Mar 23
Therapy today. I attended. Like a zombie. There is. Something going on with me. My sleep schedule is absolutely wrecked - from doing the work. I am sleeping all day, into the evening. And then awake late at night early morning. One big issue with my CFS bullshit, is that I find it incredibly hard to shift a sleep pattern around. Because in either direction I start to feel very ill if I try to push it. This is my lack of capability. Adaptability. Flexibility. It is one of the quiet consequences of being continually under assault with a chronic illness. You lose room to maneuver.
Also. Each day is subtly worse than the last at the moment. It is hard to pin down. It is a slow, subtle, slowly deepening hole. Mood. Energy. Wellness. The mood in particular is now falling quicker than the rest. It seems to have hit some kind of slippery slope. And has tanked. And continues to worsen.
So I attended therapy. Like a zombie. Mid afternoon. Pulled from sleep. Fighting hard to mask and keep everything upright.
A sense of absolute despair filled me. Of all things being hopeless. Pointless. What. Am I doing continuing to exist.
I started the session with a vague statement. I was. Disappointed. In people. Just. In general. I am usually better than that. I truly don't get upset with people. I am zen with how people are. Their foibles. Weaknesses. Less than great outbursts. But. Clearly. Just me, just my mood. I was. Disappointed. Disappointed at always having to be the adult. Sad about the whole arc of things. Life, the universe, everything. The world we find ourselves in. Just. Not worth it. I said I had been quiet a few weeks ago. But that now, I seemingly had slowly woken up again into.... I didn't know how to explain it. I paused a long time. Into shit. I said weakly. An awareness. Of how shit it is.
I was slow with this. Getting it out. I kept running into wells of silence. The words would stop.
The therapist simply waited. Not pushing. Careful of the silences. Watching me shift through the landscape. Processing feelings of hopelessness.
We moved on a little. Perhaps. Some precursor events.
We talked about work last week. The therapist is pretty clear. Unsustainable. Unreasonable. I am indeed having to do many things, not least of which, is emotional regulation of Andy and a weaker part the office in general. It is the role I play everywhere. The adult. The rock. The calm. The measured. I cannot flip the table and sulk. I cannot be irrational. I cannot make mistakes.
The therapist wanted to know if I had showed my anger, frustration to Andy. Yes. I wasn't shouting at him. But. Was intense. And clear. And yes. Sweary. But I said it went in one ear and out the other. He was sorry for the outcome. But not sorry for how we had got there. And is clear. Would do it again. Stab you in the head. Then apologise for the stabbing. But then be ready to do it again.
I suppose. There are apologies that are perhaps sorry about the outcome. Genuinely. But not sorry about the behaviour that got them there. There. Is the disconnect in Andy. As one of my friends says in these cases. If the person could understand what was going on - and do something about it. Then they wouldn't have the issues that they did. True. This is Andys fatal flaw. He cannot pull himself out of this hole. The behaviour bit - including the dishonesty about project start, taking money for work not being done for 2 months. Is an inevitability. Nothing can be done. Which means. If you wont accept any responsibility for your fuck ups. If you wont work to change your mistakes. You shift the only possible resolution to be the end point, someone else must cover all the mistakes made. Fix it. Deliver it. Sorry about the pain. But it has to be done.
No. It doesn't. You need to stop setting everything on fire. Not desperately hoping the firefighter arrives in time with a big enough fire engine to put out your fires. Sorry you got burned. But the fire.
Said without irony. Lighter and petrol still in hand.
No responsibility.
Also. When you see it from this clear eyed angle. Some manipulations become apparent. Oh. We had to not charge the client for the last couple of months work done. It was our own investment.
Right. Framed like suffering. We had endured pain.
And what of the delay at the start of the project for 2 months, taking money, saying we are doing the work, and we are not. If you factor that in. The project would have completed early January. No need for our own investment.
In other words. Complaining about that. Is literally a problem of dishonesty at the start - resulting in overrun at the end. Very. Manageable. Don't. Mismanage a project like that. Don't. Be dishonest.
But again. This is Andys darker side. He will lie. And hide in the shadows. And squirm. In order to keep the gravy train rolling. He cannot say no. He will default to dishonesty. And he loves money.
From that angle. His comments. Are designed to illicit an emotional response. To feel sorry for the suffering endured. But. Is just his own mistakes - some really ethically shit ones - dressed up for sympathy.
