The vast majority of mental illnesses are caused by trauma. Our entire society is fundamentally trauma-engendering because many of our primary life-or-death drives center around life in a tribe, and we have decimated our number and quality of social relations as well as our connection to meaningful communal labor. This concept of trauma-induced illness has been actively suppressed in psychology literally since Freud and still is today (see: why CPTSD is not in the DSM-V). If the human race continues to advance scientifically, modern day psychiatric care with its myopic emphasis on mysterious “chemical imbalances” will eventually be considered as barbaric as the use of asylums.

I think you just connected something for me… I browsed /r/TiA way, way early on, when it was mostly about otherkin and in that brief window before it really went to shit. I found my diary from high school and inside I have this huge crisis about whether I’m “really depressed or just lazy.” It was strange to read because I don’t remember how I got so many of those ideas or that it took me so long to realize I very obviously was mentally ill. Now I’m thinking I must have absorbed it from the anti-SJW culture.

So many have died and no one is mourning them. Every day our leaders loosen restrictions and downplay the severity of the virus. It’s mass death without respect and without closure. So maybe part of you wants to watch that number to see that it’s real, to see that at least one person cares - yourself.

If you base your whole identity around conforming to society’s idea of masculinity, it’s quite destabilizing to see any critique of that. So the very idea is “deranged” and what we really need is more “paternalism”

Thank you for sharing, this is fantastic news. I was hoping to hear more about Enovid’s efficacy

It warms my heart to know my one comment actually helped you. It’s odd for me as well to look back on that conversation now. I’m also feeling remarkably numb in comparison. My long covid is substantially worse, but I’ve given up on convincing the people I care about to avoid infection. Things don’t feel as raw, painful, and urgent as they once did. It’s like I boxed up some of my pandemic feelings and put them neatly aside, and I can’t tell if that’s acceptance or suppression. But maybe there isn’t a “correct” way to emotionally process something like this.

Is it possible to overdose on weighted blankets?

Everything says stick to 10% of body weight but I just got a 25lb to layer on my 15lb and, honestly. I think I need more

I don’t think so. I’m a very fast reader and I still kinda “hear” words in my head when I go at a relaxed pace. It’s just that at a certain level of literacy, your brain has the ability to visually recognize words faster than you can mentally enunciate them, and it can also recognize words faster than you can mentally process for comprehension. I realized this when of my relatives started to play a game with me where he would flash me a paragraph on his phone for just a second or two, and then I would somehow be able to recite it back. You can deliberately make yourself read at this speed but it’s not very fun, requires focus, and again, is often so fast that you start losing full comprehension of the content.

See the speed reading subsection here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvocalization - in summary: everyone seems to subvocalize to varying extents, unless you deliberately train yourself not to, which you can, but you shouldn’t, because it sucks.

I do a lot of online socializing with the covid-conscious community (people who are actively avoiding infection, staying up to date on the research, advocating for masking/air filtration). There are regular Zoom events, various Discords, Facebook groups. The community is overwhelmingly left, often queer and neurodivergent, lots of people disabled and chronically ill - so it’s a good fit for me. Possibly not a good fit for you depending on how you’re reacting to COVID.

Since you’re still masking, have you considered intentionally connecting with others who are? There’s a disproportionate number of neurodivergent people in covid-conscious spaces because, broadly, we’re less likely to make decisions based on social pressure and what everyone else is doing. You might be able to find people to meet up with in person as well as local covid-conscious events on covidmeetups.com and also through Facebook groups with the prefix “Still Coviding”