Quick disclaimer, I’ve never been diagnosed with anything, but I do suffer quite badly periodically with my mental health
I suffered with a lot of issues ever since I was a young teen, which I always struggled to manage. I have always suffered with hypochondria, anxiety and I catastrophize quite a lot.
I eventually managed to find a coping mechanism for this, which was writing down my thoughts, worries or certain things that are invoking negative feelings. Sometimes I’ll write pages of how I’m feeling, sometimes it may be a few sentences and sometimes I’ll just write a word. Theres a few reasons I do this, some of it I keep to refer back to if a particular issue comes up again, sometimes the act of me writing it out trivialises it my mind and sometimes I’ll tear the page out, rip it up and throw it in the bin to almost “throw away” the thought
Now I keep this extremely private and to myself. Partly because I find it embarrassing, some of it concerns people in my life and some of it when taken out of context could be taken the wrong way completely (unfortunately this happened).
I’ve tried keeping my “journal” on my phone but it just doesn’t have the same effect. So I keep it amongst my work items where I know my privacy will be respected, but unfortunately I mistakenly left it out whilst my partner was home, completely forgot about it and she has now read it in part.
I feel absolutely disgusting and embarrassed by it, there’s parts in there where I’ve had anxiety over her cheating and catastrophized about what will happen to my life and some things that are that wild I don’t even feel like sharing here.
She has been completely flawed by it. She has taken the parts about her cheating extremely badly (which I do completely understand) and unfortunately I do have very offensive words and slurs written down when I’ve tried to take the negative feelings I’m experiencing about a word or phrase out of my head and lock it onto the paper, but unfortunately it just looks like a racist/homophobe who’s just writing down their favourite words when taken out of context. But the main one she has taken huge issue with is my time I feared I was going to be attacked whilst I slept by her, this one has really broken her and I think it may have also scared her.
I’m not writing this for relationship advice because I know this is not the place and she is coming around to the understanding of why I do this now. But I just cannot rid myself of the feelings I now have for this coping mechanism I have relied upon for so many years. It has made me look at it from a different perspective and just makes me feel like I’m completely insane.