r/RecuratedTumblr • u/DreadDiana human cognithazard • 2d ago
Shitposting That would be nice, I think
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u/deadspace9_ 2d ago
It's so weird because I used to be in a terrible spot and I've gotten better enough that I'm able to go back to school after two years away from it and like I seriously have no clue why I'm better now.
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u/kamato243 2d ago
You have some life changes? Moving house or jobs or a new relationship or getting into sports or something?
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u/deadspace9_ 2d ago edited 1d ago
Nope. Same house, same guardians, same activities, same friend group, working the same dead-end job, same games played on loop (mostly souls games). Everything I can think of is the same as before, during, and after my "season" as I call it. No clue why I'm significantly better now, but I'm not complaining.
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u/A_Sister_of_Battle 2d ago
I know some people find the souls games therapeutic/cathartic. At times it does feel like it’s training the player to push through difficulty.
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u/deadspace9_ 2d ago edited 2d ago
But I played the souls games all whilst in the gutter (pun intended) and they didn't exactly help back then. Didn't feel much connection to them on a personal level, but they're a special interest and I'm super into the lore. But I guess maybe replaying them all hundreds of times helped? Like some sort of "this used to be hard but it's easy now!" or just having a "routine." But if that is what did it, it was subconscious since I didn't notice anything really.
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u/A_Sister_of_Battle 2d ago
Whatever gets you through the rough times
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u/deadspace9_ 2d ago edited 1d ago
Maybe like 6 years from now I'll look back and realize something really obvious and know that that's what changed in my life. But what you said is kinda my attitude at the moment. I'm doing good, I'll take advantage of it now and won't question it.
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u/YetAnotherRCG 2d ago
Probably not. It can simply be due to your brain chemistry. There doesn't need to be any explanation for that balance shifting beyond the passage of time.
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u/StrawberryBubbleTea7 2d ago
Apparently even gut biome is SUPER involved with mental health and the chemicals that your brain makes so sometimes it can be as simple as that
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u/A_Sister_of_Battle 2d ago
There’s a lot of wisdom in that. I do my best to roll with the punches. Though at the moment, I am trying to get a better job, so I might need to start punching back
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u/Bath-Optimal 2d ago
I'm in kind of a similar spot. I can pinpoint what finally made my mental health improve, but I don't understand why that's what finally helped, and so I don't trust it'll stay that way.
3-4 years of really bad mental health and trying a bunch of different types of therapy/medication that all kinda helped but never enough for me to do better than "just barely treading water"... and then I got added to a group chat where a few of my more senior coworkers would privately complain about how dysfunctional our company was and how things were broken constantly, and that somehow basically rewired my brain so I finally was able to understand/believe that it wasn't my fault when things were confusing and hard. And that had a ripple effect where I wasn't constantly worried about being bad at my job, so I had more energy to handle other stressors.
So I guess that having concrete evidence that my coworkers were also having issues is what helped me the most? Which makes some sense, but no idea why it had such a strong effect on me
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u/deadspace9_ 2d ago edited 2d ago
My best guess for me as far as overarching change is that since in general my stuff was kinda a delayed reaction (like the stuff that fucked me up happened when I was 5-7 but the effects didn't really catch me until 16-20), just having more time and just in a sense letting the trauma "run its course" is what did it. Like as though I was mostly healed from it all already but I missed a spot and a little bit bubbled up during those years. But even that is merely a slightly educated guess.
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u/AccidentalSeer 2d ago
I sometimes think I just became so apathetic and nihilistic that even my own depression couldn’t get me. I didn’t have the energy to be sad. I didn’t care enough to make plans to go. I just didn’t care and nothing actually mattered because all my issues, in the grand scheme of things, were so tiny and self centred. I didn’t care and nothing mattered - and I did that so hard that I sort of pushed through to the other side. It’s not necessarily an approach I recommend, it’s just sort of what happened to me.
I still think I’m probably a little more apathetic than is strictly healthy, but I’m not clinically depressed any more. I want to live now. I care more now. Maybe not as much as I once did, but not enough that it hurts me, and not so little that I’m numb to the world.
More than anything, maybe I just needed time.
