Vidar

Great job, congrats, May the none gaming force be with you for another year!

I think I am soon reaching my 90day no-gaming period. This is the longest I have been without gaming since I was a teenager. I feel depressed because no matter how much I try to change myself I keep falling back into my old habits. I dress in a weird way, not my age. I have difficulties keeping myself and my home clean, I behave in a weird way so that people don’t want to be my friends. And I can’t change it! It just feels so hopeless. what’s the point of spending all this money on therapy when I’m not getting any happier. What is the point of living when you are not happy? When every day is a shitshow. I started drinking a bit, like a bottle per day just to cope with things. I guess that’s a more grown up addiction at least.

I have not written in a while. Work and bathroom renovations + flu drained me of energy. today I went ti see a play in town. Historically watching people perform has triggered intense social phobia. Live acting and performances also trigger my sense of being less worth or not belonging, so I’ve always avoided them. I really liked it and will do it again. I have also signed up for an improvisation acting class, 15 times, once a week. It’s going to be crazy. It’s also in a foreign language so super difficult. i mean, I can’t even open my mouth properly when I sing... I have also signed up for a choir, so I will go and see what it is like on Tuesday. Wednesday to Friday I will be business traveling and then the week after I will have some super important deadlines... my life is just boiling over right now. on Friday I met a new therapist. She is specialized in sex counseling, not a sex therapist. I wanted to talk to her about all my issues, but she seemed a bit inexperienced. Let’s see how it goes. edit: in the past weeks when I lost my senses I started fantasizing about gaming again. Then I watched some game trailers and felt that NOPE I’m super done with that crap! Very good Vidar!

I did a group therapy program for social phobia which was based on KBT. It was really good for that purpose. Now that I think about it, one of the topics there was how social phobia and anxiety makes us self centered. This makes it harder to focus on the other person, which in turn makes it easy to do mistakes. I will have a look at the book! thanks for the advice @ElectroNugget

I think I will have to not be negative around other people, or complain about things. It’s classic management tactic to see problems and disasters as challenges. It’s cheesy but it’s true, since it spreads positive energy. I think I have not practiced bringing positivity (cake to colleagues, organized parties, positive conversational subjects, compliments) to social settings. I have tried complimenting people more, but it just does not come naturally for me. staying on topic is certainly good and also be concise. When I write emails I try to only write a sentence or two, use bullets. Sometimes when talking I can do it for hours. I also got a tip on reddit I think to ask for permission before talking about heavy stuff with friends. Even for complaining. Not sure how rigid to be about it, but at least for the heaviest traumas it could be an idea. But there is like everyday overwhelm, where this is applicable, and panic attacks due to crisis. That’s more what I’ve been going through over the weekend. thanks for the advice @BooksandTrees!

I talked to my dad about the bathroom and he thought it could use a renovation. i woke up at 13.00 today but did not feel like I had slept an hour for the whole night. I still feel like shit. I reached out to some renovation companies to start the process. Problem is it will probably take like 2-3 months and I’m loosing 1000 eur per month due to living double housing. Not sure what I should do. it won’t ruin me financially but it makes me angry. i have a huge amount of work that needs to be done also. the good thing I will be busy at least, and I will lots of time to practice on my poor social skills. I just don’t want to feel this constant anxiety...

Thanks @BooksandTrees, you are perfectly right. I know I’m not fun to be around. I’m quite pessimistic and negative. People have complained about it my entire life. I’m 35 so that’s a long time.. it feels like a personality trait by now. I don’t know what to do with the stress and anxiety. I will try to get a doctors appointment tomorrow at work to get some pills, because this is not working. I can’t afford to loose more friends. I’m bankrupt on that front.

I’m also planning on some dental work. It’s very expensive though. Not sure if it will be worth it considering wearing retainers for the rest of my life. money issues are such a drag on everything. It just sucks the joy out of things. I hope you find space to save money in the future.

As a student, doing those volunteer jobs as a habit is a fantastic way to network and build a social life. I did it sporadically but if you do it consistently you will learn lots of life skills!

Thanks for the comment @ElectroNugget! I think if a person feels toxic it is ok to silently block them. Of course it is better to tell the person, but if you don’t feel like being friends anymore it is ok. I did this with a friend of my own after repeated arguments by advice from my therapist. The problem I think is that I’m being too honest, dumping my problems on them. I wear out friendships quickly. You are right about the self compassion, I’m slowly getting better at it. I stabilized a bit yesterday evening. Friday, Saturday I was up at 9/10 in anxiety. Just chaos. Now I’m down to maybe 5/10. to get better at social skills I signed up on a course in improv theater. 10 times. Let’s see how it goes.

