Question of the day.

   When you talk to yourself, who is the real you? The speaker or the listener? 

   My answer: 

   Aint that an interesting and weird question? 😀 Will have to ask my Mum that when she comes back from her trip. I think for me it kind of depends. Mostly it’s so that I have several different ways in which I talk to myself, or even how my inner monologue goes. For example, if I’m criticising myself or being kind of harsh with myself, be it out loud or in my brain, I’d say the real me is the listener. Similarly if I’m telling myself what to do or not to do, motivate myself, comfort myself etc. the real me is the listener. The more that, as far as thinking is concerned, I often actually hear these thoughts in other people’s voices. Be it real people or people/beings who exist in any of my brainworlds. In other situations, when my self-talk isn’t quite as directly to myself but more neutral or just, as my Mum calls it, “spilling my thoughts out” I am the speaker. Sometimes I feel that the speaker is what I call Bibiel, and the rather disengaged listener is what I refer to as “I” as opposed to Bibiel when talking to people, but I wouldn’t really say that the “I” is any realer me than than Bibiel, nor is Bibiel any realer or authentic me than the “I”. Not sure if it even makes sense to people, but that’s more or less how it feels. 😀 

   How about you? If you don’t talk to yourself, feel free to apply this question to the way you think. 

Question of the day.

   You meet your thirteen-year-old self, but you can only tell them three words. What do you say and why? 

   My answer: 

   “Wait for Misha!” I think Misha is one of the best things that have happened to me in my life and I’d like to give my thirteen-year-old self something to look forward to in life. I was really depressed at that time (well when wasn’t i? 😀 ) I guess not in a suicidal way or anything like that anymore but I just felt really fed up with life and hated existing, and perhaps if I knew at that point that I’m gonna meet Misha in a couple years it would give me a little bit of motivation to keep going. If I told her “Wait for Misha” she still obviously wouldn’t know who that Misha is actually supposed to be and why wait for him, but I guess that would only make things feel more exciting. 

   How about you? 🙂 

Question of the day.

What do some people take WAY too seriously?

My answer:

Themselves. 😀 I think most of us are too serious about ourselves to a varying degree, because it can be really difficult to have a distance to something you can’t really distance yourself from physically, like your own self, and particularly difficult when you happen to be especially sensitive or something, but it can be immensely helpful both for you and for those you interact with. It’s a really good thing when you’re able to laugh at yourself and things you do, and even let other people do it. I say this as someone who I guess is slightly paradoxical in this regard, because on one hand I guess such distance is a very natural thing to me that I was pretty much born with, I like to have some healthy distance to almost everything because being able to look at things from some more or less distanced perspective helps me see them more broadly and see all the hilarious, ridiculous, absurd or ironic sides to it clearer, and being able to see those bits makes the situation less overwhelming. On the other hand though, I have this AVPD thing which makes distancing yourself from yourself quite difficult if not impossible. But I guess I’m not alone with this idiosyncrasy, and I don’t think it is limited to only people with AVPD either. I know a bunch of people who have a similar sort of conflict, with or without mental illness involved, and I have a little feeling that this may be a common problem for people who happen to both lavishly use humour/sarcasm as a coping skill , while at the same time being highly sensitive in general and not particularly self-assured. Just my little theory. It’s a difficult and weird combination to live with, and I’d say that sometimes it makes things even worse, but it’s interesting and quite hilarious in itself as well.

But what I also mean by that people take themselves too seriously is that I’ve been noticing more and more of an almost trend for being easily offended. It’s like some people almost enjoy holding grudges, celebrating their hurts which people caused totally unintentionally, like by saying one wrong word, and which seem totally blown out of proportion. We’re living in very strongly self-absorbed times, I think, when there’s so much emphasis on all things self-, and maybe this is what contributes to it in some way. We’re all into self-care, self-love, self-development, self-discovery, self-gratitude, self-appreciation, self-awareness… and this is great, important and necessary, don’t get me wrong! Except I see a lot of people taking it to the extreme and I think this can be quite harmful in the long run. I realise that my own perception of it might be a bit skewed perhaps, due to the aforementioned AVPD and that I tend to gravitate towards the other extreme regularly, but too much of a good thing is also a bad thing, isn’t it? It doesn’t lead anywhere constructive imo, anyway when self is the only thing you focus on. I think self-deprecation, in reasonable amounts, is just as important a skill to have as self-appreciation. What do y’all think?

