The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
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Notes -
At the beginning of April, I quit coffee out of spite when withdrawal gave me a headache. I later learned that coffee can aggravate hayfever, so I stuck to my decision on those grounds as well.
Now, three months later and just past the end of my personal hayfever season, I noticed that I had put on 3-5kg in that time. I was aware of heightened appetite, but didn't actually weigh in, so this came as a mild shock, though not as a surprise. Since my efforts to exercise more are only very moderately fruitful, and thus CO isn't about to increase, I need to cut CI. And because willpower is a valuable resource, I'd rather spend it where it matters. So back to coffee it is.
Had my first full-size, full-power cup this morning, and man, does it kick. I'm a lot more alert, productive and, surprisingly, social. Better mood, too. In comparison, I spent the last three months brooding and antisocial. I got a lot of work done, and took about a ten-minute break to hammer out a quick lore document for my private project in order to put some random thoughts to paper, then got back to work.
And come lunch, I got a completely oversized portion by force of habit, and regret it greatly - appetite was in fact much reduced; I could've probably skipped lunch altogether.
The jitters are real, though. So I probably need to better calibrate my coffee intake.
I wonder whether I was always going to be better off with coffee (family history of low blood pressure), or whether this is simply a consequence of my having gone 20 years with, and now no longer functioning properly without.
You gotta have a SHARP cuttoff for intake if you want to avoid depndence and keep the benefits of a strong response, I find..
I got super dependant at my first fake computer job; I quit cold turkey and now only have coffee in the morning before 10:30.
Sharp cutoff as in quitting cold turkey (which I did), or daily after initial consumption (which I don't)?
Both. I quite cold turkey, and now I only drink coffee until 10ish at the latest unless it's an emergency; and it's pharmacological effect is STRONG.
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To be honest, I've never gotten a headache from not having coffee. May I ask how much coffee you drank and how bad was the headache? I wonder if I'm doing something different. My average before cutting down was 3 tablespoons and 6 cups of water, which translated to about 4 mugfuls.
Hard to say. I used to drink large quantities of heavily watered-down coffee. At a guess, probably not more than 2 mugs of regular, on a long day.
The headaches were endurable on their own, but persistent, and on top of a flu so I really didn't enjoy them.
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The arguments for coffee are just too strong, aren't they? It really does have some nice benefits. For my part, it tastes good, it's cheap, and it doesn't have any calories. Like you said, it puts me in a better mood and makes me more social. And I've found that it can help me from not just taking a super long nap once I get home. Super long naps are net negatives.
What I'm trying now is to reduce consumption a bit. I posted a photo of myself to another person (not quite overweight but a pudgy belly, slight love handles) to ask what I should do (diet? work out more?), and he told me I'm just plain unhealthy and should get healthy, get good sleep and exercise properly, including resistance training. I'm happy he told me that, and in furtherance of that goal, I've decided to cut coffee down to 2 tablespoons, 4 cups of water, and only drink before 2 PM in accordance with @FtttG's advice a little while ago. However, I might add some decaf in the afternoons, if I'm feeling particularly thirsty...
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This will be a very verbose, haphazard missive that I am composing at 3 AM in my timezone. Proceed if you wish.
I only very recently grasped the full gravity of just how dysfunctional and manipulative my household was. I like to think I'm not a provincial fool and that I'm more cognizant of inadequacies whenever they are present, but I truly believed my family dynamics were the norm. My father is a narcissist, my mother is emotionally unstable and volatile, though I'm unsure if it's faulted by PTSD, BPD, both, or neither. For the longest time, I attributed everything to a cultural/generational disconnect, that my parents were just hard-working Soviet immigrants who were a bit difficult yet ultimately well-meaning. My father studied hard and escaped his desolate Siberian hamlet, learned the English language, found employment at a Global Fortune 500 company, and moved to the US, where I was raised in a financially stable household. Nobody ever had reservations about buying the newest trendy brands of clothing for me, taking me on vacation to Ticino or Waikiki, driving me into town to meet with my pals, etc. Any time I expressed grievances over a comment or behavior I perceived to be denigrating, my parents shielded themselves behind this and would swiftly resort to a black-and-white reasoning and insinuate that I'm saying they're terrible parents. I was ignorant to the dissonance that was being created in my head; my parents weren't consistent douchebags, but they also weren't consistently warm. I had access to plenty of opportunities my peers didn't, so surely I ought to look past whatever trivial shortcomings existed.
