Before I begin my story tonight (it’s three AM here in rural Kentucky), I’d like to make clear that times are tough for everyone, all over the world. There are unprecedented historical changes taking place in almost every country, every state or province, every town. Not only that, but everyone you know, no matter how well off, no matter how destitute, is struggling with all sorts of painful problems unique only to themselves, that nobody can really understand but the victim him or herself. I don’t mean to minimize any of these problems by drawing attention to my own. Nor do I wish to take away from someone else’s pain by magnifying mine.
As a resident of the rural South, I am also uniquely plagued with the notion that, as a single man, bringing attention to self-centered emotional difficulties such as these is often perceived, as I hinted above, as a form of “attention-seeking” behavior, a means by which a person who, going about their own business and just trying to get by, is wrested up by their collar by some stranger who shouts in their face and insists “Look at me!” That is not my intention, either, even if that is the result. Rather, however, I seek to make my circumstances clear in the hope that they will be mirrored in the life of someone who is just a little bit like me, and thereby can come to understand that they themselves are not truly alone, and thereby their pain is lessened.
As you may or may not be aware from reading this blog, I am a solitary person. I don’t get along well with others – face-to-face. This is because I struggle with a rather low-key form of schizoaffective disorder – a combination of some of the most troubling parts of both the cognitive malfunction schizophrenia and the emotional rollercoaster known as bipolar. I process most negative interactions with others as deliberate attempts to harm me or even conspire against me, and over the years I have developed a unique talent for responding to these offenses by manifesting a reaction precisely designed to deeply wound the person who has offended me in the most abusive, demoralizing way possible. It doesn’t matter how close they are to me or how much they have done for me or even how much they love me – all I want to do is return the pain that I feel. Perhaps you are bipolar or know someone who suffers from it. Perhaps you already know exactly what I’m talking about.
I guess I better quit pussyfooting around. About two months ago, I had developed enough confidence in myself via a return to school and yes, success with my silly little Skyrim mod list, that I thought I might test my boundaries even further and start attempting to get back out into the world, into the Company of Men (and Women). I had some small measure of success playing Magic the Gathering on Arena, so I started attending a local game shop to play card games with people like me, so I could once again feel value in social relationships. I don’t know exactly what I expected to happen. Maybe I thought that I could just return to the days of my youth and have an easy camaraderie with my fellow nerds like I did before I developed my illness.
None of that occurred. The veritable children at the comic book shop gave less than a shit about me. They were just there to hang out with the friends they already knew and play with the toys they had already collected. The first time I bought a couple of decks of cards on site and asked a handful of people for a pickup game, but nobody was interested because they were there for the tournament taking place. It wasn’t so much that they responded and said, “Sorry man, I’d rather not.” They didn’t even acknowledge me, perhaps because I was twice their age and they made rather understandable but incorrect assumptions about me.
I said okay, I’ll come back another time, with a deck specifically geared for the tournament scheduled to take place. I spent the next month saving up 100 Euro for a very simple Millstone deck to be played in Standard, the most inexpensive format of Magic to get started in, and I ordered it from a fellow I knew over there who could get cards in bulk. The deck came in, and I was very excited to go to a tournament at which I could finally hold the physical cards and play a deck I had tuned online for weeks, and thereby make new friends that way. It wasn’t a top deck, it wasn’t even really a winning deck, it was just mine. Nobody even showed. The Type 2 Event was a wash. Everybody was there for Yu-Gi-Oh, and thereby once again could not give half a shit that some random old man had brought his cheap pickup deck to a Standard Tournament that nobody had any interest in attending.
When I got in the car, rejoined by my friend Delbert who had gone twenty miles out of his way to drive me to this tournament, and who smoothed the way with these people to try to establish a pickup game none of them were interested in because they hadn’t even brought decks for it, I decided the “best and most appropriate reaction” was to take out my frustration on him. I brought up all his worst qualities. I accused him of abandoning me. I told him he was worthless, unreliable, a bad friend who had been ignoring me. All of this, even though he has been going through serious cardiovascular problems of his own and spends most of his days fighting old addictions, medication side effects, and at times a very real fear for his own life.
