HorrendousHexapod Member Profile

Politics Are Ruining Me

Anxiety Support / by HorrendousHexapod

January 25th

...See more As the title suggests I don't particularly care for politics. I hate talking about them, I hate thinking about them, yet for some reason I force myself to hyper fixate on them. For the last few years, it feels like not a week has gone by where I haven't worried about something political. In a lot of ways, it's starting to feel like politics are designed to trap people like me in this never ending cycle of fear and anxiety, where they constantly guilt me for forming opinions against them. For example, I kept looking up these articles about the difference between liberals and conservatives, looking up which was smarter, happier, more compassionate, more successful, etc. I don't know why I started, maybe I hyper fixated on the idea of myself or people with my political views being horrible people, so I'll find articles saying that they're is inherently miserable, unintelligent, have less empathy for people on the other side, and that any expression of empathy they express at all is purely performative. Sometimes they just speak from their personal experiences, which aren't attributable to everyone, but are spoken with such venom that it's like I have to think like them. Recently I came across this website, apparently written by a therapist, who said that using pronouns was now akin to narcissism. Apparently asking someone to refer to you as he, she, or they is akin to some kind of narcissistic level of control where people force others to cater to their beliefs about themselves and or face retribution, apparently using others as a mirror to affirm their sense of self worth and build up their self image by referring to them by preferred pronouns. The guy also insinuated that having problems with the whole “Sticks and Stones” saying, like thinking that words can in fact hurt you, is part of some culture of victimhood where people now lack resilience. Sometimes they use legitimate scientific sources to back up what they say, for example, liberals are less likely to befriend or show empathy to conservatives and are more openly hostile towards them, but are seemingly contradicted by other sources saying that conservatives hate liberals more or that they view them as more morally bankrupt. Am I going crazy? Am I allowed to think that all of this is stupid? I don't know which sources are more accurate, but sometimes I believe that the ones that cause me more anxiety are the ones closer to the truth. I'm always hyper critical of sources that don't cause me anxiety, but then when one does it feels like I have to believe it immediately. I also get worried when a source is like 70+ pages in length, guilting myself if I choose to not read it and saying I’m just trying to deny reality, when really, I just don’t want to waste hours looking through something I don’t even know is true. I even worry that I'm stupid for being so anxious or worrying a lot, since a large number of studies apparently demonstrate a link between lower IQ and unhappiness or anxiety, albeit quite a small one. It feels like I can't have any opinion about any specific topic without worrying that whatever I think of is wrong or immoral. I don't know how many of these studies and sources are accurate or well constructed, I just want it all to stop. I'm sick of constantly debating my political positions to myself, I'm sick of searching up my opinions on google to check whether or not some study says they're accurate or not or some Schrödinger’s *** says they’re dumb and immoral, I'm sick of being talked down to by smug *** who act like they're so sane, rational, and compassionate fighting back against the evil guys on the other side when to me everything they say and do just feels so fake and calculated despite them telling me that the guys over on the other side are just that. I can’t even write this out without worrying that I’m misrepresenting or misunderstanding them no matter how hard I try. I know I haven't specifically stated what my political beliefs are but I really don't want to start a flame war in the comments.

How can I stop catastrophizing?

Autism Support / by HorrendousHexapod

September 2nd, 2023

...See more I’m sorry to make another post about this topic, but I just don’t know what else to do. For the last couple of years I have delved into some unsavoury things regarding politics, generally terrible things regarding different groups of people, such as women, people of colour, people of different sexual orientations, etc. While most people would typically just ignore this stuff and move on with their lives, but for some reason I just can’t do that, and seem to obsess over certain claims being made about different groups of people, especially since some of them use science to prove their points, so I force myself to analyse as much as I can no matter how much I hate it. But I just can’t take it any more. I feel like I’m living in this constant state of fear and anxiety that I’m wrong about everything and that something will come along that will force me to view the world in a negative light. I’ve tried so long to combat the things I’ve read with my own research, but I can only do so much. And half of the time some of it doesn’t even make any sense or is just so confusing. For example, some people have made the claim that the majority of black people have committed crimes, causing me to force myself to look into crime statistics regarding unreported crime, arrest rates, and so on, and do calculations on a percentage calculator even though I suck at math. At best, the numbers are alarmingly high, which worry me but I keep telling myself that I have to be unbiased and try to accept it, but at worst, the numbers literally make no sense whatsoever, no matter which way I slice it. And there’s so many unaccountable variables and contradictory studies that I don’t know what to believe most of the time, yet my mind constantly goes to the worst case scenario. I’m just so tired of all of this. I get no joy out of doing any of this, and it feels like some massive weight is being pushed down on top of me, but I force myself to do it because I worry that if I don’t them I’m just remaining wilfully ignorant, or that I’m just disrespecting the suffering of others for the sake of my own beliefs. On numerous occasions, I just replay things that I already obsessed over months ago, worrying that I missed something the last time I did this, but sometimes I’ll go back and find nothing, and if I decide to be stubborn and say no to myself the guilt will eat away at me. Even on days when I don’t do any of this, the constant nagging and catastrophizing still hums away in the back of my mind like some kind of terrible song that’s stuck in my head and I just want it all to end. Every time I try to stop I always get a few weeks of peace, before the guilt becomes too overwhelming and the cycle just begins again with some new or old. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong and I just really need some help.