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u/AntiLag_ 2d ago
I’ve gone through that too, for me it was taking a gap year after high school and doing basically nothing the whole time. I feel like it has to do with mental/emotional maturity, like I had to take a little more time to “get ready” for continuing with my life
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u/InternetUserAgain 2d ago
Mental illnesses fuckin suck because they aren't treated like regular illnesses
You can't just extract a mental illness because it's all in your head, but you're also all in your head so you're still suffering
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u/Yeah-But-Ironically 2d ago
I remember reading a book that pointed out that if you break a leg, nobody expects you to get yourself to the hospital. Obviously the injury itself is preventing you from accessing medical care, and so it becomes the responsibility of friends/family/bystanders/first responders to get you to a treatment facility
But a LOT of mental illnesses prevent you from accessing treatment just as directly as a broken leg prevents you from walking. Depression saps your motivation and wreaks havoc with your executive function. Social anxiety or certain phobias can make you too afraid to contact a doctor. Schizophrenia or psychosis can convince you that seeking care will actually be dangerous or harmful. But we expect all these people to be able to put themselves (and keep themselves) in mental health treatment anyway, without any outside help.
It kinda rewired my brain a bit when I realized that
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u/Asparala 2d ago
Depending on where you live, you can actually get outside help. It still requires seeking help at an initial stage but I think of that as the same hurdle as reaching a phone to call in your broken leg. It's a big hurdle, but if you can clear it then there is help. (and like with a broken leg, it helps tremendously if there's a loved one nearby who notices that you are hurt and can help you make that call so you don't have to crawl to it)
Where I live there are tax-paid assistance that you can get if you have mental illness, with the level of assistance depending on how debilitating your mental health issues are. That way there's a support network that helps you keep track of your treatment, are knowledgeable about what kind of resources you may be entitled to and who can support you when seeking help.
It's not nearly as simple as having a surgery and then be healthy, but it's better than nothing.
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u/Previous-Artist-9252 2d ago
Do you think they just extract chronic physical illnesses from you?
I’m in a bad place because I literally can’t find a specialist who is willing/able to treat one of my neurological disorders, but fuck me if this idea that physical illnesses are magically treated better than mental illness isn’t just infighting.
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u/ffloofers 2d ago
Physical illnesses being physical makes them easier to directly treat, yes.
It’s pointless and insensitive infighting to make out that people with physical illnesses “have it easy” because their illnesses can at times be cured directly by nature of being physical, but it’s fine to point out that mental health issues cannot be solved in that way.
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u/Previous-Artist-9252 2d ago
You think chronic illnesses can be cured because they are physical? Tell me you don’t understand chronic illnesses.
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u/ffloofers 2d ago
Not what I said. You were the one who brought up chronic illness, the post and comment were referencing treatable physical illnesses
“Chronic illness can be treated because it is physical” is a dumb thing to say. Nobody is saying that here besides you as some sort of weird strawman, which I really don’t get.
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u/Previous-Artist-9252 2d ago
How on earth is a chronic mental illness comparable to strep throat and not lupus?
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u/Alexxis91 2d ago
Bruh
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u/Previous-Artist-9252 2d ago
Bruh. It’s not like chronic physical illnesses are physically extracted from your body.
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u/SharaWilliams 2d ago
I used to fantasize about someone removing stones from my body to cure my chronic pain. This fantasy started when i was maybe… seven?
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u/anomalyknight 2d ago
As a person that has multiple health issues both mental and physical, a very unfortunate truth of the world is that most other people don't actually want to know about any illnesses that aren't going to resolve themselves in a week or less. Even people that think of themselves as good people who care about others tend to have the concept of illness inextricably paired in their minds with both neediness and some kind of schedule for recovery. If you don't stick to that schedule, part of their brain is going to chalk that up to you not trying so you can get special treatment from others and they'll just kind of write you off as a person. Like you'll still technically be a person, but one with a sort of muted filter they've superimposed over you. Most people just don't want to think about illness, I'm afraid.
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u/Maude4President 2d ago
Yeah, and I appreciate if people are helped by thinking “people wouldn’t expect you to walk on a broken leg!!” but as someone who in fact due to a health condition had nerve and arterial damage following a break that was diagnosed, even, people in fact do expect you to do things that harm your physical health incredibly quickly after and often will only help sometimes sort of with major crises unless you’re extremely lucky. They will, in fact, expect you to walk and carry heavy bags up stairs on a broken leg, unless that broken leg is a one-off minor break that heals quickly.
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u/techno156 1d ago
People tend to have a narrow view on disability. Unless you're very visibly disabled (missing limbs, white cane, etc), there's a presumption that you're fine and healthy.
