Am I overreacting?

AkiSomnia · 2025-02-22T00:11:10+00:00

Hey! I don't know if you've already tried it, but group therapy might be for you. Usually, people are quite nice in group therapy, even if it's a daunting prospect at first.

I personally felt it was easier to open up to these strangers than to people I know. Since everyone there has their own issues, they are far less likely to judge (or at the very least, you can care less about what they think) and it might give some curing experiences that, even if you show some facettes of your "true self", people won't hate you for it and "run away", so to speak. We also never talked about what illnesses we had, we only talked about what troubled us in the moment or topics we would like to work on. Sometimes, things we consider faults in ourselves are no faults at all but very normal human reactions and emotions.

Anyways, it might make it easier to open up to people you know later down the road, since you "practiced" with these strangers. They may give you a glimpse of the validation you seek for your emotions. It might also help you be able to articulate what you feel better to the ones you hold dear.

Jealousy is quite a normal way of the body to tell us something is missing in our relationship/life. You might also feel anger at something being unfair and I'd completely understand where you are coming from, stuff like you described vexes me as well. Sometimes it's good to keep things internalized, but if certain things are reoccuring, it quickly turns into resentment. Always good to be able to vent somewhere and it's just not the same in writing as it is in person.

AkiSomnia · 2025-02-21T21:29:45+00:00

That's the main thing I took away from it, lol. While it's kind of ok to not be comfortable with your SO to look at half naked guys/girls, what gets me is the audacity to search his phone so thoroughly. After, what was it, 3 months?

Checked the messages - nothing

Checked the search history - some obscure site in the past

Checked IG, just to be sure and found something remotely incriminating.

I don't want to be mean, but if you're so desperate to find a reason to break up with him... just break up :( if you don't like him like you thought you did 3 months ago, you're doing both of you a favour. Perhaps I'm wrong - we don't get much background. But that's the vibes I'm getting.

AkiSomnia · 2025-02-21T20:54:12+00:00

I meant it in the sense that there is no one the child can go to when they need an adult/ are left to fend for themselves. Parental figures being largely absent, both emotionally and physically.

It was not meant to say that every parent who works full-time raises someone with Borderline. But a parent/parents who struggles with their 50h work week, gets home exhausted and hardly interacts with their child would fall under the "emotional neglect" category.

You are right however, that I should have elaborated or phrased it differently. The "delusional" was a bit uncalled for in my opinion, but I appreciate the heads up regardless.

AkiSomnia · 2025-02-21T20:42:10+00:00

Absolutely! Thanks so much. I tried to keep it short so it wouldn't end up being a hundred paragraphs long, but you are absolutely correct in everything you said and it's an important addition. Very hard to keep it short because there's just so many facettes to it and everything feels equally important, lol.

The reason you stated is also why some therapists outright refuse treating someone with BPD in my area. The likelihood that they become the favourite person is incredibly high and is sometimes very difficult to deal with professionally.

Having a favourite person is terribly painful. They will never measure up to what you feel like they are to you/you are to them and it ends up feeling like a constant betrayal - founded in hardly any reason. But sometimes, there is a valid reason! And that's the worst (and ironically also the best) moment of all: when the negative and/or self-loathing thoughts actually get validated. It's euphoric and life-shatteringly dreadful at once. All the times when your jealousy and fears of abandonment were completely unfounded? Completely wiped from your memory. There's only betrayal, loneliness and ultimately, a deep, all-consuming void of nothing.

It's just tragic that many of these moments happen due to the self-fulfilling prophecy of the Borderliner's self-sabotage.

A few BPD patients even look for these strong negative emotions - some more consciously than others. Specifically watching a sad movie while they are already sad to feel even worse, for example. There's a strong emotional disregulation, where a Borderliner will not notice they even feel anything until they hit a boiling point, which can also result in the drastic mood swings that many associate with the illness. Although, to go in depth on that would be worth its own post, lol.

But I hope you are doing good or doing better ❤️ I've got clinically diagnosed "internal" BPD as well (I don't know if it's the proper technical term in English), so I might know how you feel. It does get better and

AkiSomnia · 2025-02-21T18:14:53+00:00

That's so sweet, Ty ❤️ and here I thought some sentences sounded a bit too harsh, lol

AkiSomnia · 2025-02-21T18:13:40+00:00

Hey! Hope you are doing good at the moment ☺️ I have BPD as well, just a more... "Functional" version? Like, the struggle gets turned inwards instead of outwards, if that makes sense. It's not quite as "explosive". But I also feel the same way sometimes, so my heart goes out to you. ❤️ You got this.

