Judy2

hurting myself is how i win arguments. that's another one i can add to the list. along with the revenge-motives, this idea of balancing the scales when my needs are ridiculed or not taken seriously in a relationship. it's very childish, i know. like "oh look, i'm suddenly physically hurt, that must mean i'm right and you're wrong, and you should be kinder to me". very childish, kinda smart, but also very, very childish, simplistic, immature.

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@Majed how do you know that would work? maybe temporarily, but what happens then?

it's kind of like being enlightened as a monk vs as a regular person having to handle financial attachments etc. you could argue that the monk has it easy because their life is set up in such a way as to discourage any sort of attachment they may have - so have they really mastered detachment, are they really enlightened? i think the same logic can be applied to suicide: it's easy to exist undefined, as God. existing as a form that needs to survive WHILE maintaining detachment from said survival, that's the challenge. so is living through the ugliness and corruption of survival while ultimately still looking back and going "oh, that still counted though. that was still a valid form of Love, no matter how small and contracted". all these spiritual ideas on and around suicide, if anything, are more a case in point for human attachment to survival. if you weren't attached to your experience (suffering vs no suffering), you would not care about being alive. you would not even notice whether or not you are alive, because yes, indeed, there is no difference.

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.

oh my God, i'm really sorry to hear that! it's very strong and brave of you that you manage to see the Light and Goodness in such a traumatic event. i know i'd be fighting that perspective, and i can tell it takes a lot to be able to see the light in all the pain. i guess financial independence would be nice. i have a job, but not enough to cover all my expenses. if i could make enough to cover all my living costs on my own, they'd have less of a say about what i do with my life. working on that in the months to come. it's always funny because i feel so lost and helpless and want "the Universe" telling me what to do, but every time my parents try to get involved, it's like the worst thing that could happen. it's weird to crave guidance and then reject it when it comes from them. i guess this is just something i can't quite make sense of psychologically - and i'd like to make sense.

no thanks:)

@Ramasta9i guess that still doesn't point to how i should handle this specific situation, whether what you say is true or not. my best guess, regardless of that, is that there's probably, as usual, some kind of middle way to be found, i.e. "reduced contact" instead of "no contact" - but then that itself is a lot messier to navigate than the black-and-white solution.

who knows:)

true:)

@Hojo i have anxiety because i fear them getting too close, i think. to a pretty absurd degree, it seems. like they usually say and ask pretty innocent stuff but it makes me react in very disproportionate ways.

the confusing thing is that i would identify as a people pleaser in certain social contexts, but around my parents i seem to be almost the opposite. sometimes i give silent treatments and stuff, which i wouldn't do around other people. it feels like it would literally hurt me to be nice, friendly and forthcoming to them.

@theleelajoker yes you're right that i'm a bit of a black and white thinker, and i'm working on that. actually, now that you bring this up, sometimes in my posts i drift off too much and focus on all the things going wrong - haven't found the right format to share the things that are going well, or maybe that would feel awkward because who cares? with negativity, at least it's sort of justified that i reach out for help because i'm suffering. if i randomly start writing about what songs i played on the piano today, people might get confused:) i like your idea of treating my struggles as a series of small experiments. that certainly adds some nuance:)

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.

@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:)

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.