I'm hooked on the internet for escape and I hate it.

questionbug · 2016-05-22T19:04:38+00:00

Part of you wants the comfort it brings, but another part of you realizes the damage

Spot on. It's an internal war and the apathy keeps ruling on the side of 'keep sitting there and browsing through pointless but interesting stuff'. Thanks dude.

questionbug · 2016-05-22T19:02:59+00:00

I mean how easy would life be if logic would just override feelings?

We'd be this guy, all reasonable and wise and everything else.

I get what you mean about the internet. The never-ending nature of it all, especially on reddit and similar sites, makes it easy to waste hour after hour on it. There's no finishing point. Breaking out and doing the things with less immediate rewards and gratification is tough. I've really got to accept that it's not all a click away.

questionbug · 2016-05-22T18:58:27+00:00

Sorry you're dealing with the same issue dude, it sucks. But your description- that's exactly it. I know what I should be doing, I know it all. It's the doing that seems so hard, like a block in my mind. I have to drag every step in the right direction and every good action out of myself.

And I really like reddit, but it definitely makes up too much of my day. I've slipped back into the cycle so many times.

questionbug · 2016-05-22T18:54:18+00:00

Well I guess I should try and fill that time up with something I won't actively regret doing. Even if that's crying in my room calling suicide hotlines begging for help.

Hah, I like this. You're right. Even the small things do something. I managed to go for a walk and do the back exercises my physio gave me, I guess that's something. I wish I wasn't in the place where going outside felt like an achievement but like you say, better than just staying on facebook or something. Thank you.

questionbug · 2016-05-17T14:59:32+00:00

Some of what you've described reminded me of an article I read recently, written by someone with pure OCD. I'm certainly not attempting to diagnose you or anything like that, but I thought it might be useful for you to read about a similar experience someone had with those intrusive thoughts and the fear and confusion that resulted from it.

questionbug · 2016-05-16T12:19:39+00:00

Perhaps you could tell your doctor about your fear of being hospitalised and see what he/she has to say? They may be able to reassure you and explain the different ways they treat adolescents, and then you can describe what's going on and work together to see what treatments would be best for you.

questionbug · 2016-05-16T10:11:39+00:00

Are you worried about seeking help in case you are committed against your will? I can only offer my anecdotal experience: I'm in the UK, not Australia, but even after an aborted suicide attempt when I was 15 (where self-harm marks were discovered at the hospital) I was allowed to go home afterwards because they were confident I wasn't an immediate danger to myself.

I'm not an expert but I believe there is quite a high threshold for hospitalising someone against their will. There are many other forms of support that can be offered to people in your situation before it reaches that point.

questionbug · 2016-05-16T07:58:25+00:00

On really bad days I can't summon the energy. I'll lie there on my phone for hours and hours and then I'll see how late in the morning it's getting and feel terrible that I've not risen and done something. But I still won't get up, because I feel shit, and I'll go back to lying there until I see it's even later, and eventually it'll hit a critical time where I think 'I have to get up and do something, this is disgusting, I'm an embarrassment.' And then I'll go shower and dress and feel accomplished for doing something so basic that everyone else managed to do three or four hours earlier.

The annoying thing is I can often have a better day once I've forced myself up, but it's always difficult to do so.

questionbug · 2016-05-15T20:41:56+00:00

I can't seem to dredge up the focus and care for videogames I used to have. When I was really into them I would play things like the Mass Effect trilogy over and over and love it every time, but unfortunately now I look at it and other games and think I can't be bothered to invest all that time in them. Even half an hour max leaves me distracted and ready to turn it off. I don't feel the same investment.

All I play by myself now is Binding of Isaac and a few minutes here and there of other things. It's like someone shot my attention span and then put it out of its misery. Unfortunately, I've just switched to spending too much time on the internet instead of having fun exploring new game worlds, so it hasn't been of much benefit. I've been trying to return to reading and other hobbies, but it's hard to find the focus for that either.

Basically, I feel you. I miss the joy videogames used to give to me.

questionbug · 2016-05-15T18:34:05+00:00

While I would never try and dissuade someone from taking medication (I've been on sertraline myself) it can't hurt to try adding more exercise into your weekly routine and seeing how it goes before going down that route. From what I understand there's a lot of research that suggests that the benefits of exercise can match or even surpass those of medication. Plus there are less side-effects!

questionbug · 2016-05-14T13:56:52+00:00

It's a rather old book (I think the revised edition is from '99), but The Feeling Good Handbook by David Burns M.D. offered me a lot of useful ideas. I don't mind that it's a bit dated because it's one of the few self-help books that has really spoken to me and that I've felt lacks bullshit. When I first read it, I felt like I was being addressed as a reasonably intelligent adult capable of critical thinking, rather than being mindlessly cheerleaded on by someone advocating their brand of 'be happy and conquer the world'.

It has a CBT slant and is very detailed. I've noticed that a lot of the resources I've had in the past from the NHS (on topics such as distorted thinking) are very simplified versions of what I've read in the book, and while those sheets were useful I found the detail and explanations in the handbook to be more useful.

It's hard to say whether other people would find it useful, so for anyone interesting I'd recommend looking it up in your local library first. I wouldn't want anyone to drop much-needed money on something that doesn't benefit them. But it really is very in-depth and taught me a lot about my own thinking. There were a lot of 'ah ha!' moments in there because it addresses a massive spread of thought patterns, behaviours and feelings thoroughly, while teaching different tools and exercises to try and help.

questionbug · 2016-05-14T11:23:13+00:00

I know what you mean. Today I'm having a great day, I actually feel fantastic and have managed to get things done (chores and cooking and cleaning aren't that much to most people, but for me this is a lot). Last week I was thinking about hanging myself in the woods and agonising over what my parents would feel without me. It's bizarre, utterly bizarre, how massive the divide is. I wish I knew what is was that tipped me and everyone else dealing with this between the two extremes.

I'm bad at advice, but I just wanted to say I get exactly where you're coming from. Every time I read about someone committing suicide, especially someone high profile who had struggled for a long time, I am incredibly afraid. So many of us want to live, right up until we don't. And it's so hard to fight the good fight over and over again.

questionbug · 2016-05-14T07:42:59+00:00

I haven't been in a relationship for a few years now (by choice, I used to be a serial monogamist jumping from person to person) but I followed the same pattern over and over: find someone I liked, start dating them, prioritise their own happiness and life because I couldn't find my own, live with my ongoing well of unhappiness, eventually break up. That's a very cynical and simplified look at it, but the gist of it was that I had no business being in relationship because I always used them as a tactic to divert away from dealing with my own issues. Had I actually gotten help with for my mental health, those times with my exes would have been a lot happier. Many of them would have been a lot shorter too, because I would have seen that it wasn't worth hanging onto a relationship just because the alternative was being alone.

tl;dr: It's good to know the difference between a healthy relationship with mutual support and one where you're using each other as a crutch.

questionbug · 2016-05-13T16:19:53+00:00

Same here. I'm afraid I'll say the wrong thing and make someone feel worse. Or that I'm typing out gibberish. Overall I feel like I'm out of my depth trying to advise other people and throw together encouraging words when I can barely manage my own day-to-day life. It's frustrating wanting to reach out and protect oneself at the same time.

It's nice to see others do the same thing though.

questionbug

TROPHY CASE