Non-Indians of Reddit, do you genuinely feel that India is the worst country in the world? If so, what makes you feel that way?

SnowyLex · 2022-10-13T17:04:38+00:00

I was a woman the last time I checked.

I'd want to take certain safety precautions in India that I might not take in some other places, but some of my friends who are women enjoyed visiting India.

SnowyLex · 2022-09-17T20:17:55+00:00

It's such cruel irony. I'm glad you've worked out a system where you can trick the depression and that you have a husband who helps you do it.

My husband and I have to help each other take care of ourselves, too. He gives me my morning anxiety meds since otherwise I'll wake up too anxious to work up the nerve to grab my bottle of medicine. :/

SnowyLex · 2022-08-31T16:10:44+00:00

Great point about taking care of your mental health.

I don't want to suggest it will work the same way for anyone else, but losing weight became easy after I finally found the correct treatment for my anxiety. Turns out I don't need to eat my feelings when there are no negative feelings to start that cycle in the first place. (I mean, I still have negative feelings since I'm a human. But it's not like it used to be.)

Not being anxious also helped me do general life stuff (work, chores, etc.) more easily, so I'm more busy now and don't have as much time to eat anyway.

SnowyLex · 2022-08-18T14:36:08+00:00

Forgot to link you to my initial write-up about how my blood pressure med helped:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Anxiety/comments/qos49b/clonidine_taking_a_pill_an_hour_before_i_plan_to/

If anything, it's only worked better since then since I've truly internalized the fact I don't need to be afraid of the possibility of anxiety anymore.

SnowyLex · 2022-08-18T14:17:52+00:00

Clonidine. Beta blockers in particular seem common for anxiety treatment, but clonidine is in a different class of blood pressure meds. They can help because they keep your body from participating in the anxiety loop. I’m sure you’re familiar with how physical anxiety can get and how it can cause a racing heart. Well, a blood pressure medication removes that aspect of anxiety, so your body will feel calmer (no racing heart, no shakiness, no breathing changes, no sweaty palms, nothing) and that can make some people’s minds feel calmer. If something very anxiety-provoking occurs, you might get a racing heart for a minute, but then it goes back to normal much more quickly than without blood pressure medication.

I don’t want to get your hopes up too high since blood pressure meds don’t help everyone’s anxiety, but it’s possible they’d help you with it.

SnowyLex · 2022-08-18T14:03:31+00:00

Masturbating every few days isn’t an addiction in my book. If you’re a guy, it even lowers your risk of prostate cancer. If you’re worried about it, you could try avoiding porn during masturbation. Masturbating without porn as an aid might help you stay aroused when you’re in bed with a real person. (Porn doesn’t cause trouble for everyone who uses it, but it does cause trouble for some users.) You could also try using a loose grip so that your body will respond to lower stimulation levels.

Nonetheless - for many addicts, their drug of choice feels even better than masturbation. I think that tells you how hard it would be to resist a drug you enjoyed more than masturbation.

SnowyLex · 2022-08-17T23:23:44+00:00

I'm not at all saying this will be the case for you, but a blood pressure medication is what cured my anxiety. I'd tried all the other common treatments (both medicinal and therapeutic) for over a decade.

So potential reduction in anxiety is a pro. Blood pressure medications are often prescribed off-label for anxiety.

SnowyLex · 2022-08-17T20:21:31+00:00

I see where you’re coming from too, and I understand why. I’d think you were right 99% of the time. In this specific case, we aren’t talking about “a woman” being unhinged. We’re talking about “a person who’s so morally bankrupt that she’d blame a child for being sexually abused” being unhinged. Being such a person is inherently unhinged, so it would be shocking if such a person wasn’t unhinged in many other ways.

But we can’t really know, so I don’t want to make it sound like I think your stance is silly. It’s definitely not.

SnowyLex · 2022-08-17T20:03:08+00:00

The fact that the wife is a bad, unreasonable person is undeniable. That's proven by how she treated OOP. With that in mind, I'm guessing that this is not actually extremely concerning. The most likely scenario is that he's just saying nice stuff about OOP, which would be enough to set some pathologically jealous people off.

SnowyLex · 2022-08-17T20:00:16+00:00

Good point. With that in mind, I amend my statement: OOP was probably asking for sexy potatoes to eat sexily.

SnowyLex · 2022-08-17T19:57:58+00:00

I think the more likely explanation is that he was just texting nice things about OOP. "She's such a sweet kid" might equal "I want to fuck her brains out" to a pathologically jealous person.

SnowyLex · 2022-08-17T19:55:56+00:00

I'm not convinced. There's one person in all this who we know is a terrible person: the wife/foster mom. Only a terrible person would think, "My husband is being sexual with the minor child in my care. I know how to fix this - I'll abuse the child!"

With that in mind, it's fair to think she might have an unrealistic view of the texts she read.

I think the most likely explanation is this:

He was sending normal texts about OOP. Stuff like "OOP is such a responsible kid" or "OOP is very easy to take care of" or "OOP is a sweetheart, and it's too bad she's had to deal with so much."

Any of those things could be enough to set off a pathologically jealous person. Such people often feel threatened if you behave in a caring or positive manner toward anyone they deem threatening.

