What's something that you learned about yourself recently?

That if I reach out for help before things get bad, they don’t get as bad for as long, and that it makes people happy that I reached out.

I’m not a burden, I’m a person.

I’m not a burden, I’m a person.

Oh man. I FEEL this one. Personally still working on it, but it’s getting a little easier.
- I’ll always be working on it, but it helps to have those moments of hearing “I’m glad you called me” in my back pocket when hesitating.
I'm still working on this, great advice!

I am way better at everything I like to do since I stopped drinking all the time!

If you had asked me 2 years ago I would have said a couple of drinks makes everything easier lol

Absolutely. I gave up drinking 2 years as well. I'm a better artist, musician, employee, husband, and father. Alcohol just sucks.
- I would have sworn to you that I couldn't play guitar well without 2 bourbon and cokes first lol
  
  Now I'm learning new techniques I would have considered to be way too difficult before!

I am immune to a lot of anaesthetics and painkillers. This was figured out after surgery.

Ouch
- Yep. Changing my prescription today.
If you have red hair, that might be the reason.
- Nope. Lots of gray, no red.

The older I get, the more I want to be honest with people (without being a dick about it) and have them be more honest with me (ditto, non-dickishness).

Being married, I find that, in order to not be a dick, sometimes just letting it go is better than honestly. I’ve learned that, even if my SO did something incredibly stupid, I don’t have to call everything out unless it’s affecting our lives negatively.
- Spouses can have a little stupid, as a treat.
Not even a couple of years after being a teenager, and I find being honest with myself and others to be one of the most rewarding things I can do. It just makes me very happy with everything.

I was surprised to realize that I’m too tired for feedback.

Been a feedback junky my whole life and actively seeking it out. But after my last two jobs really beating me down without any sign of respect or good intention, I’m just totally burned out. Unless we have a very long standing, well established relationship based on mutual respect, and unless I know that you know more than me in the area we’re about to talk about… I don’t wanna hear how you think I’m doing and I don’t feel like doing it better right now.

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- Is it the right time to say it, the right thing to say, am I the right person to say it, are they in the right frame of mind to hear it, and is it necessary?
  
  That’s the gold standard of changing people’s behavior for the better, and I rarely hit it.

I very likely have undiagnosed adult adhd. I filled out the official medical diagnosis assistant questionnaire a few weeks ago, and BIG OOOF. I haven't been to a doctor in over a decade, and I just keep putting it off

I really think I have undiagnosed ADHD. Tried getting diagnosed and spent 8 months going from a therapist, to a psychiatrist, and finally an ADHD specialist.

He met with me once, gave me a reaction time test, and asked me what I do for a living. Apparently engineers who have good reaction times are not likely to have ADHD. So.. yay, I'm cured.
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- That's actually not true at all. If you got the TOVA test, it specifically states in their instructions that it will not diagnose someone who does that type of job for a living because you're immune to the tests criteria. So you could score a perfect normal score and still be very very ADHD.
I'm recently diagnosed. Meds don't work for everyone (thankfully they do for me) but just knowing that was the problem has been so fucking life changing. It's made so much of my life make sense, it's allowed to to explore other options for how to make my life work for me, and I've been able to communicate at work my needs to be able to stay on task.
- Praise to methyl

That reason I am angry so often is because I have anxiety.

Now this may be because I am oldish. But I grew up in world where anxiety and depression. all those things luckily existed but where associated with sadness or apathy.

So a lot of situations where I got anxiety, for example to be late or risk of asking stupid question I became really angry.

Making it extremely hard for people to deal with me because of the association was not something that was naturally occurring for people.

So last year I found an article about it and it honestly changed my life. I still get angry but now I can actually try healthy coping mechanisms instead of fighting anything.

Do you by chance have a link to the article? I relate to your comment a lot so I might be in a similar situation
- Here it is. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evolution-the-self/202211/why-anger-is-nothing-more-repressed-anxiety
  
  I also would recommend https://www.calmclinic.com/anxiety/symptoms/anger

I am confident in my knowledge but I lied about my drafting skills when I got hired and it turns out I'm a lot better at CAD than the majority of my coworkers. The people who trained me are EXPERTS so I assumed everyone at my company was just as skilled as them...nope, people submit some real shitty drawings and have no problem putting their name on it. They've got me beat with technical knowledge but I'm the guy who makes the cleanest diagrams.

As someone who was educated on the technical side but had to do drafting and was shit at both, I still think they are just totally different skillets and designers should be allowed to design scribble or whatever and people who are good at drafting should get a raise.
- I completely agree about the skillsets but if you're incapable of creating a clean and readable drawing, you should choose a job that doesn't involve that at all
  
  At my company, the design of a system (high end AV) is done by someone else, they provide a rough sketch if needed and then my role is verifying the functionality and creating the plans, diagrams, and support material for the installers/programmers.
  
