I don't have any answers...I'm just doing the best I can to deal with my life, as I am sure we all are.


btw Lenz you are a fantastic writer.

Steve0123,

Knowing that it hurts helps me cope.

Being a good writer, however flattering, has never much helped me. A talent like this is not worthless, but I haven't found what its good is. I have a written a stack of books that now look back at me. Wasn't that a vanity?

Lenz

This site, just knowing you guys are here and that I'm not alone is a great help.

Chambers,

I get that we're all coping, and that this sharing is each other’s best gift. Of course, I'd rather do a hundred other things right now. I'd rather feel a hundred other things right now, but its not possible.

Coping means accepting that I am not in charge, that my own charge has been a diversion, that listening to myself has been faulty, and that by no fault of my own, each of my words ought to have already been retracted.

Coping means to meet me inside of my own withdrawl, and to accompany my pat convictions with a new question, ineffable albeit. Coping says, you're not done yet Lenz, starting, and that you'll have to shut up a little and start over some more. Dispell the fatigue you feel, as the effort has only just introduced itself.

Cope with this: I've come again to the point at which I know I have only just begun - living. Life has been a jacket within which I have hidden all of my feelings, and coping means to watch that jacket tumble down a windy street, opening and closing, flapping its pockets about like dove's wings, and feeling no surprise about realizing that I have always been invisible.

Lenz

Hi Lenz.

there is partially a bio chemical explanation for exercize and for self harm. I have a friend who suffers from purely genetic depression, ie, it has zero cause whatsoever other than bad brain chemistry. She is pretty much an expert at coping with it the way a person would cope with any specifically physical disability, for instance she specifically has no pain killers in the house so that she cannot attempt suicide during one of her down moments, and though she works as my reader/research assistant, we have a standing arrangement that she can simply phone me and say "not today" if it's one of her off periods.

apparently, both pain through self harm and complete exhaustion can cause the brain to releace endauphins, which produce a natural high, and can change mood just like a drug.

This means that extreme exercize has to be taken pretty carefully, so as not to become an addiction, indeed, I've experienced this myself.

that is why I currently am holding off on exercize until I have the time and support to do it properly when my thesis is finished, sinse then, I'll have more time and support to handle it correctly.

As far as mental detachment goes, again, there is a bio chemical explanation for this, sinse it simply involves using different parts of the brain to those that feel emotions. once again though, it's something that can be taken to excess.

Back in about 2007, when first doing recovery I spent close to 36 solid hours playing a particular space trading game, simply because it was so much easier than dealing with all the things that were going on in my mind at the time, yet at the same time I don't think this was a good thing, given the place I was in, and the fact that I pretty much played to exhaustion, slept for four hours, then started up again the second I woke.

As Epicurus said, anything taken to extreme can be a bad thing, even things that are potentially good in other circumstances, which is really one of the chief problems with recovery, when one thing works even temporarily, it's too easy to get into a cycle of using that thing to extremes, whether it's booze, exercize, food, pain, mental detachment or whatever.