Right??? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills here that no one else is noticing the problem with that comment.

I’m not advocating on tolerating the intolerant. I’m simply not pro-eugenics…

It’s just odd to me that you are advocating for genetic control over others who want to use genetic control over others…

CBT always felt invalidating to me. I felt DBT was a lot more palatable and non-judgmental/non-invalidating. I’m not sure if it works for rumination specifically though.

I have always been a very socially anxious person. I can look incredibly confident in settings when I get comfortable. But then random things trip me up. I’ll be having a conversation with my friend/coworker and then just randomly clam up at a random question like “what did you have for breakfast?” I’ll like stammer and instinctively avoid the question because it catches me off guard and I have mega anxieties about feeling judged or rejected. But most of the time I’m fine lol. I even have talked about a lot of incredibly personal things with her! Yet I still do this on occasion with random basic things hahaha!

There was this one time where I got to attend a conference for work in a nice hotel. The first night I got there, I was so hungry and I was freaking out because I didn’t know how to find the hotel restaurant and it was the only thing open late. I asked the person at the check in desk where it was and they gave me general directions. I just for the life of me could not figure it out and could not bring myself to ask anyone else. I was straight up panicking. I went up to the hotel room and thought maybe I’ll just order room service but I was continuing to panic from earlier and couldn’t bring myself to call and try to figure out how to do that. I was so fucking starving but my terror of unknown social situations was preventing me from fucking eating of all things. I cried for like 20 minutes in the hotel room.

Then I mustered up the courage to go back downstairs and look for the restaurant again. Turns out it was outside and that’s why I couldn’t figure it out earlier. Had dinner and felt totally fine and comfortable and relieved. I interacted very normally with the wait staff!

It’s just random things like that. A lot of things go along find but then random things will put me in a panic for dumb reasons lol.

It’s weird because I feel like I have experienced that before. Before I was a daily coffee drinker, I would have a large one only very occasionally. Absolutely wrecked my stomach but sometimes I felt almost…euphoric? I always wondered if that was at all related to the coffee or was just random euphoria. Once I started drinking it more often, it never seemed to happen anymore.

You’d think I could just one day drink an amount excess of what I normally do, but that doesn’t seem to work either.

Is this ragebait?

Thank you. I’ve been on a journey this past year. So far I have finally started to accept myself and feel like my struggles and experiences are still valid and important. Been doing ok with it lately. But my coworker’s father has been in very ill health over many months and at this point he very well never make it back to being healthy. It’s slow and horrific and I fear he will die.

Obviously this is huge and traumatic and painful for her. I cannot imagine what she is going through.

But that little voice in my head is creeping back in telling myself that I should feel bad for making a big deal out of things in my life when people are going through shit like my coworker. Idk man.

So far this has been working for me! Didn’t figure this out until my 30s lol.

But what’s the approach for when you go to bed and wake up and it’s a mess? Because brushing it at that point just turns into the OP also.

Hmm I dunno then. Interestingly, there are actually a couple of drugs out there for women with low sexual desire if it bothers them in an attempt to help it. Idk how well they work and to my knowledge, I don’t know if there are any for men. I mean, obviously there are erectile dysfunction meds for men, but I don’t know that they impact desire.

Ah ok. If this happened in later life, then I wouldn’t say it has anything related to the asexuality label. Reads a bit more like depression to me tbh.

I relate to this so much. Sometimes in my happy periods, I get very anxious. Because I know how hard I crash. I know how painful it feels and how difficult it is to function when it occurs. And while I always feel “cured” when I’m happy again, the back of my mind knows that the next ride of the rollercoaster is inevitable.

I guess I just wish the valleys weren’t so steep and deep. A lot of people irl seem to have a smaller amplitude than I do.

I very much relate to this. Been in an intensive group DBT program and idk if it’s helping, but it’s way more than a one on one therapist has ever done for me. It’s not solving all my problems, but it does help.

I’m not neurodivergent tho, just born too sensitive I guess. It sucks sometimes because it seems like most people don’t feel pain as intensely as some of us do. I probably have BPD traits.

I almost lost my job several months ago when a period of extreme ongoing workplace stress exacerbated my natural predisposition for this. Been many months now and I’m still employed. :)

Did you used to be able to and now you can’t?