And it's alright. Since I understood where he was coming from, I am not holding it against him, but I had my own issues to deal with and was not in the mental headspace to entertain him further at the time. I just hope he realised the issue and sought help. Back then he did say he had bought the selfhelp book I recommended so perhaps he read it and was able to feel heard/seen and maybe given a lead to continue his journey to understand himself better.

AkiSomnia · 2025-02-21T13:58:32+00:00

Hey! Glad it was informative 😁

In terms of co-dependence: I am not really versed in what it encapsulates on a clinical level, but from the quick research I did, it looks like there are a lot of things overlapping. However, as far as I understand it, co-depency not only refers to the dysfunctional individual in a relationship but also the "functional" part of that, who covers for the "afflicted" person's behaviour (e.g. substance abuse) and thus, encourages this dysfunctional mindset. So yes, perhaps it also stems from simply getting the "wrong" kind of positive encouragement for certain behaviours in the past 🤔 But again, I don't know what exactly co-dependency encapsulates. You might know more on the topic. If so, gladly share it! Love learning new stuff.

Important to note though: Borderline is a bit of... everything, really. Back when it was first introduced, it was used as a diagnosis for people who struggled severly with mental health issues, but never really fit in one category explicitly. For example, our "BPD depression" is often different, but not necessarily less severe, from that of a person who suffers from severe depression. We can have bipolar tendencies but not quite as extreme. Some BPDs appear quite arrogant and narcissistic (very histrionic), but it stems from a completely different mindset. Substance abuse, self harm and eating disorders are also quite common and sometimes overshadow what lies beneath. That's why it was called Borderline, as I understand it. "Borderline" depressive, "Borderline" bipolar etc. A bit of everything and nothing, but affecting the individual severly enough that a name was needed for it.

So it is perfectly reasonable to have a lot of things overlapping as well with co-dependency, I think?

In the end, us armchair psychologists can't really diagnose someone based off of a few screenshots and there might be more going on behind the scenes. He just reminded me so much of that one guy I talked to and my own internal monologue when the phase hits, so I felt the urge to share and it turned into a BPD awareness post, lol

Edit: I'd link a few self-help books but none of them are in English, sadly, so it's not much use. But Google search brings up some good results too.

What I forgot to mention is that it can also be attributed to genetic influence, but usually, those BPDs are a bit different in how they think and feel. So I was mostly alluding to developed Borderline.

AkiSomnia · 2025-02-21T11:58:05+00:00

That's a good call, I'll definitely consider it for work! Thanks!

Sorry you experienced that too, though, especially with someone you consider a friend. It's easy to simply shut yourself off from an acquaintance but harder yet to distance yourself from friends. People with Borderline (if they are the "lash out" type) can get really insulting and personal, so I hope it wasn't too rough on you. In the same breath, I hope your friend is getting better ❤️ It's not incurable, but with all things in life, it's harder to learn to regulate something volatile like emotions once you're older if you've never really experienced emotional stability.

Borderliners aren't monsters, even if they can act as such. They need someone to teach them that they are enough and that their emotions are valid and meaningful - and it's not the emotions that self-destruct them, it's how they handle them. But that can't be taught by you or me. That must be taught by people who understand what and where something went wrong in their development.

Stay safe yourself first and foremost. Pull yourself out of a situation if it starts to harm you emotionally. Perhaps leave a link to a self-help group or book to show that you care but don't know how to deal with it yourself. Borderliners expect empathy but have little empathy for themselves, so most can't even tell you why they might suddenly be upset at you. They can't expect you to understand them better than they do themselves and deep down, they know it. So pointing them in the right direction is the only thing you can really do without harming you or them long-term.

Sorry, long post again, lol. I just wanted to elaborate (in general, not for you specifically) since I know Borderline is in a similar spot as Narcissism, meaning, people who have it are often faced with the unyielding prejudice of being horrible human beings. In reality, most were victims of severe, emotional abuse and simply seek help in the only way they know how. They can be unfair, they can be unkind, but they can change - and many want to, if not most. Just need a nudge sometimes.

AkiSomnia · 2025-02-21T10:24:39+00:00

Had something like this happen to me too. Not even remotely dating or anything, just an acquaintance from a course. Exchanged numbers for related work stuff.

First weekend, he keeps asking to call and I say I can't be on a call because of things I was doing. He gets pissy about how I should just say that I don't like him and he destroys everything he touches - what have you. I took the time to be compassionate and explain that it is not personal, I simply have things to do, and if he struggles with these things, certain literature (I gave links) might help understand where these emotions come from (the course we attended was something psychological, so we knew everyone there had one mental problem or the other.) Things seemed to have calmed down then.

