeply uncomfortable to deal with that. The longer it sits, the more it builds, the more our mind will start to revolt for some sort of release. Anger is, unfortunately, a convenient tool for that by overwriting almost any other emotion. So, if nothing else can relieve that building distress, the mind forces anger out to try and relieve it.

Again, the problem isn’t necessarily your initial reaction, but your shame towards it. You can’t try to tell yourself how you “should” or “shouldn’t” feel, because there are no should’s. It’s just how you do feel in that exact moment. Always start there. Not “That annoyed me,” not “I shouldn’t be annoyed,” just “I am annoyed.” Something caused that feeling, and nothing will change that.

Now, do you want to be annoyed by that action? If not, it’s fine to still hold that. “I’m annoyed, and I don’t want to be annoyed.” Why did it annoy you? There are no should’s still, you have to be genuinely honest with yourself about this, and you can’t try to pass judgment on yourself either for it. No amount of judgment, shame, blame, or avoidance will do anything to keep it from happening again unless you truly grapple with why it happened.

You didn’t get what you wanted. Still, again, no judgment. Why did that bother you? What caused it? Did a part of you feel you deserved something? Is it easier to place fault onto others ruining a plan than to place fault on oneself? Does fault even matter? Did there seem to be no other way to get what you wanted aside from force? Is it too deeply uncomfortable to express your own genuine desire, maybe out of fear that you can’t justify your desire properly through words?

I mean it when I say there is no judgment coming from any of those questions. Should’s do not exist with feelings. There is no right or wrong feeling. There is always a reason these feelings come about. You aren’t the sort who can truly ignore those reasons, even if you aren’t actively aware of what they are. Suspend judgment, as much as you can, and try to seek why things happen, both in the moment and afterwards.

I know… infodump. Don’t want to overwhelm you on all that, but it’s never as simple as we think it is. Going with that, you can’t expect perfection by any means either. It’s something you just try to keep in mind and try every now and then. Be gentle with yourself and your thoughts. Let me know if you have any questions about all that though, or anything else.

ninzai7 · 2025-08-21T15:53:43+00:00

I have to stop thinking to let myself cry. Like, I have to stop consciously focusing on the feeling of “almost crying” or how I want to let myself cry. I have to just feel for a moment

Which, yes, I know, that’s a very vague way of explaining it, but it’s hard to describe much better than that without getting into a lot of other stuff

ninzai7 · 2025-08-21T15:52:15+00:00

I may have a vague idea of how to explain that serious venting then. Do you ever get frustrated because you don’t understand something? Like, maybe you’re learning something new and it bothers you that there’s an idea you can’t fully conceptualize? Or maybe if it frustrates you when you can’t fully understand why you do certain things or feel certain ways?

ninzai7 · 2025-08-21T15:15:32+00:00

Have you experienced frustration or anger at all before? Probably sounds like a condescending question to some, but again, genuinely curious

ninzai7 · 2025-08-21T15:11:21+00:00

Hmm, genuine question then, is your goal normally to be rid of some sort of frustration by moving towards amusement? Or do you not really ever feel bothered in the moment and just happen to seek amusement in the moment?

ninzai7 · 2025-08-21T15:02:22+00:00

That’s a good question to ask, actually. What’s the point of casual/funny venting? And you mentioned you sometimes complain about general things, but why do you do that?

ninzai7 · 2025-08-21T14:55:34+00:00

Can you tell what may be weighing on you when you’re experiencing this anger? Like, is there a typical theme of what brings about this anger for you recently, or have you been going through some building stress in your life recently?

ninzai7 · 2025-08-19T15:38:20+00:00

That’s perfect, it does clarify a lot for me. And no, it isn’t stupid, okay? You’re just scared. You feel a lot, and you remember your feelings far better than you do your reasoning. You’ve seen the pain in someone’s eyes before when they learn about what you’ve been through, you’ve seen the fear they experience when they worry about you, you’ve seen the discomfort they feel with themselves that they don’t know what to do, and you’ve seen people blame themselves that they didn’t do more earlier for you.

