I didn't keep up on the forums lately, so I'll be pretty late on most of what I'll be saying.
I vaguely remember that there are mental health problems that improve over tiime.
And some just vanish under the right set of circumstances. The core of my mental problems, the touchstone of most if not all my issues, a social anxiety disorder (mostly against feeling attracted to someone) that messed my life up for more than twenty years (with fourteen years of sexual abstinence as a side effect), vanished less than one month ago, puff, just like that.
It took some build-up and a fortunate series of events. Medication was involved since last August (I've been prescribed sertraline hydrochloride, a selective serotonine recapture inhibitor, for those in the know - I've lost touch with the psychiatrist who did the prescription, but I'm thinking of finding a way to give her feedback: her prescription was apparently spot-on - psychiatry being a tricky matter, and given that she was a beginner, I guess she could use the information), which put me in the right set of mind for introspection.
Analysis didn't help much because, well, social anxiety disorders go precisely in the way of opening up, and I didn't had meetings with my psychologist for long enough to loosen up - at a point I had to cancel our meetings because of a job. By the way, the (temporary) job in question probably helped too: I hadn't had one for YEARS, and here I rediscovered that I was an able worker - with compliments from my manager. Nice boost of self-confidence.
Some pieces of conversation and friendly hijinks with a female pal of mine (to whom I had recently said I was on a 14 years long abstinence streak - and by friendly hijinks I mean that when I mentioned that I didn't even know if I was still able to kiss a girl, she... tested me - then told me I had nothing to worry about on that specific matter) opened me to the idea that I was affected by some kind of phobia, and when I looked up the matter I found out about the notion of
social phobia. It was an illumination. Just about every stupid shit I had made in my sentimental life made suddenly perfect sense. How I ruined some relationships (by my inability to get closer), how I dodged others. How I had simply, in the later years, subconsciously prevented myself from feeling attraction, to avoid triggering my panic reactions. Why I felt compelled to get (sometimes very) drunk to handle some social circumstances. (Now that I reread about social phobia and how it's treated, I'm starting to think that my psychiatrist was even more insightful that I credited her for earlier).
All was clear. I finally saw the Beast. And found it... unimpressive, actually. So I decided to confront it head on. When the occasion presented itself, at a party in which I met again the aforementioned female pal,
we tried to hook up as a couple (I'll explain later why I put the emphasis on the plural). It ultimately didn't work, in part for friendzone reasons. But in the process, we precisely upgraded from long time pals to friends. Or maybe we just discovered we were friends. Whatever. And also in the process all my anxieties have been blown away. Like, totally. Pfuh. The whole affair did me so spectacularily good that I went through a phase during which I needed to replay the events in my head in order to get rid of the irrational impression of having used her. Nope, we had both started it. That's why I insisted on the plural earlier.
(Holy Chao, I drifted further from my initial point than I feel perfectly courteous to do. Moderators feel free to message me if you think all this would fit better in its own thread in the general discussion section. I'm still in a somewhat euphoric state, post chronical depression, and I may be a bit too talkative about the matter. But given that aknowledgement of the issue has been a key element in my recovery, I feel like my backstory could help people with similar conditions.)
My initial point was that sometimes mental conditions just get away. Given that, based on Dr Case's accounts (is her name yet another shoot-out to Neuromancer from Jeph?), li'l Hanners was practically a catalogue of mental issues, it's not too unlikely that she simply got rid of some of the most debilitating ones. Station's friendship probably helped in that. Maybe she just confronted them and broke through them.
Still, what we recently learned about Hanners' past state (and yeah, panel 3 of comic 2134 is painful to watch) is, in my opinion, a Crowning Moment of Awesome for... Dr Corrine.
As for the zero-g volleyball joke in the title of comic 2133? Am I the only one who understood it as a quip towards DOA XTreme Beach Volley? I used to be a fan of the Dead Or Alive franchise, in its fighting game incarnations at least. I liked the game mechanics. But their overuse of
jiggle physics ultimately appalled me. Now imagine zero-g jiggle physics? That's how I took the joke.
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Topic: WCDT: 2131-35 (27 Feb- 2 Mar 2012) QC IN SPAAAAAACE! Week 6 (Read 76444 times)