Posted by rgb on February 1, 2008, at 14:40:23
It's hard to put my finger on this so please bear with my attempt at describing it :)
There are positive effects. Things are kind-of starting to change.
I'm less helpless. I'm realizing opportunities for improvement that I didn't before; I think I'm more often dealing with not-so-pleasant issues which I ignored before or where I was stuck in a routine.
Self-esteem has increased (up from way-too-low); less worries what others think of me. I'm more ironic. Some kinds of anxiety and worries have decreased. More online communication and also a bit more in real life, though I'm still pretty lonely. There are periods of time where I'm smiling a lot :)
But I have this odd inner restlessness. But also fatigue attacks that can lead to lying down on the desk or something. I can be quite scattered and ADDish, still not getting too much done. I'm not sure whether this is "dark", purely negative restlessness / akathisia or an actually healthy urge to do something else than spend all my free time online.
Drive for social contact has gone up from "almost none" to "a bit". This is good in principle, but bad in that my habits don't include it and it can make being alone more unpleasant (Coming home to being alone sometimes causes major "comedown"-type feelings). Paradoxically enough, both romantic desire and libido are way up. Thoughts of some women cause particularly intense bittersweet emotions.
I'm often kinda unconcentrated at my studies, but abstract reasoning skills seem to be mostly fine.
FWIW, I've been on it for 9 months.
Sorry if I'm rambling a bit, but maybe someone kinda recognizes this and has advice. I'm really puzzled whether this is good or bad.
poster:rgb
thread:810131
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20080124/msgs/810131.html