Judy2

the days keep getting rougher and the despair has been building up a bit. although yesterday, post-symptom, i told myself with surprising calm that one day i'll have this figured out, and i'll be just fine. then tonight - as my anxiety had quite reliably predicted - things escalated a little bit. eventually i just walked out the door, took my bike and cycled around the villages until it got dark. there was no anger - just a lot of sadness and despair. when the emotions got too strong - and heaven knows how i did this, because i usually don't manage - i started with that stupid alphabet skill, saying out loud fruits and then boy-names in alphabetical order. i stopped, thought again about my dire situation, felt more despair, cycled up a hill and eventually back home. then my mother said she wanted to talk to me and, again, i don't know how, but i actually pushed through, got that massage ball to run across my wrists and knead in my hands while talking to my parents. i had been thinking how much we hate each other all throughout my bike ride, how i should just never talk to them again, or maybe only on Christmas and birthdays....i had thought about how ugly i felt, too, and how sometimes i don't. ....but then they were actually trying hard to sound nice and understanding, so when i was having a tough time getting the words out and considered just leaving, i forced myself to stay and talk just a little bit....and now i just wanna rest and think about solutions tomorrow.

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yes, i have lived alone for five years... i'm just in between places right now and having placements in different cities, but i'm trying to find a new flat by April. ...my parents paid for my apartment and living costs, though. i should achieve some form of financial independence so that they'll have less of a say about my life.

i already made a related post in the mental health section outlining that i am getting triggered a lot by my parents, and that more often than not, this is causing me a lot of emotional distress. for the next two weeks, i'll be doing an internship near the city where my parents live. i had planned on staying with them, but right now i am debating whether to get an air bnb instead... i am going back and forth, having a hard time deciding. i know the internship itself will be stressful, and even more so with me contemplating my future in the meantime, and even more so with my dad turning on the radio at 6.30 in the morning, our every interactions being full of some minor or major form of hatred, and on and on, and whatever he does at 9:30, 10:30 at night. so far, i was barely getting by and this was with me having my parents' working hours to myself to "recharge"...but even so, i was quite unwell. i can't imagine things going well when i'll be at work, too, come home exhausted and have zero time without being exposed to a triggering, anxiety-inducing environment. there's the financial aspect, of course, but i also wonder how much my peace of mind is worth to me (a lot). it would be really cool if somebody could help me sort through this. i've also debated simply cancelling the internship, but out of all of my options, i feel like that would be the saddest.

you again:) thanks. idk i'm a bit uncertain but also leaning toward the airbnb right now.

@Ramasta9 okay, that's interesting. good that you have figured out what works and what doesn't:)

@Ramasta9 okay that's good to know! thank you:)

i'm training for a 13km run, and what i have noticed so far is that the physical exercise is the easier part. what's much harder is the mental aspect of motivating myself and busying my mind during the 10, 20, 30 min on the treadmill or outside. (10 is just post-workout but it's long enough to get me bored and i could go longer physically, if it weren't for my mind.) music helps a little bit, but not that much. podcasts are a bit too slow-paced. last time i went running with my brother, who's super fit, i begged him to tell me something interesting and he just went "no, you have to learn to deal with the boredom, too" and quietly kept on jogging beside me. i'm curious if we have any runners here who might have some tips on how to handle the mental aspects while running.

@Elliott okay, that's a helpful way of looking at it. thank you:)

hi there:) things are a bit all over the place here at the moment, so i am partly distracting myself by asking this, but also trying to address at least one tiny piece of the puzzle. in the past two months, certain symptoms have gotten a lot worse for me as a result of increased interactions with my parents. i feel really bad that i am basically still so childish for letting them affect me this deeply - but they are one of my most prominent triggers to this day. most recently, i got triggered quite badly by them simply asking about my future plans and when i will get my degree... - and i have a feeling this lingering dependence on them, even if it is subtle, is also enhancing pressure at the moment. but i'm also stressed in and of itself trying to figure out my career and financial independence. i've shared this many times before, but for my anorexia recovery, a critical (life-saving) aspect was moving away, and then i stayed away for five years without visiting once, until last summer. during this time, we had a number of phone calls that resulted in similar bad reactions on my end, though. due to my current increase in difficult symptoms, i am wondering again if reducing contact with my parents is the only way for me to get better. i guess the alternative would be to radically improve our communication and my own stress tolerance during our interactions, but i don't even know if i want this... sometimes i don't even want to improve things with my parents - i just want to RUN. ...but they're also not bad enough for me to cut them out completely. i like comparing myself to my brother and, for reference, he seems to be okay when interacting with my parents, or at the very least he experiences less personal conflict when trying to navigate being close vs. needing space. so i guess my question is - is it healthy to reduce contact or is that the lazy/easy way out that actually bypasses any opportunities we'd have to improve together? is my unwillingness to give this a try just avoidance of the growth we could achieve together if we actually wanted to? i also keep wondering to what degree i am just weird and a horrible person that acts weird for no reason vs. my parents are toxic and it is only natural i turned out this way. or something inbetween - it's hard to tell how much of what i feel is justified vs. just toxic.

if i have a 19m^2 room with furniture in it, 1m^2 is a lot😅 but i get your point and these things do look fun:) maybe at a different stage in life i'll reconsider getting one.