Growing up, my father would often use teambuilding activities at work and workout sessions at the gym as a means to abscond from his parental duties. When I was 12 months old, he would tell me I was already a big kid who had nothing to cry about. I was never a picky eater, but there was food that physically made me gag and wasn't merely something I mildly disliked, yet he'd shove it in my mouth. He would comb my hair in an overly aggressive manner, and accuse me of not knowing how to comb properly if what he did hurt. From a very young age, any missteps I made could result in insults and curses. If I ever wanted to understand his line of reasoning behind a certain instruction, he would default to "because I said so", or "find another home if you don't like it here". A few years ago, following COVID, we were forced to relocate to an industrial, blue-collar dump (albeit a particularly prestigious pocket of it) from a densely populated, affluent suburban area where I thrived by being encircled by a milieu of ambitious, curious, and sharp peers. Due to the taciturn and curt nature of my peers here, I was devoid of a social life for two years before things mitigated to a slight degree. I had to carry a knife to school for my safety and I witnessed my classmates nodding out in the middle of class, but in my father's warped mind, all of my frustration was just a secret plot to manipulate him and distract him from his work. He would minimize my deficits by reminding me of how much worse his childhood was and how he simply cannot afford to entertain that my first-world upbringing could be as dismal as I purport it to be. If I said I didn't have any peers at school I could hang out with, he'd tell me he had no colleagues to hang out with either. When I finally joined some uninteresting extracurriculars out of desperation and was assigned at the start of the school year to a new class where students were less actively hostile, I at last found people I could make plans with. In this region, it often meant drinking in the woods or by the beach, summer and winter. My father would act in disbelief that I could show up at home drunk after he refused to give me counsel. Not once have I ever walked out of a conversation with him feeling assuaged and uplifted about any obstacles, but again, I thought that was some cultural disconnect that's not intractable. I was always inculcated not to divulge family matters externally, but when it has affected my quality of life so acutely that I needed to get it off my chest, people frequently tipped that my father may be a narcissist. Having done a deep dive of the various symptoms in the past month, I see a plethora of bullseyes being hit. My father's a brilliant, educated man, who whenever in a good mood, would answer questions to any metaphysical ruminations I had growing up as a child. I thought that I was an exceptionally difficult kid who was exacerbating his burnout and that if I learned to do better, he could always stay warm and loving. Only now did I shake myself out of that delusion and realize that this potential version of my father will never come to be, and I can't look at him with the same reverence. Seven months ago, I found my way to my current faith as a lifelong agnostic, and it has been an immensely effective lifeline, knowing that as a human being I am born with inherent dignity, that there is a long-term meaning to life, that my self-worth isn't contingent on a handful of people's perceptions of me. It is thanks to my faith that I haven't put a halt to my 7-month sobriety journey, despite the temptation.
My mother, due to some experiences in her childhood, grew up with an abject fear of abandonment, only amplified by my father's antics. "Splitting" is one of the scariest things I've had the horror to witness throughout the duration of my life. She can initiate a normal conversation, ask me how my day has been, we get a conversation going, then I accidentally spill something in the kitchen or fold something incorrectly and she lets out a curse word or raises her voice, I ask her politely not to, and she tells me I'm trying to command her what to do, and the long train of gut-wrenching insults unfolds. Growing up, I've been unfortunate to have several not-so-compassionate pedagogues as my teachers, many of whom obtained their teaching licenses after a bachelor's from a 100% acceptance rate school, and tried to get me diagnosed for a certain neurodevelopmental condition my psychologist later informed me that I either do not have, or have it at such a high-functioning level that the opportunity cost of the tedious diagnostics process is not justified. My mother frequently vacillated between either the teachers being a bunch of unprofessional pricks who witch-hunted me with nothing to elicit it, or me being such a nightmare of a child. She weaponized terminology she could not define against me, even after I believed we agreed to close the case. She told me she was skeptical to my psychologist's conclusion, and I told her that either she could go the route of soliciting a second opinion, or close the case, but that the degrading way she threw the term around as an insult was unacceptable. She would often treat 16/17 year old me as a marriage counselor after her argument du jour with my father, go on hour-long tirades only wanting to be heard, with no desire for proactive input. I've invited her to come to my church since she complains about lacking a social life in her new area and being stuck in the toxic environment at home, but she musters any possible excuse when I throw that out there. She's had 20 years to step away from this nonsense, but she tells me that she always wrongly thinks that this time things can improve if she does something differently. They never do, and I'm faced with the fallout of it all. One time recently, when she sat me down to talk she asked for examples of what she’s done in my childhood that I found hurtful, when I began providing examples she dithered between “that’s not what I actually meant” and “when you’re throwing it all in my face at once you make it seem more severe than it actually was”. She told me that nobody outside of my immediate family will ever show me unconditional love, that all other relationships are transactional, and that as I get older I will come back running to my parents with a greater understanding for why everything turned out the way it did. I gave her examples of philanthropists, humanitarian workers, international legionaries in Ukraine jeopardizing their health and career prospects, adoptive parents, etc. She began pointing to some isolated incidents of adoptive parents abusing their children to try to rescue the merit of her argument.
I'm just exasperated from it all. God knows how I managed to pull through to this day. I have two months left until I move out for college. What keeps me going is knowing that this is the very last stretch, and that I'll be a much better father. I hope this post wasn't written in vain. If anybody wants to share any advice or their experiences with me and how they've dealt with it, please do. Right now, I feel as if a breakdown is impending.
Your dad reminds me of myself. That's about all I can say.
If you could retroactively tell him to modify his behavior in a specific way, what would it have been?
Apologies for the late response, I was away on a camping trip.
