Long story short: I live in a country with an utterly dysfunctional healthcare system. I can't afford a private therapist, and public healthcare has been worse than useless. The following is my (another) attempt at making a list of things that impair my day-to-day existence, not in any particular order. I'm doing it mostly to just catalog them, but I also hope it'll let me crowdsource more coping techniques from people dealing with the same issues.
Social life
Section titled 'Social life'- A wide range of people telling me that I "act weird".
- Struggling with expressing my thoughts, especially when not given an opportunity to write everything down in advance.
- Taking a long time to adapt to a new group of people.
- Being scared shitless of interacting with people for the first time, even if it's something inconsequential like posting online.
- Revealing too many details about my private life after I've adapted.
- Struggling with eye contact.
Emotional regulation
Section titled 'Emotional regulation'- Getting upset to the point of a mental breakdown when suddenly reminded of a currently worrying topic.
- Recalling negative events related to that topic and getting angry that I let them happen.
- Punching myself, usually in the thighs, sometimes causing bruises, to stop myself from recalling them.
Irrational fears
Section titled 'Irrational fears'- Punishing myself for merely thinking of something bad, like performing an act of extreme violence, "because if I don't make it stop, it'll get worse" or "because I'm not a bad person, and I need to prove it to myself".
- Blowing a minor setback, like a health issue, out of proportion "because what if it's more serious than it looks" and thinking through every unrealistic way it could result in my slow and painful death.
- Punishing myself for doing nothing about that setback "because I'm responsible for it, so I have to do something" when there's nothing that can be done about it anymore.
- Punishing myself for doing something which makes sense right now but which would probably look awkward if someone else was around "because what if someone notices it somehow" when there's no good reason to suspect that.
Productivity
Section titled 'Productivity'- Complete lack of motivation by things that I'm not currently obsessed over, even when they're crucial for survival.
- Getting stuck and not being able to think of what to do when finally trying to start doing something.
- Spending too much time trying to come up with all possible failure options "because what if I haven't thought it through well enough, and I'm gonna make another stupid mistake that can be prevented right now".
- Spending too much time trying to find out whether I should be doing tasks in this specific order "because what if I'm wasting my time when I could be doing something more important first".
Avoidance of responsibility
Section titled 'Avoidance of responsibility'- Not doing difficult tasks when I absolutely should, even at the cost of catastrophic failure, "so I don't have to deal with the consequences of fucking up" or "because I'm worthless and I shouldn't bother trying".
- Trying to find any excuse to stop doing the task after having already started "because I'll fuck it up in the end, and it's better to give up now" or "because it's not worth doing anyway".
- Asking for help and making up bullshit excuses to avoid doing anything "because I deserve to suffer" or "because I want to give up".
- Postponing tasks for way too long, regardless of how little effort they require, "because they require doing something".
- Refusing to do anything meaningful when completely bored "because I want to keep wasting time" while still constantly thinking about it.
Repetitive behaviors
Section titled 'Repetitive behaviors'- (Childhood) Knocking on things a certain number of times "or I'm going to die".
- (Circa 2022) Pretending I don't know something in order to trick people into explaining it to me "to see if they actually know about it" or "to find new information about it without making an awkward question".
- (Semi-ongoing) Trying to suppress invasive thoughts by either ridiculing them or thinking something worse. Makes the thoughts stay for even longer.
- (Semi-ongoing) Repeating my todo list for today in my head over and over "or I'm going to forget to do something again".
- (Semi-ongoing) Purposefully involving myself in arguments with idiots online or imagining arguments with an exaggerated version of them that dodges all attempts at reasoning "because they're wrong and I need to always be ready to debate them".
- (Ongoing) Checking something way more times than necessary, particularly when it's not obvious whether it's true (e.g. "is this photo blurry?"), "so I know it for certain" or "so I'm sure I'm not making it up".
- (Ongoing) Obsessing over whether I really like a certain piece of media and avoiding it "so I don't get tired of it" or purposefully subjecting myself to it more times than necessary "so people don't think I'm a poser". Causes me to develop a negative association with that piece of media, even though I like it, which fucks with my brain.
- (Ongoing) Reading things I'd written to someone over and over "because I did a such good job phrasing them".
- (Very ongoing) Listening to the same song on repeat for hours.
- Random fidgeting, like tapping or beatboxing, that pops out once in a while but which doesn't take so much time as to be harmful.