Should I Withdraw from University?

Student Support / by HorrendousHexapod

April 19th, 2023

...See more I’m just gonna get to the point with this post. I am a Uni student currently in my fourth year of study and am halfway through my first semester on break. Over the past few months, however, I feel as though my mental health has been deteriorating in ways that have been negatively affecting my work. As of now I have currently had a meeting with a psychiatrist regarding my personal struggles and my worries, and I’ve even visited a doctor regarding a possible diagnosis for ADHD. Normally I find myself sometimes being unable to pay attention in classes, but as of this semester I feel like I have been unable to focus on anything no matter how much I make an attempt to, and I’ve also noticed that I’ve missed a lot of details regarding Uni work and emails that I’m not sure how I could’ve missed. I’ve just felt so out-of-it, more so than usual, and I don’t know why. I also don’t particularly enjoy any of my subjects and only picked them because I didn’t have any other options available. In one of the subjects, I struggle to complete the work because there are times where I don’t fully understand what I’m supposed to be doing, in another I struggle because seemingly no one else can understand the subject, and the third subject I struggle with because I rarely ever have classes for it, so I sometimes focus on other subjects instead. I just don’t know what to do right now. I don’t want to completely drop out, I only want to temporarily withdraw, but part of me is not confident that I will pass at all this semester if I stay behind. I’m partially worried that if I withdraw for the semester, the work groups I’m in will struggle in my absence, but the only group that I’m in at the moment is working on laboratory work and, if I’m being honest, I only feel like a burden in these lab sessions because I’m usually relegated to just preparing materials. I do worry, however, that if I withdraw it would come across as me being lazy, but if I wasn’t in Uni right now I would still want to work. The problem is that my current job only has me working on weekends, so I think I would look for another job that offers more hours during the week, but I’m also kind of intimidated because I don’t really know where to look. I just don’t know what to do right now. Any suggestions?

My guilt is eating me alive

Anxiety Support / by HorrendousHexapod

March 23rd, 2023

...See more I'm sorry for making another post like this, but I just can't take this anymore. As I explained in a previous post I have anxiety issues which force me to look up specific ideas and topics that worry me for the sake of being open-minded, for the past couple of months, I promised myself not to give in to my anxieties and look up the things that worry me, namely articles about things like human nature, IQ, morality, etc. While it worked, for the most part, recently I've felt that begin to waver a bit and have found myself falling back into my old habits. The other night, I made the stupid decision to look up one of these worrying websites to check that there were no posts specific to what I was obsessing over at the time, and, lo and behold, it sent me down another rabbit hole, specifically involving topics about LGBT people this time. While most people would just dismiss it as garbage, what got me worried was the author's use of science to justify their stances and the fact that they were apparently a scientist themselves. From what I read, even though I don't fully understand a lot of things in the field of psychology and couldn't address some of the points he made, some of the points that I could sort of understand had me skeptical, although a part of me thinks that this is just because I don't know a lot about psychology and statistics they use. As I was logging out of this website, however, a thought occurred to me that the author probably wrote more about other specific topics that I had previously worried about in the past that I had previously spent hours of my time obsessively researching, but instead of giving in and going back I just went to sleep. For the past two days, this feeling of guilt at not giving in to the voice in my head has been eating away at me, but I just don't want to go back to the website. Part of me thinks that it's because the author used science to severely criticize beliefs that I previously held, and that if I go back, I'll have to face the truth, but also that the reason I'm not going back to the website is that I'm afraid of reality and that I'm just being willfully ignorant. Even while I'm typing this, the little voice in my head is telling me that I'm pathetic and only writing this to get others to validate my desire not to do it and live in ignorance. On the other hand, I know that if I go back to the website and read more, not only will I just work myself up and get worried again, taking hours to possibly weeks to make me calm down and forget about what I could read, but assuming that I find posts about these topics (which part of me thinks that I will) I could undo all of the progress that I have made over the past few months and set myself back severely. I really don't know what to do anymore. Am I just destined to do this? I really want to just move on and forget about this, but the guilt keeps pulling me back.

