Roll Call 202

I’m really happy for you! Sounds like things are going great.

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Have you ever done any DBT exercises? Is a a good therapy for impulsivity. I use a lot of it myself. Cause I’m very impulsive just like that. I make huge rash decisions suddenly that screw things up. Like I used to randomly stop my meds, randomly impulsively decide to quite going to therapy and my psychiatrist, impulsively drop out of college, quit jobs , randomly apply to jobs I know I can’t handle etc all that impulsive stuff and indecisiveness. What helps me is as soon as I have an urge to do something like that I write it in my journal and then don’t think about it for a few days and distract myself with positive coping skills and wait it out cause eventually the impulsive urge goes away and I’ve saved myself a lot of mental pain by not acting out on those urges.

For example I used to impulsively end relationships all the time. I did this a couple times when my bf and I started dating a year ago but after a few months and 2-3 times of me impulsively breaking up with him then immediately regretting it and getting right back together, I made the conscious effort to act opposite my impulse and not even give it any headway. After the first couple months of us being together I managed to stop breaking up with him. So now we’ve been together a full 12 months on April 8th coming up. And I haven’t tried impulsively breaking up with him in about 7-8 months at least. Don’t get me wrong I still have impulses to do that due to my BPD traits but I’ve managed to stop that particular behavior.

I’m still working on the whole other impulsive stuff like not quitting or applying for jobs impulsively. Etc. and college.

Idk my point I guess is that it is possible to change the tendency to act impulsively. It takes a lot of work and a lot of consciously continually choosing to act opposite your urges over a very long period of time but eventually it gets easier and more natural.

I’d say maybe start with making a rule where if you want to impulsively change therapists or quit therapy try journaling about it it may make the urge less intense

Thanks! Things are going pretty well! I’m doing good at using my coping skills. And I’m really enjoying music and art. (Violin, ukulele, and drawing) they bring me a lot of fulfillment. And my relationship is going really well. He inspires me to do better and makes me feel like I can have a future where I’m working and independent which is something people never encouraged me with due to my mental health.

Volunteering is going well too. I volunteer with the rescue cats every Tuesday from 10am to 12pm. It’s always a lot of fun, pure chaos but fun lol. There’s another volunteer there I work with and she’s really cool and fun too so it’s nice now that I’m not alone there.

I am going back to college in the fall (classes start at the end of August) so I’m finally going to be working towards finishing my associates degree which I started years ago but never finished.

It’s nice having Mocha here. I miss Maybelle so much still but it doesn’t feel as empty now. It was fine with just me and Mustachio but it feels better having two cats. That’s the perfect amount for me I think. It just feels better having two little kitties around the house. Feels more alive in here if that makes sense. They both are so sweet and make me so happy.

I changed the RAM on my laptop by myself! It's up to 16gb now from 12gb, I will install the other when I change my battery this weekend, I just wanted to check and make sure I installed it correctly before putting both sticks of ram in and I need to open it up to put the new battery in anyway soon so why not. Once this is done I'll have 32gb total of ram and a new battery by this weekend And all done myself

So my laptop is wayyyy faster with the 16gb ram now. Once it's up to 32gb with a new battery it'll be perfect. It won't run every game, especially more recent graphics intensive games because it needs a better graphics card but it can run tons of games. I got Skyrim, The Sims 4, tons of Lego games, Five Nights at Freddy's, Lucius, the first Witcher game, the 2nd Witcher game, and Minecraft downloaded and they play fine. Plus I tested my laptop to see if it can run other games I want to get eventually and it can run several of them. So I'm good. I also have my nintendo switch and Xbox One for the more graphic intense games so they can handle all the more recent games.

This is a 5 year old laptop but it's HP and in very good condition and is touchscreen. I can get a couple more years out of it, so I won't need to upgrade to an entirely new laptop for a couple years. It should get me through my associates degree which is mostly what I need it for.

When I upgrade I will go all out and get a awesome gaming laptop but that gives me a few years to save money. So this saves me a lot of money.

Thanks for the advice. I always use journaling as like a coping mechanism, but I never had thought of it in that way, as in a strategy to create space between me and the impulse. That's a great way of looking at it, honestly. I think there's a book out there called "Thinking, Fast and Slow" that talks about the type of "slow" thinking that is required for skillful decision making. All I know is I need to slow down when I make decisions. But it's really hard. Anyway...