I’ve never in my whole life been able to feel pleasure masturbating (and so I’ve never tried sex). I only seem to get turned on in very niche circumstances, and it has always been fleeting. Been like that my whole life. I’ve always had FOMO with it. Yeah, there is the label “asexual” and blah blah blah…but it’s like every piece of media and every human in your life seems to be able to get this amazing rush of endorphins and I can’t. I just wish I could experience it.

They cut all skin cancers out from your skin (well… barring some exceptions for very unusual types of cases). It’s just that melanoma often spread to other parts of your body quickly, which is why it is so deadly. But it still is standard practice to excise the portion that is visible on the skin surface.

One thing to note is that even the report you get after surgery says that all of the tumor was excised properly, it does NOT mean all of the cancer is necessarily gone, just that the one tumor was removed from that one area of your skin. You can have suspected or unsuspected spread elsewhere.

Idk if that makes any sense. I get these cases as part of my job which is both interesting and also terrifying at how readily they spread. But idk that I can explain well.

I will give you that. I definitely am on board with that. People love to link pop sci articles with dramatic headlines, but the reality often isn’t as dramatic. Pop sci articles definitely are one of my pet peeves. People will be like “cure for cancer found!” when in reality it’s just some sort of in vitro testing that destroyed cells. Cancer cells are also killed by bleach and fire, but those aren’t helpful for its treatment in humans lol.

So I get it lol. I guess I was just playing devil’s advocate for a moment.

Generally, surgery for melanoma is not very hardcore. Since we’re talking about the skin, they just cut out the area. It’s not a complicated procedure and is the standard treatment for melanoma.

Cancer treatments often gave multiple components to them. Ex: someone gets chemo and then surgery as part of a standard for certain types of cancers at certain stages.

It wouldn’t make any sense for someone to get this vaccine and for them to leave the cancer on the patient.

This is huge news, contrary to what you say. Melanoma has a crazy mortality rate. Cutting it in half is a huge success.

Is it affordable yet? Clearly not. But that doesn’t mean that it can’t get there eventually.

Hey, man, you’re trying and giving yourself grace. I think accepting yourself really goes a long way, whether you think so or not. Think about how much worse off you’d be if you didn’t.

I haven’t worked my way “out” yet either, but I do try to do some nice things for myself when I get that way, like you do. They haven’t solved things, but they add little niceties to my day. Honestly it’s almost as if we should treat ourselves like having recurring illnesses. What do you do if you have the flu? Do you try to do a zillion errands and run a marathon? No. You relax and let household chores slip a bit and get yourself some comfort items.

Unfortunately, calling out of work that often isn’t really feasible, so maintaining the ability to work is one thing that’s really unavoidable though.

If only I knew. I notice and catch myself heading towards a decline when it happens nowadays. I try to throw the therapy techniques at it that I’ve been taught, but I still can’t manage to lessen the spiral once I’ve started to enter it. It’s frustrating that I see it early too and my efforts feel for naught.

Where are you at in terms of therapy techniques you’ve learned?

I’ve honestly thought the same thing for a number of years. If you look into the research, antidepressants are consistently only marginally better than placebo. Moods change over time in general and with different environmental factors. So obviously at some point your mood improves, aided by placebo.

Despite me not really believing in them, psych meds are have been part of my journey. I hate that people think that I am not trying things and giving them a fair shot. I desperately am and continue to do so. It’s just that my life hasn’t really changed in a positive way. I really, sincerely try. Like with my therapy, I take extensive notes and do my best to utilize the techniques they give me. I even had the opportunity to use some successfully this past Friday! But it only seems to help sometimes despite me trying so hard.

I will say that I don’t think psych meds are totally bunk in certain specific scenarios. People with severe biological/organic derangements like schizophrenia and bipolar 1 disorder do massively benefit from psychiatric medications.

But the difference is that with these conditions, we are giving very high dosages of very powerful antipsychotic medications. Outside of that, the human mind doesn’t seem to operate that way. The previous thought about depression caused by chemical deficiency in serotonin has been disproven.

My issues are episodic and intermittent, making a lot of this stuff harder to tackle and “treat”.