On February 8th, 2024, I made the following Fediverse post:

Paranoid/self-focused: X claims to be a body positivity advocate and presents a veneer of social liberalism but this instance in which they subtly mock my weight issues exposes their hypocrisy and shows that even so-called "champions" of justice will succumb to selfish motives like status-seeking at my expense.

Bayesian: X is demonstrably a body positivity advocate; they have a track record of fighting bigotry online, and have never been seen making petty criticisms of others' personal issues. It's not likely that they were subtly mocking my weight issues in this instance. Whatever I picked out as mockery is likely coincidence, and they probably have better priorities than to make fun of me.

I often find myself trapped in a twilight zone between these two possible worlds.

Over the past year, I've found myself less frequently trapped in this sort of twilight zone. The paranoid possible world is more easily dismissed and I don't tend to go down its rabbit hole.

The reasons for this improvement (if that's what it is) are not obvious to me, especially considering that I've been on a lower dose of Invega since September of 2024. I don't know really how to explain it. Maybe I'm less insecure about things in general, and the Invega maybe never really had any bearing on my insecurity, as my insecurities might be separate from the thing that Invega treats. Maybe I'm less insecure about my weight issues in particular, due to losing weight on Wegovy. It's also possible that I've just surrounded myself with less shitty people (shrug).

What I mean by "this sort of twilight zone" is that such paranoid thought processes are not only limited to personal issues like my obesity. They could be about other personal issues or just things about me in general that I feel insecure about.

One thing I can say with confidence is that this improvement is, at the very least, applicable to my current baseline, which is my sequestered, reclusive, and extremely online lifestyle. It's likely that the insecurities increase in contexts where they tend to be more triggered, such as around a lot of people or in public places. Hence, it's also likely that the paranoia would increase and I would find myself in the sort of twilight zone described above if I were to put myself in those contexts. Any therapist worth their co-pay would likely tell me that the more I put myself in those contexts, the more I get used to it, and I could eventually reach a point where my insecurities don't bother me in those contexts. However, I'm not 19 years old anymore, I don't have my physical and mental "prime" ahead of me anymore. I'm almost 37, and at this point, I have priorities and obligations that make putting myself in triggering situations extremely inconvenient. In the context of autonomy and personal freedom, I think I have a right not to put myself in extremely uncomfortable situations if I can help it. I see a path in my future where I can survive just fine in this lifestyle. Of course I will miss many other opportunities, but at the moment this is acceptable to me.