331–340 of 767 posts
The things you listen to, and the stuff you watch become the ways you think, almost invariably. So you should find things to listen to that prime your mind to embrace the difficult process of change.
My recommendation? The Jocko Podcast.
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How do u find a therapist? I’m a bit weary to discuss super personal things with someone I don’t know even if they’re a professional. How can I find someone I trust and is actually good? Not like the movies where the clock is up and ok next issue. My work offers a mental health service but I’ve looked at their TOS and no thanks. Sometimes I feel like just suspending the world background process and being still would…
Find one specializing in CBT, or similar forms of therapy shown to be effective (3rd-wave CBT such as MCT). You can also just pick up a CBT workbook and do the exercises yourself. The only advantage a therapist has over this is "talking it out" - you should be capable of recognizing and correcting distorted negative thinking with a therapist guide / workbook. This is why online therapy has been growing in popularity,…
Yes. I turned my life around at 43. Single, obsolete tech skills, lots of debt, personal issues. Began with taking a genuine inventory of my life and how I function, not just how I felt. I picked a constructive and structured approach to that, which looked a lot like CBT therapy but was something else. It was a life reset, clearing out all the baggage. It was very difficult but incremental and genuine over time. Afte…
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I mean I don't know why people keep saying it's too late to have kids if you're 43. You could have a 20 year old by age 65, which is the time you could retire and have them move out after they get a job.
Not sure why you've been downvoted. This is absolutely true. I would however be careful equating having kids to being successful in life. At best, they can be a joy to have. At worst, they can be little sources of chaos and stress that you can pass your own worst traits to.
No offense to the reply, but “need a therapist” is a very American response and a bit of a cop out. OP, I’ve seen many people turn around after aged 40, including a friend who got married for the first time at aged 58. She’s energetic and attractive and incidentally also turned her life around after 40. My two pennies would suggest you throw the past expectations out the window, determine where your passions lie, and…
> No offense to the reply, but “need a therapist” is a very American response and a bit of a cop out. Why? I'd change it to "need a psychiatrist".
Why? Because it is a very American approach that is less the norm elsewhere. Therapy is not an industry to such a degree necessarily in other countries. Cop-out because it is akin to RTFM, ‘go Google it’, ‘delete and re-install’. If one doesn’t have a personal viewpoint, why bother responding.
Other people have given good positive practical advice on therapy, which I would recommend too, pick anyone and see if it works, if not move on. The therapist is not your friend and you don't need to worry about their feelings or long-term commitment upfront.
I don't like the word "recover", because it presumes things, but you can climb out of that hole. For me, it took lots and lots of honesty and work -- and I got help. Even so, it took years of it before I stopped feeling crushed by my divorce/estrangement on a daily basis.
You can eventually see yourself as a better, different person than you were before. I won't lie, there are days when the agony of it comes to mind, but... you learn to cope.
In your case, what you have to grieve is the life unlived. I can get that, but you can still create a life -- even a good one -- at your age. Mid-40s is not too old to have a wife and kids, if you know what you want and act on it.
I would start with some therapy. They can't do the work for you -- and there will be a LOT of work -- but they can offer a different perspective and help get you out of the echo chamber of your own mind.
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> No offense to the reply, but “need a therapist” is a very American response and a bit of a cop out. Why? I'd change it to "need a psychiatrist".
I don’t follow your last sentence. Why? Because it is a very American approach that is less the norm elsewhere. Therapy is not an industry to such a degree necessarily in other countries. Cop-out because it is akin to RTFM, ‘go Google it’, ‘delete and re-install’. If one doesn’t have a personal viewpoint, why bother responding.
Imho if you start with the "wife" problem all the rest will either take care of itself or not matter so much anymore. There is simply nothing like having another soul to share life's joys and sorrows with.
Given the gender distribution in our species, for every lonely man out there there is a lonely woman (who statistically is not on HN) so it is foremost a question of getting the two in the same subset of spacetime. How to go about it? Apologies for one more dry physics analogy, but for a two-body system to form you simply need the energy to go through a lot of interactions (collisions, near misses etc).
It will work out.