131–140 of 321 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think tone of the article is disgusting.
Same. I find it making appeals to the just-world fallacy, not understanding that some people really do experience extended hardship without deserving it.
I'll start:
> 2. Practice sustained boredom.
I find that a pretty decent solution to being bored is to do something that I've been trying to avoid for a while, like running an errand or trying to learn something very technical. I find that feeling reluctant/frustrated often ends up being better than feeling like there's nothing to do, and usually doing this comes with a pretty handsome feel-good when you finally finish that errand or figure out what the darned textbook is trying to say.
If you have serious psych diagnosis like BP etc., please avoid this content; your loved ones know you're trying and only a handfull of contrarians strike this pose. Get some exercise and a good night's sleep, and stay on your meds. I'm rooting for you.
P.S. This trash should not be on HN. It has nothing to do with tech and it could kill somebody.
I’m no expert on abject misery but reading 12pt serif text with a ridiculous line length on an iPhone screen has got to come pretty close.
Give yourself a negative identity I was sexually abused as a child. I spent a total of about 3.5 years in therapy, a year in my teens and 2.5 years in my twenties. Therapy was valuable, but I quit in large part for the above reason: I was at a point where spending an hour or more every week digging around in the dirt of my past was just keeping alive an identity as a victim. It was keeping me stuck. It was keeping me…
>Exercise: Sit in a comfortable chair, close your eyes, and, for 15 minutes, meditate on all the things you could lose: your job, your house, your savings, and so forth. Then brood about living in a homeless shelter. really roughly this is what stoics do, yet somehow they come to the conclusion "actually, what was i fearing? Proceed with adventure"...
What I do get is that you can fear the worst and live in that fear to the point that it almost feels like you are experiencing what you fear every moment you are not experiencing it. And it either happens or it doesn't. And if it does, well, I don't know.
Someone or something fucked up somewhere, but I'm certainly not going to blame myself as though I am lord and master of all events that come to pass, seer of all future events and protector of all ills. Humans share that burden equally, and some feel it more than others. But I think like the stoics, like Zen, you can cultivate a sort of inner strength from that suffering.
That doesn't mean pursue suffering to be strong, no no no, not at all. It means you work with what you have. You have pain, use it. Use it to make someone else's life better. You have joy, enjoy it.
I'm not sure it's the right philosophy, or way of being, but it's the most clear and present thing I can muster when I feel my feelings. And I think stoicism reflects that. Deep sadness, old wounds, aching pains. Don't use it against yourself to worsen the hurt. If all you can be is neutral, be neutral. If all you can be is Zen, be Zen. If you can be happy, be happy. Don't take some old dead Greek dude's word for how to live your whole life. There are plenty of other Greek philosophers who spoke of happiness, to learn from too.
having been, for want of a better term, ‘highly miserable’ in the past, the entirety of this article comes across as insidiously toxic and detrimental to the mental well-being of those who are suffering. there is a.. loosely similar CGP Grey video, which approaches the matter in a much more rational context [1] for anyone suffering, i emplore you to not read this and watch this instead; [1] - https://youtube.com/watc…
I do think there's a good point here that these patterns are self-reinforcing, and that there can be a kind of counterintuitive pleasure in really getting down into the muck and living there. See also Notes from Underground. But the snide and aggressive tone here is really bizarre.
Give yourself a negative identity I was sexually abused as a child. I spent a total of about 3.5 years in therapy, a year in my teens and 2.5 years in my twenties. Therapy was valuable, but I quit in large part for the above reason: I was at a point where spending an hour or more every week digging around in the dirt of my past was just keeping alive an identity as a victim. It was keeping me stuck. It was keeping me…
I know this is a bit of a controversial opinion, but I always felt that society's reaction to sexual assault give victims a reason to feel even worse about their situation. Not to say that it isn't a severely traumatic thing to experience - it absolutely is. But, we regularly treat virginity as some sort of virtuous status - and then speak of rape victims who lost their virginity to their attacker as if they were str…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same. I find it making appeals to the just-world fallacy, not understanding that some people really do experience extended hardship without deserving it.
I don't speak for anyone besides myself when it comes to mental illness, but I've come to a point in my life where I'm just like 'Jesus fucking Christ can this shit please be just over with - can I please just be happy with the life I have left and not live my entire life being miserable over what used to exist or what terrible things may happen?' Because when you dwell on suicide often enough, when you attempt suici…
YMMV, but I think this is an accurate and essential insight. Maybe it's pertinent to your story, maybe not. At the same time, I suspect much of our internal suffering hinges on the fact.