River: Insight of the day

[mdlbear]

As with so many insights, today's comes from a conversation with my dear, wise friend pocketnaomi: I'm pretty sure now that social phobia came before -- and undoubtedly helped cause -- my chronic depression.

Stands to reason. It's another damned feedback loop, of course: I'm afraid of people, so I'm lonely, and that makes me depressed, and that makes me feel both worthless and hopeless, and... You get the idea.

Well, OK; I have no idea whether it's actually social phobia, avoidant personality disorder, low self-esteem, or some combination. Or something else altogether. Low self-esteem, certainly. Something more to explore if I ever get up the nerve.

Depression is mostly just a chemical imbalance: I know how to deal with that. This other stuff is thoroughly wrapped up with my self-image. I don't have any idea about how to work on that. Most likely it would involve more contact with people, and, well...

Comments

[mdlbear]

Three times, I think.

Can't act, can't improvise.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

You can't really make too many generalizations about what can happen in the group if you've only done it three times.

And, when helping my son unload his gear at the LARP site, on several occasions I had to put on a white headband to indicate that I was "out of game", because my everyday clothing was getting mistaken for "garb". While I might well use a T-shirt and leggings as the foundation of a costume, if I intended it as garb I'd have been wearing different shoes, a whole lot more jewelry, and probably my purple lamé vest...