u/pte_rad_actyl

My quality of life kind of sucks ngl. I don't go outside much. I mostly just lie in bed depressed. I play guitar and try to do schoolwork but that's mainly it. Sometimes I socialize. But vast majority of my hours is alone in my room bedrotting and being depressed about how much my life sucks. I also have chronic fatigue syndrome and chronic pain so I can't do exercise or anything. But I wish my life was a bit more bearable and I wish I felt like I was accomplishing anything.

I miss when I could work and I felt like I was making people happy (I worked with kids so it was easy to make them happy).

Also my hygeine sucks, plus most of my clothes don't fit anymore due to zyprexa. I used to motivate myself to put on clean clothes by putting together cute outfits. But now mostly all I can wear are baggy t shirts and I just don't see the point anymore. And then not wearing clean clothes makes me less likely to go outside and makes me more depressed.

So I'm looking for ideas of easy things to be happier or at least have better quality of life.

Some people's covers, they sing just like Elliott and I have no idea how they do it. I have a pretty deep voice and whenever I try to sing higher and more whispery like Elliott, my voice cracks. Or at best sounds kind of nasally and fake. Did people who can sing like him have to practice to get that way and what did you do to practice? Or are people just naturally blessed with that voice or something

Thanks!

I've been sexually harrassed, groped, assaulted, raped etc. The sexual harrassment started young, groping started in my mid teens, rape and assault from 18 onward. I'm in my late 20s now and have lost track of how many times it has happened.

The problem is, I haven't moved on at all from any of it, and I lose sometimes several hours a day just having flashbacks and bad moods and hypersexuality and shame and all sorts of stuff relating to these events.

I've been in therapy for 12 years but it's really slowgoing and I don't feel like I'm making much progress. Anytime I try to talk about the assaults, I get overwhelmed and dissociate, and spend the next several hours after therapy in a fugue state and super triggered.

What do you actually do, like concrete steps, that helps you move on with your life and not be so triggered all the time? How do you not just dissociate and freak out? How do you stop being hypersexual to cope? Do you ever just feel ok?

No beef to the younger aroaces, but I find it hard to relate to a lot of stuff about never having had sex, realizing after first kisses, stuff about crushes, wondering if you're too young to know, etc.

I realized I was on the ace spectrum around 26 or so, after about a decade of sexual experiences. This was made extra complicated because it made me realize that a lot of my sexual experiences weren't exactly consensual or were in a gray area, and that has been a lot to process. It's extra complicated because I experience hypersexuality due to trauma.

I realized I was aro spec around 27, after a really gnarly breakup from a 2 year relationship that just sort of happened to me at first. I eventually developed romantic feelings, but they weren't typical ones, and I often preferred time spent alone with my guitar and music. I was really sad about the breakup, but also felt happy and connected to myself for the first time in years.

I'm curious how you process prior relationships and sexual experiences, if there's anything that helps you integrate those experiences with what you now understand about yourself, and how you adjust to living a life more aligned with what you actually want?

And how do you even figure out what you want after over a decade of caving to other people's wants?

Parts of me really want to be a girl, like, mainstream type of girl who goes to the beach in a bikini and has fun with a bunch of girl friends and dates straight boys and stuff.

But I was always very gender nonconforming and my transness even before I came out got read as being a lesbian or as being just generally not a girl (I distinctly remember a group of girls in seventh grade saying I couldn't hang out with them because they were talking about "girl stuff").

Idk if I might also have had some sort of hyperandrogenism, I didn't really look the same as other girls and all I needed to really look like a boy was short hair.

Also with regards to wanting straight boys to be interested in me, when I was a teenager the only ones who ever expressed interest were really creepy/sexually harrassy ones. I never got to have the experiences I wanted with boys.

Nowadays I've been on testosterone for years because like 70% of the time I want to be read as male, and also I have EDS and POTS and testosterone is vital to my physical health, so even if the girl days started outweighing the boy ones, I can't detransition without my body falling apart.

But it's so hard on girl days, I feel like even off T i had a hard time looking like a typical girl and on T it's even harder.

I just want to feel pretty but I don't at all.

I also have a bunch of barriers to getting frequent haircuts so my hair is kinda ugly rn.

Has anyone else been in this situation?

How do you manage to feel good on days where your gender doesn't align with your appearance?

And how do you grieve the aspects of childhood you never got?

I genuinely spend so much time feeling bad about all this. I just want to either be pretty or get over the desire to be pretty.

Does anyone else feel pressure to be attractive despite being aroace?

I feel like I always tied a lot of self worth to how I look and how many people are interested in me, even if at the same time I don't want or reciprocate that interest (I do reciprocate it sometimes since I'm aroace spec/flux and sometimes im repulsed and other times im neutral or favorable).

I think partly it's because I've always felt deeply lonely and insecure, and I always need proof that I'm wanted as much as other people are wanted. I compare myself to others a lot (and yes I'm in therapy to work on self esteem but it's been 12 years of working really, really hard in therapy and I still struggle. I am up against an extensive trauma history and bad genes) and I especially compare how many people I attract/have sex with/etc.

I'm also trans and disabled and I have seen how trans and disabled people get treated very differently based on if they're perceived as fuckable/romanceable or not so that adds to the pressure

Also, I really love fashion, and I've had to deal with people sexualizing my fashion choices since I was a young teenager, and now I feel like I can't even enjoy this hobby without feeling like I'm supposed to dress for other people instead of myself

I feel like I know obviously I should unlearn amatonormativity etc but like, what even are the concrete steps to do that? I feel like I'm trying to forge a path I can't see or understand, while up against very powerful external pressures that know exactly how to manipulate me into internalizing all this pressure

What are practical steps to take to stop being so influenced by this pressure? Does anyone else feel this way?

