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truthaliar · 4 years

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aiiiiiiight so here’s a post about mental health representation in media; or in other words: my mental health and apparently, the umbrella academy.

ps i am in no way, shape or form a mental health professional - this is just retelling an experience i had

sooo okay i was talking to my therapist. i’m gonna paraphrase this but basically she was like ‘do you watch umbrella academy’ and i was like ‘yea my friends are trying to figure out who is who in my friend group’ and it basically went ‘oh did they put you as diego? good, let’s talk about your hero complex.’

now to clarify i’m not typically like super open about it, but i have ptsd & anxiety. my panic disorder is mostly controlled at this point (ie i can now pinpoint triggers). a few weeks ago i finally told my mom i had ptsd after several years and she just responded, ‘i know.’

anyway, i ended up learning that there’s peer reviewed articles about umbrella academy in psychiatric journals, highlighting the show’s potential as a mental health tool. also i never really saw myself in any of tua characters but vaguely recognized my obsession w/ justice in diego, and also saw myself in five’s caffeine addiction. so the fact that a medical person... saw diego - weirds me out a little. more on that in a sec.

so my therapist, i guess let’s call her fran, said that diego’s behavior & habits are tied to his inability to introspect and manage his own emotions so he externalizes & fixates on justice, this external thing that has clear, logical right & wrong, something that he can take into his own hands bc he feels that the system is broken. it’s easier for him to focus on that than on fixing himself.

to be clear she said it’s fairly common for ppl in diff branches of medicine to feel this way to a degree; you’re trained to be more detached from your emotions so it’s not unusual to (slightly-moderately) go either the diego route or the luther route if you begin to lose it (and hopefully not the five route cuz that’s a whole diff story). of course these are extremes (and she said i have parallels to diego, not that i have anywhere near his level of hero complex)

even still when she said that -- it hit different. like when my friends cast each other, it’s something we’ve been doing for years right? it’s just fun, and yea you often poke fun at yourself/each other in the process -- but it’s not the same as a professional saying ‘look at this extreme characterization of what could happen if you don’t take a step back‘. honestly my response was, ‘wow that doesn’t seem healthy.’

so the diego route is feeling like the system has failed you. therefore you want to act against or destroy the system that let you down, that didn’t care about you, that didn’t nurture you, and build something better -- on your own because the whole damn thing is unjust and it isn’t fair. the emotion you use to cope with is anger. and to build a new system you need people to back you. to get people to back you, you need to save them. kill the system, fix the broken. you might think you’re doing it on your own, but your success is still contingent on there being problems to solve.

the luther route -- based on my understanding bc she didn’t think i did this -- is more adhering yourself to the system and saying ‘good or bad, it’s by wedding myself to the system through which i will succeed, and i must be important because the system let me in to begin with.’

ofc any person can begin to display traits of any of those characters or of multiple characters, and to repeat they’re all in rough shape. and just bc she implied those are the two fairly common ways to feel in doesn’t mean you can’t be a klaus or a vanya or an allison or whoever you see similarities with.. like that’s the point. everyone responds to trauma differently. and it’s also a one-size fits all. she didn’t mean to and i do not mean to represent the siblings as perfect representations -- only that it does happen to match my behavior.

fran told me that to snap out of the hero complex, at least sometimes, you have to be able to separate yourself from the injustice that surrounds you n understand that people aren’t helpless and you are not here to save everyone. bc first of all - that’s a lot of fuckin’ work and second of all - that’s kinda rude to assume that people can’t fix their own problems. and unless they ask us for help, it’s our job to let them. after all, i’d be pissed if someone thought i needed saving.

so then comes the part i struggle with which is detaching yourself from the work you inevitably choose that focuses on solving problems. i’m shit at it; i’m always fucking problem-solving. i can’t turn it off. i can’t make it stop. and it carries over from my youth bc i felt like i was the only person that could see the solutions to the very real problems in my life. like diego, i’d zoom in and fixate (helloooo jfk plotline) and try to do something about it. turns out i got pretty good at this, and that spurred my career path. i never wanted to see myself as the victim. ever. even after i endured certain traumas that i don’t want to disclose. in my mind, i was never broken. the situations were just injust; and i couldn’t fix... the people, but maybe i could fix the situations.

