a-trauma-fox

[a-trauma-fox]

[a-trauma-fox]

“i’m not the same as who i was before [x] thing happened to me” does it help to know that you would not have stayed that person regardless

[a-trauma-fox]

big fan of characters who have it all under control when theyre put in situations but no idea how to be like a regular guy doing regular stuff when all is said and done.

[a-trauma-fox]

I have a thing to get to but had to get this out real quick

[a-trauma-fox]

when it’s really bad again and it’s still way better than it used to be but it’s still really bad. and you do all the right stuff and you try and try and it still really hurts but it’s working but it still hurts and you go see the beautiful majesty of nature and your soul is so close to being at peace but your mind is still in pain. and it’s better but it’s still bad. and the sun is setting.

[a-trauma-fox]

thinking out loud

[a-trauma-fox]

Your trauma is valid even if it doesn't fit into any of the commonly used examples of traumatic situations.

[a-trauma-fox]

[a-trauma-fox]

[a-trauma-fox]

[a-trauma-fox]

one day you'll wake up and think, "life is okay". it'll happen gradually. you'll start to notice flowers blooming in a new light. your evening shower will be a sweet refuge. your morning coffee will warm your soul. things will seem bright and beautiful, and you'll wonder how you ever wanted to leave such lovely things behind

[a-trauma-fox]

A commonly overlooked symptom of depression is anhedonia, the inability to feel joy or pleasure. The reason that it’s easy to overlook is that it’s easier to miss the absence of something that’s not around all the time than it is to miss a symptom that causes active distress, such as feeling tired and miserable all the time.

Anhedonia is good at being a persistent undercurrent to your life. My aunt, who has major depressive disorder, related to me that she figured out that something was wrong when she looked at the daffodils she had planted blooming, and couldn’t recognize the emotion that she felt when she looked at them. It had been long enough since she had felt happy that she lost the ability to recognize the emotion.

It’s a particularly dangerous depressive symptom, because it robs you of the ability to feel those little spots of joy that keep a lot of people going, while not doing anything to impair your ability to function. If you don’t know that this is a treatable symptom of depression, it’s easy to assume that your ability to feel good is permanently broken, and decide to commit suicide because you don’t want to live like that. It’s not an irrational conclusion, but it is an uninformed one, and everyone deserves to have all the information when making a major decision.

This is what a lot of questionnaires are trying to look for when they ask about “loss of enjoyment”. If you can’t remember a loss of enjoyment because you can’t remember enjoyment, then you probably have anhedonia. If you struggle to define how it is to feel “happy”, “content”, or “good”, or how it feels when you feel those emotions, you probably have anhedonia. If you can’t remember feeling any of those emotions for a week or more, you probably have anhedonia.

Symptoms commonly co-occurring with anhedonia are fatigue (often the cause), clear and thoughtful consideration of suicide, loss of desire to socialize or do activities that used to make you happy, and weight loss (due to lack of enjoyment of food).

This section is anecdotal. In what I have observed, anhedonia due to fatigue rarely responds well to depression treatment unless depression was causing the fatigue. If fatigue and anhedonia are co-occurring and are not both alleviated by depression treatment, consider other causes for the fatigue.

[a-trauma-fox]

ive found that partially treated mental illness can sometimes look to uninvolved onlookers like faked mental illness.

[a-trauma-fox]

like i always thought I'm being overcorrect or being a bit arrogant for the impulse to, well, put every little thing that people say about me into context and overexplain.

But it really is shame and fear of being shamed at the core there huh

[a-trauma-fox]

thinking about how when you experience a lot of shame in your formative years (indirectly, directly, as abuse or just as an extant part of your environment) it becomes really difficult to be perceived by other people in general. the mere concept of someone watching me do anything, whether it's a totally normal activity or something unfamiliar of embarrassing, whether I'm working in an excel spreadsheet or being horny on main, it just makes my skin crawl and my brain turn to static because I cannot convince myself that it's okay to be seen and experienced. because to exist is to be ashamed and embarrassed of myself, whether I'm failing at something or not, because my instinctive reaction to anyone commenting on ANYTHING I'm doing is to crawl into a hole and die. it's such a bizarre and dehumanizing feeling to just not be able to exist without constantly thinking about how you are being Perceived. ceaseless watcher give me a god damn break.

[a-trauma-fox]

Even if I didn’t have a solid plan, in the back of my head, I always assumed I’d kill myself.

Now I’m an adult and people my age have their lives in order and I’m stuck here, confused, because I never planned to be alive and I’m so far behind.

I feel like I’ll never catch up.