It’s tricky when you thought for years that they were a safe space and then it ends up not so much when push really comes to shove.

I’m confused why people keep bringing up sugar when OP says they drink the sugar-free ones.

The acidity from carbonated drinks is not great for your teeth tho.

What does this mean? I don’t know of any association swith soft drinks and severe constipation.

It’s ok to feel awkward about it. Even if you are “overthinking”, it’s a perfectly valid reaction to the scenario. It would make a good number of people out there uncomfortable.

I can’t masturbate so I don’t have a ton of advice, but I think the shower is going to be your best option like others say.

Yeah if you’re using them up that quick, you’re not likely to really come across it which is good!

You’ve never experienced freezer burn? It’s not when it feels too cold to touch.

Freezer burn is when “unwrapped” food in the freezer gets ice crystalized all over it. It turns the texture into a disgusting mess when it’s cooked…overly chewy and even messes with the taste.

It happens more often when food has been opened and then placed in the freezer for a prolonged period of time.

I say unwrapped because it doesn’t necessarily mean just open without a container. Like for example I have a bag of chicken nuggets in the freezer. The bag has a re-closable ziplock type closure. However, sometimes over time, if I’ve opened and re-closed the bag, sometimes some of the remaining nugs get freezer burned.

If you’re using up said bag of nuggets relatively quickly, then it’s not a concern. But if you’re only having nuggets once and a while, then freezer burn is more likely to happen.

A huge bounce back, if you ask me. I hope you are proud of your accomplishments.

Which part of that is your lowest point lol? Wrong post??

Thank you. That is kind of you to say. It is weird because my supervisor isn’t a bully anymore. It took me a long ass time to believe it tbh. I’ve never seen someone make a change like that before. So despite HR treating me like shit, they must have actually did something in the background.

Yes, time itself seems to be key in wound healing…even if it’s painfully slow lol.

I’m sorry to hear. Curious on who is taking advantage of you in life? There are definitely plenty of people who will do that to others. The goal is to find a home in a group of people who don’t and leave as many of the toxic people behind as possible.

I’m so happy to hear this for you. What sort of field did you end up in?

I feel like there has always been a new lowest point for me in life lol.

Maybe this seems mild to some, but I worked my way into getting a well paid career after going through hell in grad school. I never ever had friends growing up or after…seemed to develop severe social anxiety that never went away.

At my job, I thought I finally found an irl deep friendship in my coworker. I had never had that kind of a relationship before. Maybe surface level stuff with others, but nothing like that. We seemed to always have each other’s back. I thought I had a best friend.

Well through the years, my supervisor seemed to get worse and worse with nitpicking my every move. I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt at first for many years…assuming things were a misunderstanding or something. But it kept getting worse and worse.

My coworker and I actually bonded over having mutual difficulties with my supervisor’s poor and unreadable attitude.

Well I got to a breaking point when my supervisor admitted to pushing me one day and I ended up eventually complaining to HR about her. I basically asked for a shift change because of all of the issues.

My friend/coworker was initially somewhat supportive of my struggles because she also knew what it was like to be on the receiving end of my supervisor.

Unfortunately, HR turned it into a multiple months long debacle and clearly was on the side of my supervisor. HR decided to involve all of my coworkers in the mess. My coworkers slowly lost support of me in this and I became more and more erratic as all of this was happening.

During all of this, I had tried to get mental health support as well. I was in therapy which I didn’t find overly helpful and was trying out various forms of medication.

But it was all too much…HR pulled me aside one day to talk to me about my distressed behavior a month prior. Instead of compassion, the woman outright called me selfish and then subsequently threatened termination in a written document that I had to sign the following day. The following day, a debacle also happened with my friend where she said that she wasn’t sure if she could be my friend anymore. None of my coworkers would speak to me.

It felt like my world ended. Everything from my daily life…my job and my friendships…I felt threatened and abandoned by all of that. I felt so hopeless and simply beyond destraught.

For two days in a row, I tried to go into work, but I would immediately go home “sick”. I could not perform my job. I contacted my mental health provider and they were able to put me on an emergency FMLA leave for around 1.5 weeks. So luckily my employer could not fire me right in that moment and I could have time to recover from being inconsolable.

In that time off, I volunteered near daily at the food pantry. I visited relatives and friends I didn’t realize I had. I got my first tattoo. I started wearing wristbands daily with positive messages on the inside. I told myself I would not touch a drink of alcohol outside of social situations. I applied to and interviewed at a different job as well during that time (tho I didn’t end up getting it).

The food pantry stuff helped me a lot. Something about trying to do something good while I was at my lowest instead of giving up on life helped. I’d recommend it. It helped distract me from being constantly consumed by my thoughts.

I have never done well with one on one therapy. My therapist did help me in a very important way, but overall I generally find it rather limiting. I started an intensive group therapy program several months later which I find was more helpful to me than most standard one on one therapy. My only regret is not starting it earlier. It was using the therapy modality called DBT which I highly highly recommend. But maybe I wouldn’t have been as receptive to it then I suppose. I’m also on a different medication now.