He told me he would renounce me for real if I kept up this behavior. His victory over certain habits in his life had recently provided him with the income to purchase a rather out of date old Dodge Challenger, and he roared out of my driveway after dropping me off at home, very angry and, I’m sure, very hurt. I flipped him off as he went. I was certain I had lost him forever. I came in, sat down, and began to brood – processing everything that had just happened. How dare those kids at the shop, I thought. I’m an agreeable dude. I am not that terrible, am I? Is a simple pickup game for an old man too much to ask? I got absurd with it. I have a mod list! I shouted to myself, ridiculously. There are five thousand people on my server! I do tech support for thousands more! And it became evident to me that no matter how well respected I am in certain parts of my life, to most of the world it amounts to nothing more than a sad little pile of beans. I started to feel as though I wanted to… harm someone.
It was almost chemical in its power. The rage. The hatred. The desire to harm. I felt as though all my individual agency that I had been fostering over the past two years functionally amounts to fucking nothing, and it didn’t matter to anyone how much of a success I became in my own realm, to most people I would be nothing more than a tired old balding schizo. I became very afraid at this point. Terrified. Helpless. My illness is taking over, I thought. I sat there, in front of the desktop PC where I spend most of my time, feeling pain and wanting with my entire being to amplify it and return it, and began to separate myself from myself, to deliberately encourage a sensation known as depersonalization, whereby a person starts to think of their “real self” as a person outside their body, making decisions and having thoughts that have nothing to do with who they really are. I realized I needed help.
I called my therapist immediately and scheduled a telemedicine appointment for later that day. He worked with my psychiatrist to prescribe me a new medication to cool me down for a little while. Over the next week or so, I did – sleeping a lot more, scaling back updates and support for my mod list, gaining weight. I put on at least thirty pounds because my appetite increased so greatly. I am at 220 pounds now, on a small, 5’9” frame. I began to deal with another concern, that the medication would eventually render me so fat and inert that I would be incapable of keeping up my household at all, and thereby become even more useless and meaningless than I already am.
I don’t want to do it, but I must take a brief detour here to describe my life circumstances. I share a small ranch-style home with my elderly septuagenarian Aunt and a Gen X forty-something I like to call Bill. She works at the local movie theater – hit hard by the pandemic – and he works at a gun shop as a clerk – for which business is booming (of course), but LOL at getting decent pay doing that no matter how many thousands the shop pulls in every month. Thanks to my government assistance due to my mental difficulties and the mod list that I provide, combined with very low expenses compared to most of America, (I don’t own a vehicle nor do I have expensive tastes, aside from computer hardware), I provide a large portion of the money necessary to keep the place smooth and operational. I am the only one here proficient with online systems enough to pay all the bills quickly and efficiently each month, and while the others provide income via their jobs, it provides only part of the requirement and I administer most of it even if my income is not overwhelmingly the greatest.
I especially hesitate to mention the next part, not only because we have one of our own in this same community struggling with the exact same fucking problem, but because it entails going into the aspect about myself that I hate the most: my teeth. While I was under the most debilitating effects of my mental illness, I stopped taking care of them. They are black, rotten, breaking apart and falling out. I switched to a Medicare Advantage plan late last year during open enrollment in the hope that I could have them extracted, scheduled my appointment at a nearby Student Clinic, and hoped to get them mostly paid for.
I had already been through an extremely demoralizing struggle trying to find local surgeons who accept my insurance plan. Almost every maxillofacial surgeon in Kentucky is registered as in-network on Aetna’s bullshit fucking Provider Directory, but when you visit them, they sniff down their noses at you and say they actually don’t. You’re a pathetic public assistance rube, why do you deserve any care? This after I have been through their standard rigmarole of x-rays, evaluations, referrals, on to another clinic for more x-rays and evaluations. (Even the most mentally challenged person could tell by spot inspection that all these teeth need to go.)
