Okay, so get WHAT in the relationship made you functional / what kind of an organization of time, and thinking of yourself / what were your thinking styles & habits & routines during, as well as needs met that aren't met otherwise - learn to be meeting them, for yourself, recreate what you were doing during that relationship.
Because it's rarely JUST the other person, that change is yours.
The change didn't come from an action, it came from a perception that I was liked by someone of the opposite sex, and by extension that I was loveable, good the way I am, life is good, etc. I found myself naturally motivated to do things instead of feeling like I'm just tolerating something that sucks, I felt comfortable going to sleep, I felt comfortable looking in a mirror, everything changed. There's no other way to get back there without sourcing that love from somewhere, no series of actions can do it besides maybe actions that lead to me loving myself again. What I was doing during the time is completely irrelevant IMO, the change happened pretty suddenly and everything else followed, when I lost what I was dependent on everything collapsed hard.
Changing your day-to-day is what constitutes trying. You don't have to start big, you can start small. But starting is everything.
So - you are basing your concept of wellness on how you felt during a relationship that lasted two weeks.
That wasn't wellness. That was a dopamine surge.
You've got yourself psychoanalyzed down to the most minute detail. You've conceptualized trauma in your life that doesn't exist, in order to make sense of what is probably a combination of depression and anxiety. , that you need secure attachment in order to fill it, that you are completely capable of finding utter fulfillment, and that mushrooms showed you all this and two weeks with a girlfriend confirmed it.
I can't disagree with you more about almost everything you say. I think trying to change day-to-day habits is not relevant to "trying", when the important change takes place your habits change naturally. I understand that how good I felt during such a short term relationship is obviously exaggerated, however most of what I noticed had nothing to do with the dope spike. Singing more, dancing more, being overtly positive, yeah that's dopamine spike. Being able to sleep without feeling unsafe, having motivation to do things, having self esteem, being able to tolerate normal stress, not minding doing maintenance tasks, not feeling like the world is a dark place, not having a headache 24/7, none of those things are the dopamine spike, they are just normal life for a healthy person.
I haven't conceptualized trauma that doesn't exist, you can maybe argue that it's technically traumatic according to the DSM, but any rational person should understand how genuinely and severely traumatic it is to be mistreated and then abandoned by your mother at a very young age. It's also pretty straight forward to see how having that kind of early experience can cause a snowball effect throughout your life. If this is depression and anxiety then PTSD is a meaningless concept. There is a really obvious void with a really obvious cause that was really obviously confirmed when it was filled in an unhealthy way. I figured this out over years of therapy and a lifetime of struggle.
I feel like even with the lack of information and lack of depth that comes with text forum posts, the picture is so clear that it's impossible to miss unless you have a personal bias, the cause and effect is pretty direct.
