Shrink says it’s a combination of the drug he had to give me and stress. He gave me that drug only because I refused benzos and my sleep is pretty fucked up even when I’m normal and happy.
Old dude, has a nice wall of qualifications**, including one for CBT**. For people in his generation, to become a doctor, you either had to be really smart, or a rich kid. He was the former. My doc and gym buddy was the one who dragged me to him as kind of an “intervention” since, well, you know what I’m like lol.
And my gym buddy knew I’d like him. First thing he did when I told him my history and trying CBT, he basically called me an idiot in the most polite way possible. The dude said people like me have too high of self-awareness, that’s why it didn’t work for me and it fucked me up completely.
And he said one thing that I didn’t really get because I refused to go look up anything to do with psychotherapy for the time being. I had already “CBT-ed” myself over 2 decades lol. After speaking with my wife alone, he literally said that I WAS THE OPTIMAL RESULT for people who needed CBT.
Wonderful isn’t it LMAO? 20+ years of constant (unconscious) mental remodeling in response to adverse triggers and it’s ALL GONE in 2 months.
While I’m not going to act like I knew what he said was true, I fucking got myself out of the rut through some variation of CBT after I started finding a way to cram a course that was absurdly out of my league, but I got accepted anyway. The irony is that my wife was asking me to do a government sponsored course instead of offering cash or vouchers for people losing their jobs due to COVID. So they offered “upskilling courses” for free so people would be more employable. I didn’t want to do shit lol.
This course nearly killed me. Since I still work from home and got one of my guys to represent me and update me on site if there are jobs outdoors, I literally slept on my recliner with my laptop on my lap for 4 months at least E.O.D lol. Fucking 16+ hrs a day. Fucking recliner caved and I had to repair it lol.
BUT, here’s the thing:
I found a wonderful note taking app that’s free or like 5 bucks a month for small teams of students since I’m using that plan as I feel bad using their free tier which would suit all my needs and I really don’t think it is not suitable for startups unless such startups are tech savvy enough to use their API for integration with other ecosystems. However, security is still an issue since that’s available at an acceptable level for shit like this using their Enterprise plan. They earn their real income from Enterprises anyway.
And then I found some methods of studying that I won’t go in details since I’ve posted them in the Flame Free Thread. It was critical. There was no fucking way I would have passed the course in that timeframe without some “productivity method”. Fucking lucky as fuck I found one that was not only 80% the same way I studied in school, it solved the problem I had before because all this shit is online now, which was organizing notes for quick retrieval.
But the most important thing using this notebook is the damn thing MAKES YOU WANT TO WRITE. Fuck, one sub-reason why I left the industry I studied for was because I HATE WRITING. Which is why I’m grateful enough to pay, even if it’s a tiny amount. I can use OneNote for the way I write stuff and it’d take maybe 70% of the time but I don’t feel like writing when using it. There’s always a tradeoff. The “quick notes” function" along with the ability to write atomic notes while keeping them in separate “boxes” with the link attached if copied and pasted from somewhere is pretty amazing, though.
And then I somehow started doing some variation of CBT (this was verified by my shrink) but without the part involving exchanging thoughts with other people. It was mainly with “myself” through writing, which got me out of this rut. Motherfucker even said he knew I would have done something like this given my character lol. I wanted to call bullshit but I thought, “alright let the old fart have his ego boost”.
Zettelkasten - Wikipedia
You still studying or on a hiatus and having fun abroad haha? If it’s the former, this may be useful.
I did a backup just yesterday and realized I have personally WRITTEN fuckin almost 600 notes in 4 months lol.
Which is why I do not want to bring up personal experience. This is the way I’m wired. My brain kinda subconsciously knows how to adapt to shit when given the right direction.
Please note that I’m not saying I’m some kind of “higher being” or anything like that. I’m just describing how my brain is wired, which may indicate some kind of heightened self-preservation mechanism which spawned from my upbringing and never showing my emotions to anyone.
Some people are good at DIY and Craftsmanship. Someone like me LITTERALLY cannot change a fucking old school ceiling lamp bulb and I can’t even use a fucking measuring tape properly and had to pay double the price for something I ordered which required that I provide the measurements and that shit wasn’t cheap lol.
So, again, I’ve kept the stuff I did discrete although I did explain shit I did.
I gave this much thought before writing the stuff here down and figured it would be really hard and expensive to find a good psychiatrist, even ONLINE ones, so I wrote these things for people who need a solution wrt to what to ask their potential therapists regarding treatment. Level of self-awareness, what part of therapy suits you (dialectical stuff through writing or group interaction? CBT? Writing? Ability of your brain to “self-regulate” given enough time and space?) and whether they suit you with their answers as well as weigh the pros and cons.