Ideally, the answer is the first post.

got in just in time to see the end

You could get into mahjong

Like, this long LONG thread of posts (sorry, bluesky is fast becoming my "post through it" platform) is me drowning out things, and it just worked.

"YOU WILL NEVER BE LOVED AGAIN"
"Ok cool let's do a long, rambling post on bluesky and we'll see if you still feel that way, ok love?"

"Maybe you should just go non-contact for a month, so you stop annoying everybody"
"What? That's insane. That's literally just isolating myself. That's self-harm. Eat a fucking banana, you love bananas"

Piece of piss, and she only ever lasts a couple hours. I'm already getting over this dip.

I only wish this could have happened years ago.

Or, practically, while I was still in work.

Like, quite genuinely - I haven't felt this much like myself in years. THAT is why I am so reluctant to stop it. I feel like the black fog that plagued my life for years - years! So many years! - finally lifted, and I'm awake again. I can't have this taken from me.

So anyway I'm fine. I think I'm doing CBT on myself.

This is all re-learning. Or new learning. But it is true, and real. There is a path I could go down that leads to these meds turning into a needy, unpleasant mess - and I don't want that. But the degree to which they make me feel like *myself* again is so huge, I have to find ways to make it work.

I am steadfastly NOT thinking about being inadequate for the good things that have happened to me. I am staying away from most of the large chats that I am in because those environments cause bad reactions when in this state(the brain moves too quickly from 'oh no nobody replied' to 'HATED BY ALL!')

Harder than it would otherwise be due to unemployment, but having realised that this works, I am now (as in, at this very moment), finding off the black clouds by just DDoS ing my brain. I am typing my thoughts! I am thinking about the piano!

I am having to teach myself mental discipline. I think I am CBTing myself. When the mood starts to drip into an insecure/needy/desperate/despairing state, I have to actively wipe it out with different thoughts. This means I need to KEEP BUSY.

(ok I played DE again finally after many many years, but it was 'non-canon' in my head, and it was a nostalgia thing)

There are all kinds of different things - it all leads the same places, though, which I think is ideal for this kind of game. And yes yes YES on 'not playing through again'. Where games have a story, I play them and experience MY story. BG3, DE, all of these narrative games...1 play through