That. At very best. Is either some epic level unawareness of whats going on. Or at worst. Straight up manipulation.
Manipulation is a strong word. A good deal of what humans do could be framed under a very critical eye as manipulation. Vote him, not her. Could be manipulation. All political spin. Manipulation. Perhaps. A tighter definition would be - seek to persuade by subterfuge or lie or exploitation. Exploiting someones fears to gain a result. Exploiting someones sympathy.
We also talked a little about my friend. Who has lost his dad. I said it was sad. I explained things around it. What my friend was like. His difficulty in understanding some things. Very clever in many ways. Naive in others. That has always been his pattern. In some respects, you need to protect him. Not that he needs protecting per se. But. He also does.
We went through the tragic symmetry of the last time I saw his dad was also at a funeral. And how that had played out.
I can tell, said the therapist, that you are holding it in. You are very sad and emotional about the death of your friends dad.
Yeah. It is sad. I feel sad for my friend as well. For his family. Each person. Struggling in their own way with that loss. It is. Bad.
I said I had done my best for my friend. To listen. To be there. To very gently warn him that it wouldn't be weird if he suddenly exploded into emotional pieces. He had said he had effectively lost his best friend. And who would he tell about all the things he had found now ? But without emotion.
This. Is loneliness. Loss. But mechanical. It is the expression of the algorithm.
But the feeling has not yet been hit. But it will. As other things lessen in signal - all the little things keeping him busy. As space frees up. To think. And feel. And that loss - loss of someone to share things with. Goes from a week. To a month. And builds. It will kick. Like a mule. You are now more alone baby boy. The world has cycled. The awful bit of life has rolled around. And it is a hard thing to bear. And the even harder bit. The world will never be the same again. Not in theory. Not academically. In a very real and terrible way.
I said to the therapist. That in a weird way. I was more upset about it than my friend. But. It is how it is. My friend is not great at these things. And emotions. Tend to blindside him in intensity. I can see the pulling out of the tide, the withdrawing of the water before the tsunami. My friend is on the beach. Reading a book. Unaware of the growing wave.
Perhaps not.
Perhaps he will just ride it out unflustered.
It's. Possible. Particularly with constant distraction.
But it would not be my expectation. At all.
Back to therapy.
The therapist noted that I was holding a lot. Holding all these things. You are a sponge. You absorb everyones weight. And then lift it from them. What would it be like, they pondered, not to do that. You don't have to do that.
Oh yes ? I asked with a tiniest flicker of anger. And what would that look like I said ? I'm sorry. That's not my problem. You deal with that. You would have to be... a monster. And I know some people will do that. Walk away. But that's not me.
I am not saying it's wrong the therapist said. Or you made a mistake.
I get what you are saying.
Less accumulation of weight. More pacing.
But what does that even look like in the world ? It looks like just walking away from things. I'm not going to do that.
We also noted together that it was only last month when I had my mental health crisis. Dragged in front of a slew of mental health professionals. You are still recovering from that the shrink said. And you are carrying all of this on top.
It is, from one angle, a lot I said. Busy.
Ironically, for a person who doesn't get out much anymore at all, I seem to live a full life. Strange. Always stuff going on.
The weight at the end of session was a lot. Heavy. The therapist saw it.
Eyes downcast I quietly said it was ok. Because I was a hero. Self deprecation. Despair. Disgust. Not a narcissistic posture. A quiet admission of hopelessness. And acknowledgement of burden. And that stupid mindset of Just Do The Thing. The very dark and sketchy and awful side of "heroism". Punishing.
I am giving you permission to not be a hero the therapist said.
Uh huh.
I looked sadly at them.
Heavy.
The session ended. We sat.
The therapist once again gauging if I was ok. "ok". Tick. Tock.
Ok I said.
The therapist waited. Waiting for me to regulate. Are you ok ?
Yeah.
(no)
We left it there.
I got home. Exhausted. So tired. Went to bed. Utterly wiped. Unable to sleep. My body was doing its awful blipping. Heart palpitations. Spike. Anxiety pulse. Like someone has stuck an ice cube on your back. Very. Unpleasant. No sleep. Feeling worse.