Articulating it in one sentence would be challenging, it's the culmination of the small unpleasantries that really took their toll on me. Truth be told, I believe he had no business being a father. He lacked the baseline temperament and compassion necessary to care for somebody, and to be a teacher as well as a reliable shoulder to lean on through the vicissitudes of life. He grew up in a wooden two-story apartment building in a remote Siberian hamlet, which was hardly even outright poverty by the Soviet Union's standards. Nevertheless, he was raised by an alcoholic father who drove his first wife insane which led her to escape the family she started with him, and not the slightest effort was made to resuscitate that relationship. He was the scapegoat child who was neglected and humiliated. He tells me I never hear him bitching about his upbringing, what he does instead is he takes his anger out on people through his actions. Clinical narcissists feel an immense sense of shame where they can't decouple a wrongdoing from their identity, so to compensate for that and feel better about themselves, they have to retroactively justify their wrongdoings by shifting the blame on others, and seek to influence and dominate other people's actions. Seeking professional help requires an admission of fault, which is a major hindrance for him. Oftentimes, it requires hitting rock bottom and feeling tangible consequences of their antics, or mellowing out over the decades as they get older and lose the energy required to sustain the powertrips.
Like I said earlier, I do not believe he is a rational actor. If it was as easy as giving him feedback, I'd tell him to quit viewing all relationships as transactional and expect constant genuflection, I'd tell him to quit letting his desire to influence other people take precedence over their needs, I'd tell him that the most brilliant thinkers and innovators are receptive to correction and a change of calculus and that there's no reason why he should be above that, I'd tell him to use the spoken language he was given rather than expect people to mind-read, I'd ask him why he can't always pretend to care about people the way he does when it's obviously expedient for him, etc.
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I actually say that quite often. First one because my young son (<6) keeps asking questions beyond questions, and I'm just trying to get through my day.
Sometimes I do understand he's trying to make sense of something but I just don't have time for it. Supposedly there's a cultural movement in parenting called 'gentle parenting' where every single decision a parent takes has to be negotiated with the child, and it just sounds exhausting.
Searching the site for gentle parenting I found this thread that may interest you:
For the 'find another home' one, which may come across as even harsher, it's for non-negotiable decisions. We simply do not do this as a family, we do not tolerate this behavior, so I'd usually ask it rhetorically 'oh so you want to switch families then?'
Obviously a teenager is a more rationally-minded person, so I don't expect you to be as relentless in asking questions, but I do sense something unpleasant in you.
While as a legal child you are in many ways trapped by your parents' decisions, and perhaps your description of being in a sense geographically-locked since COVID is accurate, as American geography can be relentlessly oppressive, there is still a sense of ungratefulness I can read.
You were privileged to have access to such an interesting environment, you know that? And that privilege comes from your father's hard-work. The issue is that your father did not raise you to be a hard person the way he was raised, and he is blind to his short-comings, so he does not understand why you are being so difficult about things, while he probably thinks that he would have personally thrived in the conditions he provides to you.
You're not mentioning it but did you have any other family? Or did your parents both get uprooted leaving you without grand-parents, uncles, etc that could have relieved the day-to-day pressure of handling children, and provided different perspectives?
As a Christian(?) you should seek to forgive your parents, pray for them and strive to have love for them. You'll find out that most people had less than perfect parents and while not having mean, broken parents seems like the fair thing for a child, they could also be mean, broken and broke parents, or worse.
Another question I have for you:
Why didn't you? A few weeks of cutting grass should have allowed you some kind of means to transport yourself to another area if needed, couchsurf or join a polycule or whatever young people are up to these days. Every tribulation should be seen as a way to harden or sharpen yourself.
Praise the Lord for all the good things he's given you so far.
The greatest challenge of these times for our youth is the relentless mental attack from a sophisticated, always-on panopticon. Guarding yourself against it is the hardest thing. All your perceptions and beliefs are the product of a constant, fine-tuned, precisely-dosed marketing system. Not one person can defeat this alone. Even that Covid mass psychological event, very few fathers could say 'I shielded my family from the psychic damage induced by mass-social paranoia, forced isolation, etc'.
Practically she is right, aside from the odd saint, God is not a person, He's 3 Persons. Any relationship will sour on you if you start behaving in unacceptable ways. Surely if you blaspheme consistently enough your church friends will turn their backs on you.
That is right. The second half of it is humility. There was no plan according to which you were fated to have non-abusive well-off parents. You'll have to deal with that just as any saint had to deal with growing up in poverty, persecution, martyrdom etc.
Any other person you meet has had to deal with some kind of hidden pain in their childhood, some bad relationships. You're a sinner like they are, and hopefully as you grow up as old as your dad, you will be able to look back and say 'I did a better job than the old man'.
I'm not demanding gentle parenting, I don't buy that dichotomy. I do concur that children need to be disciplined and that standards must be set. Along with that must come warmth and dignity, which my parents have not treated me with. I've never demanded handouts. Any Christmas gifts they gave me since at least the age of 13 were what they personally deemed fit to provision for me, and never anything I begged for. I'd be fine buying clothes from Ross. I'd be content to go on vacation to Daytona Beach or even not go on vacation at all if it meant they'd quit using it as leverage. I don't care if I have the latest iPhone or a 10-year-old Google Pixel. I want them not to act morose and curt and treat me like scum because I dared to ask a simple question. Sure, I get the sentiment that parents are a position of authority and that their instructions alone should be enough, but ultimately it leads children to be every bit as uncommunicative at school or in their work life and impedes their ability to think critically and question authority. Proponents of gentle parenting don't want to set boundaries; I want them to be set with clear explanations. Proponents of gentle parenting don't want consequences; I want consequences that are logical and not arbitrary, that don't involve cursing in my face like a sailor, screaming at the top of their lungs, threatening violence, and banging doors. I want obedience to be taught through deliberation and conviction rather than through fear and control.
