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Habits of Highly Miserable People

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161–170 of 321 posts

Re: Habits of Highly Miserable People

#161

PULIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: author trolls the mentally ill in standard way, says they're doing it for attention. 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…

I've known people who have been on upwards of 40 different medications throughout their life. It's a choice, not an obligation. If you have had to cycle through being on 5+ medications all to balance out effects of the others of which, might help, might not, not sure - for decades, and you wind up feeling like 'I don't even know who the fuck I am without all of this', then that's a place to be in life too that can be…

Yep, meds are terrible. My comment is for that small fraction of the population for whom "Just knock it off" is a dangerously wrong but appealing idea -- like curing cancer with coffee enemas. These folks have a high mortality rate. (If you're reading this you know who you are. Stay away from the article :)

Re: Habits of Highly Miserable People

#163

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…

There is a school of thought in psychiatry that some people would do better to simply move on and forget about it. There was a good podcast on this topic here:

https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/podcast-193-fck-feel...

Re: Habits of Highly Miserable People

#164
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the idea behind the exercise, from a Stoicism standpoint, is to mentally expose yourself to the fear of being homeless (or whatever about the exercise creates anxiety for you). Eventually you desensitize yourself to that feeling and begin to realize it wouldn't be as bad as you think. This is also an aspect of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).

Umm... seeing how the homeless live, it really would be as bad as I think. Probably even worse, since I don't see all of it.

>seeing how the homeless live

Except you only see the ones who are visibly homeless, so how do you know?

Re: Habits of Highly Miserable People

#165
post #160

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'm sorry you had a bad therapy experience. I hope that the therapy strategy your therapist used is not universal, and that other therapists are open to trying other strategies (for other survivors, if your need for therapy has passed) -- "Getting A Life" and "Living Well Is The Best Revenge" are good strategies that a therapist ought to be able to help with. I honestly can't understand what value a therapist expects…

I didn't have a bad therapy experience. I had remarkably excellent support. I have no idea why you are framing it that way, other than the tendency being discussed in this very thread for the entire world to unhelpfully heap pity upon survivors.

Edit: The obit for my first therapist, a truly remarkable man:

http://www.seracpe.org/Library/Remembrance/B_of_R_for_Turley...

Re: Habits of Highly Miserable People

#166

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…

it was exemplified in a movie with Clive Owen, father of an abused teen. The social drama ended up rubbing the wound open way longer than the victim wanted to.

The paradox of some forms of abuse is that often the victim doesn't know it hurts until society tells them it should. (We don't always notice ways that our life could have been better if we were treated better.) But if the victim doesn't know it hurts, it's hard to maintain the societal will punish the perpetrator.

Re: Habits of Highly Miserable People

#167
post #111

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…

There’s a line that gets crossed between “oh well that sucks but that’s life” and legitimate traumatic experiences. When that line is crossed your suffering goes from whining to legitimate in the eyes of society, so a lot of people realize this and maximize their victimhood in order to gain any sympathy.

Re: Habits of Highly Miserable People

#169
post #28

> Have an affair (...) Don't enjoy life's pleasures So... which is it? > Taking pleasure in things like food, wine, music, and beauty is for flighty, shallow people. Why is sex not listed in "life's pleasures"?

"affair" in this context means "cheating on your partner".

The list of life's pleasures is not exhaustive.

Re: Habits of Highly Miserable People

#170
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think tone of the article is disgusting.

What disgusts you about its tone? I found it informative and probably from honest experience. It's superficial chearful embrace towards problems people create for themselves is instructive towards correcting those habits.

Sarcasm is simply obnoxious.
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