Lost my confidence over these last few days

DX'd - Other
#1

A lot of things came together and it was really difficult to keep track of… but damn… I’ve been a lot more introspective and at the whims of the voices. Also my confidence with women has plummeted… I had a meal with my relatives and I left just seriously pissed off and tired…

I’ve got another day off of work here and it is crucial that I get my optimism going again. I have been sober for a couple of days now and it’s starting to pay off. Even working out though is leaving me exhausted, but it feels really healthy at times…

I had a friend come over this last weekend. Nothing but fast food, then the family gathering, then my father rolling through town… I’ve broken away from my typical diet. I think that is a factor.

I met my upstairs neighbor and that turned out to be a really bad idea. The guy had been diagnosed Schizo in the past… the conversation we had would have been locked in two seconds on here.

Had a dream I was back in high school re-taking calculus… Getting this job here has stalled my ambitions for schooling, which I’m starting to realize how important those were to me. Maybe I’ll try taking some classes online, but I still have to be patient for funds to grow for it.

So 3 or 4 years into schizophrenia, I can’t really remember, I’m still doing quite well. I live on my own, I have a good car and a good job, I’m more or less in love with this girl who randomly pops in and out of town (that part has been kind of a mind-fuck for me), life is going really well… I’m saying all this to list out the positives. Got fallout 4 which I’m about to play.

On the other side of things though… I can’t stand my family any more. They prefer such a vapid and superficial experience… this is just a figure of speech but it’s like familial bipolarism… as soon as the superficial layer is broken frustrations just surface… I can’t connect with any of them deeply most of the time and it is a major boring ass pain, actually beyond boring, it just feels stupid to sit and chat with them at times.

… and that’s cruel I know. They care about me more than anyone, but currently I’m struggling to see beyond myself because it’s kind of a weak phase in dealing with this psychosis and it still plagues my interactions with them.

There is one thing left I really need to learn. It’s to keep my romantic affairs private. I get to talking about the girl because it’s what’s on my mind… my mother tears it apart, my brother tears it apart, my friend tears it apart… that was another factor. I need some kind of hope that I’m moving towards the future I want to have.

I will mention that my friendships are healthy otherwise. Getting stronger. Most of these guys have given up on women and are doing fine… they don’t see why I’m so dependent on it… but just in the last few days I’ve gotten more perspective on what I’m doing.

Sobriety is key… I’m going to work, play fallout 4, and work on my game… take care of my health otherwise…

This last weekend really set me off but it all goes back to drinking too much… Having to work doesn’t sit well with indulgence in alcohol… I felt less professional and prepared and also got much less rest. I have to keep drinking in check…

End of rant… At least typing this out made me feel like I’m on my way up again. Gave me a bit more clarity.

I’ve got to be confident in my ability to keep this job and do all I can to make it easier to get through the day. I’ve learned the tasks that I’m more or less in charge of taking care of… there are more to learn, but for now it’s not so much about taking on new things, but getting them done quickly and keeping myself busy throughout the day.

Discipline and self-control… independence and optimism…

I’m financially free from my parents starting this month, but that reality hasn’t really set in yet… I should save what I can to make myself feel more secure in that independence…

On top of everything though my mom wants me to help sell her stuff on craigslist… It’s something I’m capable of but damn it sounds like a real chore. Especially driving across town to meet up with potential buyers or just spending time over there in general… I spent so many damn days trapped in that neighborhood with psychosis and those pricks are all so in-line well-to-do yuppy type shmucks that it really just bastardizes my sense of self inside… it’s like suffocating.

alright I gotta stop…

#2

I’ll just keep venting here to help me maintain the insights I’m seeing now that I’m feeling more positive.

I’ve been looking at borderline personality disorder and I do feel it fits me… Something I kind of acknowledged before but only over time did the dots start to connect and I could really see clearly what that meant.