Been nearly a year since those few earth shattering days with the HR lady and my friend. I’m still employed at the same company and it’s been a long road with my friend, but we are friends again. My supervisor doesn’t treat people that way anymore. It’s been a long fucking road and I still struggle from that experience, but I’m still here and doing much better.

Sorry for the wall. What is your situation, OP?

Honestly, I’m with you on that.

Idk maybe it’s because I’m a millennial who has boomer parents who never “got ahead” in life. One of my parents is unlikely to ever be able to retire. I never got the “rich boomer” hate because my parents continue to work and struggle financially in their mid to late 60s.

Gets a bit tiring to hear large swaths of people shit on other large swaths of people all the time. Such is the internet, I suppose.

put your dirty drawers in their drawers. Easy.

Omg I feel like this is one of the worst ways to go lol!!! Surely you can find a way to throw them in a bin somewhere instead.

OP, I 100% feel you and understand you. I hated myself my entire life…that’s multiple decades of hatred. People that want you to practice self love don’t always realize the difficulty in this. One simply cannot move from lifelong self hatred to self love. It’s much too far and dramatic of a leap.

I had a somewhat traumatic thing happen to me that felt like something snapped in my brain. But it gave me a sort of realization. I am a human being.

You know what that is? It’s a factual statement. It’s not trying to overcompensate by showering myself with love. It’s simply a completely 100% and totally true fact.

But look deeper into it. What does it imply? What is your view of any one human being? Humans are messy. Humans feel such a wide range of emotions…joy, despair, ecstasy, depression, anger, hatred, fear, curiosity, apathy, anxiety, jealousy, etc. Humans are not robots. People would always ask me why I was so hard on myself and I always thought “well it’s because I know better than to [fill in the blank with whatever you want]”. But that’s not how living creatures work. That’s how it works if you’re a robot. You input a code and a result is outputted. That’s not how it works for a living, breathing creature.

We like to think that we are so far superior to the creatures like squirrels and birds outside our windows. But we in reality are not so different. We are these wondrous and confusing creatures made of flesh and electricity. We don’t always make sense. And the important bit in all of this is that any living being deserves a chance for compassion and empathy and understanding.

I started to make it my mantra. I would say it to myself often. “You are a human being.” I started journaling about things when I would get upset. I would write about why I was upset. And in the end I would write something like that to myself. “It’s ok that you feel X. Because you are a human being.” And then I would come up with a positive thing to do next in my journal entry (like treating myself to a cup of coffee, or deciding to do a puzzle, or deciding to go have a friendly chat with someone, or deciding to watch a movie, etc.).

I didn’t always journal about it. I would think about it or say it to myself periodically. Always remember. It’s a factual statement. You cannot argue with it, even if sometimes you feel “not human”.

I have absolutely never been one to journal. But doing this over and over again really got that to stick and I don’t feel the need to say it to myself much anymore.

Another thing I have been doing ever since is that I started wearing these cheesy motivational wristbands. I have worn them nearly every single day since last fall. The words are written on the inside so the message is only for me. The one I wear the most says “fighter” on it. I feel like these things in combination really helped me a lot.

You got this, OP. Sorry for the length lol.

French is also used in quite a few African countries as well iirc!

Idk I guess I’m less of an advocate on what you do is important but rather that the environment you’re in is important. Is the environment intently mentally draining? Then maybe it isn’t for you. Like for me…I just could not find long term satisfaction in roles that face customers/clients/patients/etc. It was too mentally draining. I felt like I couldn’t be “me”. I also tried environments where I worked alone. It felt too isolating. For me, the most mentally in tune with me was to find a job where I have other coworkers/people who are my equal, but I do not directly face any sort of patients or customers. It was an environment that actually worked with my nature.

Things like cat cafes do exist out there. Maybe it would make more sense to actually seriously consider a sort of investigation in that direction.

I get it…easier said than done and idk. It’s like yeah a high stakes lawyer is going to make more money than someone working at a small cat cafe…but in the end, who has the better life satisfaction? If you can find a way to support yourself, sometimes more money isn’t always better.

Idk sorry for my ramble. Hoping all the best for you.

Yeah that’s the one lol

I went through a lot of mental health stuff for around a year. I still to this day wish I had a diagnosis to feel more “legitimate” and connected to why I am the way I am…as well as finding people to relate. I’m for sure doing much better now, but it did and still does always frustrate me to never get a true diagnosis of anything.

A lot of mental health providers I’ve seen are not overly keen on diagnoses because they feel that they are too limiting, as many people don’t fit in discrete boxes. It’s totally fair and I get it, but I just wish I had an answer to help validate me and look towards others in a similar boat as well as treatment research. Instead they seem to just put generic diagnoses like “depression” and “GAD” for billing purposes, but I don’t seem to relate to these.

I started taking a psych med some time ago that evidently is sometimes used as a sleep aid in people. I sleep like the fucking dead now lol.