And what’s such a thing in your opinion that is taken too seriously? 🙂

Question of the day.

What’s the most difficult thing to define?

My answer:

Just very recently it struck me again how difficult a concept to define is self, and how ideas about what it is may vary depending on loads of things. Another such thing that also got me thinking a while back is consciousness. We talk so much in psychology and even in normal conversations about conscious, subconscious, unconscious, but it seems difficult to clearly define all that. Another such thing is pain, since there are multiple kinds of pains, and even within the same kind of pain everyone will experience it at least somewhat differently, and describe it differently as well, and we don’t even know how different these experiences are one from each other as there’s no objective way of experiencing or even measuring someone’s pain. There are all those adjectives to help describe it, like sharp, dull, pulsating, burning etc. etc. but I guess sometimes they may contribute to the confusion even more so, because what one person would describe as dull, another might not, even if the feeling is more or less the same. Oh, and it’s interesting with love, but not exactly because it’s hard to define in itself, but because so many languages lack words to describe all the different kinds of love you might feel. Like, I don’t get it, all Indoeuropean languages have taken so much from Greek, yet while there are multiple words for different kinds of love in the Ancient Greek language, I don’t know of any other European language that has that sort of distinction. And we were talking with my Mum a while back how it probably contributes to why so many people have trouble with this word and its understanding.

What’s such a thing that comes to your mind? 🙂

Ways of showing gratitude to others. And how about yourself? List of the former, and my (probably biased) musings about the latter.

Gosh, what a wordy and clumsy title! But I didn’t have any more graceful-sounding ideas and didn’t want it to be too bland either.

A while back, I bought myself another book to work with for my journal, and also for blog post inspirations, about the existence of which, again, I learned from Astrid at

A Multitude of Musings.

It’s Listify, written by Marina Greenway, and as you can guess from the title, it focuses mostly on lists. The first part of this book is all about gratitude, and the first list idea is the following:

   Ways I can show gratitude to myself and others

It’s important to show others we appreciate and care about them, but it’s equally important to acknowledge ourselves and all we do. List the ways you can do so, and challenge yourself to do one from each list everyday.

As for the challenging myself part, I wrote the original list in my journal a few days ago and decided to indeed do these things to show my gratitude to people. So far I don’t find it particularly difficult as it’s mostly my close family, and of course I’m doing the MIMRA which is also one huge act of gratitude but also a whole lot of fun for me. I suppose though with people I’d feel less comfortable around I’d have more problems with some of these points, but I’ll try anyway when there will be an opportunity, as gratitude is a good thing, obviously.

Below is the list of ways of showing gratitude to others that I’ve come up with so far.

   Gratitude to others

•    Simply say “thank you” or acknowledge in any other verbal way that I appreciate what they did.
• Give them an appreciative hug or show them affection in some other way.
• Compliment or praise them, or say anything nice that could boost their mood or confidence.
• Help in any way I can.
• Be attentive to their needs and show them my interest in them and that I care about them.
• Listen carefully and actively.
• Do something that may make them happier or even just make them laugh or smile.
• smile to them.
• spend time with them.
• Do random acts of kindness for them.
• Be there for them when they need it.
• Do the same thing for them that they did to me, if applicable.
• Give them something nice that they will enjoy, like a care package.
• Give some of my free time and energy to them, even when I could use it to do something else that I may like more.
• Be patient with them.
• Offer advice if wanted.
• Remember about them – for example, when doing shopping for myself I may do it for them as well if they need it, or if I see something that I know they like I can get it for them, or at least tell them that I saw it and where so that they know I often think about them and know what they like. –
• Write something nice about them, or for them, as writing often feels easier than talking to me.
• Give them their favourite meal or treat.
• Find a book or music they could like, again, to show them that I care and know something about them.

