Venting thread that still excludes eddy (2)

[Imralu]

I'm not doing well right now ... I've just been sleeping and crying, watching youtube videos, crying, sleeping. There are so many things I should be doing and people I should be seeing but I just can't face any of it right now.

[Travis B.]

I'm not doing well right now ... I've just been sleeping and crying, watching youtube videos, crying, sleeping. There are so many things I should be doing and people I should be seeing but I just can't face any of it right now.

That sucks. Do you have an appointment you could move up?

[Imralu]

Not really. I'm seeing my counsellor on Tuesday ... it's every Tuesday at the moment ... and I'm sure I'll be coping better within the next few days. Just one of my crashes I guess. It's not an emergency or anything - I'm safe - I'm just not happy at all. I managed to go to the shop and get toiletpaper (my flatmate and I seemed to be playing a game of who'd cave and buy it first - I did - I bought the new lightbulb we needed too ... fucker!), ice cream, chocolate, waffles etc, so things seem a bit brighter right now. I've finally learnt to comfort eat ... so I think I'm going to get fat, lol.

[Imralu]

I really need to sleep but I keep starting to cry whenever I get close.

[Salmoneus]

Not really. I'm seeing my counsellor on Tuesday ... it's every Tuesday at the moment ... and I'm sure I'll be coping better within the next few days. Just one of my crashes I guess. It's not an emergency or anything - I'm safe - I'm just not happy at all. I managed to go to the shop and get toiletpaper (my flatmate and I seemed to be playing a game of who'd cave and buy it first - I did - I bought the new lightbulb we needed too ... fucker!), ice cream, chocolate, waffles etc, so things seem a bit brighter right now. I've finally learnt to comfort eat ... so I think I'm going to get fat, lol.

The thing to remember about comfort eating is that not only does it not make you comfortable, it actually makes you sad. Eating is depressive - we enjoy the immediate effect of it, because depressing our nervous system reduces anxiety and can feel good, but it also makes you want to sit around and cry and not go out (and eat more). Chemically, sugar in particular leads to immediate dopamine release, feeling good - but that then results in a dopamine-deprived crash, feeling bad, and in the long term it makes you less sensitive to dopamine, meaning that you find it harder and harder to experience pleasure. It also does stuff with seratonin, but that's too complicated for me.

It's better that comfort anorexia, of course. But comfort eating should be seen as dangerous, and not just because you put on a bit of weight. Obesity in general but binge eating in particular are associated with much higher levels of depression, anxiety, self-loathing etc, as well as being addictive.

[jal]

Obesity in general but binge eating in particular are associated with much higher levels of depression, anxiety, self-loathing etc, as well as being addictive.

Sure, but I think you might have the causality reversed a bit...


JAL

[Travis B.]

Obesity in general but binge eating in particular are associated with much higher levels of depression, anxiety, self-loathing etc, as well as being addictive.

It should be noted that being overweight is much more associated with depression in women than in men, indicating that gender roles may be at work there.

[Salmoneus]

Obesity in general but binge eating in particular are associated with much higher levels of depression, anxiety, self-loathing etc, as well as being addictive.

Sure, but I think you might have the causality reversed a bit...


JAL

Not enough research has been done, but the research that has been done seems pretty clear that it's a vicious cycle. It's worth noting, though, that while depression increases you chance of being obese, it doesn't on average increase your weight - because as the saying goes, depression makes the thin get thinner and the fat get fatter, so it has relatively little effect on the average, but does result in a more extreme distribution. But yeah, both obesity and overeating lead to depression, and this appears to be true for psychological, physiological and behavioural reasons. This can be shown both at the lab level (give people lots of fatty and sugary food and they get sadder), but also at the lifetime level (childhood weight isn't strongly associated with childhood happiness, but childhood weight is very strongly associated with adult (un)happiness and depression). Conversely, early depression is predictive of obesity specifically, but isn't predictive of overweight more generally (which probably reflects that 'more extreme distribution' thing).


Travis: certainly the links are less clear with men, but it's really hard to say why. One idea would be that women hate being overweight more than men do, leading to mental health problems. Alternatively, the bias may be 'positive' - that is, women may only be overweight when something (physiological, psychological or economic) is wrong, whereas relationships in men are obscured by larger numbers of mentally and economically 'healthy' men (some studies even show that heavier men are happier - probably because happier men are just less anxious about making sure they're not overweight).. Alternatively, it may just be that women are at greater risk of being exposed to dieting, which is a horrific thing that does way more damage than obesity. Alternatively, the particularly dangerous weight-cycling pattern in women may exist for other reasons than just body image - for instance, weight-cycling often seems to be triggered by pregnancy, and there may well be hormonal issues involved. The underlying fact though is that binge-driven weight is more psychologically dangerous than gradually-accumulated weight, and women are more likely to show the former than men are.
Some studies do show the link existing for men just as strongly as for women, though, when you look at narrower samples. For instance there's a study of depression among men and women in their seventies that found a strong correlation with specifically visceral fat for both genders. [And indeed, the significance of visceral fat, increasingly recognised, may also play a role in gender (and racial) differences, as the deposition of visceral fat (as opposed to fat elsewhere) can be connected to genetic factors.

