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Ask HN: Has anyone here turned around their life in their 40s?
601–610 of 767 posts
Re: Ask HN: Has anyone here turned around their life in their 40s?
#602You 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…
>Sometimes I feel like just suspending the world background process and being still would be nice. But I don’t have sudo.
You absolutely can do this if you go on a meditation retreat. I went to https://www.dhamma.org/en-US/courses/search though I am sure you can find other schools of meditation. My experience was that you are not allowed to talk for the duration of the course and just focus on breathing & meditation (10 days in my case). It brought a great deal of calm and focus into my life.
Re: Ask HN: Has anyone here turned around their life in their 40s?
#603Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're absolutely right that a therapy isn't THE solution to depression but I feel like it's a good starting point. A good therapist should be able to recognize if OP should be seeing a psychiatrist who then can prescribe the appropriate medication for managing his/her condition.
A halfway decent psychiatrist will also handle therapist referral. I don't see any issue with seeing a psychiatrist first, it's not like they just automatically hand out a prescription. It's actually way more common to see GPs do that for depression in the US. That said, OP should probably look into both himself, see what the wait time and cost differences are between the two routes in his area.
One possibly significant difference is that psychiatrists tend to charge a lot more.
Re: Ask HN: Has anyone here turned around their life in their 40s?
#604Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
Be cautious with this. Lots of kids need adopting no doubt. But adoption can be extraordinarily difficult for parents. I speak from experience. It's not something to be taken lightly.
Raising children in general is not something to be taken lightly.
Re: Ask HN: Has anyone here turned around their life in their 40s?
#605Earlier quoted context omitted.
The study you linked is for specific narrow treatment techniques in intensive inpatient psychotherapy, as compared with more typical psychotherapy treatment in the community for people on the waitlist. There are a handful of problems I can think of for using a waitlist in the community receiving traditional psychotherapy as a control for a group receiving intensive inpatient treatment. But the article you linked does…
It proves psychoanalysis is not discredited.
It doesn’t. It only proves there are still people trying to continue their careers in a field they have deeply invested in, in training, education, clientele, and professional network.
Re: Ask HN: Has anyone here turned around their life in their 40s?
#606there is a proverb around here...
"when the cart goes wheels up, ah, plenty of roads.."
it is mostly always taken the forward, negative way (like "too late when wheels go up").
But there is a backward, positive way. "if you want to have many roads... turn the cart wheels up." see Sacrifice by Andrei Tarkovsky.
But maybe not exactly your situation.. maybe the Zen idea of "when you name a thing, it's not the same thing anymore (for you)" might be better. That.. works also for negative things - name your fear somehow, and it's not fearfull anymore..
https://www.mindmate.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/label...
stop looking back and comparing yourself to whoever. you can be great (fun) without being like everyone else. Find something to strive for. Anything. Go for it.
Re: Ask HN: Has anyone here turned around their life in their 40s?
#607So many responses already, I'll just add that if you desire a family it's not too late. I'd suggesting getting other parts of your life in order a bit first, but I know people who are getting into relationships and even marriages later in life (40s). Even children aren't entirely out of the question (although at this point they do tend to be older than infants). If it's really something you want in your life, don't think that it could never happen.
Re: Ask HN: Has anyone here turned around their life in their 40s?
#608Earlier quoted context omitted.
It proves psychoanalysis is not discredited.
It doesn’t. It only proves there are still people trying to continue their careers in a field they have deeply invested in, in training, education, clientele, and professional network.
Yes it does because it demonstrates its effectiveness. How can an effective discipline be scientifically discredited?
Re: Ask HN: Has anyone here turned around their life in their 40s?
#609Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you'll excuse me saying -- and I may be totally misreading your comment -- it sounds like what you were looking for (and finding) so easily in the past wasn't really a partner , at least in the life-long sense, but rather a string of casual relationships. That's not at all the same thing as wanting a wife and kids.
Not really, I had many long term relationships, and shorter ones in between. I wasn't a super popular man, but attractive enough that I could always find partners with reasonable efforts. But in any case, I think it's not that different as wanting a wife and kids. You need to be able to seduce someone, whether it's for a casual relationship, or for marriage. It's start with physical attraction either way. I don't thi…
How long term can they have been if you had “many” of them?
There’s a huge difference between seducing someone for a casual relationship and forging a deep friendship with the person who becomes your life partner.
Re: Ask HN: Has anyone here turned around their life in their 40s?
#610Getting some sort of employment should be the first step. Work fills a large part of one's waking hours and is beneficial insofar as having some structure in life is concerned. Even if it is somewhat beneath your ability, having a job that helps you fill your days and get a small sense of accomplishment will do much more than any therapy or introspection will, all things considered.
If you are gainfully employed, you will find that your social circle will also start coalescing around you, and some benefits will follow.
Once you are employed, you can consider therapy. Do not neglect dating or forming romantic attachments either. It is much harder at age 43 but not impossible if you keep expectations in check. But I do not think therapy in the absence of basics is of much use.
If you have a job, you can use money from the job to visit the US (assuming you have a visa or can obtain one), and get a taste of the life you miss for a few weeks every year.