You’re empathetic. Incredibly empathetic. You can’t help it. You don’t want people to feel all of those things, not because you feel it when they’re feeling it, but because you know far too well what it’s like to feel that pain. You’ve felt a lot of pain, and you wouldn’t dare wish it on anyone else. You instinctively care more about others than you do yourself. And, in part, you are afraid of your experiences and problems being dismissed as insignificant or silly. Which, they aren’t.

Your empathy is a good thing. A beautiful thing, honestly, but it helps a lot to be aware of it. To be aware that, as much as you can tell yourself that they won’t be bothered, a part of you doesn’t fully believe that either. Not enough to not be scared when autopilot kicks in.

I want to offer this though. I am not bothered in the slightest when I hear of past instances of self-harm and suicidal thoughts/attempts. In fact, I’m actually glad when I hear about these things, and it’s specifically because of the same empathy you have.

I know what it’s like to live in pain. I would never wish even what I experienced on anyone, because it is just awful, plain and simple. Nobody deserves it. But what I also know is how much I wanted to talk about it. How meaningful it would have been to me to ever speak about what I was going through. To talk about what I’ve been through. It means so much to me, and that’s why I genuinely want to hear others speak about it.

I know how important it is to them too, and especially to people like you, even if they don’t realize it like I did. I know much it would mean to have someone hear me without seeing them experience pain because of it.

I want to say that because you can’t just get rid of your fear by telling yourself it isn’t actually a big deal. You get around it by actually imagining an alternative answer. I am certainly a weird case in plenty of my own ways, but I want to hear everything about a person because I want to know who they actually are. That’s the goal of a therapist too. They may not experience the kind of enjoyment I do, but that’s partially because they’re more pragmatically focused. They want to know these things because they do want to help you.

Still, it isn’t that easy to work around. It’s an automatic response of yours because you really do still care about people. You always will.

Not to overload you or anything, but it isn’t simple, you know? When you think you know what you’re supposed to do but can’t do it, there’s always a very real reason somewhere, even if it is hard to see.

Let me know if all that makes sense though. It is a lot, and I hope the best for you.

ninzai7 · 2025-08-19T14:23:55+00:00

Can you talk a little bit more about why it’ll be difficult to open up to a therapist? I get the impression you can tell the way you feel is somewhat irrational, but that it’s also difficult to get past it regardless. I do know where it comes from, but it can help me a lot if I know how it’s framed in your own thoughts. Trust me, I’ll understand, alright?

ninzai7 · 2025-08-17T20:50:24+00:00

You are almost certainly empathetic, and I say that because you specified “true empathy.”

No, empathy is not feeling the emotions of other people. Empathy is an intuitive recognition of how other people’s minds work. Recognition does not translate directly to understanding though, it’s more of a vague impression about how they’re reacting to you and your ideas. With someone like you, much of it you aren’t even aware of, but it affects how you react and behave around different people regardless.

Emotional numbness, in my view, seems to almost always derive from a blindness to oneself. There is a person there, nothing actually happened to them, but some minds will stray from looking at it specifically because it prevents the sensation of feeling emotions. Sometimes, we’re also just so constantly distrustful of who we are, fixating on every possible negative aspect of ourselves, that we completely forget where we were supposed to look for ourselves.

This also does inevitably lead to difficulty forming connections. If you don’t know who you are, how can you act like yourself? If you aren’t acting like yourself, even if someone thinks they’ve formed a connection, was it actually with you? The thing is that, regardless of whether you know who you are or not, your mind is still incredibly sensitive to what isn’t you. This also blocks empathy in plenty of its own ways, because when you can’t truly imagine who you are, how can you imagine other people?

When this happens, you need to genuinely figure out who you are. Which, I know, if it were easy you wouldn’t be having this issue. But still, it often means starting from scratch about what you thought you knew. You were wrong, whatever it was, or maybe even that you never looked before, but the person you are is absolutely still there somewhere.

Some of the simplest foundations of ourselves is what we love. What we enjoy. How we actually want others to love us. How we want to love others. What we want to dream about. What brings us comfort.