Well, not in my house. It can be said over the most trivial crap imaginable.
Haha, I wish. My grandparents still live in my parents' respective homelands. My maternal grandmother came to visit us twice when I was a pre-teen, but it's been difficult to coordinate anything since then. My paternal grandparents have been entirely absent. My mother loathes her in-laws, so I rarely got to meet with my uncle.
Forgiveness is a virtue. That does not mean I must quietly absorb everything like a pushover and never air my grievances out. Acknowledging the reality and seeking a way out (what I am doing as I am moving out for college), is entirely compatible with Christianity. The Biblical forgiveness means to not harbor ill will against those who have hurt you and to progress in life without dredging up this hurt, it does not say to justify their actions and give them pats on the back. Forgiveness requires distance, healing, and time.
See above. Again, I believed my parents could be persuaded into becoming more pleasant people if I just behaved a little better here and walked on eggshells a little more there, but they operate on a separate, irrational wavelength. Maybe I'm still grateful to a fault, where getting up and leaving would lead me to feel immense guilt.
I do every single morning, and every single night. Once again, you are not privy to what I've done in my everyday life.
Her cynicism is her trauma talking. I don't consider her or my father's love to be any more unconditional than that of the friends I've made. If you're thinking from an absolutist lens, then even a parent's love for their child can never be truly unconditional, only God's is. We are taught to love our neighbors as ourselves, and I will strive to uphold that. I will serve as a missionary for my church for two years to serve people I currently do not know exist and to introduce them to the Gospel and show them the love that our Heavenly Father has for all of his children.
I'm actually very familiar with your situation. My wife was raised by a mom with a similar slavic background, she did have the luck to have a very kind grandma, but it went awry upon her passing away in my wife's teens. She then had to work part-time after school, deal with her mom disappearing sometimes for days possibly due to jail, power getting cut in winter, things like that. I like to compare her childhood experience to the black experience, as the verbal and physical abuse are actually quite similar imo.
This is also something I struggle with as an expatriated parent as I do not have any family support either. Perhaps that means that I can't properly handle my kids' emotions due to some personal stress with work, or maybe I just don't have time for a given child's tantrum among some other more pressing concern.
I agree with this. Unfortunately the striver mentality which leads to social success and material provisions is in some way opposed to a holy, good-natured, empathetic approach to relationships. This becomes apparent with a cursory look at the basic physiognomy of the apparent leaders of the world, Musk, Zuckerberg, Alex Karp, Sam Altman... There's something weird about these people. On the other hand, the kind of people who see themselves as empathy experts, who can sometimes be found in colleges and other prestigious institutions, can also be nasty people (Ellen DeGeneres comes to mind).
In fields manned by volunteers and passionate people, grifters and apparatchiks rise to the top. Isn't that the story of the Soviet Union, with the bank robbers taking control over the idealists?
Of course, I'm writing from my own experience. There is a tension as a parent between asserting control, being a teacher, letting a child bloom and develop independence... We want them to eventually make their own choices and suffer the consequences of them proportionally, without getting any catastrophic failure mode.
I think it's possible too. It would take tremendous work, it would take things that you probably don't have right now, but such miracles are possible. I maintain my mother-in-law in a sort of quarantine, and at the present I have no idea how to reach out to her and help her heal whatever damage she's got going on. You are also called to be a fisher of men, down the line, and that is the kind of work that is needed.
Perhaps having challenged their authority early on would have helped, as it would have helped you create your own, separate life, without any leverage as you say. These kind of broken family dynamics sometimes end up with a child taking care of a belligerent parent suffering from dementia. Another aspect of that is some kind of emotional detachment, dealing with your parents becomes like dealing with a boss you tolerate for a paycheck.
Eventually you get to replace the guilt of betraying your parents' expectations with the guilt of not giving your children the ideal life.
Another aspect of your misfortune is that for every child in your situation that would benefit from 'raising awareness that getting shouted at daily for minor inconveniences is abnormal', the kind of people and organization that would be suitable for such messaging also want to roll in things like 'if you like playing with dinosaurs / dress up your action figures, we'll probably want you to cut your genitals down the line m'kay'. Also a lot of it is basically considered racist (it may be).
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Hold out as best you can. I was in a similar boat and getting out on my own was the best thing that ever happened to me. I wouldn't be surprised if it were for you too.