When I showed up at the Student Clinic for my appointment, they asked me where my referral was. They wanted to do x-rays and an evaluation. I told them I was bipolar and about to lose my shit, so the guy relented – peeked inside, and after five seconds said yeh, I’ll remove them all. That’s when I spoke to the “Financial Counselor,” a salty old woman sick to shit of dealing with people who can’t pay for what they themselves have done to their teeth. They told me they accepted it when I scheduled the appointment, but this glorified government busy worker said “Well, our desk receptionists don’t have all the most up-to-date information – we don’t accept AETNA Advantage, and we need $4,000 up front to remove all of your teeth. By October.” I don’t want anything more than to get them out of my mouth without having to resort to a pair of fucking pliers! I blew up. I chewed her out. I stormed out. I did the Boomer thing and filed grievances with Medicare and the University and all sorts of things I have yet to really follow up on.
Deep breaths. I don’t really expect anyone to pay for my teeth. They’re my fault and my responsibility. I’ll have them out even if I must enter an exploitative payment plan with some place like Aspen Dental. This is simply providing context for the real crisis below.
I received an electricity bill for $221 this month. I knew immediately the reason. Air conditioning. One of the only ways my Aunt can sleep after eight to ten hours at her grueling retail job (she’s 70, remember) is to pile up in a chilly room under a bunch of fuzzy covers and do her best. She leaves the thermostat at a crisp sixty-eight degrees while she is sleeping – which amounts to about twelve hours once she finally manages to drift off. Even worse, often neither I nor her can remember to adjust it in the afternoon when she wakes – and Bill has determinedly decided that it is not his business. That’s when I started examining the electricity bill – up 400 kilowatt hours from last month! It was as pricey as fucking December, and we have electric heating! And I got hot. I woke her up. I stormed into her room. I accused her of playing loyalty games because I had asked her to cut back on expenses, of deliberately making things harder for me, along with a lot of other vicious assumptions. Knowing that I had just shit all over her and her love for me, I stalked out of her room to lick my self-inflicted wounds.
I began to experience depersonalization once again and started to feel myself outside myself as I processed my anger. I thought to myself – no matter how much control I seem to have, I continue to hurt the people that matter the most to me, often in ways they will never forget. Maybe it would be better if – I weren’t here anymore. Maybe it would be better for the government, the insurance companies, all the financial interests invested in me if I were just – gone.
I immediately woke Bill and asked him to drive me to an Inpatient Clinic in Lexington. The threat was recognized and reacted to. Forces were unleashed and began to marshal themselves to save my life. The first step was removing all of Bill’s firearms from the home. While this was being done, I got dressed – put on one of my presentable sets of clothing, combed my few hairs, and washed. Prayer chains and donation services were notified and put into action. My Aunt came out and asked what was going on, Bill explained. She offered to drive me instead. My mental condition began to deteriorate and on the way out of town – I caved. I told her I wanted a cigarette because I didn’t know what else to do.
I smoked one at a gas station and almost collapsed from the rush.
Immediately my anger and my helplessness dissipated. It was almost fucking magical.
My Aunt said she still thought I needed to go in, so we got back on the road.
About 25% of the way there I called my therapist – it took me half an hour to get through. When I did, I stopped at another gas station, smoked another cigarette – and arranged an appointment for two hours later.
I fell asleep in exhaustion before he could call. When he did, my phone rings loudly, and due to previous trauma, I am an extremely light sleeper, so I awoke and answered it. He and my psychiatrist put together an action plan to bring me back from the brink. Dosages were adjusted; I will pick up the medication about four hours from now. None of us know if it would be best for me to still go into the Clinic. I don’t think anybody on the Planet knows what is best. Operating theory is that it may be heavy handed – the chances that I can harm myself now are low, and the expenses would be astronomical and likely result in the same therapeutic steps the medical professionals I already know well can provide. And it could very well be much worse – they could put me on a powerful sedative such as Haldol or Thorazine that would render me incapable of taking care of myself, much less anyone else.