Well with full blown psychosis it’s no longer borderline… but what brings that back is when neurosis starts to surface as a byproduct of both real world influences I’m still learning to cope with and the compounding factors of psychosis.

I have trust issues on a very deep level and that’s a hall-mark of it from what I gather. Revolves around identity and that is another hall-mark… revolves around feeling alone regardless… that is another one. At the end of my shift on sunday I was totally just beating myself up inside and feeling extremely impatient and frustrated with life… my mental rants became hazardous not just to myself but it was tearing apart everything I had valued and worked on creating for myself as I realized that it wasn’t quite where I wanted it to be. I had lost hope… and comfort with life. I grew a bit more delusional as I want to escape my neurosis and started to buy into the psychosis as an escape… because as horrendous as my inner world is and as versus as my psychosis wants me to see the world… it’s fascinating and there are always more angles to analyze… I always try to do so safely because the more of it I process the less that can surprise me in the future…

So… It revolves around friends and family. The people who keep helping me feel reassured and entertained and connected to what’s going on. I had a blast with my friends last weekend… it was testament to me really coming out of my shell and reconnecting with these guys in a genuine way. I didn’t want to push it though, I didn’t want to exhaust the sense of friendship and get into the oscillation phase where it becomes the back and forth of being good then not so good then good then bad then not so bad then good… so I turned away from that… which was not a good thing for me to do. These folks are my true friends… time has shown that… they probably feel similar to it as I do. One statement a friend of mine made kind of confirms it. He is just as concerned with getting along with me as I am him. I know the other guy who visits from KC is neurotic and socially anxious inside and probably feels similar… then the last guy is too chill to either be judgmental or too concerned with what friends think of him, but this last guy has been my friend for over a decade… he might have actually learned to trust in friendship at some point… Which is something I need to learn to do. I will take my time with it though… that kind of trust builds as person shows who they really are not when they are trying to prove something and takes time.

Regarding the girl… it’s absolutely fantastic knowing her… but from what she has said she also has trust issues… She backs away and returns to her life in the distance and it returns me to being alone and then over time loneliness creeps back in… then suddenly it’s like why aren’t these thoughts pleasing any more… why am I disdaining this girl who has done so much to try and understand me and hear my ideas?

I have taken on a lot in trying to get to know her… it was hap-hazardous and I was naive going in… but thankfully for the distance and time I’m starting to settle into and understanding of her, myself, the ways of the world… she has shown me that I do have an adventurist side… that it is born of escapism… but it totally healthy in keeping one grounded in the awe of existence. It frees oneself from feeling stuck in the worldly situations that wear on us…

This town seems like a blight… I have qualms with it in numerous ways… it’s strangling at times to see the monotony of a populace that is 95% white and only 100,000 people… It’s a college town so it’s all about drinking, sexing, and drugs…

Ah leads me back to the identity crisis type thing… it seems that I have been able to define my inner trend regarding sexuality… Women come into my life and they allow me to truly know the whole of myself… I only take to liking women I think I can love… and I’m pretty sure I am a demi-sexual where I only feel attracted to women that I recognize as lovable… minds I like to reward and bodies I like to see. Those two qualities are few and far between, in combination… even scarcer…

So the women leave and return to themselves… but it wakes up that sexual side… a part of myself I enjoy… but without the woman around the wholesome feel of their presence dwindles in my mind… but the cognitive neurosis of being sexual doesn’t quite taper off at the same rate… so I start feeling like a pervert… and more guilty… while also more alone and trying to fill avoid… it was crucial to realize this because it showed me the answer… I have to just put sex out of my mind again… I’ve done so many times in the past… but it’s still challenging as we are psychologically neuroplastic… the borderline between psychosis and neurosis lies somewhere between the conscious and subconscious activities in the brain…

And then there is my family. The people who love and support me… but I just can’t relate to them fully. They know who I am and I know who they are but we are so different. I think it’s just the issues wrapped into being the oldest son and having a father who is only now starting to really open up to us emotionally and as a full person. A lot of ■■■■ I had to sort out on my own in life here…