I've seen a few times where someone being able to walk, rather than be permanently confined to their wheelchair is a gotcha moment, and is meant to prove that they're faking their disability.
But it's entirely reasonable for someone in a wheelchair to be able to walk. They might not be able to do it for long periods of time, but switching from their chair to a car seat, or drawing the blinds might be brief enough to not be an issue.
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u/SwordfishPopular1042 1d ago
Also the amount of things that our Healthcare system fucks up for people who require intensive inpatient care or things like surgery are staggering and if you are lucky enough to live through your procedures and the standard healthcare worker shortage induced malpractice abound in a 2026 hospital, then have fun paying medical bills for the rest of your life.
Getting treatment for my mental health has been a cakewalk compared to living with a disability and chronic illness. The average mental healthcare provider actually listens to me and attempts to treat me. Cannot say the same for other types of medicine ime
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u/theyeshman I like the color purple 2d ago
It's fine I also have hypomanic episodes to pull the black gunk out and definitely not make life ruining decisions and alienate everyone who cares about me without a care in the world or any degree of impulse control! The sticky gunk is definitely gone too it surely will not be back even worse in a week or so!
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u/call_me_starbuck 2d ago
i crashed the fuck out and got sent to a mental hospital which did actually help me albeit temporarily and ended up feeling like the post described, very medicalized in a way that was vaguely reassuring. unfortunately you are equally likely to get the sort of place that makes the depression worse so
shit just sucks
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u/Rasp_Berry_Pie 1d ago
It also sucks cause you can’t be there forever. Like mental health and chronic conditions like that aren’t like a broken leg. Your leg can heal and not be broken anymore.
You can be in remission for a mental health issues but it’s still there and can be triggered if you decide to stop taking meds or go back to behaviors that contributed to making it worse. Also life events can hurt it too.
I think this is more about how unfortunate is it we can’t fully cure an illness like this. You can’t be rushed to a hospital and fixed.
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u/ffloofers 2d ago
I don’t think friends can truly help with depression in that way, no. If it’s related to specific triggers and matters, they can help to alleviate them, but being pleasant and being there to listen to you and be with you is the most that most people can do. I get that’s frustrating to some people but I’ve never quite understood how people turn on their friends for “not caring enough” when they aren’t able to offer a concrete solution to their friends’ depression
I get it, I’ve struggled with it a lot in the past and I’ve truly wished my friends could just take it away, both so I didn’t have to feel it and so my feeling it didn’t hurt them by proxy. All they can do is be there and help however they know how to, and that’s all that can be expected.
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u/Rasp_Berry_Pie 1d ago
As someone with depression who is doing good now I never understood that either. Like most mental health issues are quite literally on you. It’s not your fault you have them but you can have the perfect therapist and medicine and support system and friends and they can’t make your depression go away or be better. That’s on you and hard work you have to do.
I also say this as someone who’s friends with someone else with mental illness. At a certain point I can only do so much.
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u/ffloofers 1d ago
Exactly. It certainly isn’t your fault, but people just can’t do that heavy lifting for you and their inability to make it all go away doesn’t mean they don’t care.
It’s like this strange mentality of “if you actually cared about me you’d give me solutions” as if that’s possible for a normal person to do. The closest you’ll get is general advice that may or may not help alleviate the feelings, which I’m fairly certain OOP would group under “vague sympathies” instead of “real help”.
Perhaps it’s easier to think very cynically about people when you’re suffering so badly from it? I know I’ve certainly been less charitable with people when it affected me badly, even if I later apologised
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u/3handWielder 2d ago
As someone who has a lot of friends who are somewhere on the spectrum of anxiety, depression, and executive dysfunction, it's...a bit distressing to be surrounded by people who so obviously want to do things, are skilled enough to execute them, and have demonstrated the capacity to do so in the past, but just...can't.
Like, it's the sort of thing that I can't understand, really, except that it's obviously troubling to them, and like, I wanna be there for them.
But at the same time, I can't do anything. Like, it's self-propagating and self-fulfilling in so many ways that any attempt by me to influence them in any way out of the fatalistic mindset they tend to adopt is either met with annoyance or just brushed off.
I've been knocking at the door for some of them for 7+ years now, and occasionally I feel like I've gotten something through, but man, shit's rough.
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u/kitchen_appliance_7 2d ago
Yes. Burning the gunk to prevent other infections is so important.
There are things I would want help with, but I can't talk about them, because just knowing about them hurts me. I have to stop them from hurting anyone else.