Basically, yeah, it's less clear-cut with men, and social expectations probably play a role, but it gets complicated when you try to work out what's going on exactly. It's also probable that all else being equal obesity and overeating probably still are associated with poor mental health outcomes for men, at least when we're looking specifically at cases where we have reason to worry in the first place, and particularly when we're looking at female-style binge-eating or 'comfort eating'.

In general, though, there is a big problem here, because the research is overwhelmingly focused on women (there have been very few studies of men), and is largely driven by female researchers, too, often (on the psychological side) operating within a theoretical framework that explicitly denies that men can have weight problems (c.f. the famous work on the subject, 'Fat is a Feminist Issue'), which means that they have struggled to address the fact that over the last few decades male obesity and obesity-related health problems have rapidly overtaken female obesity...

[Travis B.]

Welp, root canals, take two, tomorrow. Let's just hope that I'm not miserable tomorrow and have to reschedule it (again). (I'd be iffy were it today; if I were any worse today it'd be a no.)

[Chagen]

I think I've truly torpedoed my relationship with my mom.

She was doing my hair today and trying to manipulate my dad into spending money he doesn't have. I got pissed so I finally called her out on stealing 100 bucks from me. She got very indignant and started making up this bullshit about how she had a right to just steal my money (she didn't), that my dad let her take the 100 (complete lie, confirmed by him when he got home today), and that as my mother she doesn't have to answer for blatant theft of my funds. She also accused me of wanting to hoard that money to buy video games (I didn't--it was completely meant for getting school stuff done).

I got pissed at hell at being yelled at her and finally just said to her face that she was the most brazen piece of shit I have ever had the displeasure of dealing with. She lost it then and launched into an hour-long tirade about how I'm a narcissist piece of shit and she's some innocent angel being abused by me and my father. Since I was stuck there, she took the oppurtunity to gaslight me into thinking I'm the abuser and mentally fucked up (not very effective when I know she's bullshitting, though). Witness some near-direct quotations from my loving mother:

"Say that to me again and I'll hurt. I'm your mother. Disrespect me and I will slam you into the fucking ground".
"Next time you say that, I will cut you" (confirmed by her to be an actual physical threat against my body)
"I didn't want to have you. I can kick you out any time I want, you piece of shit motherfucker"

It was just a solid stream of projection. She projected basically every negative trait she has onto me. My mother really truly thinks I'm some super-happy narcissist living in paradise while she suffers. Also, at one point, she wanted me to text my dad and manipulate him into buying her something, because she obviously can't do that herself.

At one point I finally lost it--she was combing through my hair really tightly and it was extremely painful, so I accused her of doing that on purpose to make me suffer. She said "maybe I am, motherfucker" with this smug "and there's nothing you can do about it" tone and I just screamed "FUCK YOU!" at her so loud my voice was hoarse within a minute. Hours later, it's still hoarse and I've been coughing and wheezing ever since. I really think I permanently damaged my voice from that.

To add insult onto injury she made dinner for my dad but not for me. I haven't eaten anything all day. Meh. I'll just make something later.

[Vijay]

It's not your fault your mom treats you the way she does, and in your shoes, I probably would have done the same if not worse. (Well, at least now I would. At your age, I probably would have been way too terrified to do or say anything, but that's another story, really. Thank goodness at least you know better than I did). I also don't understand what she means when she says she "didn't want to have you." Then why did she, or why does she think she did?

I can relate to that, though. I remember my dad used to claim that since my mom had gone through the trouble of carrying me inside her for nine months to give me life, she also had the right to take that life away from me. He used to say that matter-of-factly, like it was the most normal thing in the world. There have been times when I also wondered why my parents created me if they weren't prepared to accept the results for whatever they might be.

[Imralu]

@Salmoneus: Yeah, you're right. I'm just kind of excited to actually be able to gain weight now. Usually depression makes me lose weight. I can lose big amounts of weight quite quickly and it takes me six months of hard work to put that weight back on. I know I need to steer clear of sugars, but being poor and having a fast metabolism is an issue, and I still have massive psychological problems around kitchens and food preparation, so cheap, calorie rich and something I can eat while hiding in my room doesn't leave much open. Going from last year, when I wasn't even eating every day, I've been better about it for most of this year, making sure I was getting enough calories cheaply. I gained a couple of kilos but then it stabilised again, still way below my comfortable healthy weight.