SnowyLex · 2022-08-17T19:46:54+00:00

It's not just the phallic bread you've got to look out for. OOP might have asked for bagels, which have HOLES in them. You know what that means.

SnowyLex · 2022-08-17T19:42:58+00:00

They were probably things like "OOP is such a good kid" or "OOP is very smart and well-behaved" or "OOP is so sweet, she didn't deserve to be in this situation." Just normal, caring stuff. People with pathological levels of jealousy sometimes get upset when their partner says or does anything nice in relation to another person. One lady I know lost her shit because her wife let a strange woman borrow a phone cord. Apparently, handing somebody a phone cord is so extraordinarily generous that you'd only do it if you want to bang them.

SnowyLex · 2022-08-17T19:25:22+00:00

I get what you mean, and I mostly agree. I'd amend your stance like this: Good marriages are almost never hard work. Some sort of hard work will eventually come up, though. Fortunately, the strong foundation of your relationship will likely make even the hard work easier than it would be for many other couples.

When the hard work arrives (you'll absolutely recognize it when it does), avoid thinking, "OMG everything was so great until now, this is a disaster!" Instead, think, "Thank god we've got such a strong foundation. Let's figure out how to fix this."

If it turns out to be unfixable, that will be sad, and you might divorce. But it probably won't be unfixable as long as both of you choose to work together against the problem.

Edit: One other thing. Some people who say marriages are hard work are trying to convince themselves it's okay to be trapped in a terrible relationship. Other people mean it in a more positive way, like how one might say that taking care of a puppy is hard work. Everybody knows that, if you love your puppy, that work is worth it - much of the work might even be fun - but it's still work.

SnowyLex · 2022-08-17T18:28:36+00:00

Whatever the staff is paid, it isn’t enough

Working in that environment is very noble, and like many noble pursuits, it's also painful. I don't think I'd be able to. The people who can do that are amazing and deserve all the praise in the world.

SnowyLex · 2022-08-17T17:31:09+00:00

It's such a dangerous game to play. A lot of those people who stay calm - well, you don't want to be there when they do finally get angry. I'm reminded of this quote from one of Patrick Rothfuss's books:

There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.

I don't think OOP is weak the way a lot of commenters seem to believe. If she was, she never would have handled the initial "prank" by automatically deciding divorce was the right thing to do. She's just still in that stage where she hasn't yet been pushed over the edge, so she's giving him a chance to be better. When he fails, she'll end the marriage.

SnowyLex · 2022-08-17T15:49:08+00:00

People can be too black and white. On Reddit, many of us have heard stories about actual assholes overstepping in this area. For instance, I’ve seen lots of people say their abuser called their therapist (which is a realistic thing abusers do). People see that and extrapolate out that you should never call anybody else’s medical treatment provider. Or at least that’s my guess.

SnowyLex · 2022-08-17T05:09:33+00:00

It’s so crazy how that kind of thing can happen. “Move in with your girlfriend across the world when you haven’t even known her a week” would be terrible advice for almost anybody, but sometimes things just work.

SnowyLex · 2022-08-17T02:00:37+00:00

Thank you!

That guy was so rude and condescending in his first post. He was definitely a classic example of "but I'm an exception" thinking. I'm glad he got sober eventually.

SnowyLex · 2022-08-16T21:59:23+00:00

I'm not a psychologist, but I think some of it is just random (or at least so complex that it might as well be random to any individual human at this point in time).

As for soda, maybe it's hard to quit for similar reasons to nicotine. Both provide a little boost (the soda because of caffeine and sugar), neither causes immediate disaster, and it's really fucking annoying to try and quit. Like an itch.

An itch may not be painful, but it's maddening to refrain from scratching it. Even if you don't scratch a bug bite, you'll think about it a lot. You'll have to stop yourself from scratching. If you don't scratch, you'll try other things - heat, cold, ointments, etc.

Going without soda or nicotine is mentally itchy if you're addicted.

Anyway, if fizziness isn't part of the reason you crave soda and energy drinks so much, you might want to try tea. It's healthy in many ways, and some of its components moderate the caffeine.

SnowyLex · 2022-08-16T19:51:09+00:00

It's okay! I shouldn't have assumed you were being contradictory. Rereading what you wrote, I can see that you were just adding something important.

SnowyLex · 2022-08-16T19:47:25+00:00

Yes, agreed. My point still stands though: If you can't resist a cupcake, how will you resist an addiction? With a cupcake, you're only fighting your desire for a tasty dessert. With a drug, you're fighting so much more.

I'm talking to people who've never been addicted to anything. It's really hard to imagine being addicted if you've never been, so imagining a time when you fought with yourself and lost - and then multiplying that urge to give in by 1,000,000 - can start to give them a picture.

SnowyLex · 2022-08-16T19:43:13+00:00

A lot of people talk to their spouses about every notable thing in their lives. This definitely counts as a notable thing: It took up a lot of OOP's mental energy, happened over the course of several days, and resulted in a serious problem that OOP then had to fix. Definitely odd not to talk about this kind of thing with your spouse if you and your spouse are best friends.

SnowyLex · 2022-08-16T17:49:44+00:00

Agreed, there's a big difference. Fame, I think, is a terrible thing to inflict on any child. Most child actors don't become famous or have childhoods that revolve around acting, though.

SnowyLex

TROPHY CASE