mistybison
mistybison said:I have been reflecting on this topic for two days now, wondering if I could contribute anything truly meaningful that might actually prove useful to the author.
Quincy:Harold Anderson3 As follows:
I would love to have a family of my own, but that will remain a work of science fiction unless it actually happens. I am honestly unsure how I will navigate my life given the limitations I face.
I was a reserved child, though quite bright.
I didn't find that particularly troublesome; I was perfectly content living in my own little bubble.
The issue started when I realized I couldn't sustain that lifestyle, and I felt a genuine desire to follow the lead of others. Quite simply, I wanted to be more social, but it just wasn't happening.
And then there is psychology and psychiatry... |
Can an extremely introverted person truly socialize, and is it even necessary to force it? At the end of the day, we are who we are. We can certainly adjust within the boundaries of our own personalities, but we cannot fundamentally transform into someone else. Learning to know, accept, and respect oneself—even when that identity clashes with societal expectations or what people think is "ideal"—is the essential first step toward living an authentic life. 🙂
Society constantly pushes a specific image of the "ideal life," yet real lives rarely align with that mold. Many people simply follow the path they were taught to pursue, investing everything into meeting social standards or personal ideals, only to find themselves unfulfilled. No matter how perfect a life may appear from the outside, it never truly is. Every journey is inevitably shaped by trials, setbacks, unexpected hurdles, and disappointments.
The greatest thing a person can do for themselves is to truly understand who they are—their potential, their limits, and their natural inclinations. From there, one should strive to organize their life as much as possible to align with their own inner sense of integrity and what is right.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with choosing to live a peaceful, quiet life. 🙂
Caring for both your mother and grandmother while managing your own health challenges is truly noble. 🙂
It isn't really a question of whether I am a social person by nature or not; it’s more about this pervasive lack of will to engage with anything at all. There are those rare moments when I actually feel alive, where my words flow easily and I find myself genuinely curious about the world, but most of the time, I just feel isolated, unmotivated, and stuck in a depressive fog.
I have a feeling I might have missed a crucial step somewhere along the line in my emotional development, and that's almost certainly because I didn't get to experience a truly carefree childhood. But honestly, at this stage in my life, trying to make up for lost time feels like a bit of a lost cause.
I think I was probably closest to actually tying the knot about two years ago when I was seeing this girl. Right from the start, she used to tell me how much she loved me—in that intense, "you drive me crazy" kind of way—only to turn around and call me a selfish, weak-willed crybaby in her very last text to me.
The absolute worst part of this entire situation is that I can't shake the feeling that they might actually be right.
Let's say I'm doing alright visually—I've got decent features, my height and weight are pretty much where they should be, and plenty of people have gone out of their way to tell me I'm good-looking. Honestly, I also tend to look quite a bit younger than my actual age.
Unfortunately, I didn't quite manage to pull it off with my studies; school was actually going pretty smoothly for me right up until I fell ill, but I never really did fully recover.
I find what’s highlighted here quite intriguing, actually. Do you truly believe that’s the case?
If that were actually the case, we’d likely see a much higher number of depressed people ending up taking their own lives.
If everyone really is that miserable, they’re doing a pretty spectacular job of hiding it from the rest of us.
My depression doesn't really have a specific trigger; it just kind of settles in without any clear reason at all. There are times when I actually find myself wishing for the psychosis to come back, mostly because that’s when I feel light, truly alive, and like I actually matter. But then the volatility kicks in, and I end up getting into these intense confrontations. For instance, during my last episode about a year and a half ago, I got into a fight with a classmate at the university that nearly cost me an eye. At the time, I honestly couldn't have cared less about the injury; after having a couple of beers, my only real thought was to call 911 so they could take me to the psychiatric ward, where I ended up staying for the next three weeks.
Whenever you happen to bring up schizophrenia or psychosis in conversation, you can practically see people recoil in fear, like you've just dropped a heavy weight into a quiet room.
But I know that, first and foremost, I am a danger to myself.
That first paragraph you wrote, the one I highlighted...
It feels as though we are simply born exactly as we are, with absolutely no chance of ever changing.
In a way, that’s true, but we are also shaped by our environment, whether that experience was positive or negative. Can psychotherapy actually alter what we have lived through, or heal those deep scars we carry from our earliest childhood years?
If it could, I imagine a lot more people would be seeking out a psychiatrist or a therapist.
What is the actual purpose of psychotherapy, anyway? Is it meant to mold us into who we want to be, or is it just about learning to accept ourselves as we are?
I tend to be quite a quiet person—whether I was born that way or not doesn't really matter—but I feel this constant blockage in social settings, which might just be a subconscious defense mechanism stemming from how people have treated me.
I had hoped that therapy would change that, but even after several years of working with professionals, I haven't managed to achieve it.
I wish I were a more cheerful, outgoing person, and it’s honestly quite sad that I have to rely on antidepressants just to socialize even remotely.
So, here I am at thirty years old, and looking back on my life, I feel a certain sense of pity for myself; for the most part, it’s just been a series of struggles, either with the world around me or within my own head.
I don't know, sometimes I think it might have been better if I had never been born, and I find myself frequently thinking about death, whether through suicide or other means.
I know I'm rambling a bit here, but I'm not quite sure how else to put these things into words.
Joseph Bailey41 said:There. You did your own math and decided that taking medication is worth it for you. Nash decided it wasn't (even if that part was cut from the movie about him) and kept living with his difficult temperament. That made things pretty uncomfortable for everyone around him, and honestly, I can't even gauge how much his achievements improved the world since I don't know enough about that field. It all comes down to personal choice—weighing the pros and cons of any decision. My impression is that you don't have a bad character; rather, you just pay a lot of attention to how the people close to you feel, which makes your decision completely rational.
But it feels to me like everything for you revolves around trying to adapt to the world, as if that's your biggest hurdle. I dealt with something similar; I actually wrote about it just yesterday. If you read the second-to-last paragraph, it'll be clear how people perceived me back then. 🤣
I was lucky enough, both then and later, to meet many people who functioned differently than most and who could see right through my absurd mask. Some struggled with mental health, some had run-ins with the law, others lived perfectly balanced lives, but they all shared one thing: they couldn't fit into existing mental molds. (Which, in my opinion, are mostly a hundred times crazier than any illness.) I truly hope you find "your" people. Even if those connections are brief, I think it will mean the world to you if someone truly "sees" you for who you are, rather than the image you try to project. Don't settle for anyone making you feel less valuable, and don't let yourself be defined solely by a diagnosis. You're a human being, just like everyone else.
Nash fell ill over fifty years ago, during a time when the side effects of the medications available back then were often worse than the illness itself.
He wasn't even close to being functional, and the research that earned him his Nobel Prize was actually completed before he received his diagnosis. He was largely unemployed until near retirement, eventually returning as a lecturer at Princeton, though he was never truly cured.