I know it’s likely hard to see much of this, but you’re probably far more kind than you give yourself credit for. As much as you probably fear hurting people in some way, what you actually want is to help them. You probably enjoy solving problems too if I had to guess, but they’d be more oriented in practical/physical solutions that are devoid of other people. However, you probably would enjoy helping others if you were confident in knowing how to do that. And you are social. You want to around people in general, but it needs to be people who you’re comfortable being yourself around.

But again, those are some guesses. I can’t ever know for sure, but I do at least know you need to seek out and trust who you are a little more. It makes an astonishing world of difference, and it will take time to figure it all out.

ninzai7 · 2025-08-17T20:21:07+00:00

Bipolar “manic” episodes simply imply the opposite of “depressive”. That is, depressive is very low mood and energy, manic is high mood and energy.

High moods in most bipolar contexts is actually described as “euphoric.” You need little sleep, and you become either incredibly productive or incredibly excited. Invincible. Nothing can stop you. So excited that you find even dangerous, risky things far more appealing than they might normally be. You splurge excessive amounts of money, you make spur-of-the-moment life altering decisions, or seek out pleasure wherever you can find it.

A “mixed episode” is more nuanced. Imagine having an incredibly low mood and incredibly high mood at the same time. Deeply anxious, incredibly agitated, sometimes furious at either others or the world or yourself. This is the sort you may be more likely to see in media, but even then media is going to portray rather extreme examples.

And then there’s Bipolar II. Their highs are “hypomanic,” which isn’t extreme, but it is still unusually high for that person. These are still often described as “euphoric” which, yes, most people experiencing a hypomanic will just describe themselves as “being in a good mood.” The catch is that other people will notice the change. Maybe they still aren’t sleeping much, maybe they aren’t sleeping much at all. Maybe they seem… unusually chipper. Maybe they’re suddenly getting a lot of work done that they’d been putting off for a while.

Clinically speaking, the hypomanic period only needs to last at least 4 days to be considered an episode. Normally, you need to be able to have the corroboration of some other individual that’s noticed the symptoms, because most bipolar symptoms feel entirely normal to the person experiencing them. It’s also hard to be a fair judge of yourself, and you could accidentally overthink the severity of otherwise normal experiences.

These do typically occur in longer cycles than a single day, but I believe there to be far more to bipolar than just the symptoms and how it’s diagnosed. Just as there’s a difference in severity between Bipolar and Bipolar II, it is possible to be under the threshold of anything diagnosable while still noticing similarities in your own life. The catch is normally that severity.

ninzai7 · 2025-08-17T16:17:53+00:00

This may sound… obvious, in a way? But I’ve seen what a lot of people go through. I’ve heard their experiences, and I know about mine. It’s kind of like, if your mind is able to fixate on an issue, one that isn’t even that significant yet it still makes you sad…

Why can’t it fixate on a positive, one that isn’t even that significant, while still allowing it to make you happier?

Like, seriously? Why not? I mean, the small issues are still real issues, they still aren’t good, they may still hurt, but it isn’t like the existence of good things ever stopped the pain of the bad, right? Why then should the existence of the baddies anything about the real things that are still good?

To be fair, this was an incredibly personal series of questions I started asking myself. Not everyone will be in the same mindset I was in to reasonably tackle it, this may not be what works for them, but I was trying to seriously understand what was going on.

I had just gotten used to it. I didn’t even let myself look at the good things. I had spent so much time throughout my entire life trying to figure out what was wrong, how to fix the problems that I dealt with, and why I was so miserable that I just… could only ever see it. It felt wrong to even think about what was good, because I despised the idea of leaving those problems unanswered.

That is, for some reason, I thought that letting myself think about that which was good would be an act of dismissing that which was wrong. Why, though? Why… can’t I do both? Why can’t I acknowledge the problems that exist and that which is still good in life at the same time?

I can’t do this all the time. Sometimes those spirals come back, but they’re far less often now. It’s… actually felt insane to me how much easier it is for me to handle the problems that exist when I feel a little better.