so what did justice look like to me? i love my family, so i mostly focused on my career - something i could undoubtedly shape on my own. developed a list of people whose jobs i wanted to steal. out of revenge, feeling i could bring justice to the field by bringing my mindset to the table. sound vaguely familiar?

also probably not the healthiest fictional character to relate to. worse still, even arya was able to let go of her vindictive streak at the end of the day (at least in the show) -- something i am still working on. (also probably a good time for a reminder that the plan is to get good enough in my field to ‘steal jobs’ so that i can mold the field into what i want it to be, not actually physically hurt people). i did take up fencing tho.

soooo now it’s 2020. and i’m 28. and something important happened.

i was talking with my mentor and as we were chatting i realized that there is a job out there that i want. and not because i want to steal it out of a sense of ‘revenge’ -- but because i really like that person’s job. that i could see myself in that position because i love what it entails. and i think it’s the first time i ever saw that.

in eight months of constant therapy, i’ve realized that i do have a dream vet school; i do have a dream job; that my life is more than just trying to fix the world.

complexes don’t go away overnight and i kept things purposely vague - i’ll always have a little bit of ‘save the world’ in me.

but i can now say that tech school finishes in 10 months. it’ll be over in less than a year. i submit my vet school app in a week, with a much more refined & steady focus. i’m kind of ready to pursue happiness again. i’m much more confident that i’ll get where i want to be.

and whatever ya know? i’ll figure it out as i go

but tada there’s the story of my therapist seeing me in diego hargreeves, what the fuck.

#about me #personal #do not reblog pls #mostly doing this for myself #cuz fran says i need to work on my vulnerability #bleh #and also i'm curious if anyone has had similar experiences w using tua as a reference for mental health #i think you'd really have to be a certain personality to be chill with it bc i can see it being a sensitive topic for a lot of people

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dvoyd · 7 years

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giant steaming pile of vent.

it’s hard.

it’s hard to care anymore. it’s hard to live anymore. i mean it was always hard, a struggle, fucking torture really (internally at least), but at least i always had a reason to keep going. cuz my mom wanted me to.

now, especially over the last year, something’s changed. it’s like i’ve become, more than anything just a burden on my mother. i know i always was, but i thought that i was one she was willing to take on not only because i’m her child and she loves me, but because she genuinely likes having me around and enjoys being with me

it doesn’t feel like that anymore. now i just feel like some thorn in her side. now i truly feel like i’d be better off dead, because i can’t even conjure up the genuine thought of ‘well at least my mom would miss me, at least she wants me around.’ i just feel like some fucking leech or pest-- granted i always have --but one that was enjoyed despite that, instead of just tolerated out of some... i dunno, sense of parental duty?? guilt???

these last few months have marked a sharp and dramatic decline in my emotional and mental health, due to various reasons (both online and offline), and i can’t find solace anywhere it seems. i genuinely feel that my mom wants nothing to do with me, and it’s not out of paranoia either.

not only have i observed marked and repeated differences in her attitude and desire to even spend time with me, one of the major IRL issues that has caused a severe amount of stress is that she’s been seeking a romantic partner via online dating. she didn’t even see fit to let me know about it until she was already dating a dude after a couple DAYS, and it was going very fast.

i have a ton of personal issues with this, one being that i hate my dad and have very few actual fond memories with him, two that witnessed my mom go through emotional struggles after divorcing my dad and go through dating a few guys who hurt her (i was only a little kid back then but i still recall it). three that a majority of adult males that my mom has associated with (platonically, either friends, coworkers, or like, hiring them to do work on the house / cars / etc) have tried to hit on / flirt with her multiple times, even after she gave indications she wasn’t interested, AND on top of that most of them were MARRIED. and scumbags. even just random male strangers have hit on her.

on top of all of this, i have no siblings. i was raised by a single mom. thus, i never learned how to share her; i grew dependent on her in so many ways, including emotionally, and i am incredibly possessive of her because she is one of very few people in this world that i have ever loved. she and my dad divorced when i was 3, and while i did have minimal contact with him over my childhood and adolescence, i never got emotionally close to him. my mom did briefly date a couple times after him like i said, but it just hurt her more and she stopped after that. she’s never tried since and i never really expected her to.