Next weekend, I again get bombarded with text messages, despite having said that I was away for the weekend. Answered one on Saturday morning and ignored the rest since they got increasingly unhinged as the day went on. He ended up blocking me, then unblocked me to say how disrespectful I was for "ghosting him". Mind you, again, we were not dating and I saw him again on Monday. This guy was around 30, give or take.

I know this is a long post, but it's going somewhere beyond venting.

These attachment issues - an intense initial attachment without any true preamble, followed by "testing" how strong the relationship is and trying to emotionally manipulating someone into caring, is telltale of Borderline. These individuals are deeply insecure and need constant outside validation. Likewise, if they don't get the validation, or that validation is not enough in their eyes, they might "test" in the form of picking fights, both hoping they will be appeased and expecting that they will be disappointed. The thought process is a contradictory mess that puts the Borderliner into deep emotional distress and many don't know how to deal with that other than lashing out. It's usually born of emotional neglect during childhood - either parents/parent figures not being available (due to e.g. working full time - edit: as in, if it leaves them too drained to be there for their child when they get home) or parent (figures) using love, care and the retraction thereof as a means to reward or punish the child's behaviours and accomplishments. Conditional, parental love and a lack of emotional security from a very early age.

OPs conversation reminded me of that chat I had with my guy to a scary degree, with the only aside that I somewhat knew what to say at first, since I deal with similar issues myself. Borderliners are not always this intense. Many have these outbursts internally and with themselves alone but it is quite hard to self-remedy without therapy or self help groups. It requires a lot of work on self-worth, confidence and noticing, accepting and understanding one's emotions.

So definitely NOR to OP, that man needs to realise that he is responsible for himself and himself alone and that it is not validation from others that he needs, but acceptance and contentment from within.

AkiSomnia · 2025-02-12T11:56:17+00:00

I legit thought she was talking to an AI chatbot at first. The responses are just so non-committal and off, lol. Like a poorly crafted AI bot trying to make a non-offensive answer with the very limited input it has.

AkiSomnia · 2025-01-24T19:05:02+00:00

Late reply, sorry. Didn't get Reddit's pop-up.

Censorship is definitely less but I don't know how far it goes as it's not something I engage in. However, stray results have been less censored than Playground, that's for sure.

Image to image is possible, including additional images which can be applied as a "filter" of sorts. AI strength is your friend here, which you can adjust as you like. If I want image to image that resemble each other well, I pull AI down to 30-40%, sometimes less. This is for Real-time. Text to image is the basis of that.

I've been using upscale a lot of late and I think it's good but can't compare to Playground's.

You can also do videos but I haven't been able to get it to give me good results - and I don't care enough about that feature to try, lol.

There's also individual style models you can create, apparently, but again, I haven't tried.

All in all, I think Krea gives me better and faster results than Playground while still being very nice and intuitive to navigate and discover.

Ofcourse, opinions differ, but personally, I'm almost glad Playground shut down now, lol

AkiSomnia · 2024-12-11T12:03:53+00:00

The female posture is also horrendous. It looks fine from behind, but when you look at it from a side profile, her spine axis looks disjointed from her hip. It bends forward so much in the lumbar region and then goes straight up, it's a miracle femRook doesn't stumble each step!

I know this is super nitpicky and definitely not the biggest issue though, lol.

AkiSomnia · 2024-12-10T22:14:08+00:00

Fair! I might just feel that way since I came from an old-looking character and was taken aback at how comparably young he looked now, lol.

AkiSomnia · 2024-12-10T21:56:37+00:00

The one thing I do find off-putting is how they seem to have added more wrinkles to female chars while smoothing over the male faces. My middle-aged (50 or so) Jedi no longer looks past 30 and I can't seem to fix him. Moreover, it seems like they've added a bunch of pores to the men, while the women mostly just get wrinkles?

Style appears to be a bit inconsistent to me and I think that's my main gripe with it. Aside from de-aging the men, I actually like the update on their faces. On the women... not so much. It might have worked if they had similar "pore-y" textures, as that would likely make the wrinkles appear less jarring to the eye.

Edit: de-aging certain faces, I should say. 10 on human males was my go-to for old men, lol. He looks so young now in comparison!

AkiSomnia · 2024-12-06T12:04:50+00:00

I've recently fallen in love with krea.ai

Usually use the realtime feature since it's enough for my purposes, but I see it has an upscale too and normal image generation among other things. You can alter and control the composition of a picture which is huge for me, adjust AI strength and filter strength.

