Passing the Time?

[wadorama]

@wadorama: What keeps you indoors and secluded so much?

As I am not the outgoing and outside going type myself - finding many excuses not to leave my tiny 1.5 rooms size of a shoe box appartment - I spend a lot of time doing something / anything..

• drawing on paper and PC, painting, modelling (clay and PC)
• construction of architecture and other design objects (for fun)
• inventing things (like new types of doors or windows, new design theories)
• cooking and eating, thinking of things to cook and eat
• sleeping. I like lying on the bed (which is rockhard, since one can hardly call this matress) at any time of night or day - and usually I do not undress, since there are no covers except rough and thick blankets, which are used usually to cover furniture on the move.
• reading and writing, and visual models and diagramms on PC

> psychoanalysis, psychology, psychiatry, neurology, autism
> self psychological / psychiatric / neurological analysis of present and past personality development
> self biographic summarization and restoring / retrieving biographic memory
> self expressive texts as stories, poems, poetic prose, actual accounts, explanations to fictional others
> all this

a) out of analytical interest
b) in order to heal a dissociative identity and personality disorder due to sexual abuse in childhood
c) to understand other people and train executive function, empathy etc.
​

• thinking a lot about myself and dysfunctional self, my life (which was a rough ride), my poor relationships to others, my unsocial being, my mistrust in others, my hateful self image and the way I think about things and see things (for I might need to make some changes)
• reading and watching online i.e.:

> wired.com
> theverge.com
> google.com/maps and google earth in satellite + map + streeview mode, since I like maps and satellite images and looking at places
> books.google.com for books on psychology, psychiatry and neuroscience and other topics
> pinterest.com, tumblr.com, flickr.com, since I like collecting specific photography and patterns, structures, artwork
> wikipedia.com, since I constantly look up what I find elsewhere (i.e. cities + places from google maps, or found artwork or architecture)
> archdaily.com
> youtube.com for music + music videos, documentaries, old color and black/white footage (i.e. NYC in 1960), airplanes and turbine engines, cars
> newspapers, science
> forums
> facebook.com for writing. usually music, psychology, architecture, politics. I'm not blogging, but I know my friends like to read my posts
> monarchprogramming.wordpress.com
> movies/films​

• reading offline

> cutout newspaper articles about architecure my parents like to send me via mail
> magazines for architecture
> books​

• physics
• philosophy
• machinery
• art
• literature
• future and past, history
• imagery and visual things
• daydreaming
• analysis and solving logical-visual and verbal problems
• sorting and categorizing things, looking up stuff
• thinking about details of and in things, taking apart things
• thinking about language and words, how they sound and what they tell
• thinking about different perception of people and different meanings to things

First may I say that yours is a very comprehensive and interesting list of ideas, and I may steal a few. ;o)

Second and to your question, fear. Fear of how I’m changing, fear of how I will act in the presence of others now, fear of how I will beat myself up about it afterward. Just fear.

 

[bbc-bananasplit]

First may I say that yours is a very comprehensive and interesting list of ideas, and I may steal a few. ;o)

Second and to your question, fear. Fear of how I’m changing, fear of how I will act in the presence of others now, fear of how I will beat myself up about it afterward. Just fear.

I see. I do understand very well these feelings of yours as I feel much the same, albeit they may have other causes within me than within you. Therefore, I shall set aside my own terrifying fear of exposing myself and I will explain to you how these very similar feelings come to be in me - thus, you may read and see if any of the matter may apply to you. If not, then it is all alright and I just wrote useless stuff, which I don't mind to do.

Spoiler: Sensitive

In my case it is shame, and very much of it. It is so much shame induced by such a terrible sexually perverted act on me, that for many years I could not think of it nor speak about it. When I was about 5 years old my pedophile-satanic babysitter performed one of his satanic rituals on me - torturing me with high voltage electric shocks (on legs, genitals/rectum, and head) , intoxication, asphyxiation while being bound to my bed, and all this while he penetrated my behind to stimmulate my prostate, so as that I could not but be conditioned to find the act sexually arrousing. While I was half passed out, stairing at the ceiling with blank eyes, he showed me pictures (devil, puppet on strings, hound, machine, mask) and named to me aloud what was shown. He told me, that I was all these things, and that I belonged to him. He then told me - in first person - 3 times each things like "I am ugly", "I hate myself", "Everyone hates me", "I am unworthy", "I am dirty", "I am disgusting", "I must punish myself", "I want to be punished", "I like to be punished", "I am bad", "I am mad", "I must not tell", "I must remember to forget" etc. (all combined with sexual arousal, even today) so as that in my delirious state I would subconsciously incorporate these thoughts (or ego states) in to myself as part of my own self - for in the state I was in I could not process consciously and could not tell inside from outside, and later would have only very blurred memory, which I would think of as a dream. For all my life - I am now 26, although I could only faintly remember that there had been "some event back then", I thought of myself as dirty and unloved, as ugly and disgusting and perverted, feeling so incredibly ashamed of myself that I could not look at myself in mirror - and, throughout my life I punished myself daily in all kinds of ways to become better, and because I deserved it. Currently, during the last 3 years I have started to crack - the memories are coming back + the incredible shame, since I never told any of this "secret stuff" to anyone. I have been in therapy - and I know that I have to tell some people, parents and friends, about what has happened to me. I could not, cannot keep it a secret any longer - and it is in this situation that I become near to mad, and feeling like you. It is because of the incredible shame and that everyone sees this "dirty, perverted, sick, devilish, disgusting, sexualized, masochistic, self-beating, self-punishing little worm" I am - and that anyone could find out terrifies me to death: nobody must see me, I think, constantly - wanting not to leave my flat, hiding my face, not talking to people, becoming aggressive towards people, afterwards hating and hurting myself to feel loved (like he "loved" me).

