stpd + psychosis blog. i share some symptoms w/other PDs but not enough for diagnosis. currently being evaluated for avpd. if i vent anywhere it'll be here. if you have any questions about my illness/es just uhh ask. SIDEBLOG - may contain untagged unreality or similar themes. if you want my main dm me.
This is why I get meal kits. Do I need them? No. Can I easily make them myself? For way cheaper? Yes. WILL I??? No.
Other tips: if you are going to buy things that aren’t pre-taxed, you need to make a habit of always doing the prep AS SOON AS YOU GET HOME. it will NEVER HAPPEN if you don’t.
Get the bulk pack of steaks! But you are never gonna eat them before they go bad. If you freeze them in individual ziplocks as soon as you unpack you probably will?
Get the celery, but you need to cut it ALL UP and store it in the fridge in water or it will rot.
And don’t do all tgese at once, get like, one or two prep things a trip. You aren’t gonna get it started if it’s a huge task.
Don’t pass by these tips because you don’t have ADHD!
These are valid points for the busy parent, the overstressed college student, and the person working the “wrong” shift.
Real story - I have thrown away SO MUCH meat and produce in my time. Frozen veggies can even be better than fresh, since they are picked when ripe and frozen rather than picked early and expected to ripen in shipping. My local grocer will sometimes pre-chop less-than-desirable veggies and sell them in the discount cooler - a chopped onion is more useful than a whole one! Meat in bulk packs is WAY cheaper, but you have to make breaking up that huge pack part of putting away the groceries. Also, having a place to put the groceries away helps make the process easier. It’s taken me more than one decade of life to figure these things out.
It’s not lazy if it is efficient. Professionals call it “time management.”
Bonus reminder “you remembered to freeze the extra meat!” now remember to have it thawing properly more than 30 minutes before you’re truly hungry and ready for dinner
Have you experienced any form of childhood emotional neglect?
Yes, severe
Yes, moderate
No
Possibly/I'm not sure
Voting ended onFeb 4
I'd put mine as moderate (there wasn't a hostile environment at home but the lack of meaningful parenting and attention/affection) and below are the symptoms that I relate to:
the fascinating thing about being abused is that years later youre gonna be there sitting around going "okay so what now". cause like theres no instruction manual is there
youre gonna be buying groceries and then youre gonna remember you went through all that for literally no good reason and youre gonna go Oh Okay and put paper towels in your bag or whatever
I would actually go as far as to say that MOST abuse is unintentional. I think most people will go through their lives without ever experiencing intentional abuse. People are abusive because they're selfish, because they're stressed, because they care more about what society thinks they should do than the impacts of their actions on their children and partners, because they think what they're doing is correct, because they've made it make sense in their own heads, because they think they can fix their victims, they think they can fix their relationships, they think they can stop you from leaving, they think they can make you a better partner to them, they think that means you need to do what they want. We've sort of constructed mental illness in a way that doing this shit to other people counts as a form of mental illness because it is anti social behavior in the literal sense— it is behavior that causes social harm.
I don't say any of this to excuse it. I think everyone needs to be more aware of this because if you think abuse has to be intentional you will never realize you are capable of abusive behavior. You will never realize you are being shitty to the people you love, because YOU know what you mean, YOU know you don't mean any harm. But you're doing harm. You need to pay attention to the impact you have on other people, and you need to do it all the time, Especially when you feel least capable of doing so. Sorry! You live in a society. Get your head out of your ass.
Psychosis can mess with critical thinking skills and make completely irrational things seem perfectly logical at times. When a delusion kicks in, it can be very difficult to logic your way out of it.
I periodically think my milk is filled with slugs and larvae, even though I know rationally, that's not the case. Most days, I can work through that by reminding myself that I live with other people who also drink the milk, and if there were bugs in it, someone else would have noticed, so it's more logical that I'm just hallucinating.
However, the worse psychosis gets, the ability to logic like that can become more difficult. I might start thinking things like "they're only pretending to drink the milk to trick me" or something. They're not, and the milk is fine, but... the brain fills in the gaps of the logic with whatever it can to preserve the delusion.
Delusions often sound completely ridiculous on the outside, but when you're in the delusional state, it feels completely rational, often in ways you can't fully explain.
I often come out of delusions and think "how did I think that was real", but… well, brains are mean like that, y'know?