Thank you for the words of encouragement. In my situation, I have no doubts that I will thrive more in college as I will be surrounded by like-minded peers who share my worldview and aspirations, and not just a zip code. Even now, thanks to activities at my church, I've managed to get out of the house more and realized that if I'm proactive in applying my skills/interests and can maintain healthy relationships, I should be able to find happiness. Most people at my school have been busy scrolling mindlessly on Reels, getting high, and hooking up. On paper, I realize that I should be able to endure 4 years of a suboptimal social life to later discover something better, yet sometimes I am briefly reminded of how formative years went down to the drain thanks to my family's relocation, coupled with the toxic environment within the household. It was only a month ago I attended my first ever concert, with an acquaintance who is not a close friend of mine. I've never gone on a road trip with my peers until recently, never had somebody I could go to the mall or Six Flags with, etc. I see my peers posting themselves on their Instagram stories, enjoying quintessential teenage experiences I had to sit out on. Hanging out with the bridge Mormons that accosted @self_made_human the past 7 months, joining in on their door-knocking and street outreach endeavors, taking them out to try exotic cuisines in the big city or do some sightseeing, etc., has helped me fill in that gap significantly. I'm told people who rave on about their high school years throughout their adult life tend to be pathetic malcontents, if it's the same people who currently tell me how much they miss the middle school they've badmouthed throughout their entire time there, I have no trouble believing it. Perhaps I just need to find the right people in college and not let everything sort itself incidentally, then I'll find this concern trivial and not give it the time of day. I have plenty of time to recalibrate myself for my professional life and learn everything my parents never bothered to teach me, through grit and perseverance.
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Oh man, almost felt like it was my writing, that's how similar your situation is to mine.
This and so much more. To this day, I still feel guilt whenever they ask me if they were good parents because the answer is no, but they'll never understand why because to them they did everything right. They fed me, provided me roof over my head, gave me education, and steered me away from bad outcomes. Lack of nonmaterial parts of the relationship doesn't count to them.
Things will definitely get better for you as you get older and set some distance from them though. I personally gave up on trying to get them to understand, but it's okay. My advice - take advantage of whatever material help they offer even if they try holding it over your head, that's the only way they know how to show love and they will hold your childhood over your head anyway, so may as well just take it.
With how recent my discovery is, I struggle to feel anything short of resentment and disgust for my parents and the little powertrips they've subjected me to, effectively gaslighting me into believing I'm some piece of human garbage I was not, after all. I dream of the day I will be financially independent. I want to take help with dignity, and accepting any more of their help is undignified. Maybe I'll calm down in a couple of months and I'll realize I don't mean this earnestly, but right now, I'm ready to take night shifts and rent the most mold-ridden apartment in the crappiest part of town to break free from these chains. I can't discern how much of their material support was a flawed attempt at love and how much of it was just leverage.
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I don't have any advice, but I do have sympathy, for whatever that's worth. This shit sounds like it really sucks, man. I hope you find your way through it.
Hey, appreciate ya, just that alone means a lot to me right now. I'm just glad I can air this out somewhere without a guilty conscience, if nothing else.
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I've got the email that I've been expecting/dreading to show up in my inbox for a while. It showed up 5 weeks in, which is a reasonable duration to wait for antidepressants to kick in.
Well, I'm pleased to say I've passed my MRCPsych Paper B. Only one more exam to go before I'm halfway to being a senior shrink. It's more impressive than it sounds, I hope, because training takes a ridiculous amount of time in this country.
I got the ward sweets. And my colleague the Percy Pigtails I couldn't find last time, when she was having her own mental breakdown with her wedding coming up (or hypoglycemia). I flummoxed her when she asked me if I had ever tried one by asking if it was halal. She actually checked and said it was vegan friendly. I said that I'm fine with that, given that I'm not a Muslim. Poor thing, she's genuinely sweet and sincere and vulnerable to my brand of humor.
Swung by the consultants room before that, and told my CS I'd made it, despite giving the exam in the state he'd seen me in when I was a few weeks into the placement. And offered more chocolate to a cute baby someone brought along, but she was on a liquid diet. Her mother accepted it and promised to hold onto it in her stead, but I have a sneaking suspicion she ate it. Oh well, I can always get more chocolate. And more reasons to get others chocolate.
And of course, I video called my family first. They were happy. They knew their little boy - he's never failed an exam in his life that wasn't at an optometrist.
I had to stay back late at work, because of course I did. But nothing can get me down today.
Well done!
Thank you. I'd call you a bby girl too, but must settle for a more dignified "young lady". And sending kisses your way might be taken the wrong way.
What's that young sonny? I don't have my hearing aid on, would you like a Werther's?
At least it's not the other kind of AIDS, but I presume that's an American excuse for a beer that could potentially spread it around.
Werther's is a brand of butterscotch hard candies, and has the connotation of being something only old people partake of.
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Your prose has dramatically changed in tone recently (in the last couple months or so). If you’re aware of it, do you know why?
In addition to the AI thing, he’s apparently getting laid recently.
Ahem. I get laid most of the time. Even when depressed (it's therapeutic).
I stand corrected.
It's at night, and possibly 1 am somewhere. @gattsuru must stand corrected before I sleep.
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I am aware. If I wanted people to have a front-row seat to my life, as I have in the past, I would have written about it. At most, I let you guys look through the cracks when I open up the blinds.
I will be brief, and vague, because the details are for those who actually know me. Oh dear, on an edit pass, it seems we must settle for merely vague.
