Where we left off

Oh boy, it’s been a hot minute since I have been here. I didn’t feel very comfortable enough to talk about my life, but I will go into that more as we continue down the line. I have had some much going on between my new job, my mental health, trying to find proper stress relief, and so much more. I was/am not handling it the best I should be, but hopefully that changes. On some quick brighter notes, I can solve a 3x3 rubik’s cube and a megaminx. The 3x3 has become my fidget toy as it keeps my brain engaged just enough to focus on a meeting or thought processes without being so overly complicated it distracts. That was not how it was initially. To begin with, I had to focus on the patterns, but with the amount I practiced that is less common now.

Current State

Mental Health

Depression/Therapy

I have a long history dealing with my depression, and it’s not always a pleasant one. I have sure that we have our back stories, but mine has been moving more and more to an unmanageable state. It’s getting to the point that I am considering going and seeing a therapist and psychiatrist again. For those that don’t know, I have a very rough past when it comes to therapist.

One of the first ones I chose to see did give me a little information. He had stated that my emotional threshold was very small. At the time, I didn’t fully understand what he was meaning as I was still in high school and barely liked to talk. I was seeing this therapist for a while, but given I my idiocy I saw an escape when I was to call back one time to schedule my next appointment but didn’t. That therapist was good, but I for sure didn’t get the connection that I probably needed as everything I talked about was still very surface level. Crap I’m going through that normal teenagers go through etc. My parents didn’t keep monitor that I was continuing to see this therapist which was both a good and bad thing. I am glad they didn’t push, but part of me wishes they would have.

The next therapist has a very short story. During one of the beginning meetings that I was in he had decided to tell me that I channeled my emotions into anger because I was male. That rubbed me wrong really quick and I stopped seeing him. The follow up therapist was someone I thought I was going to initially like. We seemed to get along decently well, but as I opened up things seemed to take a turn. As a little backstory I tend to take on everything, and try to take care of my family first. Now, I know that there are downsides to this. I know the whole, if you don’t fill your own cup, you can’t fill others’ cups thought process. However, given medical conditions and the like I can’t just drop helping my family to take care of myself. However, when he told me, that I need to stop being a white knight, take off the armor and burn it, as well as the horse I rode in on, I could not let that go. It did not feel right to hear that from a therapist, it felt very patronizing, it felt like he was not even hearing the troubles I was dealing with. To my recollection I can’t even remember us talking about any form of stress relief I was using either, so how would he even know how much self care I was getting. I stopped my sessions with him after that.

Then came the next therapist, she was wonderful. She was an artist and her work was wonderful. Things were actually going really well with her, the problem this time was me again. I never got deep into much with her as I tend to be very closed off beyond surface level. She asked some great questions, but at the same time, as we continued things got harder and harder to talk about. I faced what I now realize was anxiety before each of our sessions. The anxiety and all the emotions became very overwhelming, and I stopped scheduling appointments because I could not handle it. I made the excuse that it was taking too much time from work and family.

It was a few years after that when I tried to see someone again. I tried going with my wife to treat it as marriage counseling to help with my anxiety, but the guy we were working with tried to make excuses for things that was none of his business to even comment on. We quickly switched to someone else. After one or two sessions with the next person, they wanted to pass me off to see a specialist and didn’t want to continue sessions. There was no specialist near me that took my insurance, and ended up paying a bunch of money out of pocket the day of because the guy didn’t charge insurance, I would have to fill out a form to get reimbursed by insurance.

Overall, it just leaves some sour tastes in my mouth when having to deal with therapist. I know not all are the same, and I’m going to try to see another, but we will see how that goes.

Dealing with my stresses

Punching bag

As a kid I tried fervently to get my parents to get me a punching bag. They told me so many times, we don’t have the room. Well, as an adult I finally got one. I can’t tell you how helpful it is. I am still not great at processing my emotions so when they come out as anger I can use that. And it’s good cardio. That is all true, until it’s not. You see, even with gloves, I end up hurting myself. I am not punching it lightly, and I end up causing bruising and swelling in every part of my hands. There have been times when I hit it and roll my wrists causing pain there. The pain can at times be cathartic, but when I can only get in 5 minutes of punching before my hands are in so much pain I can’t stand it and have to go take meds and ice it is no longer effective. 5 minutes gets the edge off, but doesn’t help me actually process anything.

Games

For a long time, I played America’s Army game on my PlayStation 4. Boy did that bring back memories of playing it in high school on my computer. It was nice, and I ended up meeting someone I could game regularly with. That was a god send at the time. I needed that friendship in my life more than I ever realized. Solo gaming is not fun for very long because I don’t have someone to share it with. We gamed almost every night. We branched to other games like call of duty. I have never been a big fan of CoD because my skill is not the greatest, and then when you add in the number of “hackers” or “cheaters” into the mix. The play experience really sucks. Anyways, we got to Rocket League. That was a game I enjoyed a lot. We all did for a while. I started off as one of the worst players of our group. But I got better. It ended up that except for one or two of the people we played with I was better than the rest. That’s when the trouble really started to come from this game. It started to become stressful.

We started to switch to other games to break up the stress and find other things to enjoy together. We tried Apex and a few others. Apex stayed with us for a while, but because they were so much better than I was I always felt like I was holding them back. I frequently, just sat there not contributing enough. It ended up with me not wanting to play anymore because it was no longer an escape.

And so we focused on the new CoD again, but it was the same stuff, different title, and so I went back to rocket league. But this time every time I played, solo or with friends I ended up getting pissed off or depressed about everything going on. And so I just stopped logging into my PlayStation all together.

A few months later I joined up with some co-workers and we started playing other games together, but I get so lonely and bored because they have different schedules that it becomes disheartening to sit there in the world alone. And so I kind of just dropped those, and pick them up every once in a while. At this time I am working with a group of friends to play some different games together on a regular basis, but it’s not frequent enough to reduce enough stress.

Smoking my pipe

And so, I resort to smoking tobacco. For a long time I used cigarettes, and then switched to vaping. Vaping was hard on me, and I found I was taking in too much nicotine in a day because I sat at my desk constantly smoking it. It became like a pacifier to me, and so I switched to using a pipe and packing my tobacco into that. To help give me things to blog about and help me remember, I will be posting reviews about which items I do and do not like.

What’s to come

So what’s next? Well, here are the headers I was going to put into here, but I think I am just going to hold off on making this blog larger, and give myself some more blog posts.

New Job / Imposter Syndrome

TV Shows and movies