Rumination is probably the most common type of OCD compulsion, but I rarely see anyone talking about it. I've talked to multiple people diagnosed with OCD who didn't even recognize it as a compulsion.
Basically, if you have OCD you have terrible intrusive thoughts. They can be about anything, but common themes are fear of being a bad person, fear of hurting someone, fear of contamination. etc.
Rumination is when you get stuck in a spiral. Rumination is when you spend hours catastrophizing, overthinking, analyzing, telling yourself it's going to be okay.
I'll say it again:
Rumination is a compulsion.
Rumination is a compulsion, and that means you have to stop doing it.
I did ERP (exposure response prevention) for my OCD with a therapist! For 9 months! And it did help, but the idea didn't really click until I found this website a couple years later.
And Oh My God. It made things make so much more sense, and I was able to pull myself out of an episode even though I wasn't in therapy or on meds at the time.
Genuinely if you have OCD, or even if you suspect you have OCD, I'm begging you to read some of these articles.
Like this was genuinely life changing for me.
Here are some of the ones that were most helpful to me:
this also counts for all those times you kept your mouth shut and didn't complain because you were being polite, and people would gladly have changed things if you had just asked. your suffering was not noble. you do not get a cookie for it, you do not get a tally mark next to your soul's score for grinning and bearing it. your suffering serves no purpose. break free of it. you deserve comfort.
it’s crazy because you’ll grow up in a household where you had your sense of self and healthy boundaries systematically trained out of you so you have no idea how to say no or stand up for yourself as an adult and you end up in situations that make you compromise more and more of yourself and what you want for yourself until you’re a stranger to yourself because you live your life for others, bound by a sense of obligation to make sure they like you and they’re comfortable and they’re happy at the cost of your one precious life, and the moment you stand up for yourself and tell others that they’re allowed to do so? SELFISH.
The data does not support the assumption that all burned out people can “recover.” And when we fully appreciate what burnout signals in the body, and where it comes from on a social, economic, and psychological level, it should become clear to us that there’s nothing beneficial in returning to an unsustainable status quo.
The term “burned out” is sometimes used to simply mean “stressed” or “tired,” and many organizations benefit from framing the condition in such light terms. Short-term, casual burnout (like you might get after one particularly stressful work deadline, or following final exams) has a positive prognosis: within three months of enjoying a reduced workload and increased time for rest and leisure, 80% of mildly burned-out workers are able to make a full return to their jobs.
But there’s a lot of unanswered questions lurking behind this happy statistic. For instance, how many workers in this economy actually have the ability to take three months off work to focus on burnout recovery? What happens if a mildly burnt-out person does not get that rest, and has to keep toiling away as more deadlines pile up? And what is the point of returning to work if the job is going to remain as grueling and uncontrollable as it was when it first burned the worker out?
Burnout that is not treated swiftly can become far more severe. Clinical psychologist and burnout expert Arno van Dam writes that when left unattended (or forcibly pushed through), mild burnout can metastasize into clinical burnout, which the International Classification of Diseases defines as feelings of energy depletion, increased mental distance, and a reduced sense of personal agency. Clinically burned-out people are not only tired, they also feel detached from other people and no longer in control of their lives, in other words.
Unfortunately, clinical burnout has quite a dismal trajectory. Multiple studies by van Dam and others have found that clinical burnout sufferers may require a year or more of rest following treatment before they can feel better, and that some of burnout’s lingering effects don’t go away easily, if at all.
In one study conducted by Anita Eskildsen, for example, burnout sufferers continued to show memory and processing speed declines one year after burnout. Their cognitive processing skills improved slightly since seeking treatment, but the experience of having been burnt out had still left them operating significantly below their non-burned-out peers or their prior self, with no signs of bouncing back.
It took two years for subjects in one of van Dam’s studies to return to “normal” levels of involvement and competence at work. following an incident of clinical burnout. However, even after a multi-year recovery period they still performed worse than the non-burned-out control group on a cognitive task designed to test their planning and preparation abilities. Though they no longer qualified as clinically burned out, former burnout sufferers still reported greater exhaustion, fatigue, depression, and distress than controls.
In his review of the scientific literature, van Dam reports that anywhere from 25% to 50% of clinical burnout sufferers do not make a full recovery even four years after their illness. Studies generally find that burnout sufferers make most of their mental and physical health gains in the first year after treatment, but continue to underperform on neuropsychological tests for many years afterward, compared to control subjects who were never burned out.
