Quote:
Originally Posted by ultramar
That's interesting, I didn't know that's what you meant. How do you 'induce' this? Maybe it's a kind of chicken and egg thing, but how do 'make' yourself feel a certain way (i.e. depressed)? Do you feel like you create circumstances around you that you think or know will make you feel a certain way or behave in a certain way? My feeling is that you can't create feelings/thoughts, etc. out of thin air, they come from somewhere, someplace, however unconscious, that is 'real' if that makes sense. I don't know if you're willing to explain more, not sure if I get it, but thanks for posting this and I hope you find what you're looking for.
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You know, I don't really know. Okay, take this example: After watching the movie The Aviator (about Howard Hughes and his OCD), I coincidentally? developed OCD, especially after researching it. It wasn't very serious and I was able to stop it. A few years later, I read someone's autobiographical account of their OCD, and, what do you know, my OCD came back. But this time it was like at a debilitating level. I was treated (very successfully) for that, but I always doubted the legitimacy of my symptoms, because it seemed that I had created them. Same goes for my ED. I don't remember how or why, but I read an entire blog (like years' worth of material) that some girl had kept about her eating disorder. Well guess what happened. BOOM anorexia. (3 years later, 2 of which consisted almost entirely of treatment centers, that one's still a struggle). So did I choose to induce OCD symptoms in myself? Did I choose to initiate an eating disorder? And, most importantly, does that make either one of them less real or valid? (My opinion: OCD, yes it does. ED, no, I seriously have a very tenacious ED)
So I don't know. I really don't know if any of this matters. I don't know what I'm doing, if I'm doing anything. Maybe it was just coincidental timing (I had some little blips on the ED front years earlier, but nothing major. Hey I just realized that's a theme here. OCD and ED. Weird.)
But yeah. I appreciate your thoughtfulness on this topic. Sorry I'm so rambly and scrambled. It's a hard concept, thinking you may have stooped so low as to actually see a mental illness and think, "yeah, that might work for me, I'll try it on for size" and then require lots of treatment to get out of the hole that it created. I don't know. I feel like I'm going to be seriously looked down on for posting this.