u/ofthemountainsandsea

Recommendations for where to look for a stolen bike?

I'm always confused by the amount of people who walk around with incredibly pungent breath, like to the level where I need to stand at least 5 feet away from them. It has always confused me because surely somebody in their life would say something, but then it dawned on me that I might just be more sensitive to this than others.

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It's intense, though. I can smell when somebody doesn't brush their teeth before work, too.

Meditation has improved my life beyond measure. I started when I was 25, after I met a friend at an alanon meeting who invited me to a sangha. Up until that point, I knew I was a mess, but I had no inclination as to why: I had decided I was born a dud, and wasn't cracked out to thrive in adulthood. Meditation is what helped me to see my thoughts, and take account of my behavioral patterns, leading to a diagnosis of PTSD/CPTSD, and ADHD a decade later. Now that I'm in a good place with my mental health, it has helped me realize at nearly 39 that I'm definitely autistic, along with many others on both sides of my family, and I'm waiting for my diagnosis. Before this I chalked everything up to being a trauma trigger, which in hindsight makes little to no sense:

-i was known for my 'tantrums' as a child. My grandmother even saved a nasty note my stepmom wrote to her when I was a child about all of my 'tantrums' around food. My mom would punish me by picking out my clothing from an early age, because I was so particular about what I wanted to wear.

-its hard for me to leave my house and even bedroom when I absolutely don't have to for work, or appointments, because it feels like the world is assaulting my nervous system. I had a hard time understanding this through the lens of cptsd because I wasn't afraid of the people, I just didn't want them looking at me. If they quietly exist around me, great, but that's not the case. This has led to insane amounts of money spent on Uber rides, and food deliveries (no car).

-taking care of myself during burnout--the last 12 years--has been incredibly challenging. I love to cook, but have resigned to the fact that money spent on ingredients to cook, is money down the drain, and the food waste also sucks. Part of this is my ADHD, for sure, but most of it is my nervous system feeling so fried from people.

-Im great at masking for one or two first interactions, then it's all downhill. I've had the thought for a long time that I could dazzle any body for about two first meetings, and then I couldn't keep up with it because I have no clue what to talk about. Part of this comes from wanting people to feel included, because I know all too well what it feels like to be excluded.

-I love doing activities by myself, because I get to control how long I'm there for before I crap out.

Meditation has been a tool to view myself, and my thoughts objectively, which has helped me see myself in others, in ways I couldn't before. It has also helped me separate my traumatized self, from my neurodivergent self, and in that I can see the ways it has benefited me in being able to sit with uncertainty, understand that life and emotions are always changing, and that though something might feel doom and gloom (like missing the bus when I had my days schedule planned out) in this moment, that that feeling would also pass...that I can sit with the feeling, recognize it, tend to it, and also not take it so seriously. It has helped me so much that I now consider myself a buddhist, after almost 15 years of practice.

Wondering what your experiences with meditation have been, and how it has, or hasn't, helped you.

I'm wondering if anybody else has used weed to process and understand their emotions. I can be stuck in an increased state of overwhelm for weeks, then use weed, and I finally figure out what is bothering me.

It also helps me to understand other people better. Like, I can be so clueless when it comes to understanding another person's experience, and then I smoke weed and finally get a glimpse of what they might be going through.

I feel like I have a mental catalogue of stoned revelations that help me understand myself and others better.