New Testingstan

insecurity and self-loathing blow

i mulled over that while walking home from work (edit: principally thoughts on how despite being a really awesome person who folks regard as really awesome, my sist0r has a huge problem with insecurity and self-loathing too, due to family environment and family background, thanks to having all sorts of neurotic lunatics in the fam)

idk, me, i had to find a haven principally amongst pseudo-nomadic young drifters/travelers, lunatics, chemical super freaks, liberals, degenerates, and pop culture reference-referencing martial artist nerds, and i'm still on the road to recovery

its about defining yourself. "finding" yourself.

a lot of our conflicts (interpersonal, external, whatever) actually stem from internal conflicts

long before we're fighting/clashing with other people or the environment we're already clashing with ourselves

and what we see inside ourselves heavily influences a lot of our external conflicts too

(i am not saying that we ourselves are to blame, because other people are dicks, but a lot of times we react to external things not because of the external thing itself, but because of something we see in ourselves as well)


anyway, i don't recommend the whole "going beneath the radar" or "disappearing" thing

(too much) solitude is madness


i found that seeking a new environment (leaving the family house and leaving the family business after dad pointed a gun at me, and then living at another place and finding work elsewhere while having a new environment free of deranged neurotic family members, and immersing myself and mingling with new non-judgmental folks and activities i enjoyed) really helped with my healing process

i think i'm getting better


there are still times when i lapse into bouts of misery

but i look at all the new experiences i'm making in my new life, the achievements (well, not really achievements, but the cool stuff that's happened) and all the good vibes

and i am better able to deal with it more effectively

there are still times when i lapse into bouts of misery

but i look at all the new experiences i'm making in my new life, the achievements (well, not really achievements, but the cool stuff that's happened) and all the good vibes

and i am better able to deal with it more effectively

If it's conferssion time: I was scared of everything and had random panic attacks. That made me avoid anything I didn't already know or could control which made me more anxious yadda yaddy repeat ad infinitum.

Turns out life really wasn't that scary after all. Four years ago I was afraid to go to a bakery I'd never been before, the day after tomorrow I'm taking a train to Beijing on my own.

Full disclosure: heavy-duty medication sure helped

Oxymoron wrote:Deliberately put yourself in situations you have no control over and try to learn from the experience how to deal with your issue(s), rinse and repeat until you're comfortable with not being in control ?

Oxy, my friend. I appreciate that you're trying to help, I really do. But, seeing as I'm pretty much constantly in that situation and it's not doing anything, I don't think I'm going to become comfortable with it.

Something I'm thinking of trying is putting myself in a situation where I do have more control. The top candidate; moving up to Thunder Bay with my friend and starting a small business in some space he got from a family member while we work our way through college.

Might I then suggest some shock therapy ?

Ryan, have you gone to a therapist about this? It might help, both in the usual sense and in the sense that by taking a proactive step like that, you'd be taking some control back in general too?

Yeah, you really should do this with a doc. Exposure therapy has been a big part of my healing but had I decided to do it on my own, there may have been a rash of beatings in the grocery store.

Yesterday I noticed the ceiling was leaking. We live in a two-storey house with three bedrooms, a toilet and a bathroom upstairs. We have one boarder who lives with us who lives upstairs but he works on a ship and goes away for upwards of 6-8 weeks at sea. When I went upstairs to investigate I initially didn't find anything but a second look showed that the toilet has been leaking. For how long? God knows. Today a plumber came, looked at the ceiling and surmised there was a lot of water up there. So he poked a hole in the ceiling where the leak was coming out from, and a steady stream began spurting out. It's now looking like it's been sufficiently drained and is now only dripping intermittently. He's fixing the toilet right now but goddamn, what a headache.

RyanThunder wrote:

Oxymoron wrote:Deliberately put yourself in situations you have no control over and try to learn from the experience how to deal with your issue(s), rinse and repeat until you're comfortable with not being in control ?

Oxy, my friend. I appreciate that you're trying to help, I really do. But, seeing as I'm pretty much constantly in that situation and it's not doing anything, I don't think I'm going to become comfortable with it.

Something I'm thinking of trying is putting myself in a situation where I do have more control. The top candidate; moving up to Thunder Bay with my friend and starting a small business in some space he got from a family member while we work our way through college.

Just a quick note, if you start a small business without a customer base your tension and anxiety levels will increase exponentially. Plus you are considering moving. It appears that you are talking yourself into a position where you will have LESS control, not more.

Ssh, don't ruin it !

Moving to a new city with the possibility of becoming destitute is something everyone should experience at least once.

The vast majority of whatever investment we'd make is already taken care of, so the whole thing just needs a couple hundred dollars for some tools and raw material.

And if that doesn't work out at least we have our own place where we only need to pay for utilities, so pretty much any job will do.

I'm not, you know, insane enough to put all my eggs in one basket.

Have you been to Thunder Bay?

I'm going to go visit in the summer. If I don't think things are going to work there are other options.

Aaron wrote:Have you been to Thunder Bay?

That sounds like the awesomest place ever. How many car chases, gun fights, and massive explosions do they have per day?

Depends on the amount of chili having been ingested that day.

RyanThunder wrote:I'm going to go visit in the summer. If I don't think things are going to work there are other options.

Experience has taught me to never commit to moving somewhere without visiting it first.

Zod wrote:

RyanThunder wrote:I'm going to go visit in the summer. If I don't think things are going to work there are other options.

Experience has taught me to never commit to moving somewhere without visiting it first.

Yeah, pretty much.

Aaron wrote:Have you been to Thunder Bay?

My cousin went to school out there. She will never go back if she can help it.

Update: My neck is okay, so no worries.

The Spartan wrote:Update: My neck is okay, so no worries.

Good. Glad you're OK. Whiplash is a biiiitch.

Man probably moving at the end of the year when Rhea starts grad school. No idea where, yet. I hope NYC, Seattle, or Portland. Though apparently Ann Arbor is a possibility. Yay.

Seattle and Portland are nice if you don't want to deal with NYC's obscene housing market.

Losonti Tokash wrote:Man probably moving at the end of the year when Rhea starts grad school. No idea where, yet. I hope NYC, Seattle, or Portland. Though apparently Ann Arbor is a possibility. Yay.

Seattle. Move to Seattle.

And now I'm worried about my friends in South Korea.

I don't really care about how little sense it makes for North Korea to go and do anything stupid. It all rests on the assumption that their leader hasn't bought his own propaganda.

RyanThunder wrote:And now I'm worried about my friends in South Korea.

I don't really care about how little sense it makes for North Korea to go and do anything stupid. It all rests on the assumption that their leader hasn't bought his own propaganda.

Indeed, I'm sure that the guy who grew up in the Swiss boarding school is all fired up on Juche spirit and eager to come to grips with the American imperialist dogs.

And that's assuming that the rest of his government wouldn't and couldn't stop him if he did go nuts and decide to start off Armageddon.

I agree it's worth being concerned over, but odds are very good they'll be alright.