People who have experienced burnout report worse memories, slower reaction times, less attentiveness, lower motivation, greater exhaustion, reduced work capability, and more negative health symptoms, long after their period of overwork has stopped. It’s as if burnout sufferers have fallen off their previous life trajectory, and cannot ever climb fully back up.
And that’s just among the people who receive some kind of treatment for their burnout and have the opportunity to rest. I found one study that followed burned-out teachers for seven years and reported over 14% of them remained highly burnt-out the entire time. These teachers continued feeling depersonalized, emotionally drained, ineffective, dizzy, sick to their stomachs, and desperate to leave their jobs for the better part of a decade. But they kept working in spite of it (or more likely, from a lack of other options), lowering their odds of ever healing all the while.
Van Dam observes that clinical burnout patients tend to suffer from an excess of perseverance, rather than the opposite: “Patients with clinical burnout…report that they ignored stress symptoms for several years,” he writes. “Living a stressful life was a normal condition for them. Some were not even aware of the stressfulness of their lives, until they collapsed.”
Instead of seeking help for workplace problems or reducing their workload, as most people do, clinical burnout sufferers typically push themselves through unpleasant circumstances and avoid asking for help. They’re also less likely to give up when placed under frustrating circumstances, instead throttling the gas in hopes that their problems can be fixed with extra effort. They become hyperactive, unable to rest or enjoy holidays, their bodies wired to treat work as the solution to every problem. It is only after living at this unrelenting pace for years that they tumble into severe burnout.
Among both masked Autistics and overworked employees, the people most likely to reach catastrophic, body-breaking levels of burnout are the people most primed to ignore their own physical boundaries for as long as possible. Clinical burnout sufferers work far past the point that virtually anyone else would ask for help, take a break, or stop caring about their work.
And when viewed from this perspective, we can see burnout as the saving grace of the compulsive workaholic — and the path to liberation for the masked disabled person who has nearly killed themselves trying to pass as a diligent worker bee.
I wrote about the latest data on burnout "recovery," and the similarities and differences between Autistic burnout and conventional clinical burnout. The full piece is free to read or have narrated to you in the Substack app at drdevonprice.substack.com
fucking hate it when the stuff everybody says "actually works" does actually work.
hate exercising and realizing i've let go of a lot of anxiety and anger because i've overturned my fight-or-flight response.
hate eating right and eating enough and eating 3 times a day and realizing i'm less anxious and i have more energy
hate journaling in my stupid notebook with my stupid bic ballpoint and realizing that i've actually started healing about something once i'm able to externalize it
hate forgiving myself hate complimenting myself more often hate treating myself with kindness hate taking a gratitude inventory hate having patience hate talking to myself gently
hate turning my little face up to the sun and taking deep breaths and looking at nature and grounding myself and realizing that i feel less burdened and more hopeful, more actually-here, that i am able to see the good sides of myself more clearly, that i am able to see not only how far i have to grow - but also how much growth i have already done & how much of my life i truly fill with light and laughter and love
horrible horrible horrible. hate it but i'm gonna do it tho
My tip for trying to compartmentalize your emotions or desires is to realize when you're using hyperbolic shorthand for an actually realistic desire. I know realizing even that can be difficult sometimes but let me demonstrate
"I wish I was popular" -> I want to be noticed and engaged with, and I need reassurance and the feeling of connection
"I wanna delete my blog and ghost my friends" -> I want to act out in a visible way that expresses how frustrated I am / I feel overwhelmed with connections and need time to cool off
"I wanna do something reckless/dangerous" -> I feel trapped in obligations and am buckling under stress, I need a sufficient outlet and more freedom to exist in peace
Obviously there may be different kinds of feelings or needs under your particular impulses, these are just some fairly common examples of what you could be feeling. The harder part is trying to figure out what it is that causes this impulse, and even harder might be if you don't have control over the situation, and are unable to have your needs met. It's not always your fault if you're feeling bad, but realizing where it stems from can help you seek out new paths to relieve it. This is something I've learnt working in therapy.
The toddler in your heart has valid needs. But it is a toddler and will scream and cry about it. Learn to sit by until it's done and then ask if it wants a juice box or a hug
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