  I started in the industry as an installer before moving to programming so it's important to me that I make the field techs' lives easier. But for some coworkers, that is simply not a concern

I think I'm a really unreliable narrator. Some of the stuff I say about myself just turns out to be untrue, particularly as it pertains to likes, dislikes, and my comfort zone. I don't know myself as good as I should, and really need to learn more

I thought that for a long time of my life. Turns out, all of my childhood my feelings, my likes and my dislikes were all invalidated constantly by everyone around me. Which lead me to have no idea who I was or what I wanted.

Not saying that's the same case for you but, might be time to do some inner work.
- Man, I feel this. We weren’t allowed to be ourselves, so I’m still figuring myself out. I think I’ve made some progress, but it’s gonna take some time.
Parental gaslighting/manipulation can distort the child's ability to understand their own emotions, preferences, etc. I'm 50-something and just coming to grips with it. Hopefully you are younger and can work it out with fewer self-sabotaged careers and relationships than I have in my past :-(

I love from connection, not attraction. I haven't had any crushes of the sort in my life. Now with this one girl it has clicked. We just started talking and I just have grown more atracted to her the more we have talked.

I have been doing things because I think other people expect them, not because I actually want to do them. Now figuring out what I should cut out...

Good job. You must feel a sense of freedom now?
- Thank you! It's very liberating, but also a little bit scary to be fully in control over your life.

Waiting for that promotion will likely never come. Working your arse off doesn’t mean you’ll get it either.

Don’t let your job define who you are. Take time off, enjoy your surroundings and make time for your friends and family

Working your arse off doesn’t mean you’ll get it either.

When I was 16 my first boss told me "you may love the company but the company will never love you." It took me decades to internalize that.

That I prefer PlayStation over Xbox. I ended up playing the Killzone, Resistance, and inFamous series as well as Red Dead Redemption on a PS3 and I really liked the dashboard and trophy system. I even got used to the controller. I was a die hard Xbox 360 guy in high school but I think that was mostly because it's what my friends were using.

It does help consoles modding seems to be easier on the PlayStation side of things.

Oh man I have found myself in the exact same boat recently. While I still love Halo, since getting a PS3 in the last year I'm continually impressed with the general maturity level of the system. The system software, the games themselves, having a bluray drive in 2007, it was arguably the better console. Hard to convince pubescent me of that though.

That I needed a little validation as an artist. I’ve been making things all my life, and always felt like a bit of an imposter. I didn’t really care, or thought I didn’t. I recently entered some work to the Royal Academy show, which was accepted, then quickly sold for £1000. I have to admit it felt pretty good.

Wow congrats! One thing I learned about making art is not to seek validation from my friends/family - something about the close association of them to me makes it hard for them to view the art in an unbiased way. So it must of been empowering to have strangers approve of your art. Anyone in your life that hasn't been so supportive, turns out those people were wrong or at best close-minded
- You’re right Bobby, close to home is often too close to home. I definitely enjoyed the stranger love. Hope you’re making some stuff!

I'm burnt out at work.

That keeping in touch with people gives me anxiety and I don’t know why. Even calling my family once in a while feels like such a battle. I haven’t seen one of my sisters in 10 years, and I love her with absolutely no bad feelings! But for some reason it’s so difficult for me to have frequent contact with them

Very sadly same. I have struggled so hard to maintain friendships and family connections throughout my life and am fortunate to have finally found some friends who are patient and persistent enough to basically force me to keep in touch with them, but don't take it personally if I vanish for 6 months without a word. I'm just much happier on my own with my cats, plants, hobbies, and partner and don't even actually remember other people exist a lot of the time.

I don’t like people. Majority of people are exhausting and downright annoying to be around. Whether is commuting and being cut off by them, small talk in a doctors office, or family gatherings for holidays. They all just exhaust me and I can’t wait to get back to my cats. Honestly, my fiancé is the only person that doesn’t make me feel this way as of late.

I have much less hair on top of my head than I thought :(

That I may be autistic. Literally had a friend of 10+ years who works with nonverbal pre-K kiddies with autism say to me "You know you're autistic, right?" So I started taking some tests online and reading some books and stuff, and dang, that would make a lot of sense. Not sure if I want to try and seek an official diagnosis as it is apparently pretty difficult to access in my area. But as an AFAB elder millennial who has struggled my entire life with making friends, interacting socially, and progressing in careers it is really freaking interesting to maybe finally have a reason for that.

ETA that I have spoken to my therapist about this at length and she has casually agreed that I may meet a lot of the criteria and we are spending a lot of time breaking this all down. I'm very fortunate to have the access to mental healthcare that I do have.

I am extremely mentally resilient... don't get me wrong, I'm struggling, but I've been struggling for 10 years now, and I've gotten so used to the extreme stress of some various personal things I can't talk about, and being in limbo for ever for very important, life-changing (for the worst) events....

I'm here, I'm managing, and... no, I'm flourishing. The last year, became a Christian, started playing guitar, photography, collecting watches... I've done so well despite being under the pressure that I am..

Would love to talk about it all, but I really, really, cannot....