Anonymous: thank you for everything you post. It helps me feel normal again, knowing theres even tiny things I can try to help myself. I love/need this blog

uwu

thewaitingplace-andasecondchance: but what if you *know* you have some disorder? its not bad to be self aware, right?

Bein’ self aware is rad, I fully support that! But you don’t always *know* for a fact you have something. My point is that it can be really dangerous and that’s why I’m against it. If you’ve got problems, working on them is more important than knowing what exactly you have unless you can see a professional. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with being self aware, but there is something wrong when being self aware turns into harming yourself whether you mean to or not. u_u

Anonymous: i really think you need to get off your high horse, acting like you're some expert on mental illness. i agree it's stupid to glamorise it but at the same time there is nothing wrong with someone just thinking they have a mental illness, surely its better than someone believing there's something fundamentally wrong with them and that they're just not normal etc. You aren't a special snowflake who gets to patronise other people.

A post from a couple hours ago.

“Phone blogging since I’m on the bus but a lot of you were asking in response to the last video about whether I thought it was okay to THINK you have a disorder like social anxiety or depression.

Yeah, I think it’s all good if you’re like, planning to see a professional to get further information or whatever and want to tell them you think you have ______ or ______, etc.

Thinking about the possibility of having something can be deluding and harmful, but if you talk it through with a psychologist it might benefit you, if that makes sense.”

Hm.

Phone blogging since I’m on the bus but a lot of you were asking in response to the last video about whether I thought it was okay to THINK you have a disorder like social anxiety or depression.

Yeah, I think it’s all good if you’re like, planning to see a professional to get further information or whatever and want to tell them you think you have ______ or ______, etc.

Thinking about the possibility of having something can be deluding and harmful, but if you talk it through with a psychologist it might benefit you, if that makes sense.

Anonymous: for anon; I've done exposure therapy most of my life with theater--more than half of my life, starting from when my social anxiety manifested itself. Because of this, public speaking is 'easy' for me (everything else still sucks though). Not everyone with social anxiety is in the same place, or has the same problems, for many different reasons.

I am under the impression that the anon from before who messaged me about young girls self-harming is perhaps mistaking me for another blog or something because I’m trying my best but I have no recollection of ever saying that.

Again though, I could be wrong, but to throw it out there if I did say that, I definitely disagree with it now. You can be any age and understand depression/self-harming urges.

Anonymous: Why are you running this blog? You guys are just so young. I don't really think you understand half the topics you are talking about.

Being sixteen doesn’t mean I’m completely uneducated. I’ve been going through depression for a good 3+ years, anxiety for maybe 4+ and other things as well.

While I’m in no place to do things like diagnosing people or prescribing medication, I am in a position to give people advice and my opinions on certain things.

That’s your decision or opinion to think I don’t understand the things I discuss, but I am inclined to disagree with you.

Anonymous: it bothers me how young you are. You wrote something a while ago about younger girls writing about how they self-injure themselves, and how you don't know how they could understand yet. Well you're the same age as those "little girls". I just don't think your advice is always accurate.

I don’t recall ever writing that considering I don’t think that at all… I could be wrong and have forgotten, but, I really don’t remember saying that, and if I did, my opinion has changed considerably since then.

Anonymous: really? you have anxiety and yet you're posting videos on the web for thousands of people to see. yea right, that takes a lot of coincidence.

Anxiety and social anxiety come in many forms. I’ve had severe social anxiety and general anxiety/paranoia for a good few years. Despite my recovery with my anxiety being well underway, I am still very nervous about making videos. I talk a lot faster than I usually do in real life, I stutter and say ‘um’ a lot, but you guys don’t see that particular stuff aside from the fast talking because of the magic of iMovie. I generally have to edit down a 15 minute video into a 6 minute one.

I am unable to film outside my house let alone my room most of the time. I try to take loud enough for the camera to hear me, but quiet enough so no one in the house hears me. My anxiety DOES affect my vlogging. I’m not as animate as I would like, my voice isn’t as deep as I would like especially because of my nervousness, my hair usually doesn’t look right and I constantly have to fix it, etc.

Anxiety and social anxiety come in many, many different forms. _____ trigger it for some people, for others ______ doesn’t.