I am just feeling the need to write something down; it sometimes helps me to see things differently or to better grasp how I unconsciously operate. https://www.skool.com/calmness-in-mind/about Way back when I was a teenager, I felt an overwhelming separation from people and experiences. I never felt like I fitted in anywhere, and I was painfully self-conscious. Plus, the idea of being laughed at, looking stupid or judged badly stopped me from doing many things (even if not doing them was silly or self-sabotaging). It was almost as if it was ok for me to be horrible to myself, but not for someone else to be critical of me. When I try to remember those times, it is a bit of a blur because I would just get overwhelmed with emotions, and then I needed to suppress them because I felt self-conscious! Obviously, this led to a lot of repressed frustration, which would occasionally explode out of me in fits of anger and rage and bouts of “cutting my nose off to spite my face.” I remember as a child being sent to my room once for an hour, and I stayed in there for 24 hours! I guess so, I could wallow in the unfairness of it all. It was a silly strategy, but (back then) I knew no other way. This avoidance of bad emotions probably led to the development of my early behavioural traits, making sure things worked the way I wanted them to, so I could avoid them (often at the expense of what I truly wanted). Plus, because everybody seemed to be interested in different things than I was, I thought I had nothing of interest to say to others. So I would spend a lot of time silently watching people, and rather than wondering how they saw the world and trying that on for size, I seemed to just feel more and more different, more and more disconnected. It was as if I were looking for ways I was different from others rather than for ways I was the same. This led to my formulating an inner world of dreams and outcomes that could elicit emotions, which I could ride in a good way or dwell on and spin into tornadoes of depression and melancholy self-pity.

What time is it where you are?