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Habits of Highly Miserable People

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Re: Habits of Highly Miserable People

#251

Post by DoreenMichele »

dragonwriter wrote: post #247
DoreenMichele wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Choosing to be an example of recovery is not evidence I have not recovered. I'm well aware men who were raped or molested are treated even worse.

> Choosing to be an example of recovery is not evidence I have not recovered. There's a huge difference, as I see it, between choosing to be an example of recovery and being,asyou previously described, a “brag and show off your scars person”, particularly in terms of the audience to which accounts of particular trauma are directed.

You know, I actually have a lot of respect for you. You really have your moments when you shine.

This is not one of them. This is right up there with that brief period when you were repeatedly accusing me of being transphobic.

So I have zero plans to argue this further with you.

Re: Habits of Highly Miserable People

#252

Post by MaxBarraclough »

Noumenon72 wrote: post #235
ulisesrmzroche wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a better exercise. I stole it from Seneca. Look at the back of your wrists: see those fragile greenish-blue veins? What if tomorrow - while thinking about some problem with money or love - you trip and fall, and a particularly sharp rock on the ground or a shard of glass on the street cuts one of those thin exposed blue-green veins open?

From what I understand about suicide, no little crossways cut on those veins will ever kill you. You have to go up the arm and deep. Humans aren't that fragile really.

And the ones you can see are veins, not arteries.

Re: Habits of Highly Miserable People

#253

Post by pjc50 »

RIMR wrote: post #111
DoreenMichele wrote: post #104

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…

This is one of the reasons why people prefer the term "survivor" to "victim" for cases like this.

Re: Habits of Highly Miserable People

#254

Post by dsego »

Karunamon wrote: post #204

The rest of the list notwithstanding, this one got me thinking: > Well-meaning friends and relatives will try to sabotage your efforts to be thankless. For example, while you’re in the middle of complaining about the project you procrastinated on at work to your spouse during an unhealthy dinner, he or she might try to remind you of how grateful you should be to have a job or food at all. Am I the only person who fin…

> It’s inevitable that as you make yourself miserable, you’ll be making those around you miserable also, at least until they leave you—which will give you another reason to feel miserable.

Re: Habits of Highly Miserable People

#255

Post by jahnu »

make3 wrote: post #172
ModernMech wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"14. Be critical. Make sure to have an endless list of dislikes and voice them often, whether or not your opinion is solicited. For example, don’t hesitate to say, “That’s what you chose to wear this morning?” or “Why is your voice so shrill?” If someone is eating eggs, tell them you don’t like eggs. Your negativity can be applied to almost anything."

I thought it was appropriate constructive feedback.

It's only really feedback if it goes to source. If it's on here it's just whinging.

Re: Habits of Highly Miserable People

#256

Post by ThePadawan »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #229
a1369209993 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have no idea why you are framing it that way I think it's because you said: > [Regarding therapy:] spending an hour or more every week digging around in the dirt of my past [...] was keeping me miserable. That sounds like at least the later portions were a bad experience. Also, I suspect a lot of people here have a default assumption that any therapy experience is bad unless otherwise noted, but the above quote i…

It wasn't a negative experience. Therapy was effective. But at some point I realized that continuing to invest so much time in a negative past experience was giving over my present and future time to said negative experience and what I wanted was to invest my time in positive experiences, to pursue something enjoyable and life enhancing. Long experience suggests that it won't matter how positively I frame it or how c…

I agree and went through similar experiences.

I will however mention for the other readers that not all modes and schools of therapy see "digging up the past" as essential, in fact I believe this is a point of contention.

Methods such as Cognitive Behavioral Theory, I believe, focus much more on "OK, but how does that influence your behavior? Should it?"

Re: Habits of Highly Miserable People

#257

Post by ThePadawan »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #231
throwawaymath wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the reaction you're "supposed" to get by thinking about that? I took a moment to think about it and I don't think I got it. My reaction was, "Well then I probably die", but I don't feel particularly different about the present. If that's the thing I'm supposed to feel then so be it, but I feel Seneca intended for some greater profundity, or he would dispense with the mental theatrics. What am I missing? Does…

This is the first time I've heard the quote, but I think it's to appreciate that life is short and could end at any time, and while bleeding out you'd realize that worrying about these long-term things was a waste of time.

I fail to see that as highly positive though - with that attitude, I would stop exercising and invest all of my savings into cake and pizza. These things would make me happy each day, but miserable each month.

Re: Habits of Highly Miserable People

#258

Post by pjc50 »

foxhill wrote: post #71

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 think it depends on how you take it; some of cognitive behavioural therapy is about changing how you behave physically in order to achieve changes of your mood, or break you out of unhealthy mental habits.

Re: Habits of Highly Miserable People

#259

Post by DoreenMichele »

ThePadawan wrote: post #256
DoreenMichele wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't a negative experience. Therapy was effective. But at some point I realized that continuing to invest so much time in a negative past experience was giving over my present and future time to said negative experience and what I wanted was to invest my time in positive experiences, to pursue something enjoyable and life enhancing. Long experience suggests that it won't matter how positively I frame it or how c…

I agree and went through similar experiences. I will however mention for the other readers that not all modes and schools of therapy see "digging up the past" as essential, in fact I believe this is a point of contention. Methods such as Cognitive Behavioral Theory, I believe, focus much more on "OK, but how does that influence your behavior? Should it?"

I was in couple's counseling briefly with my husband. He also was very briefly in therapy on his own. He was extremely introverted. He hated telling all this private stuff to a counselor.

One day, I told him "You don't have to go to therapy. I don't care if you go to therapy or not. Therapy is a means to an end. Therapy per se doesn't matter. I only want our marriage to be better. I don't care how that happens."

So he quit both his own therapy and couple's counseling. And he was promptly and permanently a better husband.

There are many paths.

Re: Habits of Highly Miserable People

#260

Post by agumonkey »

gowld wrote: post #166
agumonkey wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

true
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