Can you come up with anything more? Please do share in the comments, unless you prefer to write a separate post and pingback, whatever feels better. 🙂

   Self-gratitude

Now that was (and is) a tricky thing to me. Not just implementing it, but generally the concept. I don’t know, perhaps I’m seeing it in a very inflexible way, and most likely, just like I wrote in the title, my view of this is very biased, but I can’t really see much sense in self-gratitude. Maybe I just don’t understand it well. As I was preparing to write this post, after I read some things online about it, thinking that perhaps they will enlighten me (which they didn’t) I asked my Mum what she thinks about it, whether she has ever felt it, and if she has any ideas about how one could express it, and also how it’s different from self-care or taking pride in your accomplishments. My Mum had a similar view on this and actually started laughing and said that to her it also doesn’t make much sense, because according to her in a way it implies that there would be another self inside of you to whom you could be grateful for example for doing something you yourself wouldn’t think about doing, or wouldn’t be able. Like: “Oh, thanks, self, for reminding me that I should set my alarm at 6 AM, I don’t want to sleep in”. 😀 I mean, do any of you really think like this – say you’re driving somewhere, and instead of taking your usual route you have a gut feeling to take a roundabout one, and later you learn that on your usual route there was a huge traffic jam because there was an accident earlier – would you think: “Oh yay, thank me!”? If you would, it’s not at all that I think it’s wrong for anyone to do this and I think you shouldn’t, I’m just curious and would like to know because it’s certainly not my default reaction and I would probably burst out with laughter if I tried to force myself to it.

What I assume people understand as self-gratitude, is for example when you had an exam and passed it very well, you learned for ages until your brain got so swollen it nearly burst out of your skull and you mainly focused on this goal of passing this particular exam because it’s important for you, so perhaps you often refused yourself many things you liked and spent most of your time with your nose in the books despite you didn’t particularly enjoy it. But you did pass the exam and you’re euphoric, so now you can go for a huge dinner plus some very fancy coffee and an ice-cream dessert, then go to the spa and have a massage and then go shopping for things you really enjoy shopping for, because this is your way of thanking yourself for your perseverance, determination and for achieving your goal.

And that’s all good. But, just like I said earlier when asking my Mum, how’s that different from just regular self-care or celebrating your accomplishments? It seems like it should if it has a different name, and when I was thinking about a potential list of ways to show myself gratitude, I thought it was just a list of self-care activities.

Perhaps I don’t think in such a “Thank me” way, because I am a Christian, and rather than thank myself, a much more natural thing for me is to thank God. Like, when it’s a nice day and the weather is lovely and there’s a lot of crunchy, fallen leaves for Misha outside, I’d rather say “Thank you, God, for giving me the idea to go out and refresh my brain, and thank you for the lovely weather and that there are so many beautiful leaves for Misha here” than something like “Thank me for going out”. It just feels totally unnatural to me, and I’m not just talking about the “thank me” form which I’m mostly using in a humourous way to emphasise just how unnatural and awkward the whole thing seems to me. I may rather say: “Oh, I’m so glad I went out” or: “What a great idea I had that I got some leaves for Misha” (that’s still not my typical inner dialogue as I’m normally way more self-critical and sarcastic with myself but at least something I’m trying to aim for).

When thinking about any accomplishments, I don’t really think of them in a way that I’m grateful to myself for them. For example, I am quite proud of my language learning accomplishments but am not grateful to myself for them. It’s not my merit that I have good linguistic skills, I didn’t get to choose them at birth or program my brain to pick up languages easily. Neither is it really my merit that I’m learning Welsh now, because I wouldn’t be able to do it if the people who did the course wouldn’t create it, if my Swedish teacher didn’t show me how to learn a language on my own and didn’t always believe in me and that I can do it, if I wasn’t taught how to use technology and if my Dad wouldn’t be employing me so I could actually allow myself for paying for the courses, buying Welsh speech synths, Welsh books and what not without stressing myself about it. Thinking according to Christian faith, I wouldn’t even be able to take any action having all these things if I wouldn’t get the idea from Holy Spirit. Okay, I guess I could be grateful to myself for acting upon that idea and not wasting the skills I have, but in what special way should I show this gratitude to myself? Sometimes I also have a sort of self-gratitude feeling when I feel really euphoric about something so my self-esteem also goes up but that’s very much fleeting and not a mature, serious kind of feeling so the more I don’t know in what way I could act on it.