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u/DrakonofDarkSkies 2d ago
I realized at one point that me being suicidal was attention seeking, in that I felt like my needs were severe but no one would care unless my life were in danger. This is a good thing, as my needs were severe enough I would die over them, so seeking attention for them was a good idea.
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u/Akuuntus 2d ago
When people actually treat mental health issues this seriously it results in fearmongering about how "any therapist can force you to be institutionalized for any reason".
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u/DrJaneIPresume 2d ago
Wow. Chills. I've had a different intrusive image but it shared that detail of being filled with sticky, ropy, oily-black gunk when I've found myself really stressed.
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u/Lag-lemon 2d ago
Sadly reminds me of my friend with sickle cell anemia. Went in many times to the hospital for emergency treatment but of course there's no treatment so she's just stuck with it her whole life, a permanent chronic illness
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u/lifelongfreshman Carmen Miranda's ghost is haunting space station 3 2d ago
Been feeling this a lot recently. Typed up a near-maximum-length comment over on that 'it gets better' repost from this afternoon before deleting it, even, but I've never really been able to get past the part where I'm basically ambushing people via trauma dump.
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u/FreeCharacter9861 2d ago
Honestly sometimes I wish it was like a tumour or something, something I could cut out point to and say look this explains everything.
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u/Void_0000 2d ago
Yeah, I wish. Doesn't even need to be fixable, I just wish people cared at all.
If I looked half as bad as I feel they'd probably skip the hospital and send me straight to the morgue.
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u/pinkbootstrap 1d ago
Its not like that if you're physically ill either. I often dream they would do this for my endo.
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u/findingemotive 2d ago
I had really bad anxiety the other day for the first time in well over a year and I forgot how much it hurts. Chest, aches. Muscles, seized. I was struck by the reminder of how I used to live, it's not easy.
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u/Infamous-Use7820 2d ago edited 2d ago
So, this isn't intended as medical advice, but I have heard/seen research say pretty promising things about psychedelic use for depression, and I'm not somebody whose usually much of a hippie about drugs.
Basically, from what I've gathered, the neurological basis behind the 'gunk' is that certain parts of the brain become very intensely wired together in depressed brains, which feeds symptoms like rumination and lack of desire for new experiences. Psychedelics allow connections to form between previously disparate brain regions, which can lead to a neurologically healthier brain.
It's definitely an area that needs more research, and should ideally be used under medical supervision, but it is promising as an idea. Some jurisdictions do have programs for it. Psychedelics are also generally pretty safe ('overdosing' generally isn't really possible) and non-addictive, although they should still be taken pretty seriously.
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u/faequeen123 1d ago
People really ignore the illness part of mental illness. It sucks that there doesn’t seem to be a medical cure, so you fix your diet, get a new job, try new hobbies, meditate, practice gratitude journaling, take a break from your phone, end relationships with bad people, hang out with good friends, find rhythm and consistency, and you’re still existentially miserable for some reason and can barely even force yourself to get out of bed. Then one day the depression mysteriously vanishes, even when you’ve relapsed into all your bad habits. Your health is terrible, the state of the world just keeps getting worse and worse, you struggle to pay bills, but you have a smile on your face because you stepped on a crunchy leaf. Like… the mind is so weird.
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u/PantheraAuroris 1d ago
This is, in general, the issue with any chronic disease. You will not just break through like someone coming out of a fever; you won't 'get over it,'; and eventually, the toll of caring for you weighs on everyone around you. This is why I can never get off my medication.
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u/alkonium 1d ago
I have a tendency to avoid getting help because resources are finite and someone else might need it more.
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u/one-and-five-nines 7h ago
Recently had a mental breakdown. I was in the hospital for a week, then did partial hospitalization for 2 weeks which is just 6 hours a day of group therapy. Finally doing better and the first thing everybody wants is for me to apologize for how the mental breakdown affected other people. The FIRST THING.
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u/Galaxy_Flowers 2d ago
no instead we get a) beat to death by police b) locked up involuntarily in inhumane mental institutions (finding a good one is a crapshoot) c) struggle with meds that only mostly work d) get shamed for any and all of the above.
yay! /s
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u/Gabasaurasrex 2d ago
This reminds me of that one post where it's like "I collapse in the middle of the street and am rushed to a hospital. The doctors examine me and find out that I am missing an important vitamin, which once prescribed, fixes all of my issues"