I have tried so many meds for the depression and I'm thinking about asking my psychiatrist about whether there's any way to access ketamine. I don't know if being schizophrenia spectrum will make them not want to give it to me though. Does it interact with psychosis stuff at all? My psychosis is currently well managed on an antipsychotic.

I was on metformin to combat antipsychotic weight gain and I think it was helping my HS bc as soon as I stopped it I have been having nonstop flares.

I was taken off it at the advice of my dietician because I have an eating disorder (decently well managed at this point but only recently) and they didn't want me trying to lose weight since that could encourage the ED. They were also concerned about it being used off label and concerned about potential risks of doing that, since it's not its intended purpose.

But I know some people use it for HS off label too, so are there any risks to using it off label?

My dietician said I could get back on it if I have a legit medical reason besides weight loss, so I'm exploring whether HS is a legit enough medical reason and whether it's safe. I also just generally felt better on metformin, I have a lot of chronic health issues and I feel like it may have been helping some of them. I also wouldn't be surprised if I have PCOS and I know metformin is used for that.

Are there other risks besides potential weight loss? (I am not underweight/I am overweight due to antipsychotics so the weight loss is mostly an ED trigger concern not a health concern). Like can it make your blood sugar too low or something or make it so youre not absorbing nutrients?

2023-jan 2026 my life was a genuine traumatic nightmare, and most of the years before then really sucked too.

But now I'm like, finally doing better in a lot of ways. My psychosis is under control on meds I take consistently (after 6 years of uncontrolled psychosis, it's only been good for maybe 3 months now), I'm free from abusive relationships, my health is mostly improving after years of severe disability, I have stable, safe, clean, and nice housing with no abusive roommates, I have a careworker finally so I don't even have to do chores, I'm back in school after dropping out, I have a fwb and a friend who come visit me regularly, I'm mostly getting along with my family, I even have a small garden.

I know depression sometimes happens even when life is good, and I also know my life being good is a recent development (one of my rapists just moved out of my apartment 6 months ago, and I spent the next 3-4 months in a blur of distress trying to recover from living with someone who did that to me), so of course I'm not going to be suddenly thrilled with life and happy go lucky.

But I'm still really disappointed that getting my life together didn't actually make me happy.

I recently started zyprexa to try to help with the depression and it helped a little, I'm doing my hobbies again at least, but not enough. Still depressed and suicidal.

I don't really know what else to try. I feel like I've been working so hard to get my life together and it's definitely better than it was but if it was that much work just to get to a semi-stable baseline, how much more work is it going to be to actually become happy?

I've had a pretty rough week with bad chronic pain and insomnia, and I just don't really know what to do. I'm so lonely, too, I spend nearly every day alone in my room (still too disabled to go out often). I'm tired of trying so hard just to have a bare minimum quality of life.

Does it actually get better? I've had suicidal thoughts since I was 6, nearly daily since 11. What if this is as good as it gets, and I just live a lonely depressed life until I eventually die?

Would love to hear stories of life getting better, especially if you've been depressed a long long time. Thanks for reading

For reducing flares, I am on doxycycline, and use topical clindamycin, hibiclens when I shower (only twice a week, I'm disabled), witch hazel sometimes, epsom salt baths sometimes, and I take zinc gummies.

But none of this really does anything for the pain. Sometimes I take tylenol or ibuprofen. I'm also on low dose naltrexone for chronic pain but it doesn't seem to do much for HS pain.

Is there anything that helps the pain? Thanks.

I had unmedicated psychosis for like 5 years with lots of paranoia. One aspect to it is that anytime someone says anything at all, positive, neutral, or negative, I believed they hated me or thought i was a criminal or were part of a government conspiracy targeting me. Now I'm medicated and I don't really believe in the conspiracy anymore or that they think I'm a criminal, but I still think everyone hates me and wants me dead. I don't know how much is paranoia and how much is the lifelong depression.

I just want to be able to receive a compliment from someone and assume it's genuine instead of assuming they're making fun of me or think I'm terrible.

How do you trust people after years of paranoia?

recently put on 10mg zyprexa and now I'm taking so many naps. It's otherwise working well for me so I don't really want to change meds again. It's the only med that has ever helped my mood and only one of two meds that helps my psychosis.

So does it get better? Or will I just have to get used to being sleepy all the time?

For some reason also the sedation isn't helping me sleep at night, I'm waking up a lot more at night.

Also what dosage are you all on? No idea if 10mg is typical or not

Has anyone successfully gotten bottom surgery while having HS in the groin area? I'm really nervous they will tell me I can't get it. I am pursuing metoidioplasty and then phalloplasty, both with scrotoplasty and vaginectomy. My consult isn't for like a year so I can't ask the surgeon yet.

The fear of not being able to get bottom surgery is making my current flareup more stressful. I have only a mild to moderate case, but it has been going on since I was 11 and I'm nearly 30 now so there is a lot of scarring. Currently on a waitlist for a dermatologist, I'm on doxycycline and have topical clindamycin but both have stopped working so now I'm just trying a bunch of home remedies (witch hazel, hibiclens, hot epsom salt baths, cbd + cbg edibles, not sure what else to try; considering taking some metformin i have lying around bc i think it helped my HS) and hoping it will get better soon. About a quarter of my groin is covered in a bunch of connected painful lumps.

Any experiences with this? Has anyone had at least a consult and gotten approval for surgery?

Thank you!