I have smoked five cigarettes and drunk three cups of coffee while writing this story. As it stands now, I have no idea what to do with myself, but strangely enough, the cigarettes as well as both in person and online reassurances seem to suggest that the crisis point is past. I may have made things far worse for myself by starting back smoking, it may have saved my life. But I can never be certain. Hell, given my cognitive malfunctions I can’t even be assured that my interpretations of everything have anything to do with reality.
I wrote all this to say that I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to take care of my silly little Skyrim mod list Licentia. I’ll certainly probably have to scale back support for it in the next couple of months while I get more stable. I may even harm my chances with more terrible financial decisions before it is all said and done – impulsive behavior is a part of bipolar. I don’t ask that you save myself from myself. All I ask is that wherever you go and whatever you do – assume the best of people. Be kind to others. Chances are they are hurting in ways you will never know. Don’t blame them for their own problems. Try to empathize. Read my blog. It’s a failed life of missed opportunities and terrible coincidences and bad assumptions and you’ll learn something from it. And then go even further – be honest with others about your own pain, your own needs. People need to know that this stuff is not as horrible as it seems, that you understand where they are coming from. That’s really all I can ask. And if you want to help out in some way, buy me a coffee or stop by Discord – chances are I’ll still be there, stacking up my little pile of beans.
I am opening public comments for this blog. Please don’t make me regret it.
Pal, that is one of the most honest and moving personal essays I have read in a very long time. I have a job where I make daily decisions about peoples’ daily lives and their children. I’ve been getting a bit hard-edged lately and I guess needed a reality check. Thanks for giving me one. You’ve done a service here for people you will never meet. Be well.
I personally think most “front line” positions such as police officer, firefighter, social worker — hell, even some types of retail and tech support — should have a life span of about three years. That’s about the time it takes to stop giving a shit.
I hope you are doing okay. I read a lot of myself here, so much that I was actually moved to tears… which is a rarity for me anymore.
I know it’s just a modlist, but it’s YOUR modlist and it is one of the best ones out there. You can be proud of your pile of beans. 🙂
Thank you.
I hope things get better for you soon, Caco. It sounds like you’ve got it really rough. I wish there was more I could say or do to help you, but I’m kind of at a loss here. This random internet stranger is sending good vibes your way and hoping for the best.
Thank you for your kind words. They keep me going.
I’m always here for you bro.
Hi Caco! I read the whole thing and I hope the best for you. Stay strong and keep fighting! I hope you know how many people smiled because of you. Your modlist also helped a lot enjoy this terrible situation we are all in. Remember you are never alone! You got thousands of people on discord to talk with! 🙂 Stay safe Caco and I wish you the best!
Thank you very much for your kind words.
Hang in there, one day at a time. Quite a rant, glad to hear you’re holding on enough to recognize trouble. The gifts you do have manifest in Licentia. I’m an introvert nearing retirement and lose myself regularly in your work. If you need to back off for you it is certainly understandable. Take care of yourself and I wish you well.
Thank you, I will keep that in mind.
I hope you feel better when you know that lot of people love your work
I do. It is one of the few things that keeps me going.
Damn dude, what a rollercoaster while reading all that.
You have my best, if I was wealthy enough I’d fuckin throw fat $10 bills at you. You focus on yourself as much as you need to. We all love your work and you’re a good person within. We all know it. You know it yourself despite your outbursts. It may be tough for those in-person but they know you and know you’re good natured.
Myself and my family wish you well.
I ramember you! Thanks, Clog.
I’m one of those people who might have posted a couple times in your server, but most of the time I’m just quietly enjoying Licentia. Skyrim is the only game I play (I have one of those “Skyrim saved my life” stories like so many others) so the joy your list has brought me is that much more special.