I like my friends… I like this girl… they are highly intelligent people… I’ve spent so much time talking with them though that it’s tough for me to readjust to the simpler side of things where nothing serious matters and the conversations are light gossip and jokes and making little family plans and all the other stuff that is little value to me because it’s always there and just passes by… it isn’t about me and my friends exchanging the deepest insights we have into the world and the humor we’ve developed in ourselves about them…

I could give an example of a conversation between my mother and my brother… and it’d just be the same thing they always talk about… no change in perspective on either side even after all these years… I am glad the know themselves… but frankly I’m the only one there who see both sides sympathetically(or try to, my brother is a womanizer and my mother was raised protestant.)… but really both are annoying for being so extreme… and listening to them spin over it all again knowing there is no purpose and having heard it all before… effing mind numbing and makes me want to climb up the walls…

I have to make sure that I have gas in my car at all times… because I gotta be able to get the ■■■■ out whenever I can… and just knowing I can do that allows me to stay longer.

End of chapter 2 :slight_smile:

#3

Happy for you that you have true friends and will have true love soon! (:open_mouth:)
Look like you are doing so-so with family and neighbors.

And good to hear you know how to keep the job. Remember to save money!

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#4

You are close to have a relationship!!:scream:

#5

Alright hopefully this is one last entry here…

This is more about my strategy…

I want to do a hypothetical compare and contrast between my friends and I… I’ll try to make it comical as we all survived but there is the underpinning tragedy of what happens to folks when they push it too far.

There is a lot of drinking in my life… Everyone I know drinks… there are a lot of drugs in my life… pretty much everyone excluding my mother smokes weed… I’m talking about my immediate life… the people who live in my town.

To set the situation up I’ll describe my weekend. I get off of work on friday. Knowing that the small bota box wasn’t enough the time before and it left me mooching of the last supplies of other peoples alcohol I went with the larger one (3 liters)… bad idea… but I did have a blast that night.

My friend from KC has a good job and doesn’t mind the expense of alcohol so he rolls up with a case of 20 budweisers and the usual liter of fireball… easy whiskey to drink.

My other friends power was out and they need to get back to the modern nature of electricity and internet so they roll up… Of course they bring booze for themselves… and them boom several hours of getting extremely intoxicated and revisiting the old and only seldom resurfacing of playing Halo. Probably my favorite part…

I was sharing wine and we were all basically just drinking everything. The friends who live in town brought over their coffee stuff as they couldn’t grind the beans at their place. It was a trade at first… not that I need a strong cup of coffee at that hour, but they brew it right and their coffee is much better than mine to say the least.

Mental exhaustion on all levels… I couldn’t even aim and that was about as close as I’ve gotten to truly blacking out and losing sight of myself as I have in a long time.

The next day at work. The smallest dude out of us is really suffering… You can tell when this guy crosses the line and get’s “white girl” drunk… his character becomes fleeting and very care-free… on a true level… this is something I have to fake in most instances. At work he was breathing heavily and his complexion was off… he was constantly leaning on things and not saying much… He was traumatized on a physical level and I can only imagine that all the upset between his stomach and his physical brain was dominating his focus… more or less just extreme fatigue and pain. This is the chill guy… he doesn’t raise to many qualms with the world. He skates by doing the minimum on his own time and considers that his ticket to being content with things…

The other guy… who I should mention drunkenly destroyed my kitchen while trying to brew a coffee. Leaving grounds and coffee stains more or less everywhere… while also breaking on of the precious five glasses I have in my apartment. It was a moment of deceit when later at work I said light-heartedly “Looks like one of my glasses broke last night.” He responded, “Yeah I saw that.”… Even later in the day when returning from work I mentioned it to the other friend who had crashed there. “Ah, yeah that was [insert name].”… Who was the guy who had brewed the coffee… Made me chuckled that he more or less lied to me… The guy isn’t one to typically lie… the non-disclosure was comical to me.

