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Ask HN: Has anyone here turned around their life in their 40s?

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Re: Ask HN: Has anyone here turned around their life in their 40s?

#551

Post by theGnuMe »

ravenstine wrote: post #501
vjulian wrote: post #316

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…

THANK YOU I know "see a therapist" is generally meant well, and therapy can definitely help, but people are way too quick to suggest it, and suggest it as a must . It can communicate that a person is broken when their situation can be due to any number of things besides brokenness. I think most people know that therapy is an option, and I think many also underestimate the difficulty in not only finding an adequate th…

Whatever man. Nobody is implying that therapy means you are broken. It’s about growth and self actualization.

Lots of people use "therapy" for performance optimization for example: sports psychology.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone here turned around their life in their 40s?

#552

Post by soheil »

wizeman wrote: post #469
philosopher1234 wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation needed. Psychoanalysis is widely practiced and it’s efficacy has been repeatedly scientifically demonstrated.

> Citation needed. Sure, I will cite the Wikipedia page on Psychoanalysis, which itself has many citations which you can follow: 1. "Psychoanalysis is a controversial discipline, and its effectiveness as a treatment has been contested" 2. "Linguist Noam Chomsky has criticized psychoanalysis for lacking a scientific basis." 3. "Evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould considered psychoanalysis influenced by pseudoscie…

Chomsky? He's a linguist, what does that have to do with Psychoanalysis?

Feynman? He's a physicist, what does that have to do with Psychoanalysis?

...

This list very much sounds like something the marketing team of an online therapy startup would put together and post to Wikipedia and tell their colleagues to contribute to.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone here turned around their life in their 40s?

#553

Post by soheil »

caddemon wrote: post #456
soheil wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Recognizing and being willing to admit to others that you have an issue is a big barrier to mental healthcare though. People who won't do that don't see a psychiatrist. So OP has taken an important first step that is really difficult for some, and maybe was for him. Certainly he should keep the momentum going though.

Of course it is, but it's no place to dwell in.

You wake up and realize you've been in a car crash. Best thing to do would be try to reach for immediate help, not to focus on or be thankful that you gained consciousness. There is a time and place.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone here turned around their life in their 40s?

#554

Post by simmschi »

You are not alone, and you are not a lost cause. People change their life all the time.

Start with both the most important and the easiest problems.

You mentioned depression and suicidal thoughts. Take those seriously, treat depression like an injury or illness. You wouldn't ignore a broken leg or high fever. Absolutely get professional help for this illness. This is top prio. Do it tomorrow.

And then there's also all the small things you can change right now.

I've been in a similar situation a few times in my life, the most recent in my late 30s.

Kids, work and family left me without any time for myself, which meant over the years I had nothing else left. No hobbies. Very few friends. No real interests outside of work and family.

This also meant that any crisis in family or work hit 100x, because there was not much to compensate. I had reduced myself to a worker and family serviceman. I wasn't really a person anymore.

It took me a while to get out of this mess. The path that helped me was re-discovering things that interest me and then pursuing them in a careful way. Reading, sports, computer gaming, side programming on hobby projects, open source contributions, cooking...

Nothing special or unique, but all of these things I did for myself and not for others. I was slowly rebuilding my persona and reinventing myself.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone here turned around their life in their 40s?

#555

Post by Eisenstein »

gwd wrote: post #281
necovek wrote: post #10

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 (well, at least making babies: bringing up kids does get a bit harder as you age regardless of the gender). And regardless, do consider adoption, even as a single parent. There are loads of kids taken away from parents who for whatever reason can't really care for them. Often there's a generational component: the kid's grandparent abused or couldn't su…

> And regardless, do consider adoption, even as a single parent.

I am struggling to think of any official agency which would pair a child with a single man. Is this really something that happens?

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone here turned around their life in their 40s?

