:/

There is online chat @TheVorticon .... is that any better ?

Maybe write some practice answers first as a warm-up @TheVorticon .....

Thats what most people do ahead of interviews and things ... it’s sort of role-playing in your head ..... and feeling like a dumbass is only one option ..... there are others ..... like I-know-what-I’m-doing .... and I’m-not-quite-sure-but-I-think-you-can-help-me ..... different roles to try on .....

Have a try, maybe ?

Yeah that could be an option @Faith-and-Hope... But then if there's time to practice/prepare then it's not "bad enough" to be discussed if you know what I mean... Like if I have the mental capacity to prepare then I should be able to figure it out and have the answers already.

Also if I've already prepared and am copy-pasting I'm going to be incredibly annoyed if the other person doesn't have anything helpful to offer and takes a long time to say exactly the same thing I already said (I dunno if the people here do that, but in the past I've dealt with other places that have).

Good morning @TheVorticon .... 👋

Here’s what I am thinking ....

To achieve a different outcome from the one you have got at the moment, something has to change ..... that change doesn’t necessarily have to be a big one in order to start one of the balls rolling in a different dopirection, so to speak.

If you can bring yourself to have a go at this ..... start the process .... it might start brining small changes that make a difference to your life ...... ones that you can build on.

Think of it as exchanges maybe ..... you are exchanging a moment of writing for a moment of frustration with the way things are .... and see how that feels. Then exchange a chat convo for sitting there fuming about what has happened in the past, and see if this one is better ....

It sounds like you have a lot of rules for yourself to follow ..... is that right ? It can feel safer that way, but it can also make it a bit harder to make changes, because it means testing one of the rules you have in place. That’s why exchanges can work, if you can bring yourself to exchange one rule for another one that will serve you better ......

G’day @Faith-and-Hope

That kind of makes sense. I have a couple of reservations though:

1) Are the SANE helpline/chat people here for talking about that sort of thing?

I don’t know what’s in their scope or not. Is it ok to talk to them when feeling ok? When feeling not-ok? Is it ok to talk to them about non-administrative stuff (like for example I don’t need help to do a web search for nearby doctors, or a web search for “anxiety resources” or whatever).

2) Does anyone have any ideas on how I could identify if something is part of a ball direction-change or not?

I feel like I already do mini-changes but they’re things that aren’t working as ball direction changes. For example...

3) Does ‘support’ or ‘help’ even exist for macro-changes, or just for micro-changes?

I’ve seen evidence of helping-people providing support for micro-changes. But not for macro-changes (beyond “if you keep doing micro-changes they will eventually accumulate into a macro-change”... which is fine in theory but in practice I am stuck even though I feel like I am doing the stuff for micro-changes... not perfectly of course, but I’m trying, ya know?). Is there anything that exists beyond that?

Anyway...

I guess you could say I have a bunch of rules. I’ve never really considered them to be “rules” though. They’re just things that make sense or feel right to me. I’m not sure how to identify ones that are unhelpful when they all feel normal or all make sense to me.

I have a son who is experiencing similar struggles @TheVorticon ...... there are days he can attend uni classes, and days he can’t, and he has presented his thinking to me in those terms ..... that he has “rules” about what works for him or not ..... and he has to wrestle with them to get unstuck enough to achieve course attendance or requirements.

He has experienced life circumstances that caused this behaviour to trigger in him, although the traits (traces) would already have been there ..... without having been triggered, if this was all he had known, he probably wouldn’t understand why some people seem unbound to the sort of rules that he is bound to .....

Does that make sense ?

Doing a CBT course helped him to understand how his brain works and how to overcome obstacles that leave him feeling stuck.

I would encourage you to look into it @TheVorticon.

I think you are doing aspects of it already, like stopping and waiting outside a store you can’t bring yourself to go into to give yourself the chance to change your mind and give it a try .....

Give some deep, steady breathing a try in those moments too, because it helps to do a mental re-set, if you like ..... often when we feel stressed, sometimes without even realising it, we switch to a shallow breathing mode, which in turn kicks in our fight-or-flight responses ....

Deep, steady breathing helps to restore our equilibrium.

@Faith-and-Hope Look into CBT in general, or look into doing it with someone (what type of someone?)?

Yeah as I mentioned, I do know a bit about it after seeing a bunch of resources for it and previous therapy somewhat based around it... So I might have adopted bits that are easy / non-effortful and made sense to use. Or just relied on regular common sense. I'm no rookie 🙂

But again, everything to do with that example is micro-change stuff.