So this guy is also at work… He’s struggling… We all were struggling. For me it was strange because back when I was a manager working somewhere else… or pretty much any job I had before that on occasion I’d wind up in that state of desperately needing sleep and still having intoxication subside while the hangover rose… I was always alone in that struggle. Keeping it to myself and just pushing through the day. This was the first time it was me and two good friends all in the same state. I was more enthused and entertained by the situation… (my day to suffer was going to follow.)

So this guy eventually starts lamenting about how long he’s worked there and how his body is just rejecting the locality of the store. That he feels physically compelled to just walk out… other than that with mild signs of fatigue he continues to press on. At one point though he walks back in from the store-front and mentions to me that he might be done “I was just blacking out while walking out there.” This is the difference between the first guy to make note of here… This guy wasn’t showing hardly any signs of physical pain… it was entirely mental… He pushed it to the point where his mind was about to shut off on him without saying anything about his condition beyond what we already knew he was dealing with because we were in the same boat.

That night I get off work and my other friend was still over and he’s had the most time to recover and is likely the most dependent on alcohol in social situations… He get’s more alcohol and I’m looking to drink after a good nap.

Long story short the next day at work I’m hung over again… Knowing my apartment and more or less my life is a mess and that I’m out of money again…

Everything was fine for a while. Regrettably I have to say I have had too many days like that. It was more back when I was a manger and had to work a twelve hour shift in those conditions where I was also in charge and incapable of expressing my condition… I kept most of it inside and managed to just keep chatting with the other guy who hadn’t quite recovered by that point either… By the end of the day though… I was really losing my ■■■■… Psychosis started to dominate… I started resenting the girl who has helped me the most over the last year (as far as people in my non-internet life go…) All the past thoughts about the economy and wage-slavery and how so much could change and no-one seems to care… all of that led to resenting humanity and the culture here and all this was intertwined into thoughts of this girl I had basically just fallen out of love within a few hours… and how all of it tied together… meanwhile I was maintaining and average pace of work and average interactions with my coworkers… and hallucinating more or less every 1 to 3 seconds throughout the day. Just barely make it out of there…

Then boom… the flood… every thought I had been suppressing all starts to unfold… A horrendous out-pour of disdain into my mental space… I slander away at all that I was frustrated with but didn’t even allow myself to think about for the most part… regarding women, culture, psychosis, family, alcoholism… everything about those and how they intertwine… for about 6 hours…

Then I start feeling guilty… and I realize I’ve relapsed… and I feel guilty for holding such cruel and spiteful dispositions… but also feeling like they were a true expression of the self as a totally independent person with no regard to the feelings of other people… just my raw opinion in my mind. It was true though… I was not in a good state… extreme physical discomfort and schizophrenia for 48 hours… had me hating everything.

It’s just really interesting for me to look back on now… how this drastically reckless weekend played out.

There are a lot of lessons in there. Inspiration all around to do better… inspiration in speculating on the inner nature of the first friend who is more relaxed…

This should be the end of the book here… but it’s where my thoughts immediately went after writing.

#6

@Plumber thanks for the encouragement…

@moonlee I highly doubt it… though it’d be great… the girl is awesome in herself but not she’s not ready for a relationship… she’s a good friend but anything regarding a relationship with her… will just drive me mad with impatience… I do like knowing her though… I’m glad that I’ll get to spend time with her in the future.