Going my Mum’s trail of thought, that it sounds like we should be grateful to some other self, well, perhaps that makes some sense when we think that our personalities are made up of different parts. There may be, speaking in a very basic way, a part of us that is more prone to do good things, and another one that makes us do things that we regret later. So we may be grateful to that “good” part. Perhaps that’s what it’s all about. Or I’ve mentioned on this blog sometimes how I have this part of myself that I call Bibiel, who is very childlike and humourous and eccentric and always talks about Bibiel-self in first person and who is like a mentally healthier sort of, less inhibited version of me whom I actually genuinely like. So maybe the clue is that I should feel grateful to Bibiel? Actually I sort of am, because without Bibiel I’m not sure where I’d be now, and Bibiel helps me with a lot of things. Perhaps I should be more grateful to my inner self-critic Maggie when she’s not as critical of me as she is usually, and maybe that will make her feel better?

My Mum goes as far as to say that all these self- things only make people more conceited. I think that’s a rather huge overstatement because it’s definitely important to be kind to yourself and love yourself, as much for your mental, physical and emotional, as spiritual wellbeing and even the wellbeing of others, though there is certainly a risk of this as these days we hear about alll things self- all the time and it’s easy to lose balance between what’s still self-love and what’s already conceit, in my opinion.

So my view of this is definitely strongly influenced by the fact that I’m a practicing Christian, someone who is not might think differently, as well as the fact that I have avoidant personality disorder, which has quite a strong influence on how I feel about myself. And it’s because of AVPD that I think I may be biased here.

So I’d like to hear your thoughts about this. Do you practice self-gratitude? If so, in what ways and how would you define it? In what ways would you say is it different from self-care and celebrating your accomplishments? Am I missing out on something huge here? Let me know. I may not be able to share your opinion, but that doesn’t matter as far as I’m concerned, and who knows, you may even convince me. 🙂 Oh yeah, and let me know if you can think of some other ways to show gratitude to other people perhaps ones that you use yourself that I didn’t list.

 

A letter to my 33-year-old self.

Continuing with the

Letter Writing Challenge

today I am writing a letter to my older – 33-year-old – self.

Dear Bibiel, because I believe that, if you are still there, you are still Bibiel, deep down, aren’t you?

Remember me? I’m your younger self. How’s life going for you right now? What are you doing today? I must say I’m quite curious what you would write to me, but since you have more important things to do at the moment, I assume, I decided to write to you first, and hope to get a response, someday.

I wanted to remind you that, wherever you are at in your life right now, whether you like it and are satisfied with it, or not and are struggling a lot, everything is transient in life. I’m sure you know that better than me but it’s easy to forget about it in everyday life. I also want to remind you about another cliche thing that I’m sure you know, but I want you to never forget it, that no matter where you are, and what people are surrounding you, or maybe you’re alone or lonely, no matter whether you like it or not, what you are doing and what life is like, what is going on with the world and what challenges you are having to face, you have your brain. Use it. You know I am not talking about thinking, although that’s important too especially that we humans seem to be worse and worse at it and get tired of thinking more and more easily, and I don’t expect this trend has changed in the world where you live. I am talking about coping with things. I hope you are surrounded by supportive people, even if it is mostly or exclusively online as is the case with me, and that you are privileged to be able to support other people and do it as much as you can, but even if you do, and especially if you do not, it is important to know that no one will help you more than you can help yourself, and that you can’t rely too much on other people. Your brain is your fortress so do use it, as much as possible, especially when all else fails, and don’t forget about your Brainworld, it is always there.

How is Misha doing?… Does he still live with you or did you move somewhere and leave Misha with your family? I hope that if you live on your own, you weren’t selfish and possessive enough to take him with you, if you did, know that I loathe you for that. Well, unless some miracle happened and you are able to take proper care of him and provide him with all that he deserves. On the other hand I hope you do not live with Zofijka, because as much as she is a sweet kid, I know you would have a very hard life living just with her, or possibly her family, since you both are quite clashy and neither of you would be happy long term. I also hope that you didn’t have to bring your emergency plan into life, if it did have to happen by now, I hope you are managing and have something that brings joy into your life, and that it isn’t as bad as it used to be. At the same time I congratulate you for being a very courageous Bibiel, courageous enough to make it happen and I know it must have been a very difficult decision, and its outcomes are certainly no less difficult. Most of all though, I hope you will never have to do that.

