I do not appreciate my brain being scanned and put on blast like this
this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2025
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me_irl
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Turns out you weren't vigilant enough to prevent this attack. It's okay, I'm sure you'll be better prepared next time, but you don't need to worry about that right now.
How are you doing?
There's a reason people nicknamed me Cassandra. I have the uncanny ability to both accurately predict a bad outcome while simultaneously never finding a soul who gives a flying fuck until the bad thing actually happens.
Oh well.
I'm somewhat validated to hear of somebody else having this nickname.
I think most people just truly don't want to think that something bad is going to happen. So even the ones close to me that know my track record and have used the nickname still seem like they're making a conscious choice to not deal with that information, even if that means being blindsided later while I sigh hard enough to eject my soul from my body.
Often, there isn't really a whole lot anyone can do though. It's pretty obvious to me there's going to be more war in Europe in the next five years, but unless you have fuck you money, what can you do? Go live in a hut in Patagonia somewhere maybe...
I think that's the real most painful part.
Warning people what's going to happen, sometimes years ahead of time, just to be ignored.
The best options I have found are
A) give the warning not as a warning, but as a benefit (EU stock market is going to go up, should have invest there VS dollar is going to drop a lot in value).
B) Band together to help out other Cassandras. If we can't help people who ignore, we can at least try to help others who know.
C) Just stop caring.
I have avoided many bad outcomes by anticipating they could happen. Suffering with anxiety is a very real side effect though
That's the insidious thing about it - there are times when it serves us well!
Exactly. 99% of the time it is "worrying for no reason" then it saves your ass and you feel validated for worrying so much.
"gestures broadly"
Not doing great, ya know?
I feel like my paranoia is manifesting additional real problems at this point. "At least the orange asshole is not doing ... yet" and then he does.
Meds helped me with this a lot. Not the first or even the second medication I tried, maybe the third or fourth? Really good therapy, too. That took maybe another four tries with different therapists for me.
The worst part is being incredibly overwhelmed with anxiety makes it really, really hard to deal with shitty experiences with any of the above. It’s demoralizing when it doesn’t work out and it’s not perfect when it does work out. Still miles better than I was before.
The pharma-go-round is torture, even with a good doctor. With a doctor that doesn't listen, it's unbearable. Which means finding a new doctor and starting again. It's a vicious cycle. Glad you landed on something that works.
Me: “Hey doc I’m depressed and often think of killing myself”
Doc: “Here have some anti depressants”
Me: “this is working much faster then the label suggests, and I don’t think of killing myself multiple times a day, thanks doc!”
Doc: “hmm that’s not right, you should go see a psychiatrist and I’m not prescribing these to you anymore”
Me: “that was strange but doc said to find someone”
Me: “it seems that everyone on the insurance list has a six month wait for new patients”
Me: “the anti depressants have worn off, the anxiety is back in full swing, and I think of killing myself daily… I hope the depression doesn’t kill me before I work up the nerve to schedule and appointment and wait six months before being treated”
Spoiler: I found a different primary care instead with the help of family who didn’t cast me aside like my doctor did. That new doctor put me back on the anti depressants. Life ain’t easy but at least I don’t have suicidal thoughts multiple times a day.
Gotta love a system that is setup to make the people least able to advocate for themselves forced to be the best advocate in the world. It’s like asking the blind if they can see and if they can’t just tell them to find someone else after shooting there seeing eye dog and taking away their walking stick. Then pickachu shocked then they fail.
Ok this is a stupid question, but am I not supposed to relate with the OP? Is it not just a normal part of being human. I get my most frustrated when I get something "wrong" like the OP describes because I didn't prevent what I was trying to prevent. It's not constantly distressing by any means...just when I get an interaction incorrect.
I have been trialing an SSRI for the past several months now. I can't tell if it has at all affected me or I am just on a less externally stressful streak. I am inclined to believe the latter is the case, but idk.
I’m not a psychologist so I can’t tell you anything definitive, but getting very upset over something unexpected happening could be anxiety related. Everyone naturally gets frustrated when things don’t work out, but a lot of mental illnesses are just ‘normal’ things dialed up to 10.
It could also be a lot of stuff other than anxiety! Mental health is super complicated, regardless of what it is (if anything).
Are you in therapy with someone you trust in addition to meds? Because meds helped me a lot, but the therapy was super necessary for me as well.
No, I'm not in therapy. I've tried it on and off before and not really found it useful. Because either the therapist was just interested in chatting and not giving any sort of useful feedback OR they focus on minor, but easily identifiable issues that aren't necessarily why I was seeking out therapy.
I think for me, it just doesn't really work because I don't have one specific, obvious issue. I've known people who have been helped by therapy, but they had one very specific, glaring, obvious problem. One person I know was having near daily panic attacks. Another person I know was assaulted. Another person I know was having hallucinations. So these are all readily identifiable, singular, obvious issues.
I don't have anything like that and often don't even know what to say or what to bring up. It understandably makes it difficult for therapists to figure out what to do, and makes the whole thing just not overly beneficial.
Yup 3 combat tours will do that to you got the speed run and get the natural version, then you are the chosen one.
Also I'm doing bad
Every computer operations job worker pops into the thread to explain this is their job.
Some of us have been dealing with this for so many years that were desensitized to the anxiety part.
When COVID hit we quietly bought a case of masks and an industrial bag of flour as soon as we saw China pressure washing streets.
The hard part about doing this right It's not setting yourself into a feedback loop. You need to know the news and the events and what's coming up but at the same time you don't need to see the same piece of information twice. Algorithms will fuck up your day. Bluesky will show you every last take on everything that happens in LA, you will get 15 different accounts of Gretta, this causes people with real anxiety to doomscroll and over consume. TikTok go brrrrr. Just dip in, and dip out. Just consume enough news to create an image in your mind of this is what's going on in LA, this is what's going on in Texas, this is what's going on in Gaza, this is what the government is doing, this is what the military forces are doing, then GTFO and get back to work.
We are all rats and a maze with a billion little binary decisions to make. You inform and adjust those decisions based on what's going on in the world and where it's likely to go. And you don't need that much information to get that done.
I'm correct most of the time and that scares me.
Working in infosec rewards and reinforces this exact mode of thinking. So I'm not getting better, but at least I'm getting paid.
You just described being a system administrator.
Perhaps we should form a network and create a new Sybiline sort of thing.
Oh hi, that's me
We are anxiety twinsies then
This isn’t normal?
Bruh, Raekwon looks different than I remember.
don't forget the self abuse to try and stem it all
I see this so much in so many people that I feel like it's blown up by the strong streak of magical thinking in American society. Like, I have to worry about it, because if I don't, it'll happen. It's only the anxiety per se (not any actual action based on the foresight gained from it) that stops the bad thing from happening.
Yeah but it didn't work, died anyway. (yes really)