But in the last four or five months, I've come back up towards my healthy weight and I'm pretty sure it's down to peanuts. They're cheap and healthy ... they use them and once I started eating them pretty much every day supplementing my normal diet of other things, I noticed my shoulders finally stopped creaking and my arse got firm again (it went floppy when I moved to Berlin, got really sick and lost 10kg) ... I think I was not getting enough protein till I started eating lots of peanuts and so my muscles were not able to maintain any mass. In hindsight it makes a lot of sense because I was eating meat every day in Australia and probably only eat it about once a week here and I never thought about making sure I get another source for protein. It's not like I deliberately became almost-vegetarian, it's just that my whole lifestyle changed and there's a lot of tasty vegetarian food and I have a lot of veggie friends ... and then the depression thing when eating at all was the biggest struggle.

So yeah, peanuts are my supplement. The only thing that sucks is that it's not easy to find unsalted peanuts here. The best would be unsalted peanuts with the reddish skin still on (just called "unsalted beernuts" in Aus ... or everywhere in the Anglosphere?) ... I even think they taste better than salted ones ... but here it's either roasted and salted peanuts without skin ... or "fresh peanuts" in the shells and they're hard to find, come in really big bulky packaging and it's so time consuming and I really need to just shovel food into me because otherwise I kind of have to be constantly eating.

And yeah, I did really regret my pig-out the other night. It takes a lot to upset my stomach, but I got a belly-ache from that. I'm learnding.

@Chagen: *hug*

and I just screamed "FUCK YOU!" at her so loud my voice was hoarse within a minute. Hours later, it's still hoarse and I've been coughing and wheezing ever since. I really think I permanently damaged my voice from that.

Don't worry. It won't be permanent. I am able to be very, very loud but I don't know how to do it without absolutely shredding my voice. It recovers within a few days.

I'm not quite sure what's up with my voice now though ... I got a very sick early this year, then a bit sick a few months ago and since then, it's been kind of ... unrobust. I have to be quite loud to get my normal strong tone of voice. If I speak quietly, it's thin and sometimes just cuts out. It feels like coughing should fix it but there's nothing to cough. I don't like this. I miss my old voice. Potentially I've got permanent damage but from an illness rather than shouting.

Once, I had just lost my job after my school closed down and I was waiting for the ferry to go and do Difficult and Important Adult Things and the ferry just went straight past the stop. I was not in the mood for that so I screamed "HEY ... HEY ... HEY" until the ferry stopped and turned around and came to our stop. It was about 500m away at that point and had a loud engine. My voice was echoing off all the buildings on both sides of the river. People waiting with me at my stop cheered for me. Then the deckhand went right off at me - claimed I was making them late (that makes a lot of sense, right? Why did they turn around then?), a boat had broken down, there was another one coming in five minutes (which I would have seen later ... but didn't, because he was lying) and bla bla bla. He swore at me and everything. I said nothing back. I just stared at him and walked past and sat down. I shut down in confrontation as it is, and I was sitting in my chair trying not to visibly shake, but even if I could have psychologically dealt with it, I was unable to speak. A guy called Stjepan stood up for me and I whispered my thank-yous to him afterwards. I went to a hairdresser's that day, and to Centrelink (Australia's government unemployment and benefits agency) and made a bunch of phone calls, one of which resulted in me getting another job, and my voice was pretty much fine by the end of the day.

since my mom had gone through the trouble of carrying me inside her for nine months to give me life, she also had the right to take that life away from me

That's insane! It's kind of like saying, if you ever save anyone's life, you're allowed to murder them at any point after that on a whim if you like because without you, they wouldn't be alive anyway. I pulled a friend of mine back once when he was about to absent-mindedly step in front of a speeding truck ... feeling a bit bored, might look him up and murder him later, lolololololol! (I've had two people do pretty much the same thing for me ... better watch my back.)

[Cedh]

So yeah, peanuts are my supplement. The only thing that sucks is that it's not easy to find unsalted peanuts here. The best would be unsalted peanuts with the reddish skin still on (just called "unsalted beernuts" in Aus ... or everywhere in the Anglosphere?) ... I even think they taste better than salted ones ... but here it's either roasted and salted peanuts without skin ... or "fresh peanuts" in the shells and they're hard to find, come in really big bulky packaging and it's so time consuming and I really need to just shovel food into me because otherwise I kind of have to be constantly eating.