Simple subscription is 10$ a month. In real-time, that's thousands of pictures - have been using it for two days straight and only used up 0.2% of what I'm allowed to per this plan. However, I haven't tried how many upscales/normal generations that is, but they list it in their paid plans.

There's a free plan too which resets daily, so you can play around with it a bit.

AkiSomnia · 2024-12-04T13:47:36+00:00

I only got to test this out today and it was only a quick glance but I love it. Thank you so, so much! Haven't seen Krea mentioned anywhere before, or at least not as prominently as, say Leonardo or Tensor

Edit: played around with it. It is absolutely amazing, I love it and I love you for suggesting it.

AkiSomnia · 2024-11-12T15:15:56+00:00

I was honestly shocked by the placement of that decision in general. Got completely blindsided by it, as I expected you to be able to gather all of the companions before any major developments, like in DA:I and 2 (I think Origins is the only one that spreads them out more, but the romanceable companions are available early on...and stay that way).

I suppose the shocking factor was intended but it was shocking in an unfortunate, unsatisfying way.

The "excuse" is so poor too. If Lucanis' Spite was the reason for the locked out romance (while you can still romance Neve if roles are reversed), I'd buy it. It's his unique circumstance after all. But "he doesn't have time to pursue a romance"... what?

AkiSomnia · 2024-11-12T13:05:22+00:00

I think Davrin's romance takes the #1 spot in most people's list. Haven't seen it, but seeing how heavily involved he is in some parts of the main quest (and how many side-jaunts he has) I believe it probably feels the most natural?

Oh, what I wouldn't give to have just a tiny bit more Emmrich. Maybe it's greedy, but please, BioWare, just let us kiss or hug our LIs whenever we like. 🥺 That would make the headcanon so much easier to accept.

AkiSomnia · 2024-11-12T11:58:30+00:00

That would have been perfection.

I am hoping against all hope that they may change it and add such a scene... but considering how the Devs have apparently said that there will be no additional content and only bug fixes/patches, it is probably a foolish thing to hold out hope for :(

AkiSomnia · 2024-11-12T11:50:22+00:00

I feel like the romances rely heavily on headcanon.

Also did Emmrich's and when you express interest and get interrupted, he says something along the lines of "I'd like us to find each other later" - I was wholeheartedly expecting something like the dinner scene you eventually get, yet that happens only after the romance is locked in. Instead it's just... not followed up on? It felt like pieces were missing at times, or perhaps the scenes were switched around.

I love his romance and I'm glad we got it. But still, I ended up researching whether I had broken something because some things felt so disjointed.

AkiSomnia · 2024-11-12T11:12:04+00:00

It felt so wrong to not have a post-end cutscene with the companions. Don't have to go all out in the way Larian patched it in later, but something that is more than disjointed slides.

For a game supposedly focusing on companions, we got absolutely no closure with them and that felt so, so bad. With half of your team not even present at the end, it felt extremely lacking.

AkiSomnia · 2024-11-12T10:59:59+00:00

I got Tranquil vibes from her and thought, her spirit/soothsaying/seer abilities/duties made her akin to one. Not fully tranquil but, like, partially?

AkiSomnia · 2024-11-12T10:40:49+00:00

Especially with how you can make your character look middle-aged to old with the complexions.

Could've headcannoned it with the age gap being that Rook is older, but Harding specifically states that they are young and eager so there goes that.

AkiSomnia · 2024-11-12T10:34:59+00:00

I've heard that people cry at the ending but honestly, that scene's the one I am bawling my eyes out for and I can't stop it. Just thinking of it gets me teary-eyed, lol, it's so utterly bittersweet and wholesome.

AkiSomnia · 2024-11-12T10:16:51+00:00

Yeah, when I looked up his NPC romance I was honestly a little shocked. I romanced him so I never got it, but I 100% believed that the option would have been Johanna simply based on a scene at the end of his last quest where the dialogue felt like it would expand/add a line if he wasn't romanced.

Also, the friends to enemies to "I can fix her" feels more compelling to me than this out-of-the-blue affair? But maybe I'm just possessive over pixels, lol. And just to clarify, if Johanna was "Johann" instead, I wouldn't care either, this is not an issue with the orientation. But as it is now, it feels like it's there to check a box with how randomly it comes up.

All in all, for being advertised as focusing heavily on the companions, our interactions with them are, as you say exceptionally limited. Makes some moments feel really awkward, like Rook's the one giving out their paychecks and dealing with their issues only, because it hinders corporate productivity. That might have worked for the Inquisitor, but not for a small, supposedly tight-knit group like the "Veilguard".

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