I do a lot of research myself, cinnamonsun. Sorry you are struggling. But your proactive coping with "taking more of a student approach to life" is great coping in and of itself! It means you have self-efficacy, determination, grit, self-confidence, and other internal strengths. Once you do what you need to do, you build mastery as well! Using your strengths is a coping mechanism in and of itself.

I deal with bouts of suicidal ideation and major depression. The stress in life is very overwhelming. It's hard enough with being a master class status of "disabled," but even that much more so when financial issues, health issues, and relational issues arise. It becomes too much to bear at times.

So we try to reach out and ask for help.

But then, some of us are fortunate enough to do our own studying on how we could cope and better ourselves. I'm doing this with my newfound prediabetes (non-diagnosis, since I'm within the range of a diagnosis, but the VA won't make a true diagnosis until the sugar levels get higher, which means that they won't treat you at all with meds for prediabetes to lower it). I am literally on my own because society blames the victim here for diabetes. Honestly, diabetes is NOT OUR FAULT. People are predisposed to diabetes because of their biology as well as our cultural factors (too much processed foods and not enough *affordable* healthy foods). There were times when all I could afford were processed foods to keep me fed - and I was skinny during those times. Who would have thought that, over time, those processed foods coupled with having PTSD coupled with being poor coupled with having insomnia coupled with homelessness coupled with adverse childhood experiences would lead to obesity and diabetes?! But they do, and so it's NOT our fault for certain things such as metabolic disorder and diabetes. Society wants to blame us and therefore make it out to be our individual responsibility, instead of the doctors treating us properly with preventative meds and affordable meds at that. And when left to our own demise, we can stave off months or years of the inevitable, but some things might not be reversible. And then, when that happens, we get blamed.

So, we are left with having to do our own research more times than not. And not everyone has the mental, emotional, or intellectual capabilities of doing research to self-care. Society forgets about them, too.

But we're fortunate with the strengths we have to be able to self-care, do research, and find solutions when everyone else ignores us.

I think the stress is piled on more when society sends messages of judgement and blame to the individual, instead of looking at what is allowed culturally - such as processed foods being more affordable than healthy fresh foods, rape culture, misogyny, and more. Mammon (money) is more praiseworthy than humanity (caring for humans in need). Self-care is isolating, lonely, and victimizing at times, even though it is often praised in an individualist society. Don't get me wrong, self-care is good, but OTHER-care is needed! How much more could we accomplish if OTHER-care were MATCHED with self-care?! That's what we needed as children suffering from childhood emotional neglect. And, in a similar vein, that's what we need as adults suffering from medical neglect.

So kudos to you for being proactive and self-caring!



If you need help in your endeavors, I'm a private-message away or I can reply here, too.