You can probably get unsalted peanuts (but skinned) in a typical Asia shop. At least, that's where I used to buy peanuts when I was still living in Berlin.

[Travis B.]

Chagen: That really is horrible of your mother. As I have mentioned before, it is probably best that you find yourself a job so you can get yourself a roommate so you can live away from your mother.
Vijay: That logic is horrible unto itself. And that it was stated matter-of-fact-ly only makes it more horrible, because it cannot be chalked up to being said in anger or like.

[Travis B.]

I should eat lunch today, because as I am having root canals done later today I likely will not feel like eating dinner. However, I probably won't have any appetite for lunch; yesterday I just nibbled some noodles out of my pesto cavatappi at Noodles, and I don't really feel any better today than yesterday. Maybe I just won't eat today.

On a slightly related note, I've noticed that my mother has been paying more attention to how I am doing and asking I am okay and like since I got out of inpatient and, now that my parents are going off to take care of my nephew, asking whether I will be okay enough for them to be away. It's nice that she cares, but I really just want to be treated as a normal person, no matter how miserable I may be.

[jal]

normal person

Good luck defining that :).


JAL

[Travis B.]

normal person

Good luck defining that

Yes, I have heard that before. To me normal means to be like non-mentally ill people.

[jal]

Yes, I have heard that before. To me normal means to be like non-mentally ill people.

I more or less got that, but I've heard the term being used as opposed to whatever the person using it found the norm. An autistic person vs. a normal person. A physically handicapped person vs. a normal person. A person with ADHD vs. a normal person. An atheist vs. a normal person. And so on and so forth...


JAL

[Travis B.]

Yes, I have heard that before. To me normal means to be like non-mentally ill people.

I more or less got that, but I've heard the term being used as opposed to whatever the person using it found the norm. An autistic person vs. a normal person. A physically handicapped person vs. a normal person. A person with ADHD vs. a normal person. An atheist vs. a normal person. And so on and so forth...

I see what you are saying there, and indeed when I use normal I imply that I am also referring to non-autistic, non-physically handicapped, and non-ADHD together with that. However, I do not mean to imply being non-atheist.

[jal]

I see what you are saying there, and indeed when I use normal I imply that I am also referring to non-autistic, non-physically handicapped, and non-ADHD together with that.

Making the definition of "normal" awfully small :). non-OCD, non-HSP, non-... (oh, and I haven't even mentioned the obvious "a gay person vs. a normal person").


JAL

[Travis B.]

I see what you are saying there, and indeed when I use normal I imply that I am also referring to non-autistic, non-physically handicapped, and non-ADHD together with that.

Making the definition of "normal" awfully small . non-OCD, non-HSP, non-... (oh, and I haven't even mentioned the obvious "a gay person vs. a normal person").

So what shall I say, that I want to be treated like people who are seen as normal? (Like my sister, who despite being anxiety-prone and having suffered from depression in the past, is seen as being the normal sibling.)

[jal]

So what shall I say, that I want to be treated like people who are seen as normal? (Like my sister, who despite being anxiety-prone and having suffered from depression in the past, is seen as being the normal sibling.)

Well, yeah, basically that :). Or perhaps "treated as if not having a mental illness" or the like. But anyway, I got you right away, I just wanted to make a general point about the many uses of "normal".

I hope everything goes/went well with the root canal.


JAL

[Travis B.]

I hope everything goes/went well with the root canal.

I am leaving for it in an hour and fifteen minutes.

[vampireshark]

The situation with my brother really concerns me, and not just because he managed to do a lot of damage to my mom's car (that first passed to me before passing to him). He kinda failed out of grad school by failing both of his attempts for candidacy in the Ph.D. program and stopped attending classes last semester about a month before the semester ended (which made no sense!), but, rather than trying to find something to do like another Ph.D. program or job, he's pretty much spending his days sleeping until noon and playing video games and burned through a lot of money on a trip to Australia. His place is a huge mess (I left him the place, and he complained about how I apparently left it a mess... but I KNOW I cleaned it well and didn't leave a mountain of soda bottles.) A lot of people appeared to be concerned when I talked to them in Kent, but he just doesn't seem to care. And his lease expires in about two weeks, so he needs to find something/someplace. I also know he's been doing a lot of stuff on an online dating site, and some of what he's mentions has been more than a bit concerning to me.

So... I just don't know what the case is with him. And I know I shouldn't care (or should care less), but I do worry.

And I feel a bit responsible for the whole situation, considering I'm part of the reason he ended up in Ohio, but that's perhaps a separate situation.

[jal]

And I know I shouldn't care (or should care less), but I do worry.

What about your parents?


JAL