I get addicted to anything that distracts me from knowing I exist

It’s an unfortunate way that I learned at an early age to cope with the trauma. As a child it was maladaptive daydreaming and overeating until I got numb. As an adult if I kick one bad habit it’s just replaced with another. I can stop smoking but then I drink too much. If I stop drinking then I start binge eating. If I’m completely sober then I’m spending way too much time on TikTok to avoid life. The least destructive distraction is video games.

I have just always distracted myself from existing in the present moment as much as I can and I’m realizing now the older I get that’s why it seems like years are passing by in a flash. It’s because I don’t want to be me and face the reality of what I’ve been through and instead I find immense comfort in dissociating the days away.

Always hating myself, never developing confidence/self esteem from such an early age affected my development to the point where I robbed myself of so many opportunities bc I was conditioned to think I would fail and be judged just as harshly by the rest of the world so I never really lived, just survived to the next day. Then when my parents died life became “Ok what can we do today to not repetitively think about how violently they were murdered?” And my way of survival is dissociation. I’m never here in the way that some people are.

Being self aware is torturous in itself because I know I need to find a way to start living in the present moment I don’t want to keep wasting my life and feeling stuck inside of myself. But how do people clock into reality consistently every single day? The thought is so exhausting and mentally draining to me. If the intrusive thoughts or flashbacks are too intense I will rage quit having a brain by taking a nap bc I just can’t I’ve been dealing with it for so long and it won’t stop.

My therapist and I have worked out positive coping mechanisms that I enjoy. Walks, yoga/stretching, journaling, trying new hobbies, etc and I know these are good for me but they just make me feel like Squidward when he moved to that really nice neighborhood and couldn’t get into the routine. It doesn’t hit the same. After dissociating for most of my life in various ways, being present feels weird and performative.

Dissociating is unhealthy but feels so nice because it’s like did I just lose 8 hours of my life today that I’ll never get back and doing this consistently is causing me to squander the entirety of my twenties? Heck yeah. Do I need to leave the house and speak to another human being? Absolutely, I do! Unfortunately, being able to turn off my brain and forget I exist and what happened happened is so comforting that I keep choosing it every day.