Although I don’t personally know what it’s like, I lost a parent to the worst thing that can happen when someone who’s biploar goes through a major depressive episode without any support. I’m glad that you were able to find any type of temporary reprieve and I hope you can continue to find things that help.
I wanted to share what I can with someone who might need it. I hope you can enjoy some coffee. Take care of yourself, and thank you for what you do for the community.
Thank you very much. Bipolar bros / babes!
Hi Caco. I wanted to simply send you my love and good vibes. Your little bag of beans it’s a thing of wonder, although I can totally understand why it seems like nothing in the middle of so much pain and hardship.
I read your post from top to bottom and I feel your pain. Definitely scale down your effort, if it’s draining you and prevents you from taking care of yourself and those stuff you, but I feel that it does you a lot of good and you take (very well justified) pride on it. So please don’t abandon it completely.
I really hope things get better and that you can mend relationships with those around you. Please don’t forget that there is a community that values you and that appreciation and love is a real thing, even if it happens in the virtual world.
Thanks for the support. I don’t know where else to get it. Rural America is a lot like Great Britain — keep calm and carry on.
I can totally understand. It’s hard to find people with common interests as yours in a sparsely populated place. This is why I feel that it’s so important that you don’t undervalue the connections you have with others in the virtual world. They are real friend. We really value and appreciate you as a person and as a creator of special things.
That’s probably true.
Hey Caco. During the las 6 years I have been fascinated with the idea of leadership and what makes a good leader.
One of the most important things a leader can do is create a culture that brings the best in others. You have managed this with Licentia because Licentia brings out the best in you. That you, that incredible Caco, that helpful Caco, that creative Caco is real. Never forget that.
The question is: how can the Caco in Kentucky become more like the Caco in Licentia? What is it of the discord server that allows you to bring out the best version of yourself? Can you manage your environment and interactions so that it’s easier to the best version of yourself at home?
Remember, we are creatures of both light and darkness. You are simultaneously the best and worst versions of yourself. Don’t give up on yourself because you have a destructive and dark side.
If I were to become the best version of myself, I would go into social work. But that would quickly lead to more nihilism than I could cope with.
Hey Caco.
It must not be easy to write about your pain so much, I applaud you for it. While I only know you from Licentia, none of that matters when I’m writing this comment now. I’m commenting, speaking, to you just as a person.
Another commenter tells you not to give up on yourself, and I want to tell you the same thing. Life is never over before the final day, no matter the mistakes or regrets of the past. People grow, and I believe you may grow too – every person may. Your life may not be on the track you want it to be, but I hope – and I believe – that you may still steer the course in the direction you want. While you may struggle with doing so – it is really not easy to open up to people, I definitely know that myself and am working on it – I hope that you be as open to the people around you, as you are here, to us.
Also regarding scaling back on your work, I believe you should scale it back as much as you need, take a breather if you need it! Put it on indefinite hiatus, do whatever you feel like you need to steer the course, if only by a nudge! I may not have met you, but I believe in you, and I want you to be happy – everybody deserves to be happy, especially someone who struggles like you do.
Best wishes
-A person that wishes you well
I don’t know about all that. I was encouraged to journal about my personality since I was 14 years of age. I have been writing and talking about pain for a very long time! It’s almost how I process it. I sometimes feel as though I do too much of it, and become self-centered and myopic as a result. I have often been accused of such. I’ve also known several bipolar friends — even love interests! — it seems to be a feature of the illness. One of my respected colleagues was mystified how I could share all this information, given the abuse and stigma I might endure. I told him I don’t have a lot of the responsibilities that require me to uphold a public-facing persona, and so I’m one of the few who can afford to do so. If my actions help someone else to feel comfortable opening up about something hurtful to them to someone they care about, I’ll endure the criticisms.