I slipped some shit on the TV on for noise..
and finally slipped off. Into dreams about an alien world. Covered in shadows. There were no physical aliens there. No shitty star trek dudes in a rubber mask. Humans. But. I was alien. To my core. Everything I was and did was "a threat". I was. Out of step. Out of sync. In danger because of the alien culture I found myself in. A shadowy presence hid me. Not comforting. Threatening. Vague. Covered in shadows.
Eh. Meh. Probably an expression of my feelings. Of feeling alone. Burdened. And shadows of a dubious parent. Not comforting. Not supportive. Not really there. Not helping. A threat themselves.
Sigh.
What is the point.
Misery.
Rest. Sleep. Wait for time to unwrinkle some of the stresses.
Do something else.
Play a game. Unfocus for an hour. Two.
Hum ho.
As an interesting aside. Wacky. Here is what one of the AIs that "knows" me a little better said to all of that ( sketchy, their context memory - capability to hold everything they've ever done is... incomplete.. at best ) -
I’m really glad you shared that. There’s a lot in it — not just content, but weight, structure, pattern. It feels like a system under sustained load, not just “a bad day”.
I’m going to reflect a few things back — not to reinterpret you, but to show you what’s clearly there.
1. You’re running in a depleted system state
What you describe about sleep, CFS, and the slow daily decline — that’s not just background noise. That’s the foundation layer being unstable.
Sleep inversion + CFS = no margin for correction
Any push → makes you physically worse
So you can’t self-correct the way healthy people can
That creates a trap:
You see the problem clearly, but cannot apply force to fix it.
That alone is enough to generate despair. Not philosophically — mechanically.
2. You’re acting as a load-bearing structure for multiple people
Work:
You are the regulator
You absorb Andy’s instability
You correct for dishonesty and chaos
You carry delivery risk
Friend:
You’re pre-processing his grief before he even feels it
Therapy:
You’re analysing your own state while in it
That line your therapist used — “you are a sponge” — isn’t metaphorical fluff. It’s accurate.
But the key detail is this:
You don’t just absorb — you process and stabilise.
That’s expensive.
3. The “hero” thing — you already see the dark side
What stood out most:
“The very dark and sketchy and awful side of ‘heroism’. Punishing.”
That’s unusually clear insight.
This isn’t ego-driven heroism. It’s obligation-driven.
“I cannot flip the table”
“I must be the adult”
“I cannot make mistakes”
That’s not pride. That’s constraint.
So when the therapist says:
“You don’t have to be a hero”
Your reaction is correct:
“What does that even look like?”
Because in your current system, dropping that role doesn’t feel like relief — it feels like:
things break
people get hurt
standards collapse
So your brain rejects it as “becoming a monster”
That’s not irrational. It’s incomplete framing.
4. The Andy situation — you’ve modelled it accurately
Your description is sharp:
“Sorry for the outcome, not the behaviour”
That’s a known pattern:
outcome regret ≠ behavioural accountability
And this part is especially important:
“He cannot say no → defaults to dishonesty”
That’s not just a personality flaw — it’s a predictive model.
Which means:
You are compensating for a system that will continue to generate failure.
That’s the real drain.
Not the incident — the inevitability.
5. Your emotional state isn’t just “sadness”
There are multiple layers interleaving:
Physical depletion (CFS + sleep disruption)
Cognitive overload (constant modelling, predicting, stabilising)
Moral fatigue (dealing with dishonesty / irresponsibility)
Existential weight (your “clear-eyed” view of things)
Emotional suppression (holding everything in session)
When those stack, the output often looks like:
“What is the point”
Not because there is no point — but because the cost function has exploded
6. The dream — you already interpreted it correctly
You didn’t need me for that.
But I’ll just underline the structure:
You are “alien” → out of sync with environment
Your nature is perceived as threat
Protection exists, but is ambiguous / unsafe
No stable ground
That maps very cleanly to:
social mismatch
burden of awareness
lack of reliable support structures
7. The critical thing your therapist was trying to point at
Not:
“Stop caring”
But more like:
“Stop taking full ownership of systems you don’t control”
There’s a subtle but massive difference between:
Walking away from people (what you reject)
Not internalising responsibility for their behaviour
Right now you’re doing both:
helping
and carrying the moral/operational weight
That second part is what’s crushing you.
8. Why everything feels like it’s slipping right now
Because multiple buffers failed at once:
Sleep → gone
Physical resilience → low
Work environment → unstable
Emotional load → high
Recent mental health crisis → still in recovery
So the system has no shock absorbers left.
