Tldr:
Seeing lemmy posts about Disco Elysium reminded me of something that resonanted with me and its been bubbling wanting to get out and the other topic feeling lonely and isolated from friends due to hardware failure and a growing sense of low self worth and loneliness with some introspection.
: End tldr
First off I want to preface that I am going to be using a game and I guess how it emotionally resonated with me when I tried empathasing with the main character.
The game in question being Disco Elysium.
Although I myself cannot directly place myself in the shoes of the protaganist the game did catch me in a lot of moments where I am in a situation and just think “damn, that sounds like me” at times.
From the commentary of being a “Sorry Cop”, that I have tried to move past in my life ( being someone that used to say “sorry” a lot)
To the many different examples of falling into a line of thought or idealogy and being exposed to the idea that maybe I might be inclined to ideas because I have been hurt and in that hurt I have lashed out mentally clawed onto these ideas less from thinking clearly to maybe it just makes me feel better to identify with something to try forget about the pain.
A part in particullar resonanted with me in the first run through the game where the protaganist talks to their ex-wife, it resonated with me from a moment in my life where I mentally fell blindly in love, was rejected and come to the realisation I was being used.
It isn’t an exact situation from any stretch but the emotion of wanting someone and wanting to get an answer and seeing that he felt he was not good enough, really hit home in a different way from how I usually have ruminated - mainly because I expressed but never had anyone to empathise with being felt betrayed and abandoned.
In a weird way, I could empathise with the longing the character had and how painful it coukd feel, at the anger I have carried in me and how I could feel that anger in the character. It was like “I know this, and I know how you feel” and the game explores this with the destructive( and the potentially destructive) behaviour the character goes through in the game.
When I played it a second time I really went pretty hard into the worst emotions I felt during those times and it was I guess eye-opening to see the self-destructive behaviour from the outside where the character was a philosophical mess embracing many different philosophies falling in with facists and communists, the uncomfortableness of almost making a little girl cry, catching that in myself in that moment and really feeling bad exposing a child to the ugliness of the world when they express a world view with their child-like innocence.
And what really sealed the deal in making take a step back and think on things is when the protagonist has genuine heart to heart with other broken people and then just hitting right through to a root cause that
“Hey, that person really messed you up didn’t they. It’s okay and maybe your life is a mess because you cannot forgive yourself and you doing all these wild things, believing all these ideologies because you feel hurt and you do all these things to try replace that pain with something, anything that can make you feel better”
It just hit differently feeling personally called out but not in the way that they reprimand and ridicule you but just in a way that says “hey the world is fucked up, people will do fucked up things, things will not always work out and we all carry baggage.”
Isolating yourself and trying to carry the weight of the perceived world on your shoulders can lead to self destruction and ruin, but when people genuinely listen and, even though their situation can be similar or worse, listen with sympathy and understanding that one can start to take steps to heal oneself.
I guess seeing news of Disco Elysium around Lemmy sparked the memory, but yeah even though things are not great for me and I feel myself falling back into my isolation as events that was planned to improve fell through and my personal situation not getting better with things I also planned to use breaking down as well.
In regards to the breaking down of things was my computer which one could argue was the thing that was keeping my sanity in check somewhat probably in the same vein I suppose an addict uses substances to deal with issues if I try be honest with myself.
On the other hand it was a lot easier to communicate with people but when it died, I tried communicating with the mobile device and unfortunately the earpieces are kind of trash with it having degraded audio or static while communicating also on top of the charger cable breaking and having to playing round robin in the household with a single working charger.
With the events just piling on in a negative momentum, I think I feel incredibly lonely and low value because that is how I feel around my peers when I cannot engage with them when I feel I bring nothing to the table and feel like I actually make the experience worse
When the pc was working I attempted to make videos, however every time I tried I would be bitterly disappointed with my own voice and it would demotivate me from further editing and attempting to create.