Hi Caco,
I just want to say how happy it has made me to be a part of the community you have created through your hard work and the world you have helped so many to enjoy through your work on the mod list. You are gifted and it shows through your work even though that may not make life all to much easier. I am sorry things are so tough, I will do my best to remember your story as I treat people in my everyday life. Thank you for what you have done for everyone on the server, and thank you for not giving entirely in to the thousand pressures you must feel on a daily basis. I assure you as one of the many nameless people who enjoys the fruits of your labor, so many of us wish you the best and are nothing but thankful. Keep pushing to be the best you can be and make the right decisions, I promise it’s worth it.
Righto.
From one internet stranger to another, just want to say you have to put yourself first. I couldn’t imagine what you have to deal with on a daily basis but just know everyone is here for you. I absolutely love your mod list, You’ve got amazing talent, and a real care and attention to detail that I haven’t seen before. But after reading this all I hope is you take care of yourself in the best way that you can. Keep moving forward.
-EVSN
Yeah, rural america with mental illness really sucks. I really hope this advice doesn’t come back to haunt me but from personal experiences mental hospitals aren’t really all that good as a treatment for suicidal thoughts, in my case they just loaded me up on enough meds that I couldn’t walk in a straight line and gave me a fairly traumatizing experience to boot. The only two things that really worked for me is working on self improvement or some great work to be proud of, or having someone or something to depend on you, some reason to NOT end it.
Thus the modlist.
And even if they did help with the thoughts, they load you up with a hospital bill so absurd, it’ll put you right back in there.
Wow, not that I mention it often, but when I have, most people have no idea what schizoaffective disorder even is. I’m not glad that someone else has it, but hang in there brother. I won’t say our experiences are exactly the same, or maybe even similar, but know I’m right there with you. I struggled through thinking my own mother poisoned my food, cutting off connections once I felt someone was too close (in often times the worst way possible), and emotional control of a tantruming child.
Hahaha, reminds me of the time I had a breakdown at my best friend’s house. His father tried to calm me down by showing me his workshop in his basement. *I* thought he was taking me down there to secretly murder me out of view of all the obvious CCTV cameras all over rural Kentucky. Yes, totally plausible. So I went outside and stood on the porch so they would record him when he did it. 🙂
Hi Caco-
Long time lurker, first time caller.
Your unflappability lies in your profound and profane use of the written language. In the echo of others, please take any time that need for your health. I appreciate the care and the tact to write this very touching diatribe/Apolagia.
Life is defined by agency: and there is a feeling at 3 AM, when one is in rural Southern Ohio, has lived off the government’s teat for a million years, that there isn’t any agency—just a menu of options. I am old. I am balding. I get my SSDI check from my dying mother, because I am not deemed fit with money. I have Schizoaffective Disorder Bipolar type, as well. You really described scenes from my life almost. Thank you.
I wish the best for you. The sound and the fury (and humor) of any sentence I have had the pleasure of reading of yours —and even the the “silly mod list”—hold a hell of a lot of beans.
Experiences like these are isolating up until they become shared.
Hi Caco,
Humanbean here. I read your blog and it struck a (dis?)chord with me. While I don’t claims to have experience with everything you have been through, the flying spaghetti monster knows I have been though my own share of trials and tribulations over the years. I had a pretty miserable teens thanks to some well-intended but plain bad schooling choices from my parents, a miserable failed 4 years of university combined with doing lots of things I should not have done, then spent some years in a rut in a very bad place and lashing out at everyone around me before finally getting a career opportunity that ended up being my big break in life and led to moving to an entirely new country. After getting that break I still then continued doing lots of things I shouldn’t have done throughout my thirties until a couple of years ago when I kicked a lot of bad ingrained habits and finally started being a person that looks in a mirror and feels pride and self-worth.