@Ramasta9 do you experience bloating when eating lots of raw fruit and veg?:)

doesn't a re-bounder use up a lot of space? they look fun though.

hi there:) so i'm still in the process of figuring out what i should do with myself, and this has been quite stressful tbh. while i'm trying to decide on further university programmes etc. i may want to sign up for, i figured that one thing i could do now, without a degree, is to write a cookbook or even start a recipe blog. in general, i really enjoy cooking and baking, i enjoy creating new recipes or watching health and nutrition-related content on YouTube. while i have been thinking for a while that i could also start making my own content, i have a number of concerns in this regard. as i have a pretty intense eating disorder history and have been experiencing more immediate symptoms again in the past few months, not only may the aspect of thinking about recipes etc. be triggering - so may the whole body image aspect, "putting myself out there", being vulnerable etc. i am not fond of the whole self-presentation thing, this idea of needing to "sell yourself" online, and i estimate it would be a huge, huge trigger for me to think about how i am being perceived all day every day. some of you may know that it was a huge fuss for me to have a profile picture with my face on here....and i doubt i'd be comfortable showing my body or even just my face on a blog post or on the cover/inside of my hypothetical cookbook. in general, my vision would be to combine recipes with some kind of framework that communicates more gentle nutrition tips, as i am aware that while many people on this planet need to lose weight and the aggressive approach of certain fitness coaches online may yield great results for some people, it can also aggravate mental symptoms in others as nutrition is not just scientific and objective - it's also subjective, emotional, and psychological. so i'd like my recipes to be framed by that kind of compassionate approach and include tips on how to have a healthy relationship with food etc. (which i don't have yet). anyway, i don't know if i can realistically do this with the current body image and disordered eating challenges at hand that i am facing in my personal life. i also assume it might be quite embarrassing to try this kind of thing, if people who know me find out about it. i'm also not sure to what extent this kind of domain presupposes i'd have to start making videos for YouTube/Instagram, if i'd want my cookbook or blog to be successful. by the way, i also do not have the slightest idea how to start a blog in the first place - if anybody knows, fire away:)

i dreamed of my late grandmother again. and again, in my version of events, she was given one day, fully alive, awake, and well, before she died. i wonder why this keeps coming up for me, and what it's meant to symbolise. guess it would have felt "just", it would have felt appropriate, though nothing short of a miracle considering her coma. i also saw the bill for her funeral on dad's desk last night, which might have contributed to this.

i don't think you have to judge yourself over that one situation.

@Ramasta9there's a whole Mega-Thread on spiritual memes:) ...thanks for starting this one though! made me giggle a few times.

oh my God that's cute lol:)

@Carl-Richard that's suppose to mean: yes you are right but i'm still struggling to implement the advice...

yeah.......:)

yes that's kind of why i thought maybe running is a practice that's easier for me to start than meditation as it's more dynamic.

@bazera okay so it just takes some getting used to:)

yes, i remember:) i know they shouldn't bother me, but they do. which, i think, is not solved by telling me i should not feel that way. so i wonder why i feel that way, and how i can manage that. yes. bad excuse, but sometimes i feel too agitated or anxious to stick to the meditation routine that would stop me feeling agitated or anxious. is that a bad character trait of mine? are there ways to make meditation feel more accessible to me? you don't have to answer if you do not know. i am judging myself for being like that.

rough day. i've been debating whether to share this, but i finally got in touch with a systemic therapist this week - one i'd already spoken with twice last summer - and he, rather surprisingly, agreed to take me as a patient. the session got rather amusing when he brought up that he'd like to invite in my dad so that we can all talk together. not sure if i see that happening, realistically speaking. other than that, he said to assemble an "emergency kit" for myself and start painting my emotions with colours - because pressure requires ex-press-ion, he says. the emergency kit, i am hesitant about. i rarely use my dbt skills, mostly because i believe my dysregulation isn't bad enough for me to require it, and my emotions are real and objective.... but i suppose it is true that i could benefit...i've never tried for long enough to actually see if they work, though, and it is just a weird shift in perspective to consider myself as the one who's allowed to consciously down-regulate herself when needed. but i guess it is needed, if i am being honest, although that doesn't make this any easier to admit.

i don't.....i probably should. okay, interesting. sometimes when i play the piano i look up at the ceiling...maybe that's a similar effect. okay:)