Just over 2 months ago, I was a wreck. A high-functioning, white knuckling wreck. But very close to falling apart. Many reasons, all of them valid ones. I do not make it a habit of worrying about what's not worth worrying about. I had my exam, brutal work, a seemingly terminal case of impostor syndrome because I have been treated very badly at an earlier placement.
I would say that I am a reasonably competent psychiatry trainee. I am also unreasonably against seeing a doctor if I can help it. If I was begging for an urgent psychiatric review, you can imagine it was bad. Bad enough to cut through the depression and exhaustion and akrasia and despair and beg for help. I got... not fuck all, something more than nil. Approximately about as much as I could expect from the NHS, which is why I got a lot of blood tests and investigations done on my own dime, on vacation time, before returning to work like a man walking to the noose. And that's why I'm going to be spending a small fraction of my psychiatry trainee wages on appointments with more senior psychiatrists, at some point. That's a circular economy for you.
I realized, to my despair, that I would have to work on fixing my own issues in my own way. It worked, or at least I have avoided ending up on the other side of the couch. And it had a strong helping hand from actual people, IRL, telling me, with actual sincerity and gratitude, that they appreciate me for who I am and what I can do. I won a decent amount of money through a rather challenging contest with big-name panelists you've heard of. Might talk about that one at some point. I am, of course, a finalist in the ACX book review contest. I had/have excellent, talented and supportive colleagues who went out of their way to make my life easier - while showing me they care. I have a good boss, an experience I didn't expect given that the last couple have been useless as an asshole after a colostomy. A rather thankless job, where I end up getting thanked by my patients on a regular basis anyway. I am not lying about the compliments, I have better things to do than make up things on the internet for clout. I have been doing exactly those things.
And, of course, my dreams/hopes/nightmares are coming true. AGI is right around the corner. Am I allowed a "I told you fuckers half a decade in advance?". Is it here? No. But it's gone from knocking on the door to shimmying the locks or preparing to kick down the door. I am not sure I can achieve everything I've wanted to achieve before it kicks it down and makes itself at home on my couch.
So I'm having fun, and making hay while the sun shines. I've been present in reality. The parasocial engagement of arguing with idiots on an Underwater Basket Weaving forum has lost much of its charm. Not all of it, clearly, since I was here yesterday, and show up every week when @FtttG pings me in this thread. As the Scots would say, I cannae be arsed to deal with some of you. Your boos mean nothing to me, I've seen what makes you cheer.*
I have a job, a social life, responsibility, and a beautiful summer to enjoy and photograph. I was incredibly stressed, running on fumes and quiet desperation till I ran out of the fumes. I'm now only moderately stressed, and grimly determined to have a good time anyway. Life's actually good. Very far from perfect, but I'll take the scenic route. You have seen me severely distressed, close to breaking point, solving my own problems instead of bitching about it, and now doing what I like, when I like it. How queer.
*This is not a personal attack on you, most of the people here are fine. I'd call a handful actual friends. I was just never kidding about feeling sympathetic towards @DaseindustriesLtd when he picked up his ball and went home (or was shown the door for a while, wonder if the ban has expired) . I have no interest in flaming out, I'm not saying I'm going anywhere, but I genuinely do not care about this place as much as I used to. I lack the spare time, or the spare energy, and my Ritalin is well-employed getting me through my job with little spare to write essays on the shitter. My priorities are finally about as straight as I am. Good luck to the rest of you.
I was shown the door, after repeatedly petitioning for fair and non-preferential treatment* and with the clear and not unreasonable suggestion that I'm expected to self-immolate upon coming back. The 90 day ban had expired like 2-3 days ago. I might write another update on the AI competition (like my long-running series on Ascend hardware, given that they're rolling out SuperPODs in July-August, and DeepSeek given that they're finally raised $7.4B…) when there's some alpha. Oh, Cheng Li-Wun's visit to Beijing (and next to Washington) also should have gotten some coverage. And https://europe2031.ai/ in light of the Fable pullback. I think @Stefferi and other resident Europeans might care. Advanced drone warfare reaching Moscow and starting to make inroads in Lebanon… Lots of stuff to talk about. Maybe one day.
Thanks for remembering me, I guess.
Sorry for hijacking, @self_made_human.
If you're interested in what I'm going to write (assuming I won't get banned again right now), maybe you'll see reason to check in from time to time.
*If @Amadan wants to knock me right out again, he's within his rights to do so. I legit was fed up with the mods for this year-long public game of "Oh no Dase, you're such an asshole of course, what a shame, but you're too precious to get banned… or at least you were, long ago… what do, hm? Hmm?!" which invited resentment from the Oppressed User Underclass conjured into existence by the very act of this public distinction. My requests weren't an attempt to suicide-by-cop, I just wanted them to stop it.
Well, I am glad you haven't called the place quits. And while I can respect your decision to not ask for or accept special privileges, I would also prefer that you put extra effort into being polite. Yes I know we have more than our fair share of idiots, but my approach to bad takes on AI these days is to chuckle sensibly and drink a beer instead of engaging.