Having Licentia as a project and all of the great things you have done with it seems to be your center, your balance, so do not let that slip out of your life because otherwise I think you would rue the day you did. You would lack that meaningful, positive and motivational thing to hold on to, that virtual oasis to take shelter in, which would then only amplify any negative things you are going through. If ever you question your worth and meaning, just think how many thousands of people benefit and get joy from your modlist. You are very literally one of a proportionally tiny fraction of people in this world who get to make thousands of other people’s lives better by allowing them to better enjoy a game they love which takes them away from the many stresses of the world and that very likely helped many of them to better cope with a shitty COVID period. In summary, you make a positive difference to others in a way most people can never hope to achieve, and that is just cold hard fact.
Another thing I would recommend, and I KNOW finding the motivation for it is a killer when you are suffering from lack of motivation to do anything in life, is strenuous physical activity at least three times a week. It WILL release aggression, it WILL tire you out to sleep better and it WILL help you to combat and even reverse weight gain as well as dumping some feel-good chemics into your brain. Easier said than done I know, but the physical and mental benefits of doing that can’t be overstated. Also, don’t start smoking regular cigarettes again, any benefits are illusory. If you must smoke to get a nicotine hit then get one of those smokeless tobacco heating things instead, because the last thing you need is to add to your current problems is to then develop further chronic health issues later in life. My main message is that no matter how bad things get, they often do get better, especially when you are as self-aware as you are. Best of luck my dude and thanks for all the work you and your other mod author friends put into the modding community, we really appreciate it even if we don’t express it nearly enough. 😊
Thanks for the kind words and advice.
Powerful stuff, Caco. As an unsuccessful science fiction writer, and former AltMedicine practitioner with 25 years in the biz–specializing in personality disorders–your writing reflects not only intense self-awareness and understanding of the mental health landscape; but is disarmingly honest about your journey to date. If I may say so, you’re pretty crystal on where you came from, and how you got to where you are now. Your sense of humour is utterly irresistable.
Your manner of written expression at Jolly Co-0p has a kind of mystical lucidty. Honest, and unfailingly considerate. I very much envy your wit and style in communication. Not to mention how artfully you’ve curated Licentia and Licentia Black. A remarkable accomplishment that’s given me hundreds of hours of fun. Thank you!
My personal frame of mental reference is Bipolar II–hypomanic/hypodepressive. Which tormented me throughout my life, until about the mid-forties. But the sometimes unbearable suffering my mind generated at least had the effect of motivating me to learn a ton about it (the mind), and really work on trying to fix it. My solution historically was primarily a “flight to light”, fleeing East; joining a Yoga Ashram at age 18 (Kripalu), and in a later iteration becoming a Buddhist forest monk in Thailand for four years at 28. An oddity, I was walking a Buddhist-Psyche walk years before I studied Freud, Jung, Masters–and the DSM.
It was my experiences in Thailand that really saved me, forced me to “endure the unendurable” of the Shadow, and was my de facto apprenticeship in AltMed mental health counselling. A subsequent Masters and Doctorate would’ve been meaningless without it. Unconditional self-acceptance is not only the marinade of Buddhist psychology, but the cherry-on-top as well. Self-acceptance being the only real solvent for dissolving self-hatred, self-judgement, self-trashing. Add in liberal doses of self-awareness, gratitude, humor and love–and voila! The mind can be freed from most of its suffering.
That’s my journey in a nutshell. I still display a fair amount of hypomanic behaviour–like staying up all night playing Licentia Black. But now there’s just fun, without the guilt and self-trashing.
Like yourself, in some areas of life–my “Buddhist” and “healer” personas–I’ve got cred and respect from a community. In pretty much every other area, I’m an utter failure, and a schmo. More or less. A weird sort of idiot savant combo. But due to successful lobotimization of most (?) of my self-trashing-ness, my schmo-ness is no longer grist for self-torment.
Anyway, please forgive this self-referential rant. What I’m trying to say, is that you’re an amazing guy, who gives a lot to the world, and deserves every happiness.
Thank you for the kind words. They mean a lot.