Experiencing a Bad Backdoor Spike

Anxiety Support / by HorrendousHexapod

October 12th, 2022

...See more So for the past couple of weeks I’ve made a promise to myself that I would not look up the things that worry me and, for the most part, it’s been working with the exception of one or two days. However, about a day ago I’ve been getting these compulsive thoughts to look up the things that worry me again, mainly conflicting scientific studies about relationships that seem to contradict each other. My compulsions are now telling me that I need to look through some of these studies again because, for some reason, despite spending at least fifty to a hundred or so hours researching this stuff I managed to miss whether or not some of these studies were replicated, and now I’m telling myself to check if they were. The problem is, in order to confirm or deny this, it would just require a quick google search and a browse, assuming that I haven’t forgotten the titles of some of these studies in the first place. A part of me is saying that, by not checking, I’m just being wilfully ignorant of things that challenge my worldview and looking for excuses to keep my beliefs intact, and that I’m just writing this in order to weasel out of going through with it. However, I know that if I do give into my compulsions, they‘re not going to stop and I’m just going to keep thinking of things that worry me and look them up again. I also know that, if I go through with my compulsions and find something that confirms them, I’ll feel this sense of dread and anxiety and will be constantly trying to rationalise the things that I’ve found or get sidetracked with a bunch of other sources. If I don’t find anything that confirms them, I’ll just have wasted my time once again on things that never even mattered in the first place. Either way, however, regardless of what I find, I’ll probably feel terrible anyway if I go through with my compulsions as I’ll just be going back on a promise that I made to myself and I’ll just set myself back even further from trying to break my obsessive habits. I know that I should listen to the voice telling me not to, and I’ve wasted hours of my life reading through things that worry me already, but the voice in my head telling me to just do it is seriously starting to weigh down on me, and I really just want some help to shut it out.

I want to stop worrying, but I feel trapped by my obsessions and anxieties

Anxiety Support / by HorrendousHexapod

May 28th, 2022

...See more I’m just gonna get right into this because I really need to get this off my chest. I just can’t take this anymore. I have genuinely tried to stop worrying, stop obsessing over things, but for some reason I just can’t do it. Nothing seems to stick with me no matter how hard I try, and I just feel awful about it. Over the past few years I have read some… let’s just say unsavoury things about people online, terrible things regarding different groups of people, such as women, people of colour, people of different sexual orientations, etc. Any other person would typically just ignore this stuff and move on with their lives, but for some reason I just can’t do that, and seem to obsess over certain claims being made about different groups of people, especially since some of them use science to prove their points. For example, recently I’ve been worrying about this one claim I’ve read about women and how apparently they only live men who make more money than them. This is apparently supported by the fact that husbands on average tend to make more than their wives, and that apparently a large number of single men are poor, whereas a large number of single women are wealthy. At the same time, however, I’ve also read that the number of married women who outearn their husbands has increased significantly in numerous countries across the world, to as many as 30-50 percent of women in some countries earning more than their husbands. Granted, apparently most of these husbands aren’t in the lowest income group, but that still counts for something right? I even read as well that some the trend of husbands out earning wives may not even be intentional based on certain statistics. I’ve also read that apparently, these types of marriages where wives earn more are more likely to divorce, but the reasons are sketchy, since some say both men and women become uncomfortable when the wives earn more, and some indicate that them being unhappier is due to the, doing more housework on top of earning more, and others still say that it differs by country, and that these divorce rates are t that high in some countries. I have also read some studies which suggest that these wives try to compensate with husbands if higher social status, but I’m still sceptical that so many of these women are all able to find men of higher social status, especially in countries where a caste system doesn’t exist. I just don’t know what to think anymore, I know there a lot of studies that apparently provide evidence for this behaviour, but I also know there are some that call it into question. I did think for a while that I should be skeptical of all of these studies if I didn’t know that much about the topic, since I really was just using the information of other people to form my opinions. Unfortunately, I told myself that that was just a cop out, and that I was just scared of the truth or of reading studies that go against my worldview, but at the same time I never just blindly accepted the studies that found little support for these things, and I literally copy and pasted the titles, links, and even authors of these studies all over twitter, advanced search engines, and numerous other websites in order to determine whether they were heavily flawed. Honestly, I think I should have reason to be skeptical of these studies, at the end of the day I don’t know much about social sciences, some of the papers I’ve read involve maths that I don’t understand whatsoever, and I feel like learning about these topics would take more time than I have available to me or that I’m even honestly willing to spend. Part of me thinks that I’m just copping out by doing this, that I’m just seeking affirmation to stop reading into this and am just being wilfully ignorant, or that I’m pathetic for even doing this, but I just can’t take it anymore. I’m sick of worrying about things I hardly understand, I’m sick of constantly having a nagging voice in the back of my head all day that urges me to go back and look, I’m sick of wasting hours of my life reading this stuff just so I can have a modicum of a better understanding towards it, I’m sick of having the thoughts interrupt the things I actually enjoy doing and causing me to stop, and I’m sick of staying up late into the night just to satiate the parasitic thoughts that dwell in the back of my mind. But honestly the worst part is the promise that I made. A year ago, I lost someone close to me, and I promised myself that I would properly grieve and move on and that I would give up my habit of doing this. It’s been over a year now, and I haven’t been able to do it, I’ve failed at keeping my promise. Sometimes the voice in my head tells me to just get over it, that it’s a cop out reason to stop, or that it’s disrespectful to them to have made that promise in the first place, especially when they didn’t know what I was going through, but I just don’t know at this point. I’m just so tired all the time, I feel like my brain is on fire, and some of the things I used to enjoy just don’t have that spark that they used to anymore. I just feel so trapped, bored and stressed, and I just want everything in my head to just go away. I apologise if this isn’t the right place to post this, but I just don’t know where else to go.