I suppose with the forceful break from it I guess deep down I really just wanted to make videos to be recognised and acknowledged, however I hated the content I was trying to make because it felt lifeless and phoned in. I guess I was so focussed on trying to be “perfect” that I just made myself more unhappy when I couldn’t do something I really do enjoy doing but feel incompetent in trying to get that across.
This was all very loaded again, but it has been building up inside of me for awhile and I really needed to just write something otherwise I feel I would stubble down into the “madness” pit.
It’s cliche, but seeking out therapy is a good idea.
Your thoughtfulness here, even if it’s jumbled, shows that with the right therapist, you can work through things.
I wish you luck.
I would like to say thank you for your reply and long message to follow is not in any an attempt to discredit your advice, I believe I just feel very trapped in difficulty finding options that can result in a postive outcome and it is a verbose outburst on why I feel it is difficult.
Tldr:
If I really what to get help I need therapy yes, but all the “help” I get is predicated that taking medicines is enough and thus miss out on the “therapy” aspect.
I cannot afford a therapist and all the options that I have tried been horrible experiences that do not address any problems and it devolves into passing it on to someone else to deal with because again I have not been told definitively I have specific problems just given a general idea what they believe it to be and given medication for it and thus it is believed that medication is enough to solve the problem.
:TLDR
There in lies a lot of problems, I cannot afford a therapist and when seeking help via either the state or helpline I have received similar help.
State hospital devolved into handing out medication to solve the problem, the therapist felt half-assed in the sense I saw a qualified doctor twice ( they just listened and wrote things down for most of both sessions) and had sessions if one could call it that with the nurses at most probably 4 times and then for the next 6 months it was going to the hospital to collect medication. They mentioned they have an idea what it might be but never really came out and diagnosed what it is specifically and go through the process of saying what I have, it felt more like it probably seems most likely like the problem so lets give you these medications to check.
So it felt like the problem was just looked down as a physical thing and it was then called a day and to that effort I got incredibly frustrated and went cold turkey as they repeatedly refused to listen to what I was saying.
Then not to long ago, tried the help line, well because I have a mobile device that is not fully functioning (the microphone is damaged and requires a earpiece to talk) I could not get the earpieces plugged in fast enough before I could answer.
When I finally could answer I was given lip about why I don’t answer even though I wrote multiple emails to express to the facility asking if they could provide a rough idea when I should expect a call because of my situation and it took the help of a friend to make an arrangement to get a time.
The phone call felt detached, like someone going through the paces, and again like the hospitial not fully listening, but addressing things but more like reading out of a hand book. It felt like I was wasting their time and I got worked up about it because I spoke about issues but they speak about solutions in the sense it felt like they were ignoring everything I was saying.
I had an anxiety attack while on the phone with the person because when I spoke about my difficulties it ultimately boiled down to their answer being to go to the hospital, get medication and that is the extent of the help they would offer because they cannot really help.
And again when I asked if they could provide an idea about time of calls, they would answer that they will call when they have time, yet my friend was able to arrange a time. And I specifically wrote if they could be please be patient when they call because I would need to plug in the earpieces and all that when I see who is calling but they wait 5 rings then write it up as I do not answer.
So ultimately they have other people to call - which they specificially mentioned they have to do about 2000 calls a day. I am sure most with issues far worse than mine, so I rather not bother them with my problems if it comes across as such a burden to them.
And then the most recent problem, is when a friend offered to help but that never went anywhere and fizzled out as they also going though problems themselves, and financially they were additionally burdened by a family member and they are similarly going through mental problems and going to a professional therapist themselves.
So yeah, I am somewhat stuck, because I appear “functioning” enough to appear like everything is fine, added with my poor communication skills that make things appear better than it is assumed, made worse because I feel horrible if people haven’t been taking me seriously then what the hell is wrong with me that when I try to get help it feels like it is looked at in one dimension and written off as a lower priority.
I feel like I am not listened to, because they have worse problems to deal with so I get “triage” into maintenence mode.
Added to that events out of my control happen that derail the attempts to get professional help and just yeah it is a whole lot of things bubbling under the surface which is either too intense for a normal person to deal with or not intense enough to be taken seriously.