Ah. After Fable came out, and I had the fortune of using it for a while before it got yoinked? I can't be arsed about GLM 5.2 or Mistral Baguette or whatever else came out last week. I experienced that rare state change of experiencing something clearly ahead of the pack, just right on time. The trend lines on log-linear curves remain steady. What it felt like using GPT 4. o1/o3. Where you don't even have to look at the benchmark scores to know what you're looking at is something else. I read the whole whitepaper for Mythos in a single evening, and it made my heart pound. I presume Fable will be back, at some point, or something of comparable general capability will come out of OAI or DM (I know 5.5 Pro is about as capable on cyber security, but that isn't my primary interest). About time the latter did something, Gemini 3.1 Pro is shoddy and wasn't that impressive when it came out. But Google is Google, now that they're awake, they're probably cooking.
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Shrug We don't care that you're "fed up" that we mod the way we always have (the principal has been clearly explained, many times- good posters are allowed to have the occasional bad day), but if you really want to insist we treat you the way we'd treat a new user, fine, next time you go off, maybe I will.
Thanks
The ritual with public chiding and howling of Les Miserables is insufferable.
The only one singing "I Dreamed a Dream" is you.
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I think it’s worth separating people like Dase, Kulak and others who have gone on to have the same arguments on slightly nastier and (at least in the latter case) more lucrative platforms from people who have actually ended their underwater basket weaving forum careers altogether (I like to imagine Hlynka is out there somewhere, having a nice time, but he’s probably on Boomer Twitter).
I’m trying to think of the longest I’ve left for over the last decade. A few months here and there, a few times. The thing about Britain is that the Summer always ends, and at some point it’s cold and grey (worse up where you are) and there really isn’t anything better to do on a quiet sunday morning than argue here. Maybe things change with a kid in tow (although there are quite a few parents here already), but I have my doubts.
I am fond of money. I made an amount that's nothing to sneeze at through writing, unless you have hay fever. But I have a day job that keeps me up at night. I also have too much dignity to tweet.
Anyway, I've never claimed that I am gone for good. And unfortunately, I am still a mod (and paid well for it) so I can't just start calling the people I particularly dislike retarded and spin up an alt. @Amadan would catch me.
You don't have to tell me. It was 36 degrees in Manchester a day or two back, and even Scotland is above thawing. I swear I almost felt a warm breeze, but it could have been someone farting on the bus.
This place has had me when I'm depressed and have no time to spare but spared it anyway. Now I'm less depressed (but brittle), and I don't really want to spare the time. I can make bad puns at work that people don't want to laugh at, but end up wheezing to anyway (it's hay fever again). I can comfort the dying. I can flirt with the grannies and their still-too-old-for-me daughters and pick flowers that catch my attention and present them to someone I like, who unfortunately has asked me not to write about her. Maybe I really should just get married, there are a few promising candidates. And then I'll be right back here, to avoid my wife of course.
Yup. Becoming a dad will solve my problems. Or swap them out for new, more exciting ones. Soon enough. They got stale.
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Moved from opus 4.6 to 4.8
/jk, but the setup was too good.
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Eyy, well done!
Thanks bby girl 😘
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Have any of you intentionally reduced contact with/outright cut off a family member you used to have a good relationship with due to irreconcilable differences? If so, how did it go and do you feel regret about it?
I did so recently and can't stop feeling guilt (and also a lot of anger) about it.
In my case, I went VLC with my mother about nine years ago. I, too, felt a lot of anger and guilt over that decision, but I know that my decision was best for me. She made her feelings of unhappiness clear to me, promptly turned to my other brothers for support, and we rarely spoke outside of family gatherings afterwards. I have come to accept that my relationship with her could only ever be complicated and so, too, would my feelings towards her only ever be complicated.
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One of my siblings has an untreated mental illness, and over time it got unbearable and dangerous.
I moved and made sure she didn't have my new address or phone number. I also made it very clear to the few remaining family members who still talked to her that they were not to provide her with that information for any reason.
My life is a lot better since then. I don't have anybody pounding on my door and scream-sobbing at three am anymore. Nobody's slashing my tires. Nobody's calling my landlord and claiming that I'm a child molester because they didn't like my tone of voice at Thanksgiving dinner.
I still miss her, but at this point I know that she'll just drag me down with her if I let her back into my life. I understand the anger. She could easily seek treatment, but it's like she enjoys being like that.
I wish I had a better answer.
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What kind of differences would even need to be reconciled between people who don’t live with each other?
I can only think of religious disagreements that lead to a refusal to participate in one thing or another, which would lead to intense hurt feelings. But you don’t code as religious to me.
To my immense frustration my female adult family members keep pissing each other off and will stop talking to each other for periods of time, but it’s for mysterious reasons that I’m never interested in learning about. I insist to each of them that they should reconcile when I get opportunities, and they eventually do (or just gradually forget about the conflict).
These aren't religious disagreements, and I didn't cut this family member off entirely, merely reduced contact with her. It didn't get so bad I would fully initiate NC, though I do have a lot of annoyance over a lot of things. It's not on the level of some of the horror stories I believe some others in this forum could tell.
To answer your question, I did live with the family member in question; circa two years ago my elder sister moved back in with me after her then-boyfriend of five years called a temporary pause on the relationship, which eventually led to a break-up. It's hard to give a full picture of why I soured so heavily on her without massively long essays (longer than this one) detailing the pattern of behaviour that eroded my sanity overtime, but the reason for trying to reduce contact was simply that I started to notice just how aggressively one sided my relationship with her was.