Sry! Thx for putting up the spoiler... I wasn't thinking..

> I fear very much how I am changing, for I fear I cannot control the change and I fear letting go of control. That is why I wall in: To keep control over my sorroundings.
> I fear very much how I act in front of others, or will act, since I fear I cannot control myself
> I fear I will hurt myself after beeing seen, rightfully for how bad and disgusting I am and I fear that (I know I do, I can't help it) I feel sexually aroused by it - and disgusted and ashamed of myself at the same time, which means, I have to punish myself more.

So, possibly you have a shame problem (or possibly not) You might know so - or you might not know. In the latter case you simply feel the effects of the shame - but you don't see the shame itsself, that wants to be hid. You do not know where it comes from. In any case: There is something in your self, that you think or feel (conciously or subconcsiously) is extremely horrible and bad and this part must not be part of your self: It needs to go away and not be there. Yet, the effect of this is, that the part you deny will go into the representations of other people in your mind, and to your ego this will appear as if all these people where thinking horrible things about, hating you, laughing at you - whatever. it is a simple mechanism, that works with neutral, positive and negative parts of the self: It is called projection and projective identification, and this mechanism serves to your mind as a part of empathy and mentalizing, connecting the inside with the outside - for example projecting parts of the selfimage or self representation into representations of other people, and this inner movement will then overlap with the your eyesight once a person (into which something of yourself is projected into) comes along. of course this is only one of many ways this works. especially shame - which is how I appear in front of the other (and in case of shame: it hurts, and I fear it like death) - has the special trait, to blur our thinking and perception, to block empathy and connection to other people (so as that we are not seen by them), to make us feel bad and horrible, and especially to become very fearful - and in turn aggressive for defence - if we are to confront other people, for then the subconsious shame feels seen: thus, I become fearful and feel the need to hide, or I become uncontrollably nervous, anxious, aggressive in front of or towards others.

Therefore, if you think that this is your problem - it may be so - it is a good idea to carefully search the inner for the cause. So much more, if you remember any traumatizing event, even if you think that it was not traumatizing and even - especially - if you think that you are guilty of it. In any case you can PM me.

 

[Fitzo]

I have a plethora of interests and hobbies and never have any problem filling my time but my dogs are the one area of my life which force me out of the house every day. I have to take them for a walk every day.....I feel wracked with guilt if I don't! It's obviously good for my physical and mental health and essential for theirs.
However any pet is good because you're interacting with another living being.
In saying that though it's a committment and you really have to be sure you can give them the care they need for the term of their lives. If you can't do that it's not fair to them.

 

[wadorama]

Thank you bbc-bananasplit. Like many here I had a hard time coming up, but not on the scale you did. Pure evil. I cannot imagine.

Shame is certainly a component for me. Had to teach myself coping skills early and self-teaching risks bad habits. I now see the ideal as retaining the lesson without internalizing the associated negative experience, but that is not what I did or do. And if digging up all the old bodies and burying them properly is the task at hand then I am not equal to it. wado under the bridge at this point (would that make me a troll?).

Difficulty passing the time is starting to seem like a symptom, just as the public meltdowns, speech loss episodes and insomnia are.

This is helping. Trudging onward.

 

[Suzanne]

Wow, I have only just seen your thread!

Have chronic social anxiety ie fear of humans, basically.

I go out on a monday to the bins, which is only a very short walk, but have to pass the bar/tabac ( live in France) and monday is the day it is closed. From then, I seem to take courage and if I need to visit the chemist, which is only 2 minutes away, I manage to do it.

If I see one other person walking, I lose courage to go out.

However, I am blessed, because of my faith, I get to go out at least 3 times in the week, but other than that, I am at home.

My husband works, so I am on my own mainly and we go shopping together.

I find that if I do not have an activity to do in a day, I suffer and so, as long as I can be busy, I am fine. I do the mundane action of cleaning the house etc and cross stitching and internet.

My faith keeps me from taking my life.