351–360 of 767 posts
Life is what you make it. Find something that makes you happy and the rest falls in to place in my experience.
Also therapy is very wise here. They can'tfix your issues but they help give you the tools to do it yourself which I found huge.
Good luck and if you have or can create a group of friends around you, it helps a lot as well.
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> rather successful with women, was never single, always could find someone easily The good news for GP is I think for a lot of people what you consider to be much harder is just the norm.
Totally agree with this. I have an older (late 50's) gay friend who considers himself 'over the hill'. He talks constantly about how hard it is to find someone etc. However, by comparison to myself and my other straight friends, it's trivially easy for him to find both sex and companionship. Essentially it was so easy when he was young and handsome, he learned an aversion to trying. It's not so much that he doesn't k…
I don't have any idea why you think "a wife, kids" are out of the picture for you: after early adulthood, men and women are looking for someone they can see having a family with, and not for the more superfluous things in life (good looks, status or lots of money). At 43, having kids is harder for women, but usually not for men (well, at least making babies: bringing up kids does get a bit harder as you age regardles…
> At 43, having kids is harder for women, but usually not for men Finding a partner becomes hard, especially if you expect her to be 5-10 years younger. I used to be rather successful with women, was never single, always could find someone easily. I'm 45, in good shape with a good job, but it has became much harder.
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And A decent therapist is better than an ideal one. Just getting started talking to someone is key.
It depends. If you're in a serious rut I seriously think a therapist could make it worse. You need the right fit who your brain is not going to dismiss the moment they open their mouth.
You need to see a therapist. Your problem is largely on your outlook on where you are in life. This is not meant to be a buck up or shut up comment, it's just that you can't improve your life until you change your outlook on things. You won't be able to move forward on things until you confront your feelings and accept your position to move out of it. To answer your question, yes. My 30's were a mess with a divorce,…
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…
Keep an open mind, but... it takes looking. I've had therapists with all the right degrees who were... meh. Well-meaning, but just not that good at it.
Unfortunately, this isn't a zero-effort path. You have to look, and fire therapists who aren't doing what you need.
At the beginning I had some anxiety crises and went to see a psychiatrist. I remember that they asked about sleep upfront. I was sleeping okish, but not great. After some time I noticed I started sleeping less and less (woke up at 4am and couldn't sleep anymore), I went back to a psychiatrist (different one this time). She said I needed antidepressants, and I read about them a lot, especially against. I wasn't sure. But in the end I tried.
It took a while to "enter" that kind of medication, tried 2 and then another. But I was convinced somehow of trying until it worked. Everyone is a complex, beautiful "mess", so you have to find the way. But in the end Venlafaxine started working. And boy did it work...
Right now I feel like I did in my 20s (I'm 47). I've never been as optimistic about my prospects, I think I can do anything. I used to think that I was finished, that I was bound to be grey all my remaining life. Now I've started doing all the stuff that I had stopped doing because of the feelings you are having (helplessness, strong anhedonia). I sleep so well now that I dream quite frequently and I think that has made my mind waaay more plastic. I've regained all the piano technique that I had plus I've leveled up significantly (Chopin studies, etc).
I have the willpower (and the experience!) now to work on myself, and I think I've made a lot of progress even in interpreting events and not being so pessimistic, etc. Like I'm doing a kind of mild CBT because I want to invest, because I have hope.
So my experience is that medication was a really necessary crutch, which in my case was quite necessary (that's my belief at least), and it solved "everything" in the sense of making the baseline so much higher that recovery seemed almost easy.
But there is hope. One way or another, life will be awesome again. If you need me to tell you face to face, I can do that (@pauek on Twitter, DM me). It really helps to listen to people in a similar situation. Nobody seems to understand anything when you are hostage to depression, and that can dig the hole even deeper.
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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.
What? No it's like format whatever that shit is and install Ubuntu.
I think the US therapist industry is a symptom of its culture and relative lack of community. There is an important role for mental health professionals, don’t get me wrong. I’m referring more to the industry of mental health.
You need to see a therapist. Your problem is largely on your outlook on where you are in life. This is not meant to be a buck up or shut up comment, it's just that you can't improve your life until you change your outlook on things. You won't be able to move forward on things until you confront your feelings and accept your position to move out of it. To answer your question, yes. My 30's were a mess with a divorce,…
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…
The most important lesson for me in this area is this: I can only control today, and not every day is going to be a home run. For me, trying to commit to big, sweeping, dramatic, permanent changes on a dime in my life has always resulted in failure and been a mistake. Whereas when I make a decision to make some small incremental progress/task today, and worry about re-committing tomorrow, tomorrow, I've had success.…