starting up therapy again

published: 2024.09.23
tagged: therapy
by mana

now playing – Irish Coast

this week I’ve started attending therapy again. over the years I’ve been in & out of therapy, but ever since losing my dog last year I’ve been not doing so great. the anniversary of her death is next tuesday, october 1, 2024, and that’s been weighing on me. I also stopped playing ffxiv around when Dawntrail came out bc of burnout, and I miss my friends from the game, but not so much the game itself. Sometimes, I’ll have bouts of loneliness, but a lot of the time lately I just feel like I wanna withdraw into myself.

I’ve noticed I’ve had a flat affect for a few weeks now, and I know my mood’s been getting worse, so I guess I got pretty lucky getting a therapist when I did, since I can feel a pretty bad depresso spell coming on. in the past when I’ve been like this, I tend to withdraw and not talk as much to friends, which I know isn’t the healthy thing to do but I can’t help but feel like a nuisance to people. usually I’m the one others are coming to about their problems, yanno?

I used to think it was just low self-esteem keeping me from sharing with other people but I’m beginning to worry because I haven’t been able to find anything really to talk about with people lately. I feel like there’s nothing going on in my life really, especially nothing worth talking about, and for some reason when I feel sad or listless or whatever this is (the pounding of television static inside my brain, the numbness to everything, the anhedonia) I don’t feel as close or comfortable around people (not true with my very closest friends, but with others, it’s true) and I get this like…unwillingness? inability? to talk about myself. I can answer questions, sure, but I find it very difficult to feel pleasure doing anything I usually enjoy so I don’t end up gushing/talking about my interests as much. Sometimes I even feel like maybe my interests are stupid and there’s no point discussing them…

I know I worry other people when I’m like this, but please know I am currently getting help. thankfully, it won’t be like this forever. I don’t feel like I’m in any kind of danger, just feeling very…flat and listless lately.

I had gotten into playing some Stardew Valley and also Fields of Mistria for a while and that was good but suddenly they both stopped being fun. I’ve been working on converting this website to using jekyll since zola and tera templating has proven a little too difficult for me; I’ve learned a lot in my time using it, but my skillset is just not good enough to try to figure out what I need to do to make certain things happen, and I have some experience in ruby, which is what jekyll is written in. there are things about jekyll I already love and find much easier to use, but there’s some features zola has I really like as well, but the templating & documentation just isn’t there for a beginner like me…sometimes I don’t even know the right question to ask to figure out what I am trying to do, and that makes me feel pretty stupid. I’ve never been someone who’s good at studying; school usually came to me pretty easily, so it’s not a skill I really picked up. I’ve always been more of a learn by trial and error type; I like to get my hands dirty in that way I guess.

I started a streak with lucidiot and am trying to write a little in a notebook every day and blog or do something website-related at least once a week, so I’m trying to get ahead of myself instead of waiting ‘til the last minute for once and actually do something.

my therapist talked to me about working through some of my grief and how she wants us to focus on dealing with negative thoughts which reinforce negative behaviors and even mentioned working some on my sense of self & identity; I guess she noticed that I have a hard time defining myself or talking about myself, which is something I mentioned in my intake. frequently I will make new friends who feel very close to me, but I won’t always feel the same way about them, or worse, I will feel the same way but I can’t really…express it? very well? I worry a lot that being depressed makes me seem cold or aloof…please know I’m trying ;w;

In the meantime, I’ll be working on getting this converted over to jekyll and wrestling with making image galleries to replace the zola-generated ones I currently have on the fridge and rkgk pages. I’d like to get back into doodling too. I’ve been seeing a ton of cute art everywhere and it’s been making me feel inspired.

I tried and failed to compile aseprite, something I’ve never tried to do before (except for a failed attempt at compiling gentoo when I was first learning linux; I am unfortunately not the best at following directions, it seems?). Trying to do anything lately is a tremendous effort and any setbacks experienced just make me that much less motivated. ;w; also I know I can buy aseprite but I don’t have much money and I know it’s free if you compile it yourself, so I thought I’d give it a go. I guess I’ll wait to try that again for a while ;w;

I made a huge list of ideas for this website in my journal a few weeks ago and I’m finally getting the layout where I really want it to be, so I hope to start filling this place out some more and adding more content to it :D some of the ideas I’ve had have been anime/manga/film/tv show reviews, talking about makeup/skincare products I like and sharing my skincare routine and maybe some makeup tutorials? :O I’d like to also start a stationery inventory similar to luci’s notebooks wiki page, fountain pen & ink reviews, an inventory/introduction to all my plushies, listing some of my favorite recipes, talking about current sewing/crochet projects, stuff like that. I also have some blog post ideas, stuff like talking about my experience with synesthesia, some of my favorite anime characters and why I like them…there’s a bunch of ideas but not a lot of motivation currently. I’m hoping therapy helps to remedy that! x3

until next time~!