Still in panic mode 12h later. I just hate myself for fucking things up so much. My insane lack of social skills and my financial fuckups. I just want to feel safe. need to go out and buy a laundry machine. New apartment does not have one. if I don’t use the shower in the new apartment I can live there safely. I will smell a bit but that’s ok I guess.

I’m going through a crisis. For some time now I have noticed that several friends and relatives have been slow to respond to text messages and such. Now I realized they have blocked me. I looked through social media and text message logs. It’s just my messages there and I can’t see their posts on Instagram. Feels really shitty that I can’t maintain relationships or behave since I only have 1 friend left now outside my family and colleagues. I know the reasons also. I’ve not maintained boundaries with them, you know the appropriate social codes. Of course I creep them out. i also found some issues with the apartment I bought and I could not help myself from sending text messages to the seller and to the broker in the middle of the night on Friday. Im loosing my mind... next week I will start family therapy with dad at least and on Friday I will need a sex therapist. I’ve been leaking emotions and behaved really weirdly the whole autumn. I don’t know what to do...

I survived the holidays! Now i need more vacation... I have spent time with all my friends and family. It was a great time. I also spent a lot of time with the children of my sisters and my friends. I’m like the cool uncle with the cool gadgets. I like this role ? I chatted with a woman on and off over the weekend. tomorrow I will be off, just washing my clothes and preparing for the move.

Gratitude journal i am grateful for my familj and friends of my familj for organizing Christian partiets. i am grateful for the compliment i got from a younger attractive woman for my sweater. i am grateful for the reply I got from my tinder dates whisking merry Christmas. I am grateful for a Christmas greeting I got from a crappy friend I ditched some time ago. One amazing thing that happened/I did today i got a compliment for my sweater from this friend of the family. She is about 6 years younger and I’ve always had a crush on her. Workout/run None too lazy What I ate Some yoghurt and musli for breakfast. Porridge for lunch. Candy for afternoon snack. Christmas dinner. Candy and a couple of beers late in the evening. I did not have any drinks while eating, to avoid starting to blabber and leak emotions. what I will eat tomorrow Leftovers from today, candy and beer ? Arts Took a bunch of pictures of family and friends. Singing We sang some Christmas songs. I used the techniques I learned. Not perfectly on tone but smooth pressure and breathing. social activities Met with family and friends. Meditation maybe creepy but I watched some porn in the afternoon. Wanted to control/own my sexuality in the context of my parents home. Visualisation i will meet my friends after Christmas and have a great time! Daily affirmation My voice and opinions matter. Reading + taking notes Read some chapters in a book called Lust. Its about couples in therapy and about how sex and intimacy and love are separate things. I think I fit the profile that craves closeness and love. But this also kills sexual tension. I will read it and review it more in depth later on. Getting to bed before 9pm Nopes Weekly Goal(s) Be social and enjoy it on my terms. Monthly Goal Go to a art class or take a singing lesson (singing done, croci done) 3 Month Goal stopped playing video games finished a course in personal finance enjoyable Christmas with family What went well today i Socialized to the extent I wanted to. What I could have done to make my day better: i could have helped out more in the cooking part. What I will do differently tomorrow: Work out.

I think the word “excuses” is very important here, as it’s a way to escape responsibility. I blame my parents for a lot of things. Though I think I have the right to be angry at them for not raising me well and taking care of their own issues, it’s not their job to fix me as an adult. If you read the above post about Christmas, it’s clear that while they avoided putting expectations and trust as well as wanted me to be an capable adult, I equally avoided to take on those responsibilities on my own. I have done an enormous amount of harm to myself and I keep doing it. I think the only way of dealing with it is to absorb the responsibility, shame in small bits and keep at it over a longer timeframe. There is just so much of it for one serving. About the negative thinking.. I think I’ve done it for my whole life as I remember people complaining about my pessimism in early school. I read a bit about it and it is to some degree genetic, to some degree learned behavior. I think I need to somehow package it better, since it’s difficult to completely eradicate personality traits. One component is definitely fear. I was afraid my whole childhood from my mother and bullies in school. So my amygdala has become overactive. One of my therapists said that the only way to retrain it is by breathing excercises (it’s in the reptile brain). So that’s what I will do.

