Well, I've decided to start a blog here, even though I have doubts about how worthwhile it is or how much I'll be able to keep up with it, if at all.

I already have "blog-like" posts all over these forums and anybody can just go to the "search member's posts" link to bring those up and read them. One advantage, though, of having all this on a blog is that one can just hit the print icon and it'll bring up all expanded posts, which can be read without a lot of clicking---a headache, especially for anybody on dial-up, like I've often been---and they can all be printed, which I often like to do, finding it much easier to read paper than screens. Thus, one rationale.

I've been on several forums, one being Anxiety Zone, another BDD Central, in a need to vent, articulate and explore "what's ailing me". After being intimidated from joining this forum after reading all it's confusing technical hoops, I tried again, and for some unknown reason, managed to do with quite easily. So, here I am. I have found this forum quite a bit more satisfying that AZ and BDD which were a bit "infantilizing". Psychforums has a bit more intelligence and healthy cynicism. Wierd as that may seem, I find brutal honesty, even if it's "negative", more comforting than sugar-coated optimism. I also think emotional-mental problems can be a lot more complex than anxiety or any single "disorder".

I come to this forum to vent, commiserate, learn and find some sort of community with my "fellow crazies", but I use that last expression with a grain of salt. I don't like to think of myself as "mentally ill" or "disordered". I have a problem. I have a condition. I have "pain". I have angst. I need to work on it. But I don't want it, or anybody else, to define me. I'm not trying to join any clubs, to gain official admission into anybody's insular little clique.

I investigate and explore psychology (or psycholoGIES) as tools of self-help. I assert my right to self-diagnose, to apply what labels I deem fit me best, as WORKING DIAGNOSES. Maybe I'm a typical arrogant narcissist, maybe I'm oppositional defiant, but I have no intention of ever seeing a "therapist". I haven't seen anything in them that suggests to me they are more insightful than I am about my condition. If anybody tells me I should go "get a proper diagnosis" I will ignore it. If you want to talk about it any further, meet me on the anti-psych forum. I'm a rebel and a skeptic who's always been rather hostile to "expertism" and the very idea of somebody telling me what's "proper" kind of irks me. (Even if I wanted to see a therapist I'm very, very low income, and couldn't even begin to afford it, and being a libertarian, no, I'm not going to "ask" (beg, grovel) for "assistance". People who don't take these issues into consideration when telling others they should "get professional help" are probably very class-sheltered, culturally insensitive, or ideologically arrogant.)

There are many, many philosophical and existential issues with the (holy) DSM and maybe even other psychologies that have been deeply explored by people far more educated than I, and there's much more to the issue that forced hospitalization and drugging, serious as these are.

Anyway, as working diagnoses/labels for myself, my research so far has led me to covert somatic-type narcissism. Other "co-morbidities" may be avoidant and schizoid. Cognitively, I've long thought I probably have ADHD and sluggish cognitive tempo. All a rather daunting mix to say the least. Hopefull I'll have the time and discipline to explore all these in this blog.

fascinating? I'm not sure what word to use. But I did read, twice in fact