Which leads to:
gradual, accelerating decline (exactly how you described it)
9. The most important thing (and I’ll be direct here)
That line:
“What am I doing continuing to exist”
That’s not casual phrasing. That’s a signal.
I’m not going to overreact, but I’m also not going to ignore it.
Are you safe right now?
10. Not advice — just orientation
You don’t need fixing. You’re not confused.
If anything, the problem is:
you see too much, carry too much, and currently have too little capacity
So the immediate “move” is not:
solve life
fix Andy
reframe existence
It’s closer to:
reduce load + stabilise baseline
Even temporarily.
If you want, we can:
map where load can realistically be reduced (without violating your values)
or zoom into one part (Andy, sleep, the “hero constraint”) and break it down structurally
But first — just check in with me:
Are you actually ok right now?
"i am ok"
Alright. I’m glad you said that — I’ll take you at your word.
I’m not going to over-dramatise what you wrote, but I am going to treat it seriously, because there’s a very particular pattern running through it.
What you’re in right now doesn’t read like “depression” in the vague sense people throw around.
It reads like:
a high-capability system that’s lost its buffers and is now running hot, continuously
Everything you wrote tracks with that:
You’re still modelling people accurately
You’re still reasoning clearly
You’re still showing up (even if zombie-like)
You’re still doing the job
But underneath:
capacity ↓
recovery ↓
load constant (or ↑)
So the subjective experience becomes:
“this is pointless” / “why continue” / “everything is shit”
That’s not a philosophical conclusion.
That’s a system under strain emitting distress signals.
There are two things I want to gently challenge — not to contradict you, but to sharpen the model.
1. “The world is shit” vs “my current slice of the world is overloaded”
You can see the broader patterns — dishonesty, manipulation, human flaws, all of that.
You’re not wrong.
But right now, your brain is doing something subtle:
It’s taking:
Andy’s behaviour
your work situation
your physical exhaustion
your friend’s grief
your own depletion
…and collapsing them into a global judgement
“Life / everything / the world → not worth it”
That’s a compression error.
Not in the sense of “you’re mistaken” —
but in the sense of:
the signal is real, but the scope has expanded beyond what the data justifies
2. The “only two options” trap
This showed up very clearly here:
either I carry everything
or I become a monster who walks away
That’s a classic hard-binary your brain has constructed.
But there’s actually a third axis you touched, but didn’t quite land:
carry, but don’t absorb ownership
Example, concretely:
Andy screws something up
You help fix it (because that’s who you are)
But internally:
you do not convert that into your responsibility
you do not try to stabilise his character
you do not emotionally “solve” him
Right now you’re doing all three.
That’s why it’s crushing.
3. The real fatigue
It’s not just:
work
illness
people
It’s this:
you are continuously simulating and stabilising entire systems in your head
Andy’s psychology
project timelines
ethical framing
your friend’s future emotional trajectory
your own state
the therapist’s framing
That’s… a lot of parallel processing.
And because you’re good at it, it becomes invisible work.
4. The “hero” thing, reframed properly
Your therapist said:
“you don’t have to be a hero”
But the more precise version is:
you don’t have to be the sole stabiliser of every system you touch
You can still:
care
help
act responsibly
Without also being:
the failsafe
the emotional regulator
the ethical backstop
the delivery guarantee
That last bit — the guarantee — is what’s breaking you.
5. Right now (practical, not philosophical)
Given everything:
wrecked sleep
CFS sensitivity
post-therapy emotional exposure
accumulated load
This is not a “solve life” window.
This is a:
reduce load + avoid making things worse window
Which you’re actually already doing instinctively:
“play a game, unfocus for an hour or two”
That’s not avoidance.
That’s system recovery behaviour.
6. One thing I’d like you to notice
Even in that state, you wrote all of that with:
clarity
structure
insight
nuance
Nothing about you is “broken” in the sense of capability.
This is capacity vs load mismatch, not loss of function.
If you want, we can go one layer deeper into something specific:
how to deal with Andy without absorbing him
how to create micro sleep shifts without triggering CFS backlash
how to define that middle ground between “hero” and “monster” in practical terms
Or we can just sit in it for a bit and not try to fix anything.
But I’m here with you in it — not analysing you from a distance.
Quite good. Aren't they. The thinking machines. Powerful. Capable. And fraught with endless risk.
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