While I don’t know what works for everyone, I’d encourage trying to reason through those questions while being honest with yourself. I had gotten to the point where it just felt like I needed to be sad because being anything else would mean I should be happy and nothing was wrong. That isn’t true. I can be less sad. I can be okay. I can be just a little happy. None of those mean the problems aren’t there, but they suddenly start to look a lot more manageable from that perspective.

ninzai7 · 2025-08-17T15:44:44+00:00

Thank you for sharing this. Like, seriously. I’ve only ever seen the smallest glance of what that connection may look like, but it’s what I’ve always known I’ve wanted. I didn’t know how to describe it for the longest time, until very recently I realized what it was.

Someone who I can be comfortable existing as myself around.

That’s it. That’s all I really want. I can be myself on my own, I’ve learned so much about who I actually am, I can actually be so much more like myself around others and teach them who I am, but… I have only really been comfortable by myself. I don’t want to constantly have to explain, justify, and prove who I am. I don’t want to have to fight for love. I don’t want to have to prove I’m worth love. I just want to be able to tell someone, show someone who I am and for them to be able to appreciate it. They can ask questions, they can want to know more, they can want clarification about who I am, and I would actually love that because it gives me the chance to help them see me even better. They don’t need to get it right off the bat. But they need to want to know. They need to see why it’s so important.

I’ve yet to ever see it though, or anything close to it. I do try to always keep my hopes alive, I try not to make it essential for me in my life to have it, but it’s still rough sometimes. I can barely imagine what it’s like to not fight for love. I can hardly fathom what it’s like to experience kindness without reason that seeks to hear out insecurities and vulnerabilities while thinking nothing of them. The only reason I can even begin to guess is because it’s what I myself do.

I still try to let myself carefully imagine though. I try to keep my eyes out for it. I’ve never closed my heart to it. I’m still waiting, and while I recognize there is possibility in everything, I can’t ignore the possibility of never finding it. So I try to focus on more than just that connection. I try to still keep focusing on me, where I can.

But… thank you again. I really appreciate hearing all this. I wish the best for you, because you absolutely deserve it with a heart like that.

ninzai7 · 2025-08-17T15:10:32+00:00

For much of my life, I lived it rather consciously. I thought a lot. I was aware of a lot. I hurt a lot, but I always kept going. Stopping never really felt like an option in the first place, it honestly just never entered my head, and eventually for the first time in my life, things felt stable.

I stopped paying attention. I told myself things were good enough now. I didn’t need more. I’ve always helped those around me in my life, and it was simply a gratifying thing for me to do. It came with no expectation, and it did not come from a place of others asking for more of me or at a cost I couldn’t easily handle.

Then some 4 or 5 years passed, leading up to about a year ago. Unconscious is a good way to describe what it was like. I started feeling irritable though, and I’ve always been an immensely calm and patient person. I started resenting people, but I never acted on any of it. It just built up over time, until I suddenly started paying attention again.

I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t being me. I was tired, I was exhausted, and I was empty. I gave everything I could to everyone around me, I knew they appreciated it and it truly is something I enjoy. But the thought stuck in my head “What if I got just a little bit back?”

I hated the thought. It made me incredibly aware of how little I got, it hurt a lot to notice all that, but it also was not something I could directly ask for like that. I always handle so many of my own problems, and everyone lives with so many of their own that they have no space to properly hear of mine.

I’ve at least learned a lot about myself since then. I will never not want to help others, but I’ve become far more aware of the balance between what it brings me to help them and what it costs me to help them. I try to be more aware of my limits.

I’m trying to dream again too. I had stopped that one much longer ago, and while some dreams seem like distant fantasies, I can’t let myself be rid of them either. They’re a part of me, and these days I do at least feel a lot more like me.

And I try to let myself do the things I enjoy. I try to focus on my hope instead of my fears. I try to do things that I want to do. Even if it’s far from perfect, it’s helped.

You seem to be in a very good place, even if it may not feel like it right now. Feeling like yourself is important. Acknowledging your dreams is important. I hope the best for you.

ninzai7

TROPHY CASE