This reminds me of the time I saw some folks fill up about 30 ish helium balloons in a store then walk out to their small car. I couldn’t help but laugh as they went from smiling to panicking when they realized they had no way to fit them inside. It was hilarious. I still wonder what they ended up doing to get the balloons home lol.

Just got the news last week that my dad, who was diagnosed with Pancreatic cancer in October, might have 5-7 months left. Plus my mom is slowly dying from COPD. I’m trying to stay positive and spend what might be the last Christmas we get with them. But to say I’m not feeling the happy new year vibes is an understatement. Only death and more depression coming in 2024.

Thank you! I think the weird part for me is that I’m so emotional over telling people. I told my neighbor I’m not drinking and said I’d still like to come over to visit. She didn’t reply for a while and I got really upset, because it almost feels like I’m going through a breakup. It’s isolating. But then she replied and said no worries, she’s gonna make us hot chocolate instead! So yeah, you’re right that my friends will likely be supportive. It’s just this time I’m not lying to myself and telling people feels like a really big deal because I really mean it.

I really hope I pick up some new hobbies and activities, and get my health back on track too.

I found out the difference between just normal dislike and phobias a few years ago. I dislike insects and they make me jumpy but I wasn’t terrified of any of them, even spiders. Until I had an encounter with giant carpenter ants, both the normal ones and the ones with wings.

I was living in my RV and apparently it was their nesting season, and I come from a different province and normally never see large ants like these. I kept finding them everywhere in my trailer, these giant ants, like I’d open a drawer and pull out a dish cloth and one would be underneath it. I was crying hysterically and shaking and I would rather have died than come across another one. It went on for about 3 days, I barely slept because the fuckers were crawling all over the ceiling and walls at night.

I went and picked up ant killer spray and went scorched earth on them. Within a day there were dozens of dead ones inside the trailer and probably thousands outside in the gravel. It was crazy. Neighbouring campers had these ants too, I guess it was normal nesting season there and no one worried about it much. They started to comment that the ants were disappearing earlier. I didn’t tell them it was me lol. But yeah, I have a phobia I wasn’t expecting and I lose my shit when I see them to this day.

It’s interesting how it affects people differently. When I lost my sense of smell with COVID, bad smells were the last to return. I could smell everything else but couldn’t smell bathroom smells, eggs, skunk, or weed (debatable if the last one is bad or not, but either way it was gone). It was nice, I was hoping to only smell nice things forever, but it came back.

And then directly into sleep paralysis

Thanks. I have had a relatively drama free life, so this was a pretty significant event for me. I met an amazing man a year later and have been married to him 8 years now. But I still think about this from time to time and feel sad, and I guess a bit of guilt (which I know I shouldn’t). I realize this guy had a lot going on besides our brief relationship to take his own life but it’s still difficult feeling like I had a part in it.

It was 2010, and after dating a guy briefly for 3 weeks and noticing some red flags I made the mistake of breaking up with him while giving him a ride home. I wasn’t expecting what came next. He started yelling at me to pull over so I did. He yanks the keys out of the ignition and I try to grab them and he pulls me out over the center console through the passenger side and I land on the gravel road in a skirt. I get up and he grabs me by the shoulders and starts yelling at me (I don’t even remember what because I was crying so hard in fear). Then his demeanour changes for a split second and he’s like “why are you afraid of me, I’d never hurt you.” I had bruises on my legs for weeks after landing on the ground. His whole thing was jealousy and that’s part of why I was breaking up with him. He thought it wasn’t possible id wanna break up with him so I must be cheating and just randomly started naming names of guys he knew I was friends with.

He tells me to get in the car, and I have no choice because I’m terrified of him and we are in the middle of a country road. He starts driving us back to the city and that’s when I realized where he was going. He picked one of my guy friends that he knows where he lives and is going to confront him over cheating that never happened. He knew the general area where this friend lived but not the house. When we got close and had to stop at an intersection, I took off my seatbelt, opened the door, and started running. I hear the sound of my own cars tires screech as he chases me. I saw a house with a door open and ran inside, there was an older couple there unloading groceries. I locked myself in their bathroom and they called the cops. He left my car and the keys with the couple and walked away before the cops arrived.

I never talked to him again and got a cryptic message on Facebook from him a few months later apologizing. Then a few more months later a friend called me to tell me he had killed himself. It still haunts me thinking about the entire experience.

Just deleted my Twitter account. Of course, the app gave nothing but errors so I had to do it on desktop, but it’s done!

One time I took a solo 1.5 hour flight and on the descent I suddenly felt a tingling on the top of my head and down my face, which quickly turned into a feeling like someone chopped an axe into the top of my head. I felt an excruciating pain on the top center of my head , behind my eyes and down my face and was trying not to react in front of all the other passengers. The pain was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. By the time we landed and I got off the plane the sharpness of the pain subsided but I had a bad headache for 2 days after. I thought I might die honestly and it spun me into such a bad anxiety attack. I did some searching and only found one post ever of something similar happening to someone else and it was from sinus pressure. I wasn’t sick at all or stuffed up so it was surprising. So now when I fly I pop Sudafed and blow my nose frequently and basically have a panic attack on the descent because of my fear of it happening again.

I do this all the time too, and one day I decided just to look it up and we what it’s called. Rumination. Honestly for me, just reading about it, finding out that it’s super common, and giving it a name helped to stop it. When I find myself thinking about embarrassing things I did years ago or replaying and over analyzing things I just think “oh I’m ruminating again” and it usually goes away for a while. That along with other distraction techniques can help.

https://www.mind-diagnostics.org/blog/repetitive-thoughts-and-behaviors/what-is-rumination

I do this all the time too, and one day I decided just to look it up and we what it’s called. Rumination. Honestly for me, just reading about it, finding out that it’s super common, and giving it a name helped. When I find myself thinking about embarrassing things I did years ago or replaying things I just think “oh I’m ruminating again” and it usually goes away for a while.

https://www.mind-diagnostics.org/blog/repetitive-thoughts-and-behaviors/what-is-rumination