Post
by Opustus » Sun Jul 23, 2017 11:52 am
Personal flooding:
Hey all! Lots of hugs to everyone who has a hard time or suffering from depression or other predicament. Many of my best friends have depression and most of my family are alcoholics. I often think I must be either insane or in denial to not be depressed myself, but I have some qualities verging on sociopathy which I think make me immune to what I am expected to feel and how I am expected to react socially and emotionally. In short, I live in my own antisocial bubble, and although I love my friends and family far more than I love myself, I just don't think there is any reason for me to be emotionally burdened or shaken, and it's better to stand tall and brave it than to succumb to hardship. I've practised this control over myself since childhood, which was a coping method to overcome my brother's suicidality, a narcissistic mother and other problems at home. Subsequently, I've worked with refugees with severely traumatic experiences, worked on their asylum applications containing lots of awful stuff, and tended to families with neglected children, and through all of it, I've never flinched or felt any compunction -- unless bad conscience is my permanent state of mind.
I understand that this disposition isn't anyone's choice, but simply how one turns out owing to environmental and biological factors. I feel thankful for turning out the way I did; I can't imagine how difficult it might be without this hard personality in which I've cloistered myself.
About internet relations in general:
RP communities have never ceased to amaze me in how genuine they are in their social interaction and how well text can convey our emotions and intentions. Language itself encompasses a complicated yet detectable social code we process and produce, which is much the same as the symbols we interpret in our everyday lives in our behaviour and apperance. Language emulates or reproduces behaviour to a high degree of precision, because the social nature of humans is deeply embedded in our language. Many linguists and psychologists even go so far as to claim that language is what makes us human and vice versa. Considering all of this, I don't doubt for a second that our community isn't a real one, and I've personally known so many people online who have become as important to me as my real-life relations. Furthermore, I think many of the alleged online strangers have known me far better than my closest friends in real life.
I agree with the few assessments that you shouldn't trust just anybody in the internet. Especially in RP communities, such as Arelith or Amia, people tend to interact with conviction: they are who they are, they open themselves to others and are vulnerable social beings. As RP and other communication herein tends to be so intimate, it presents psycopathic personalities with repetitive opportunities to control and manipulate others for narcissistic gratification. I think text itself yields control over our external behaviour to a greater degree than real-life interaction does: we get to think, rethink, and carefully construct our messages, which enables calculation in terms of self-presentation and social maneuvering.
I don't want to dissaude anyone from being brave and honest in your interaction, but to realise that you need to speak out especially in the relationships that function over the internet. Be honest to yourself, don't do anything only for other people's pleasure, and never submit to other people's will if it feels bad to you.
As a wee addendum, I hate how people can just vanish from the internet because of the stuff they need to do IRL. I miss so many of the people I've played with over the years and I wonder if they even know it or care, but then again, I fear they might be creeped out to hear about it.
About therapy:
In Finland, there is a consensus that all government-funded psychotherapy that is offered via schools, social services, and other routes, chiefly aims to keep a person productive and functioning. For example, if you are diagnosed with persistent depressive disorder and are undergoing a bout of major depression, but can still function well at school or at work, there isn't any imminent danger and you are prescribed to preventive care that often consists of psycotherapy sessions. However, if you prove to be unable to perform your daily functions at school or at work, you are prescribed medicine to keep you active along with the psychotherapy sessions. This is the basic protocol every psychologist and psychiatrist in Finland are expected to follow in their profession.
The decisions to policies on mental health practices are being stipulated by economical needs and a political system that tries to cater to them. There is also a moralistic, layperson's understanding behind these political decisions: if a person can perform to a required capacity, that person isn't actually sick. My girlfriend suffers from major depression, but she is the kind of person who constantly pushes herself to the limit. This has nothing to do with her condition per se, it is her temperament or personality, but it is harmful to her treatment as she cannot focus on her problems when she is constantly doing something. When she stops, she fatally breaks down, and this has created a fear in her to never stop. As her psychologist is tasked to keep her active (his own words, more or less), he doesn't see a problem in perpetuating this cycle, and she's been told that her work is an integral part of her treatment. To me, it seems inevitable that she will have a major burnout that will also bid welcome the problems she has been evading.
If a person has lots of money to pay for non-subsidized treatment that doesn't follow the aforementioned protocol, you might be treated without the imperative to be a productive citizen, but even then, moral opinion has that if you can function just fine in your daily chores, you're probably not in a purgatory of your inner world, about to disintegrate. This is terrible.
Characters: all poor babies suffering from neglect
