General Hints

Things I'm currently trying:

- dietary supplements (including omega-3 and now magnesium and coenzyme Q10)
- meditative techniques (including mindfulness, tai chi, biodanza and binaural beats)
- cognitive-behavior therapy (constructive thinking and behavior)
- daily exercise
- expression in art
- accepting my pain
- enjoying every sensation

Things I tried but stopped, as they made matters worse:

- social contact
- repressing my emotions and pretending there wasn't a problem

hi oblomov,

You are making just one mistake.

Do reverse one thing: Keep social contact and give up accepting pain.


What will work, how it can effect on you:

1. Social Contact: You will learn more from people who are in your contact. They can give support to you. They can relate to your problem quickly, if you gave good friends. Another major advantage, you will learn social intelligence how to communicate in our society and you will be very strong.

2. accepting pain: This will never help you really, if you are going to work on your genius or on your talent. They will drain out your all energy. You will feel pain, because you are thinking negative.

So make decision wisely, what you should do?

Accepting my pain = objectively enjoying the sensations brought about by pain, without thinking or judging. In this way I'd supposedly learn not to fear my pain. My pain comes pretty spontaneously, you see, in the form of sudden anxieties that come without any real thinking involved. I'm still not clear if it works.

About social contact: I was a bit too terse there. What I meant was actually seeking out social contact with whoever I'd find and adapting myself to them. The result was that they'd invariably find fault with me, criticize me, and eventually leave me, and I'd end up feeling very out of place. Now I just follow my gut instinct when it comes to social contact, and if I don't like talking to someone, I just don't. As a result, I've got just a few people left I talk to, and there's one friend I see often.
I haven't done that for very long, though, but I just wanted to try everything to get better.

When it's really bad I recommend stepping into the local bar for half an hour. I did this, and all my 'positive' symptoms were gone. It really brought me down to earth. I didn't talk to anyone though.

Philo wrote:When it's really bad I recommend stepping into the local bar for half an hour. I did this, and all my 'positive' symptoms were gone. It really brought me down to earth. I didn't talk to anyone though.

What do you mean by this? I'd love to hear more. I'm curious what happenec with you.

It feels like I'm channeling evil from hell through my body. The devil is watching me through my forehead and menacing me. Supernatural evil is choking me from below the chin. After some time at the bar my symptoms were gone and I was almost a normal person. I attribute it to the down-to-earth atmosphere of the bar and I recommend it as a general hint for this thread.

Philo wrote:It feels like I'm channeling evil from hell through my body. The devil is watching me through my forehead and menacing me. Supernatural evil is choking me from below the chin. After some time at the bar my symptoms were gone and I was almost a normal person. I attribute it to the down-to-earth atmosphere of the bar and I recommend it as a general hint for this thread.

I think I see. So being in the atmosphere of regular people just talking and joking and laughing and interacting and being stupid and talking seriously and flirting and watching others and all of that and more... just the down-to-earthness of a bar scene.. helped to normalize you inside. Is that it, philo?

Well, there isn't anything sophisticated going on in a bar, is there?

However, I didn't really feel dumbed-down.

Yes, it's hard to feel dumbed-down from that if normalness has come to seem the most alien thing in the universe. Hard to get too much of it then.

However, going in a bar or a similar place only makes me feel nervous. I feel very distant from the people around me because they do not understand me, because they are so different. They would cringe and grimace if they knew the first thing about me, and that's true. The fact is that no one likes a highly sensitive, schizotypal, bipolar, gifted maverick like myself. Someone with such an intense emotionality is shunned pretty quickly, and for fear of being shunned by others I shun them first. It gets a sore spot after a while to be turned down, misunderstood and criticized by everyone, so I just ignore them. That doesn't take away the sense of loneliness I feel when I'm with other people, however.

Exercise sometimes helps somewhat in the same way, but I can't exercise all day, as the effect only wears off after a while. When I'm back in my room, the feeling of unreality and alienation comes back in full force. It'll be better once summer's over, though. Summer's heat has taken away my only truly effective weapon against my suffering, creativity. I try to stay up at night to escape the heat so I can still express myself, but by the time it's night I'm too tired to do anything.

Actually, I might try exercising a bit longer in future, say, an entire day, but again, I'll have to be careful to avoid the heat, because it's torture to me.

I try not to compound society's rejection of people like me by rejecting myself from society completely. Also, if I go to a bar it's not to be 'accepted'. It's to have a drink at quiet hours in the afternoon, in a more or less quiet corner where no one will bother me, where I can watch some soccer or something. If someone wants to talk to me I'll talk to them, but I won't spill my guts and open up as if I was looking to become best friends, so usually I won't give the person a chance to reject me. There's a balance to everything and I tend to practice my preferences, like avoidance of crowds, without totally shunning public spaces.