“I don’t think telling someone ‘don’t feel sad’ will console them you need to do whatever you can to make them feel better whenever your actions make them feel sad and not stop until they feel better read my text message and think about it you just never seem happy with me anymore even if i make you laugh i think the damage i’ve done has become irreversible i’m surrounded by endless shit i can’t move where are you i just had a dream where i came to nyc but i didn’t tell you and i took the subway to your apartment and waited for your roommate to come out so i could sneak in then i went into your room and crawled under your sheets from the end of your bed and crawled to your face and kissed you and then pet and hugged you and we fell asleep happy birthday i drew you an ugly fish comic will you visit me today? i want to hold you and kiss your face i miss walking with you at night”
—Tao Lin, “Are You Okay?”Discover Ways To Give Up Smoking Successfully Without Having To Use Harmful Drugs
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"i will learn how to love a person and then i will teach you and then we will know" by tao lin
seen from a great enough distance i cannot be seen
i feel this as an extremely distinct sensation
of feeling like shit;
the effect of small children
is that they use declarative sentences and then look at your face
with an expression that says, ‘you will never do enough
for the people you love’
i can feel the universe expanding
and it feels like no one is trying hard enough
the effect of this is an extremely shitty sensation
of being the only person alive
i have been alone for a very long time
it will take an extreme person to make me feel less alone
the effect of being alone for a very long time
is that i have been thinking very hard and learning
about mortality, loneliness, people, society, and love
i am afraid
that i am not learning fast enough
i can feel the universe expanding
and it feels like no one has ever tried hard enough
when i cried in your room
it was the effect of an extremely distinct sensation that
‘i am the only person alive,’
‘i have not learned enough,’
and ‘i can feel the universe expanding
and making things be further apart
and it feels like a declarative sentence
whose message is that we must try harder’
Loneliness and mindfulness
The weirdest thing about loneliness is that it’s not unique to any of us. If anything, our loneliness is part of what unites us. This should be comforting, if only intellectually. But I’m an emotional person, and intellectual comfort often isn’t enough. Misery loves company, and loneliness is miserable. The whole idea of that is so absurd.
I understand that most emotions have some sort of biological or evolutionary purpose, and I often wonder what the purpose of loneliness is. If I can identify a purpose for it, maybe I can accept it and eventually concur it. But I’m not sure if loneliness is even an emotion, or if it’s just something that is inherent in all human beings. Something we are born with the same way we are born with hands and feet. To be a human is to feel loneliness, maybe. Some people just feel it a lot stronger than others.
I think loneliness drives me and fuels me in so many ways. But I’m not sure if I’m trying to escape it or accept it, that’s the thing. My therapist talked to me about Mindfulness last week in relation to my chronic illness and anxiety. I don’t know a whole lot about it yet, but I do know that it’s a part of Cognitive Behavior Therapy that, rather than focusing on conquering something, focuses on non-judgmental awareness, attention, and acceptance of one’s present experience.
I like the idea of Mindfulness a lot, and it’s definitely something I want to learn more about. I think I need to learn how to be more present. Focus on my current experience rather than the constant rush of thoughts that are always clouding my head and the weight of the world that I feel in a broader sense.
Fatherly Advice at Lunchtime - # 1
- Me: People are so stupid.
- Father: You're being negative.
- Me: No, they actually are stupid.
- Father: Give me an example of why you think they are 'stupid'.
- Me: Okay, someone walks up to me at work, holding a shoe, and asks me for the price. I turn it over and point to the sticker on the bottom, with the price. Why is that so hard to figure out?
- Father: What if they can't read?
- Me: They're numbers!
- Father: What if they can't count?
- Me: That's ridiculous.
- Father: No, it's possible. You shouldn't be so negative or quick to jump to the conclusion that they are stupid. It's like if you saw a young girl on the bus, drunk, and you just assumed she was a loser or a bad kid. You have no idea how she got to that point in her life; she could have been beaten as a child or abandoned, and now she's just looking for a little attention. She could be a straight A student, who's just letting loose for the weekend and drank a little too much. You just don't know and you can't assume. Same with these people who come to you asking for the price on the bottom of the shoe; you don't know if they can read or if they can even comprehend the numbers. You don't know their past, you don't know them. Don't judge, look at it differently than you do now, it's called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
“...borderline individuals are the psychological equivalent of a third-degree burn patient. They simply have, so to speak, no emotional skin. Even the slightest touch or movement can create immense suffering. ...the sensitivity of borderline individuals tend at times to appear to others, including their therapists, deceptively less emotionally vulnerable than they are.”
