Anyone else need constant stimulation?
Hello everyone, I hope everything is going well for you all! I'm not sure if I'm posting this in the correct form, but it's the best I can think of. My psychiatrist doesn't want to officially diagnose me with it, but she's having me be treated for BPD, which is why I've decided too post this here.
Recently, I've noticed just how empty, and numb I feel if I don't have constant stimulation. Don't get me wrong, I usually feel empty underneath everything else, but it gets much worse pretty much the moment I don't constantly have something that I find mentally/emotionally stimulating. Recently, I've been getting over an obsession I had over someone, so this emptiness is hitting me 10 times harder since if that makes sense?
I'm not sure what to do. I've tried throwing myself into hobbies, and trying out new things, but I get bored of them very quickly after being incredibly invested in them which is a bit crushing. I'm have issues finding something that sticks right now, and I can feel myself slowly falling down into a hole. I can't tell whether or not this is a sign I'm moving forward, or if I'm falling back down.
Does anyone have any advice?
@Blueturtle1111
Hey there 🫂 I can't say for sure that I've struggled with the same issue, but I definitely empathize with the "getting super invested into something and then getting bored of it", though for me it generally happens for longer periods like a couple months before slowly trickling away.
For me, what the hobbies that last longer have in common is that they tend to be more of a 'theme' rather than a specific item? For example, I've always loved music, but I've jumped around between a lot of different genres as I discover new things I love and rediscover old songs I used to love—and so there's always a new field to explore. Perhaps taking this approach to your hobbies to more thoroughly explore them could help to reduce the boredom issue.
That said, it also might be worth trying to break down that tendency to get 'obsessed' with something and try to spread it out more evenly across several things—if like you said it's possible to throw yourself into hobbies, would it be possible to somehow purposefully select several hobbies and try slowly building them all up?
Regardless, best of luck and hope you're doing well!
@Blueturtle1111
Hi, that makes sense what you're describing. 💜 There's this emptiness that's like a baseline of how things feel if you don't have hobbies or something to pull your attention away from it. (And when your attention is distracted, that emptiness is still there and has some influence, but it's not as powerful or all-consuming.)
But the hobbies are unstable and don't last, so you're periodically pushed back into that void. The obsession you mentioned sounds like it had a positive effect similar to the hobbies in terms of being stimulating and stabilizing (it pulled your attention/energy outward into something compelling that filled up some of the empty space).
***
I don't have an answer and I'm feeling torn in a few different directions.
1) One idea would be to accept the instability of the hobbies and just try to be clever with nomadically moving from one hobby to the next. If one hobby "stops working", see that as something normal and something that just happens and have more hobbies waiting in the wings.
2) I hesitate to suggest this because it doesn't sound easy at all, but maybe trying to find some kind of meaning that makes a hobby/activity worth doing or gives it a greater purpose that goes beyond "this holds my attention temporarily and distracts me from the void".
3) Sort of the most radical/counterintuitive option, but sometimes I find that if there's something constantly nagging at me and demanding/forcing me to look at it, it can be worth just letting that thing happen, not resisting it, and trying to relate to it gently and sensitively. Being honest with myself about the fact that there's an emptiness there and (temporarily) giving up on trying to cover it up by constructing a bunch of hobbies/activities on top of it.
The gentleness/kindness is really the important thing for me that makes it possible. If something's scary, then creating a space for myself where I'm acknowledging "this thing is vulnerable and I'm hurting, so I'm going to be really gentle/loving toward myself". To meet that scary/sad experience, having the intention of blanketing myself in kindness and really caring for all of those moments and experiences of hurt or fear as they arise. Being luxuriously/gratuitously compassionate and sensitive. Whatever I feel, that's okay and I'm allowed to feel it and I give myself permission to be what I am.
Sometimes just looking at what's there and giving it attention in this way is enough to "satisfy" it and it'll feel heard and stop nagging, or become boring/stale (sort of like the hobbies) and fade back into the background. Other times there might be layers to it (uncovering one thing causes something else to bubble up). Or sometimes what bubbles up is a demand to solve an external problem or take an action, in which case that can sometimes be a source of that elusive meaning/purpose.
***
It seems like I'm a bit biased toward the third option based on how much I'm writing about it. 😊 But I probably use the other two more frequently: constructing a bunch of activities that keep me busy, and trying to have at least some of those activities feel like they're satisfying some higher moral/emotional purpose. It maybe just creates some security though to have a feeling that if everything collapses, I have the option of sitting still and metaphorically hugging myself.