How is your language learning going? I hope you can continue with it and it’s exciting to think that you may be able to speak even more languages than I can. As you may realise, I am in a faza limbo right now, or I hope that this is a limbo, and not the end of everything, as I sometimes feel. Please tell me that it’s not the end, and that you have a faza!

You may also remember, that at the time I’m writing to you, the world is going through the coronavirus outbreak. I’d be curious to hear from you what you think about it, looking back. Were you scared of it at any point? Did it affect you?

Looking forward to hear from you in the future and sending you a little piece of Mishfur, and a little Mishpurrr, with this letter, in case you forgot how it feels and sounds.

Bibiell

*****

I thought I’d clarify one thing in the letter, so that no one has any doubts. One of my readers was concerned that my “emergency plan” was suicide, and after re-reading this, I agree that it is easy to draw such a conclusion. But it was not what I meant, and it isn’t anything dangerous and unsafe. Just something I am not particularly looking forward to, but will do if I have to. I may have a lot of passive suicidal ideations in the background of my brain but I am stable enough at this time in my life that I don’t make active plans or anything like that, and I would definitely trigger warn this post if it was about suicide even indirectly.

 

A letter to my 13-year-old self.

Today starts

10-Day Letter Writing Challenge

and, as I mentioned in the original post that I reblogged earlier today, or rather yesterday as it’s past midnight, I really liked the idea. I have never participated in those kind of challenges where you write every day for a certain amount of time, so I don’t know how it will go and I don’t promise that I will stick to it on my blog, but I do plan to write those letters for sure in my diary because I like to expand it in such ways and not just plain write about my daily life.

Here’s a letter to my 13-year-old self:

Hi Bisbis [Bisbis/Bibiel was the way I used to mostly call myself as a child and teen]

I am your future self, however strange that may sound to you. You may wonder why I am writing to you in English then, and I am sure that it will take you a looong time to figure this letter out, but this will at least improve your English skills and occupy your mind with something interesting for a while. You will need it in the future – the English, I mean. – One day, when life will get better, you will have an English blog. You have heard from people that you have a talent for languages and you sometimes wonder if it is true and what you should do about it, if anything. And you have already learnt some Swedish. I know how painful it is for you that you cannot do it anymore. Please don’t suppress this one thing at least. I think it will be of some comfort to you if I’ll tell you that you will be able to return to your Swedish in future. It will bring you a lot of pleasure and you will also learn to love many other languages, which will make your life feel more purposeful. You will have to thank one of your faza objects for that. Soon after that, you will also find the greatest love of your life (so far at least), whom you will love with all your brain and soul, who will live with you and sleep with you and who will be your best friend. No, obviously I’m not talking about any guy, I’m sure you know it! Nor about a girl, if you’re wondering, or maybe being concerned, hehe. His name will be Misha, not Jacek, and that’s all I’m gonna tell you. Believe me, seriously, the things will not always be the way they are right now, even though it really looks like they will. Change will come sooner than you think, although you will have to get through a lot before it happens, and then learn a lot of things that you might find unpleasant or uncomfortable.

I know that you wrote a letter to me as well, like Emily of the New Moon did to herself, but unfortunately I am not able to read it now and look back at all those things you wanted to know and respond to you properly because you lost it. You do have to learn to be less chaotic. But so far it hasn’t happened. 😀 And I think we agree that being chaotic is more interesting, right? I still like Emily of the New Moon a lot, although not as frenziedly as you. I can assure you that your current dream will come true and that you will change your name to Emilia legally soon after you turn 18. It was a good idea so you don’t have to worry, you were right and I thank you for that.

At this point, I live in a different house than the one that is your family home, but not far away from there, just in a town nearby. It is also big, and you will move in it about 7 years from where you are at, if I’m counting correctly. You will like it here. As we’re talking about counting, I have some bad news for you too. Well, at least for you it will probably sound bad, I feel quite neutral about it and I don’t perceive it as a tragedy or even anything near it. You will not pass your math final exam after high school. Moreover, you will decide not to rewrite it.