—Cognitive Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality DisorderBy Marsha Linehan
September 10, 2009
11:30pm
I’ve come to realize that I truly know nothing. I rely on finding evidence to solve problems, but I relied on someone else’s “evidence” to help justify my ideals. I didn’t seek my own projects. I will admit that I do look at all possible sides of many situations (or try to be conscious of seeking all possible angles). I try my best to collect everything “out there”, no matter how mundane or extreme, to piece together a realistic, educated reasoning. I want to say that I don’t live my life through past/present/future emotions, personal judgments, or anything that can’t be reasonably justified. I’m questioning so many things that I thought I knew were certain…only because I had the justification to express why I believed in it. That alone made me close-minded and stubborn. I need to keep in mind that absolute knowledge isn’t possible (along with something I always strive for…PERFECTION) because knowledge is ever-changing and constantly growing. Personally, I don’t want to know everything. That complete knowing would bring power that no human should ever have. We (humans) aren’t meant to know the what’s, why’s, who’s, where’s of every and anything. I guess some would ask…well who or what has that knowledge? My answer: hell if I know and hell if I care. One reason why I love CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) is because it focuses on the present situations and rarely touches on the past. I can’t change the past (no one can) so all I can do is understand it and learn from it. I can only change the present to make for a future more promising. So why focus on something that I can’t change? I will admit that understanding your past will help understand the present which helps improve the future. The issue is that so much emphasis is put on the past (causation and other things) so little attention is put on strategies to improve the present. It can relate to this crazy society right now. We are so focused on finding the Why’s and the causes that no present solutions are being thought of so that means no real preventive solutions for the future. We are only hurting ourselves by waiting for a cause or explanation and not trying to suppress or stop the present problem. It sickens me that I’ve lived this long with this nonsense mentality. But like I said…I cant only change the NOW, so that is what I’m going to do.
I love reading past journals I’ve kept. I’ve had many online blogs/journals but nothing beats putting on paper what you feel.
So many people here who are shy tend to try to self-diagnose with Social Anxiety.
Y’all don’t get it do you?
When shy people don’t get involved, the advice is to let them enter at their own pace. It’s about letting them go to the party they choose, giving them the choice. You don’t force a shy person to do things, it’s about entering when they are ready. You let the flower bloom on its own, so to speak.
When you have social anxiety, the treatment is to get forced into situations. It is not a fun time, it can be really really traumatizing, but it’s the only treatment that reliably works. You have anxiety in these situations and its really hard, so you have to be forced into them.
You really really fucking don’t want to have to do that. Social Anxiety is not a fun thing to have, and all the people in here self-diagnosing with it when you clearly don’t have the symptoms gotta shut the fuck up, because you don’t get it. You really don’t.
Being shy is a state. Social anxiety is hell. Being shy lets you enter at your own pace. Social anxiety forces you into terrifying situations.
Don’t you act like you have social anxiety. You really don’t want it.
“my favorite emotions include ‘brief calmness in good weather’ and ‘i am the only person alive’ without constant reassurance i feel terribly lonely and insane i have moved beyond meaningless, far beyond meaningless to something positive, life-affirming, and potentially best-selling”
—cognitive behavioral therapy by Tao LinI understand that my mom was trying to protect me but...
I can barely function out in the real world. I’m an adult. I should be able to find my way through the city, catch buses, taxis, ask for help when I’m lost or can’t seem to find something in a store. I would be able to do these things myself if it wasn’t for, one, social anxiety, and two enabling my dependency on her.
Even after mustering up the courage to face my social anxiety by going to the hospital, talking to a doctor through my tears and nervousness, and being prescribed pills for this issue, I still have many fears about being social and doing things for myself. Medication the only answer, there’s also cognitive behavioral therapy. Medication only makes it easier to do day to day task around people that I know and outside. I don’t get nervous going to stores, but I still have issues asking anybody there anything.
I’m 24 years old.
- never had a job.
- or an interview
- don’t know how to go about getting one
- trying my hardest
- my hardest isn’t enough
- constantly badgered about getting one
- not given help
- just bullet points for no reason
- feel like a failure
- my only accomplishment is graduating high school
- need to go to college
- can’t because I fucked that up by not getting help sooner
- can’t get financial aid because I was denied the chance to build my GPA up to good standing
- regardless of mental issue, I was denied, had to give out my info to complete strangers just for them to look at me like I was stupid as if this isn’t a real problem
- fuck that bitch
- need money
- I could go on…
- to be continued…
“Research has shown that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is one of the most successful ways to help people learn how to stop picking. CBT starts by helping you understand the emotional and physical triggers, situational factors, and associated behaviors involved in the picking. After understanding those triggers, alternative coping strategies are taught to each person with their triggers kept in mind, therefore not every person will benefit from the same coping strategies. ”
—Help with skin picking | srcbtKeeping Track of Anxiety
A few months ago I decided to try to tackle my anxiety without medicine, to mixed results. A key portion of overcoming the anxiety, for me, has been identifying stressors and key times of the day that I feel anxious. I made this little chart that’s been pretty helpful. I keep it alongside my trigger charts in one single journal. It’s helped identify common anxiety stressors and also peak times of anxiety. Here’s a sample chart! Knowing what might cause anxiety takes away the sense of helplessness. If you can prepare ahead for what might bring up that anxiety, you can learn to talk back to and overcome it!