My obsessions are ruining my life

Newbie Hub / by HorrendousHexapod

March 8th, 2022

...See more I think it started around seven years ago when I started worrying about sinning going to hell. For every little mistake I made I would often make a little prayer to God in my mind to ask for forgiveness for the things that I did, regardless of how minor they were. It quickly got to the point where I would even apologise for thinking things that I didn’t even mean (such as hating God, my family, my friends, etc) and ever since then not a day has gone by where I haven’t had these thoughts, as they’ve even evolved over time to encompass more horrible things that I don’t mean. I wish it stopped there, but that isn’t the only obsession I developed. Roughly five years ago, I began obsessing over certain conspiracy theories, with the one taking up the most of my time being the “dinosaurs never existed” theory. This one got to me because dinosaurs are my favourite animals, and have been a pretty massive presence in my life ever since I was a child, so I took some serious issue with the idea that they never existed. Most people around me would likely just ignore this kind of theory, but I just couldn’t let myself do that. Instead, I spent so many hours of my life looking as deeply into this conspiracy theory as I could just so I wouldn’t be closed minded to any potentially mind blowing evidence that would shatter my preconceived notions. Needless to say, five years later and I have turned up nothing, yet for some reason still sometimes make myself sift through this information in order to see if there is anything if worth which, 9/10 times, there isn’t. But in a weird way, this led to my latest obsession which has taken hold over the past two years, and especially so over the past few months. I’ve made myself go down numerous rabbit holes regarding “human nature” which have led to me discovering some pretty terrible claims made about women, people of colour, LGBT people, and so on. Unlike the situation with the dinosaurs, however, I don’t know that much about human psychology and behaviour, so I mostly relied on the words of others regarding these topics. Sometimes people would put forward scientific articles that supported claims such as “women only loving men for their looks/money,” or “people of different ethnicities having lower or higher iqs.” I also managed to find scientific articles which provided evidence against these claims, but I would then make myself check to see if anyone had criticised these articles (sometimes they did and sometimes they didn’t), which just confused me more. I understand that it is important to be open minded to other evidence, but this has just been exhausting. It’s even bled into my personal life as well. I’ll sometimes just be doing something I enjoy, such as drawing or bike riding, when suddenly a little thought enters my head relating to a specific group of person. Sometimes I fight against it and it goes away, but usually I cave into this urge, look up a specific claim, and try to address it the best I can, which can sometimes go on for hours. In the end though, I’m either left worried, numb, or somewhat dissatisfied, because I know that there are hundreds of sources out there making specific claims, and I know that I don’t have the expertise to thoroughly analyse them all or the time or patience to even try to go through them all. I know that this might not be as serious as some of the other posts on this thread, but I feel like this has genuinely negatively impacted my life, and this has really been weighing down on me for a long time. I just want everything to go back to how it used to be when I wouldn’t become so worried about all of this, but I just can’t stop ruminating on this stuff no matter how hard I try.

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