I have two pressing psychological issues recently:

1. anxiety
2. holding on to pain

Anxiety is both macro level¹ and micro level. But that’s unsurprising. Holding on to pain is sort of weirder, but I think I recently made a big jump in untangling it.

“Holding on to pain” is what I’m calling it when something bad happens and then I complain about it too much. Complaining happens in real life (if we’ve hung out IRL I have probably complained about parenting; sorry), online (sorry discord friends; I promise I am cycling through multiple venues to get support and yes I’m still complaining this much in our discord; sorry), and internally. Sometimes it’s just one part of me complaining to another part! Sometimes it’s the Innie saying “listen, Outie, you have to remember this! I don’t know why! but you have to!”

This does not seem like a good strategy. It seems designed to, and indeed it does, keep me thinking about whatever painful situation happened and wallowing in a spiral of how I’m such a tragic figure. So why am I doing it?

Simple: it gives me a handicap. If I convince myself and everyone around me that I’m playing life on difficulty level 20, then it’s okay that I’m mostly failing and miserable. If I were on level 1 and still failing, I’d just be embarrassing. If I were on level 1 and unhappy, I’d be ungrateful. But if I’m on level 20 and unhappy, well, of course I am. So: dear self and everyone around me: witness me², life is so hard for me, see I’m on level 20.

But this is dumb, though. First, everyone who cares about me is supporting me regardless of what level I’m on. Second, … it’s kind of pathetic? I mean, some people go through life with all these excuses for why they’re not Better, and some people just don’t bother with all that, and the latter are happier and more successful and more pleasant etc etc. Third, and this is inspired by a realization last weekend³, I don’t need a certificate proving that I’m playing on level 20 to be Good Enough.

So I’m going to cut it out. After a week it’s a little easier to connect to other sources of comfort than “look how hard life is for me” and it feels healthier. Not that I won’t complain, just perhaps more judiciously. We’ll see how it goes.