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Reluctance to Present Yourself Socially, Due to Your "Mental Backbone" Being too Frail

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,873
This thread is about ME/CFS patients who feel too mentally frail to engage socially. I am not talking about the state of being too tired, or being too brain fogged to engage socially; I am talking about the state where your "mental backbone" feels too weak to want take part in any human interactions.

In this state of weak "mental backbone", you feel kind of unsure about who your are, you feel uneasy about offering any of your thoughts or opinions to others, feel very uneasy about presenting yourself to others or extending yourself to others, and feel uncomfortable in expressing your personality to others.

In this frail state, you feel you don't want to engage or interact with the world, in case there is some comeback. You only feel comfortable in interacting with the world if you can do so at a distance, such that your are insulated from any results. Thus for example, you feel much more comfortable interacting anonymously online, where you are distanced from the world, and can run away from the interaction at any time just by getting up from your computer.

In this frail state, it feels that your strength of mind has gone, and you become feeble emotionally. It is the very opposite of character and charisma.

Of course you can use willpower and determination to try to cope with this frail mental disposition when you have to socialize and interact with people, and you may do this successfully, such that people don't even notice that there is anything wrong; but this does not diminish the fact that internally you are suffering from this frail mental state.

I wish I knew the correct psychological technical term for this frail condition of mind, but I don't, so I am trying my best to describe the condition. Perhaps some of the psychologists here might be able to put a name to these mental symptoms — symptoms which I suspect are common in a substantial number of ME/CFS patients.

Before I go on, let me say that although I suffered from this frail mental state for several years, I discovered that very low doses of the drug amisulpride work wonders in vanquishing these symptoms of mental frailty. So fortunately, for me most of the old character and charisma is back.

The main purpose of this thread is to pass on this information: that amisulpride in very low doses of 12.5 to 25 mg daily can abolish most of these symptoms of a frail "mental backbone".

Amisulpride is generally useful for ME/CFS, and a thread on the general benefits of this drug for ME/CFS can be found here.

I was only reminded of this frail mental state as I decided to take a break from amisulpride for a few days, and very soon I felt this mental frailty return to a degree. But within hours of taking some amisulpride, the mental frailty disappeared. So amisulpride does seem to be an effective treatment for mental frailty.

Note that amisulpride is not yet licensed in the US, but is available in Europe. Anyone can of course buy this drug from overseas pharmacies such as this one.
 

Esther12

Senior Member
Messages
13,774
It is weird with CFS being a diagnosis which so many take to mean 'someone who should be treated with disdain', but I tend to just not worry about things going wrong. Better to say what you think and have it go wrong eighty percent of the time than just staying quiet.

I think that being exhausted does reduce one's ability to be confident in ones own thinking, and this combined with the prejudices which surround illness (and particularly CFS) can reduce one's confidence further... but that I find it preferable to just just what I want anyway. I was unusually bolshy prior to falling ill though, so maybe CFS has just toned me down to normal. I expect that everyone's different in how they respond to these difficulties, and that lots of different CFS patients face different difficulties.
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,873
I think that being exhausted does reduce one's ability to be confident in ones own thinking, and this combined with the prejudices which surround illness (and particularly CFS) can reduce one's confidence further

Yes that's true, but even on days when I am very tired and brain fogged, I can feel quite comfortable and content with other people around me, and I am happy and pleased with their presence and company.

However, if I am hit by the condition of mental frailty that I describe above, then even when I am feeling fairly energetic, it is uncomfortable to interact with people, and I feel uneasy about extending myself towards others.

The nearest thing I can think of, in terms of a label for this mental frailty state, is some aspect of a schizophrenia spectrum-like condition, as there is a tendency to social isolation in schizophrenia and its related conditions.
 

Dreambirdie

work in progress
Messages
5,569
Location
N. California
When my brain is functioning at a reasonable level, and my energy is up for it, I actually enjoy connecting with people. But when my brain is in slo-mo, and my energy is tanked or on the way down, I really just want to be alone in my house or in nature. I see nothing problematic about this. I don't have a confidence issue preventing me from engaging with others whom I have similar interests with. If I don't have interests in common though, I feel quickly bored and drained.

The problem that prevents me from most social interaction is that I have MCS in addition to CFS, so there are not a lot of people I can stand next to (literally) without getting blasted by their shampoo and laundry detergent odors. :p That trashes me very quickly. Fortunately, I live in an environmentally progressive town with quite a few all organic people, so there are at least a couple friends I can have over occasionally without the dreaded chem-exposure.

What screws up my head is when I start to think that I SHOULD feel social when I don't, or that I SHOULD be interested in a particular someone, when I'm not. The second guessing thing. I'm not sure where that comes from, but on a bad brain day I can feel fogged out enough to think myself into confusion about what I really want to do, and think that has to do with being somehow fragile. But really it has to do with not being completely honest with myself about my preferences. On a clear day, I have no doubt about those. ;)