Ask HN: How did you rebuild yourself after having hit rock bottom?

But… I have some experience. Divorced, remarried, work was shit. Couldn’t focus or concentrate and felt burnt out. Finally I go into the doc for help with dealing with the ex (omg stressful) and discovered I had a pile of health issues, including a tumor (not cancer) that decided to flood my system with a stress hormone. That’s been removed, but things aren’t back to 100%.

I was on TRT, but that was stopped recently cuz it turned my blood into gear oil (hematocrit levels in the mid 50s). It helped to a point, at least where I got the habit of going to the gym and being active again.

I suspect I’m low on growth hormone due to symptoms matching up, but I’m not the endo - that appointment is in June.

I’ve had to completely restrict distractions at work. The only IMs I let in are from fam or a few close friends. Non work slacks are turned off, etc.

Get yourself a good work up, check all your hormone levels. And get active. Walk, run, ride a bike, lift heavy things, whatever works for you. Just do it.

Don’t wait until you’re middle aged to find out your body is a wreck and try to fix it.

But seriously this is almost too selfish.

It is almost making me sick and angry simultaneously, and I didn't know that was possible. The downvotes will only represent my ability to swim up stream or as my friends Bad Religion might say “against the grain”.

Here is my recommendation since you are asking:

1. Volunteer at a homeless shelter or soup kitchen 2. Go tutor, some undereducated children with your advanced Ph.D. 3. Sit in on a big AA meeting (you don't even have to be an alcoholic) 4. Put your loose change in a parking meeting as you walk down the street 5. Walk along the streets and pick up trash, to make the world a better place 6. Go to the gym 7. Give someone you don't know a nice compliment 8. Play sports 9. Become a big brother or sister at big brother organization 10. Suck it up 11. Remove yourself from social media

Therapy is great, but there are other parts to the equation.

If you are challenged and you dont want to face the hard issues you quit and find another one.

Saying that marriage is not as important to society has no bearing on what value marriage should mean to you. I also never said that marriage is bad, or not for me. I’m married myself, but like I said, i saw it as a vow of love not a societal contract, unlike your statements that were all matters of societal contract that are neither solved by marriage but are also provided for by common law partnerships.

You inferred something because you took things too personally and saw things in the argument that weren’t there because you clearly took it as a personal attack.

In fact, your marriage is largely irrelevant to the discussion altogether since it’s purely anecdotal and doesn’t expand to the entirety of the human population, let alone the population of a single country like the USA where 1/5 of first time wed couples end in divorce, and who knows what percent of the remaining 4/5 include forced marriage or abuse.

Like I said, I’m married and I don’t think marriage is bad. But I’m also not so arrogant or narcissistic to extend my own life choices and extrapolate them to being integral to society.

I’m also not so narcissistic as to ascribe the success of marriage to the value of the people in the marriage. People change with time. Circumstances change. Marriage shouldn’t be a chain holding people together for eternity to the detriment of each person.

Also to be clear, I’m not saying you’re being a narcissist, though I do think your world view is clearly projected from your life choices based on your response but that’s not enough to judge someone online. Im saying that if I extrapolated my choices to others I’d consider myself a narcissist. Before you reply saying that I’m calling people names.

Marriage as a societal contract is archaic. I didn’t say it was dumb historically (marriage has a long and varied history, where love was often never a factor but made sense for the time), but it is archaic. Those aren’t synonyms.