but she tells me that she’s not willing to live her life isolated and hidden away anymore. that she needs to be with someone romantically to be happy. basically being with me isn’t enough. i know i obviously can’t give her what she wants, but it just... hurts. especially since not only does it make me incredibly anxious and scared and angry and hurt and frustrated and all sorts of things, but also that i realized that i’ve always been willing (and i think even went with the expectation that i’d do so) to reject all romantic and sexual opportunities or potential just to be with her. maybe it’s sad, idk, idc, but thinking about it, it probably doesn’t come at that big of a loss to me because i’ve never experienced either of those things to begin with. i’ve never had sex, and i’ve never dated or had a romantic partner. hell i’ve never even been on a DATE.

now the whole dating thing happened like a month ago and it ended up ending like a week later because when she met him irl she didn’t feel the same chemistry that she did on the phone or computer, but she’s still determined to find someone else. but to make shit even worse and all the more terrifying, my very life hinges on whatever schmuck she picks. she was willing, as i overheard her tell one of her sisters on the phone, to literally pack up her bags and move to wherever that one guy wanted to go. AFTER JUST A FEW DAYS OF TALKING TO HIM.

like i understand that she wants to be happy and even though she cares about me, my being in her life isn’t going to stop her from fulfilling whatever else she needs in her life. like, i’m obviously not going to like or enjoy it, but i’m aware that i either have to put up with it or gtfo. but the fact that she’s willing to pull the rug out from under my feet for some guy she met on the internet (that she claims she had this ‘soulmate’ kind of connection with, yet apparently it only works over the phone/computer, smh) after just a couple days??

you cannot say that you love and care about me and what i think/feel and yet are willing to give me the proverbial middle finger like that. i’m aware that i’m 25 and her parental obligations to me ended the day i turned 18 but holy fuck. that’s just cruel. (not to mention i’m disabled even if the state won’t fucking acknowledge it and have mental + physical illnesses that aren’t all diagnosed because doctors are assholes and want to shove medicine down your throat rather than help you.)

so after having a huge emotional meltdown like a week or two ago over this and the fight we had over it which we never really resolved, on top of other drama (again both IRL and online), basically this whole summer has been a depressing and anxiety-ridden shitfest that has crushed whatever positive growth i managed over the last few years concerning my mental health, because i have suicidal thoughts and urges prominently and daily (i say prominently cuz i technically always have suicidal thoughts, yay depression, but they’re kinda ‘muted’ and in the background and basically get pushed under the rug, thus never acted upon) and my physical health is feeling it too.

i’ve been admitted to the hospital 3 times for suicidal + homicidal ideation / attempts, but all 3 were when i was an adolescent. obviously i’ve had plenty of ideation since, and i did have attempts after as an adult, but the last one no one even knew about (it obv didn’t work), i tried to overdose, but it basically gave me a pseudo-stomach flu (throwing up, nausea, dizziness, etc) and that’s what my mom thought i got until i told her what i did. promised her i wouldn’t do it again which is why she didn’t report it.

but now i’m an adult so that means i’d go to the adult unit and that my mom has no weight in the decision of getting me in or out, though that just assumes i’m unsuccessful. i’ve had enough attempts by now to p much know what it’ll take, and even though i promised my mom i wouldn’t

at this point it is clear i’m nothing more than a burden. that’s not anything more than the reality. i’m 25, no job, no job HISTORY or experience, mentally ill and disabled...

like, my potential in life is gone. it passed me by a while ago. i lost it. i tried to make things better, i tried to get help. i went through a program that was supposed to help people like me GET experience and get a job, but then my mom’s work changed their insurance (which is my mom’s insurance, and through her, mine as well) and the program didn’t accept that insurance. so i had to stop going literally right after i finished the registration process :))) 3 fucking days of filling out paperwork and having to sit there and wait and listen to old people and be in uncomfortable situations, all for nothing

the job market is shit. the pay is nowhere near what a ‘living wage’ actually is, as plenty of millennials can tell you. i’ve submitted tons of applications in the past, and only once have i ever gotten a call back for an interview, went to said interview and got an email back like a week later and was denied. this was for an entry level job at a fucking turkey hill, to basically be a CASHIER or similar. like?? if i can’t get accepted for that lmao.......

basically what is the point in putting myself through more suffering? at least a year or two ago it felt like i was suffering for a reason, or that i had a chance. what do i honestly and realistically have to look forward to?

world war 3?

yeah no thanks

#don't read it if you don't want a huge long post of whining and depressing bs #skyler rants #personal #long post #suicide /#negative /#del

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