memes

Whilst I broadly agree with your sentiment about people being weirdly judgy about some coping measures as opposed to others, I can't help but sympathise with the people who express concern; I do think there are some coping measures that are better than others, in terms of giving us the best chance to grow and potentially thrive. I'm reminded of a couple of words that a chronically suicidal friend of mine coined to describe this kind of thing: "vivagenic" and "vivalytic", roughly meaning "life promoting" and "life destroying" respectively.

For me, there are times when indulging in substances like cannabis is vivagenic. However, I know that I am also prone to chasing an unhealthy kind of escapism sometimes, resulting in substance use that's vivalytic in nature. Although sometimes the solitude of smoking alone is sometimes exactly what I need, I have found a decent correlation between solo smoking and the vivalytic kind of smoking. My own ADHD probably plays into this.

It's not for other people to decide what is vivagenic or vivalytic for you, but I wonder whether some of people's judgemental comments are because it's harder for people to see how you're doing when your coping measures are skewed towards more solitary activities. Beyond their concern, they may also be coming at this from a sort of selfish angle of preferring when you were doing the dance stuff because they may have perceived you as being more of a member of that community — even if they weren't directly interacting with you in that context, it's reassuring to see the people we care about appear to be coping, and community dance is much easier to fit into a conventional model of "coping".

It can be difficult to discern what comments are worth listening to when there's so many: some may be perceptive friends struggling to articulate their concern about potentially vivalytic coping measures; others may be unproductively projecting their own values onto your life and feeling unwarranted concern at things that are working well for you; and then there are people who are just assholes who don't care about your wellbeing but will judge you whatever you do.

This comment got longer than I planned, so I'm not sure how to end this. I suppose the thing that caused me to start writing is that I related to your comment a little too much, and I felt compelled to share my well wishes. I don't know what is best for you, and I know we're all just doing what we can to get by, but you seem like a pretty cool person, so I hope you don't become too isolated, regardless of whatever your coping strategy is. I'm not suggesting you should be doing the dance stuff instead, because God knows I understand how ADHD can lead to a rocky relationship with moderation. I don't know what I'm suggesting. ¯_(ツ)_/¯ I'm just a random internet stranger who was surprised by an emotionally impactful thread on a meme post, but I wish you the wisdom to recognise what strategies could help you live, rather than just helping you to survive. I also wish you strength, because it's exhausting to have to constantly fend off others' judgement in order to carve enough thinking space for oneself.