Note that for several years I suffered from a chronic illness that made it extremely difficult for me to work (which I have written about before here) and she would constantly lambast me; she barely even cared to talk to me then - she had a stable job then and a relationship and I had none of these things. After I recovered, found stable employment, and generally began to pull my life back on track, she suddenly became more interested in spending time with me. She wanted to go out together, talk more often, and generally have a closer relationship, presumably because I had finally become someone Worthy Of Attention. Then, when her own relationship collapsed and she moved back in with me, the dynamic shifted again, and suddenly she wanted emotional support. And despite the fact I was still getting back on my feet then I did provide it, to the point that my own mental health seriously began to suffer (and if I tried to withdraw after spending hours reassuring her, she'd often follow me and continue the conversation). But it soon became clear that there was a lot of underlying behaviour from her that would simply not change, and persisted long after she had gotten over the breakup.
Her general hygiene was awful. During this period she quit her job and started pursuing self-employment, which gave her a far more flexible schedule than I had, yet I would always see dishes in the sink left out for days on end, clutter in the hallway so thick one could barely walk, and hair clogs in her shower drain that resulted in standing water; eventually there was a carpet of black mold growing on the bathroom floor. I was the one who scrubbed the floor after getting back from work (the drain would clog and the mold would always accumulate again though), and at one point the mold had even spread to the blinds and pillows, which I also had to clean. Keep in mind I am not a tidy person at all and do not believe that everybody must kowtow to the member of the household with the lowest tolerance for clutter, but when you end up with black mold everywhere that's a sign that the situation was ridiculous.
In general I always felt as if she often displayed an intense lack of reciprocal care or interest in other people's lives, except when she wanted to tell you that you were Doing Things Wrong, and she would not prioritise you if it caused her inconvenience (though you would have to deal with many of her neuroses, in contrast). One prominent example of the sheer lack of consideration involved a holiday I was planning, where I made the mistake of asking whether she wanted to come, and what should have been a simple yes-or-no decision somehow remained unresolved for months. Every time I asked, she treated me like I was pestering her, and my planning was delayed repeatedly because I had no idea whether she was joining. Eventually she decided to come, something I never forced her to do, and then spent much of the latter half of the trip constantly complaining over every little annoyance in spite of the fact that my leave was limited and hers was not. So many little instances when she was living with me showed she just did not care about my time and did not appreciate the extent to which every other family member put their lives on hold to accommodate her when she needed it.
She could be good, even fun, to be around. But the problem I think was that she felt at liberty to embrace some of her most indulgent tendencies because she thought she would never be dropped like a hot potato by family members. Eventually the sneaking suspicion that she just did not give much thought to my wellbeing looked too plausible to ignore, and when she moved out I took the opportunity to give myself some space from her.
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New Year's resolution check-in:
How goes it @self_made_human, @thejdizzler, @birb_cromble, @ThomasdelVasto and @falling-star?
Nothing to report on the fitness front. I am particularly annoyed that when I do have the occasional twinge to pay it a visit (on the way back from work), it's overrun with women hogging the leg press machine. Well, at least it's a nice view. I just don't like sitting around waiting for a machine.
Doing aight in other ways. We have a pharmacist who loves his job. Perhaps too much. No, cyclizine is not particularly a drug of abuse, and I didn't need him breathing down my neck about it. Aggressively gay, in an anal way. Owns a Chihuahua too. But he's a pretty nice guy, barring possible OCD, and I have other hills to die on. If you thought I was dedicated to my job...
I've also realized that my colleagues are on to the fact that I seem to own only three shirts. Which isn't correct, I do own at least 5, but I used that as impetus to go raiding Vinted and I'm in the process of discovering my Inner Indian and the joys of getting nice clothing at reasonable prices. I seem to have spent all of £90 on half a dozen items in a week, which is practically profligate spending on clothing by my usual standards.
I suppose some might be surprised to learn that clothing prices are much the same in the India and the UK, in absolute terms. In relative ones? Might be cheaper to get new shirts and throw them away rather than launder them.
I've been getting out and about. Taking pictures. Being a pub psychiatrist and giving free advice, with people getting what they paid for. Doing a reasonably good job at actual work - where they don't pay me either. Today, I happened to run into a lovely old lady I'd screened for cognitive impairment and taken a history off while her husband and his brother wheeled her out. Did my usual song and dance and advised her to enjoy the fresh air. As I turned the corridor, I heard her say "isn't he such a great doctor" and that made me ache. Well, I try.
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Best do that while you still run real fast.
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Do you need to lose any weight? How tall are you, if you don't mind my asking?
I’m 6’0” so I dont need to lose weight. However I will be faster at running if I’m closer to 155. The extra body fat isn’t doing anything for me.
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Spending is $1,298.05 lower than the same day last year. My dad had a medical scare, so gas and travel incidentals took a bite out of my progress, but it's worth it to know he's ok.
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Going well. Have not skipped gym despite going through a tough time personally, and just passed a year of 2x weekly gym visits. Woo!
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