I've come here to this site in the hopes that engaging with other autistic people will help me gain insight and grow as a person. I'm afraid this thought is undermined by my negative bias to believe that any effort to improve is fundamentally futile. There's an aspect to my thoughts that wants my efforts to improve to result in failure, so I can justify giving up entirely. The only thing that keeps me going is knowing there are people who would be let down if I gave up. I'm only really doing it for them, but it feels very draining to keep going to efforts on things that I deep down feel aren't going to make things better for me.
I understand a big component of this could be depression and poor present health. That by following through with these changes and improvements, I might hit a point where I start to feel better. But that feels so far away and distant, and I'm terrible at letting myself feel good about anything. I think if I did hit that point where I might start to feel good about things, I'd compulsively want to crush that feeling and affirm my ongoing unhappiness.
So, if anyone has the number of an anthropomorphic animal with a cartoonishly oversized mallet that will flip my personality by way of concussion, I'd appreciate it. Also open to other suggestions.