I payed for the groceries and I cooked dinner! A bit of background info is needed. My parents have very strong routines and my dad has always been the one cooking. My sisters socialized early with him and they learned how to cook together. I just hid in my room and played computer games. My parents just let me sit there, there was never any demands on helping out with food, cooking or cleaning. So there I sat until I was 30. During Christmas it became even more extreme. My dad would cook all the food by himself. My sisters and their husbands would sometimes be asked to cook food, but never me. All the routines were set up by my parents to their comfort. Same thing with groceries. My dad always paid for all the food. I never had any money. Perhaps I would have joined him to the store, where I would walk around while he was shopping. This was in my late 20s btw. I lived like a pet animal. This made me feel like I was never part of the Christmas celebrations, where my dad would do all those things times ten. He would also clean. My mom took care of the horses (her hobby). So my dad did not ask for it, but I decided I wanted to cook and I did it. I also payed for the groceries in the store. Seems super stupid probably but it was a big step forward for me in breaking some very dysfunctional family dynamics/patterns.

My parentes have never had any expectations on me whatsoever. It’s just a void I had to fill. They just talk about themselves. I think a good friend or parent should ask how I’m doing from time to time.

Second day with family, three days to go. we went together to a Christmas market. I got my driving license about two years ago. It might have been the first time I have been driving my family around. My dad enjoyed it a lot. When I was unemployed a couple of years in my 20s I lived with my parents on the country side. My dad had to drive me around if I needed to get somewhere. It just killed me. I hated it so much. I hated myself so much. It was so humiliating. At the same time I was trying to take the driving license. I tried 5 times to take the test. I was practice driving for about ten years. Still could not make it. Then when I moved to a small city in the north I managed to take it. I was 34, but still. My sister has a boyfriend who has a car and she said one of the reasons she fell for him was because he had a car. They talked about all their adventures they had been to in their car. I felt terrible. Imagine all the things I’ve missed out on, the road trips. The girlfriends, the adventures. The sex, the fun times with friends. My life is a desert. im so bitter about all these things. i took some pictures on the market of my family. I had no camera phone in my teenage years, and no camera in my twenties. In other words I have no picture memories of me between 12 and 35. It’s like I have not existed. If we have done things it’s me taking pictures of others. I don’t exist. I’m detached from my family. It’s like I’m there but I’m not part of what is going on. Its depressing.

I have had lots of mental health problems and I also have family members with issues. For me I have adhd and depression and anxiety. Having this kind of issues all comes down to how you deal with it. You can be Healthy in your disease or you can be unhealthy. If you take your meds and ensure stress levels are even, you will most likely be fine. In cases like psychosis and bipolar it can be a good idea to lock down your finances somehow and always know where the escape route is (like emergency ward). If you loose it, the damage you can do to yourself is limited. Mental illness is usually not a huge problem in itself. It’s the unpredictability and anger issues that causes people and employers to turn on you. My path to stop gaming was to build other areas in my life so that I did not need gaming anymore. My therapist even encouraged me to game and watch porn. Because if I stopped playing I would start drinking which is 100 times more destructive. Now for the first time in my life I have not felt the urge to game in about a month ? be nice to yourself, focus on building healthy habits and the gaming and porn will become less important by themselves. If gaming keeps you from having psychotic episodes, maybe that’s a cheap healthy way to keep it in check? At least while you transition and transform your life ❤️

First day at my parents place. Four days to go. Feels super awkward around my mom. Reading a book about becoming a manager. Sounds really shitty tbh. Not sure what to do. Feel really bitter about my life and my parents place bring up all the shitty memories. My youngest sister is 7 years younger than me and she is more settled then me. I just feel like such a huge freaking looser. All my thoughts are fragmented. I don’t talk to my parents at all. I feel discussing because I channel some sexual energy through my mom. I think the covert incest has been going both ways. I just want it to stop. I did run/walk 10km today. I need to hit the gym to build more muscle strength. Slept the whole afternoon as I don’t usually move around that long stretches of time. I think I’m too dysfunctional to function in a relationship. My best bet I think will be to get a dog. It will force me to become more social. But then I also need a car. A King Charles cavalier would be good. They are small, social and silent. My parents have been asking about my apartment shopping. I told mom I don’t want to talk about it. She accepted that.but I know she is persistent and will ask again until I answer. just feels like shit, everything

Gratitude journali am grateful to my sister for being there. One amazing thing that happened/I did today I met my sister and we had a long good talk Workout/run 100 fake pushups What I ate Hot Chocolate and sandwich, shrimp sandwich at airport, some bread with cheese and yam. Salmon potatoes and soup. Some Xmas candy. what I will eat tomorrow no idea, no control at my parents place, my dad runs the show Arts drew some sketches of people in airplane Singing some breathing excercises social activities dinner with family, talk with sister Meditation Breathing excercises Visualisation i will have an enjoyable Christmas with family Daily affirmation I will heal because I want to heal Reading + taking notes none Getting to bed before 9pm Nopes Weekly Goal(s) Buy a swimming card Monthly Goal Go to a art class or take a singing lesson (singing done, croci done) 3 Month Goal stopped playing video games finished a course in personal finance enjoyable Christmas with family What went well today: i brought myself to the art class What I could have done to make my day better: gone out of my home, just done some shopping but I did not eat enough so I was tired. What I will do differently tomorrow: Get up on time to get to airport eat!!!