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#7

@Azley, I couldn’t read all of what you wrote (sorry) but from what I did read you’re doing so well! Try not to be a perfectionist in your life. Most people without sz aren’t doing as well! Give yourself credit :heart:️ Are you attending AA meetings? I would recommend finding a group. You’re obviously very strong, but there are some things you should seek help with and stopping drinking (awesome!) is one of them. Addiction is sly and you could transfer from alcohol to other things, like food and/or sex…just something to watch. You sound like you’re cycled into an active phase and you’re handling it really well. Don’t despair. Focus on that good stuff. Are you in therapy? I, as always, recommend Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. :blush:

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#8

Thank you for you kind words, encouragement, and concerns… I might look into alcoholic anonymous… I do understand my addictions and they really revolve around one thing… the immediate need to consume to try and get through the moment. I am an impatient person and substances ease that impatience… and really basically allow me to escape becoming a patient person.

To not be a perfectionist… I really like that you threw that in there. The perfectionism in me adds a lot of stress and pressure.

As far as therapy goes… I don’t know if I have time for a group therapy regiment in my life. I also don’t want to put pressure on my insurance in covering that expense. I have been through a couple different CBT courses and one of them I attended twice… I know quite a bit about CBT and use it all the time. Distress tolerance is a big one… that’s one I still need to work on.

As far as the addiction goes I’m working on spending time on my interests more heavily. I have my computer good to go… I’ve got a guitar and amp and soon I’ll get my bass rigged up… and later a keyboard. So I’ll have a variety of pursuits in music to think on and return to.

I’m going to spend more time reconnecting and keeping up with you all on here and I really do have some good friendships in life. Between 5 and 10 distant and near friends who do really care and like to chat with me…

I’ve just got to start whittling away at the discomfort and distrust I have with life. Much of substance abuse is escapism… you must face what you want to escape and find a way to rationalize it so that the sober and more idle mind won’t be as uncomfortable… I’m on stable enough grounds to start doing that I believe.

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#9

Keep up that momentum! I wish you the best :heart:️

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#10

Hey likewise @Hedgehog.

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#11

@Azley You have a lot of good insight into your life and self-identifying areas to focus on (btw you’re a very good writer).

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#12

thanks @Moonbeam

Not everything I write is good… naturally… so I’m glad when people compliment my stuff. Let’s me know when I’m getting it right.

#13

Hi Azley. I just wanted to say that your writing took me through happy and sad moments with you and I felt like I was right there alongside you in it.

You have really good insight and writing skills. You should try to hang on to both of those because I think that your writing helps you a lot.

I don’t identify very strongly with my family either. But I feel like the shallow one in my family.

Due to some ‘delusions’ my psychiatrist has recommended I don’t watch the news or regular tv shows.

So because I’m not particularly up with current events, I can’t relate a lot of what my family talk about.

I think they all think I’m dumb or something. That I have nothing to contribute.

I hope it all works out for you in the job, it sounds like you are doing really well in it.

Remember I was telling you about my new laptop? I dropped it the other night! I was so worried it wouldn’t work but apparently no harm done, it is working fine even after being dropped on to a hardwood floor.

Your thread title says you lost confidence. I lost confidence in my job when I was working in a particularly competitive and backstabby team. I asked to move team and luckily I was granted permission to do that.

I had lost so much confidence in my work that when I would be at home thinking about doing even the most mundane task, I would think of suicide.

Now I’m in a team that is happy to have me around and we’re all really supportive of one another. It has made a world of difference. Now I only think about suicide on my days off because I get depressed.

Take care Azley and keep posting.

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#14

these won’t make you any more deep… perhaps more aware seeming… up to date… on the edge…

True depth comes from knowing yourself and being able to empathize and sympathize and relate… and perhaps philosophy. Trust me thought if their conversation is flowing they aren’t going to mind you spectating. Most people like talking and are proud of what they know on their own… another voice might just complicate things…

I’d try to be content and happy looking for them. You can even explicitly state that you aren’t interested in the topics at hand… if they ever ask. Perhaps they’ll change the topic for you.

I’m glad your laptop works still… I’m glad you hanging in there and I’m glad you have a good team these days.

Thanks @anon84763962 always here if you need an ear… :v:

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#15

Thanks @Azley you are a good person.

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#16

hey likewise @anon84763962

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