#556

Post by strangedud »

Therapist, excercise (3+ weekly), eat better (protein+veggies are the base of this) and quit alcohol. I did all of these in my late 30s and in my 40s and I feel younger. When changes you can make alone are not enough, therapy (and possibly meds) should do the trick. best of luck, and a strangers hug

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone here turned around their life in their 40s?

#558

Post by Sasha914 »

I had lost track in the mid 40s, in mid 50s now. I built a model to predict SNP and due to some technical error (network connection lost), blew up some 470,000$ in 3 hours trading futures. Had mortgage, wife/kid to support etc. Was bit rusty on java/c++/c#. So took a coupe of udemy courses to brush up. Hit gym, started running to get boost. In 2 months landed job at a start up in NYC. After that took a contracting position at a bank, and now contracting for another bank (both in NYC). Also developing code generation from english specifications on the side. Still running my SNP model. So its doable. 1. Hit gym, run 2. brush up and take up a job Its not too late. All the best.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone here turned around their life in their 40s?

#559

Post by wizeman »

soheil wrote: post #552
wizeman wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Citation needed. Sure, I will cite the Wikipedia page on Psychoanalysis, which itself has many citations which you can follow: 1. "Psychoanalysis is a controversial discipline, and its effectiveness as a treatment has been contested" 2. "Linguist Noam Chomsky has criticized psychoanalysis for lacking a scientific basis." 3. "Evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould considered psychoanalysis influenced by pseudoscie…

Chomsky? He's a linguist, what does that have to do with Psychoanalysis? Feynman? He's a physicist, what does that have to do with Psychoanalysis? ... This list very much sounds like something the marketing team of an online therapy startup would put together and post to Wikipedia and tell their colleagues to contribute to.

> Chomsky? He's a linguist, what does that have to do with Psychoanalysis?

He's also a philosopher, historian and cognitive scientist. He has received a Membership of the National Academy of Sciences (which is an award given to scientists), a Kyoto prize in Basic Sciences, a medal from a German academy of science, an American Psychology Association Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Psychology, etc.

These are relevant areas and merits with regards to judging whether a discipline is scientific or pseudo-scientific.

> Feynman? He's a physicist, what does that have to do with Psychoanalysis?

He is one of the most famous scientists in the world, had an extremely significant scientific career, won a Nobel prize in a scientific area and a National Medal of Science.

If you don't know why such a person would be extremely qualified to distinguish a scientific discipline from a pseudo-scientific one, I'm deeply sorry for you.

Also, don't ignore all the other experts in the fields of psychology, psychiatry, cognitive science, philosophy, history, etc. who arrived at the same conclusion.

Although, I am interested in knowing why you think that you are more qualified than these people to judge whether a discipline is scientific or not.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone here turned around their life in their 40s?

#560

Post by upghost »

Hey brother hang in there. My grandpa didn’t have his first kid until he was 68!! And his wife was in her young 20s. And they were in love till the day he died in his late 80s. He wasn’t any kind of programmer or rich or anything. It’s an atypical story but the point is do not EVER think the best of your life is BEHIND you! One of the most foolish and important of all emotions is hope. Hope is about taking a look at the data and realizing that the situation is grim but choosing to proceed as if life has good things in store for you anyway. Beethoven’s 9th symphony was written when he was stone cold deaf and he wouldn’t ever get to hear a single note of the music, and yet he wrote it anyway as a big middle finger to the cruel hand that fate dealt him. If you look at his writings from the time, they were pretty dark. That’s why Ode to Joy brings me to tears darn near every time I hear it. Hope has a way of making its own luck, if you are open to the possibilities that life puts before you and you don’t hang onto the wheel too tightly. Last thing to remember is that YOUR story is beautiful, even the tragic parts, because it is your experience. None of us have any idea what we are “supposed” to be doing here. No one’s journey is more valuable than anyone else’s. And the sad parts of being human are part of the experience too. Hang in there man. There is so much beauty out there for you to discover, out there and within.
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