Day #26 Gratitude journal i am grateful to the mother who was live streaming on badoo and talked about never bringing guys home to her son. She protects him from her sexuality which is healthy. I am grateful to myself for doing laundry, packing 8n time and packing an extra bag with workout gear. i am grateful One amazing thing that happened/I did today I got contacted by a woman on a dating app. Workout/run 100 “pushups” I’m too weak to do proper ones so I stand on my knees ? but that’s fine What I ate Some yoghurt for breakfast, pasta and cheese for lunch, crisps for dinner... I need to make some noodles or something... what I will eat tomorrow Yoghurt for breakfast, hamburger at airport, dinner with parents Arts Painted self portrait while live streaming on badoo (no one joined the chat lol) Singing Nopes social activities some work meetings, listened to some live-streams, tried some live streaming myself. It was scary even though no one was there. Just the exposure. I will practice it some more. Meditation none Visualisation i will have an enjoyable Christmas with family Daily affirmation I will heal because I want to heal Reading + taking notes none Getting to bed before 9pm Nopes Weekly Goal(s) Buy a swimming card Monthly Goal Go to a art class or take a singing lesson (singing done, croci done) 3 Month Goal stopped playing video games finished a course in personal finance enjoyable Christmas with family What went well today: i brought myself to the art class What I could have done to make my day better: gone out of my home, just done some shopping but I did not eat enough so I was tired. What I will do differently tomorrow: Get up on time to get to airport eat!!!

I think I’ve seen some version of this. I realized today how badly traumatized I actually am. I’m questioning if I will ever be able to have a healthy relationship with any woman. At least the intimate kind. Before I thought these two years of therapy was coming to an end, but now I see I’m just getting started. It’s just so unfair the whole thing. Like, being a middle class white dude with average looks and good intellect is like being on top of the food chain (or at least used to be). Somehow I have not been able to cash in on it and everything has just crumbled. It’s just shit. I don’t know what to do now. I came to the conclusion that I don’t want sex and I don’t want that promotion. Less narcissism and no messing with traumas. Tomorrow I will fly to my parents and stay there for a few days. I can stay at my friends place if I freak out and my therapist is working so I can call her. One of my sisters will also be there. What I fear the most now is that my mother has huge power over me and that I will start talking about this after a few glasses of wine. Need to stay away from the drinking!

Thanks @BooksandTrees, I really appreciate it. It feels good to name your demons. It makes them shrink. Sounds like you have had a narcissistic dad. My mom was more into sabotaging my relationships, my dads relationships too. You are right, we deserve better! I added a great video on the topic above. The thing is I don’t have traumatic intrusive memories, it’s more like slow poison. My ex had experienced physical abuse in her childhood and she could barely sleep as an adult. For me it’s more ambiguous, which is why it’s been so difficult to grasp what is going on. My mother is probably not really aware of what she is doing herself. I will visit my family over the holidays. In the past I tried no contact like you said. But that hurt me more than maintaining a sliver of a relationship. The healthiest thing for me right now is to forge and maintain as many healthy relationships as possible. The ones that feel bad I can keep to a minimum. I have also come to the conclusion that the management position is not for me. I will have to write a very polite letter declining it. My boss is also a bit narcissistic.

During therapy I came to realize my mother and I have had some tendencies of incest in our relationship. Like she would show herself naked and also comment on my body in an inappropriate way. I think this is the main reason I find women who are showing that they are attracted to me repulsive, they remind me of my horny mother... I have seen my mothers naked body more than all the women I have dated. This is very shameful and disgusting. During the croci these emotions and flashbacks resurfaced. It felt grate to burn in new impressions and overwrite the memories of my mother with this woman. After discovering this I made an effort to find help from a medical doctor. I don’t know but maybe there are some resources out there. One reason I don’t like to be buff and attractive is because my mother finds me attractive and expresses it out loud (it happened before). However I decided not to let her control and own me and my sexuality so now it’s eating and beefing time (I’m anorexic and thin as a way to protect myself). Edit: a great video about the topic