There was that man who told you that you won’t fix yourself by studying psychology and becoming a therapist, and you felt offended because he was assuming and implying that something was wrong with you and that you were selfish, and I think you also felt very insecure because you knew he could be on to something. I know that your intentions weren’t selfish at all, but, as you’ll see for yourself later on, he was actually right, in a lot of ways. Because, you do know deep down that it is not normal to feel the way you feel, all the time, don’t you? And you do realise that many things in your life and functioning aren’t the way they should be? Well, you will need time to come to terms with this, and one day you will understand that it is yourself who needs help, before you can give it to others. But also, this is not your fault, as you think and as everyone is making you feel or even telling you, indirectly. I do not like you much more than you like yourself, if I’m being honest with you, but I want you to know that this is not your fault and that some people, even those you seriously wouldn’t suspect to be, are way more selfish than you think, others are clueless. You are clueless too. You will learn and discover some difficult things about yourself and your life circumstances, I am still doing that and in a way it’s getting overwhelming, and so confusing, but you will learn to live and cope with those things you learn about yourself, but also making those discoveries will be helpful, as life and your whole situation will become a bit clearer for yourself and others, and it is always easier to deal with something that you know at least a bit. As I said, life will really get better. Your brain will get better. The mere relief from having to pretend that everything is OK will make a difference. You will find a lot of friends online, not the same ones as you have right now, although I know many of them are cool, and don’t let anyone tell you that online friendships are any less valuable or real or something. You will find very supportive and understanding people with whom you will often have a lot of things in common, in one way or another. I know it feels awful right now but don’t give up just yet. And, while you will still have a deep interest in psychology, maybe even deeper in some ways, I think you will grow out of that idea, and instead you will decide to focus on your languages more. Well, that’s at least what I know now, who knows how things will get in the more distant future. As for more distant future, currently I have no idea how it will go, and it feels somewhat scary even to me, but I am trying to be hopeful because otherwise I would have no right to tell you not to give up, as my life is way easier than yours.

Zofijka is almost your age now and a lot of what you thought she’d be like has come true. She is very bubbly and energetic and talks all the time, and she loves sports and One Direction and currently has become enamoured with Japanese men, and yes, she loves clothes shopping and changes her clothes all the time, but she has a very distinctive style despite being a very average girl in a lot of ways, and you’d be surprised how very mature she is deep down. I think you would like her. Though she is very different from you, and thus very different from me, and so we not always get along.

I really don’t know what else to tell you, other than that there is hope, so I will be finishing, because it’s 2 AM and I feel like I should go to sleep. Yeah, I still tend to write at nights, but now it’s my choice, and not a necessity, and I realise it’s a luxury not only for people like you who feel they lack privacy but most people actually, who aren’t able to manage their time on their own. Ah, and I can tell you that you will live in times of a pandemic, which is happening right now, I guess you’d find that interesting, for example to observe how people are behaving. I find it interesting myself, but while it’s changed our lives all around the world very much, it doesn’t feel scary for myself so far. Maybe just because it is not a norovirus pandemic, haha.

Your future Bibiel self (I no longer call myself Bibiel all the time, only sometimes, you have to adjust to the society at some point, but I still am Bibiel and am loving it no less than you do)

Question of the day (17th April).

Hi hi hi people. 🙂

I hope you’re having a wonderful Easter. 🙂 Let’s start with our overdue questions of the day, shall we? I might not manage to catch up on them all today as I’ve been up for ages and it’s late now so I’ll be soon going to sleep but maybe we can do the few of them. 🙂

A bit of a philosophical one now, which I find very difficult, especially at the moment, even thought about changing it but decided that it can be interesting anyway so here goes.

Who do you think you are?

My answer:

That’s very difficult one for me. I think for all of us it can be difficult to figure it out, more or less. Recently, I guess I’ve been having a bit of an identity crisis, not a rare thing at my age I guess or any age when some things are changing for you. Although my identity was always a complex topic for me. First, because I am a complicated person and don’t even really fully get myself, I often feel very confused about things regarding myself even though I am a fairly introspective person and theoretically have a lot of knowledge about myself and other people around me, or so I guess. I know well what I like, what I dislike, I know what I feel most of the time unless I’m overloaded, yet most of the time I don’t feel like I truly know who I am. Other people don’t get me either because well how can they if I can’t figure out things myself, and most of those that I’m relatively close with seem to agree with me that I am pretty weird and complex, be it positive or negative, depends really, or as my Mum once put it very interestingly: “I guess God was trying out some new type of clay when He was making your brain”. 😀 In a way that sounds brutal, and explains why I feel inadequate a lot of the time or some other alien syndrome stuff, even though Mum meant it as something positive because she thinks I’m “remarkable” and somehow very outstanding etc. but in a way I indeed do like my different brain and, although I generally don’t like myself, I guess I wouldn’t change my quirkiness andcomplexity if I had a choice, or not much of it, perhaps just the more troublesome stuff. That’s also why, even though I am not autistic or anything like that that I’d know of, in some way I relate to that whole neurodiversity thing even though I’m not sure if I even can hahaha but that really speaks to me and explains the way I feel about myself, because I seem to think in a different way than most people do, and perceive things differently (in which also my blindness plays a huge role obviously so that changes a lot of things too and I wonder whether blindness itself, plus that other stuff like synaesthesia for example that I have, doesn’t make you neurodivergent in a way). As those of you who have stuck around here for some time probably already know, one of the mental illnesses I have is AVPD which stands for avoidant personality disorder, which also adds to the mess regarding my identity, as it makes me feel inadequate as well as having low self-esteem, bordering on self-loathing a lot of the time especially if I’m very depressed or something like that, even though I feel like with a change of environment and help of other people I’m already in a much better place than I was say 3-4 years ago or earlier. That prevents me, I suppose, from having a clearly objective and rational idea about who I am, even though I like to be objective about things as much as I can so I do try to be. There are things that I do like about myself more or less, and my self-esteem shifts slightly, as I guess it does for everyone, depending on what is going on and my mood and anxiety levels and some other things, but from what I can observe in other people, I have an impression that even what for me is feeling good/neutral with and about myself is different from how it is for others, ’cause I always have that Maggie the Inner Critic (you know I call her Maggie don’t you? I guess I wrote about it one day but can’t remember for sure, so, in any case, my inner critic’s English name is Maggie 😀 ) very active in the background. So if I’m feeling neutral/good about myself, for me it means that I’m not hating myself or am able to be more kind for myself in a more genuine way, or at least can pretend to be self-caring a bit more than it’s necessary to survive and appear normal and not too scary for other people to be around. 😀 If I do something real great I can be proud of myself, like recently I was all ecstatic because I finished my Welsh course, and since I can develop my languages I am feeling much better with myself, but Maggie is still there and even when I’m all happy with myself she won’t let me forget about herself, or will jump at me after a while. I hope it all makes some sense for you, I don’t really know how to explain my brain to someone else so that they can get it. I know I’m sort of walking around this topic all the time now and not really answering the question but I want you to see how it is for me. I guess that there are so many things that I think I am, some even quite contrary, and a lot of them shitty, and I’m still figuring it out and am not sure if I ever will, I guess lots of people don’t ever come to that point in their lives where they know who they are and have some clear idea about it even if they are less of a mess than me hahaha, I’m not even sure if it’s really so necessary to know that, anyway it’s a difficult topic. Also, if I was to tell you who I think I am, it wouldn’t look too appealing at the moment. I’ve had some yucky depressive mood lurking somewhere in the back of my brain for a couple of days and have been feeling it coming, guess without any specific external factor, and today, although I’ve had a very nice day, I’m feeling rather low and not getting along with my brain, so I don’t think you’d like to hear what I’m thinking at the moment. 🙃 I guess when you’re depressed you can’t be too happy with yourself anyway, AVPD or no AVPD. I’ll tell you what I think after I finish my advanced Welsh course that I’m doing right now, and will move on to Cornish, OK? 😉 I actually rarely talk about such stuff with people because, well, that’s a very sensitive and a rather vulnerable topic, and I never talk about it in details because honestly I feel like many people could perceive it as not only overwhelming, but also attention-seeking, you know, like I want them to deny it and say that it’s not true what I think, some people are like that, that they self-deprecate in front of others just to hear how great they are. I don’t want to be like that because that would make me feel even more shitty. I just wanted to show you a little bit about what it’s like for me, as me and as a person with mental illnesses, and if you have a mental illness yourself I’m curious whether it has also impacted your self-image.

So, who do you think you are? Is it easy/possible for you to define it and if you have a mental illness how does it affect your self-image? 🙂