Isn't it an awesome feeling like changing the RAM and stuff yourself? I always felt that way when I used to do it with my old computer. It felt useful. Haha.

Anyone know how to build concentration? I feel like I cannot focus on anything in particular.

Yeah it is! I feel pretty proud of myself lol I never even thought I’d be able to do it. I kept debating back and forth whether or not to bring it in to a shop but doing it myself saved me a lot of money and it feels good having a new skill

For myself the main thing that helps is a consistent meditation routine. For me that means at least 20 minutes of meditation daily. And also putting my phone in a drawer or in another room if I need to focus on something else, those are the things that help me. I think there are studies that show that just having your phone in a visible location to you can reduce your ability to focus on what you’re doing

Next weekend's violin lesson is paid for. My violin teacher is visiting family this weekend and coming week so my next lesson will be the weekend of the 23rd. Need to practice.

I spent some time outside in the sun for the vitamin D and mood boosting effects.
Talked to my bf on the phone for an hour and a half before he went to work.

Applied for a job to Petsmart again

Other than that not much going on. I meditated for 25 minutes this morning. Kind of feeling anxious, and discociated now as I usually get in the afternoons. But I'm gonna try coloring and drawing and see if that helps

The rest of my requests are in at the library so I can walk there tomorrow and pick them up after I run some errands

I started reading The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Sitting here waiting on brownies to bake. This is the recipe I used. They’re extremely decadent. It’s from the cafe Delites website. I’ve used this one before. Out of every brownie recipe I’ve ever tried making this was always number one.

INGREDIENTS
1 cup 8oz/240g unsalted butter, melted and cooled
2 tablespoons (30ml) vegetable oil
1 1/4 cups (9oz/260g) white sugar
1 cup (7oz/200g) packed light brown sugar
4 (2oz/57g each) large eggs, at room temperature
1 tablespoon (15ml) pure vanilla extract
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup (3.5oz/130g) all purpose flour
1 cup (3.5oz/100g) good quality, unsweetened cocoa powder
7 oz (200g) roughly chopped chocolate or large chocolate chips

I colored for awhile and it did a good job at relieving stress. And I read for about an hour and that helped too. Now obviously baking is helping cause it’s fun to bake. And I took a shower and feel good now

So tonight I’ll have fresh brownies with some coffee , and play some videogames and watch some anime

Oh one thing I’ve been doing a lot especially when I’m outside walking is that 54321 senses grounding technique. It’s actually helped when I started dissociating outside

Yeah I totally fail at the phone thing. It distracts me so much.

Meditation is something I have done consistently for a while but I want to get back into it.

And I also realized that getting poor quality sleep does not help my concentration. Anyway.

Psychedelic overdoses, dissociative panic attacks, rebuilding my whole life and mind from scratch, and constantly focusing on my heart beats for half decade.

I can now watch 3 hour videos without pause.

Oh and taking ADHD med as prescribed.

So the key is to increase mindfulness - BB is right that meditation helps greatly.

Good morning, plan on practicing ukulele and violin a lot today. And cleaning cause my apartment is kind of a mess. Listening to the song Playing God by Polyphia. I didn’t go to sleep last night. Pulled an all nighter. I’ll go to sleep tonight. I stayed up because I wanted to spend some time with my bf after he got off work. He gets off work at 2:30am. So we watched a couple episodes of Naruto over FaceTime. He’s going to the car dealership to buy a car today. So that will be helpful for him and for us because it will be easier for us to visit eachother. That way when I’m down there we have transportation to go where we want. I’ll most likely fly down there in a few months. And we’ll just go back and forth visiting eachother till we get stuff together and figure things out about moving in together eventually. That will be awhile because we’re both getting our lives together right now. But yeah I think we’re good for eachother. We motivate eachother to do better. He recently got back on his feet after staying at a friends house for some time. He was saving money while working to get an apartment. He just got the apartment last week so that’s good. And now he’ll have the car. He has some job security now that he’s gonna be full time then eventually in the union there. So eventually his schedule will be a little more normal and not working till the middle of the night/morning. A couple more weeks and we’ll have been together a full year. I miss spending time with him in person (we went to the same high school). But we’re long distance this past year. It hasn’t been easy but I think it’s worth it for sure.

Funnily enough, I find that when I post consistently on this forum, or at least empty my mind of the thoughts that fill the void somehow, I can focus better. Anyway, so, the journaling technique works. I find it even better when I can actually talk to someone who understands, like here, but the journaling technique works very well as well.