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this might piss people but but i'm really sceptical that a lot of what people talk about as depression is anything more than a functional response to a life that has become lovely, combined with a bit of peer pressure to acknowledge the world is hosed up. there's so much talk about mental health nowadays that i think it's the first thing people turn to in order to explain what's wrong with their lives, partly because a lot of the times the problems are so complex and intractable due to their economic roots, but also because i think it takes a bit of responsibility off you to personally do anything about it. i did it myself for a long time and it's only when i changed my perspective on this stuff that i've felt better. but it's a process i went through - had to realise that yeah, capitalist society has played a role in isolating me like this, i'm not broken for finding work extremely draining. then had to realise that these things don't mean i get a prize for having the worst possible reaction to them by only seeking escapist means to feel better. i wasn't depressed at all, i had learned helpnessness about my life and was using a bunch of excuses - capitalism, alcoholism and 'maybe i'm depressed?' - to justify it and continue seeking low quality kicks where ever i could without actually having to try. i'm not saying anything against seeking mental health help if you haven't done it, but i did it for a long time and it honestly didn't get me very far because my problems weren't clinical. they were material and personality based, and those things CAN be changed with the right attitude and a bit of concerted effort. people who work in mental health have a limited remit, they can't address the complex social reasons you are in the situation you are in many cases because they can't actually do anything about them. so they give you CBT therapy, maybe put you on some antidepressants - these are the tools they have, but they might be useless to you. if you have a real mental illness, then okay, but i'm not talking about that and i think inside, you know if you are kind of bullshitting it for the reasons i've alluded to. i know some people on here have serious mental illnesses and i'm not talking to everybody with this. i'm also not saying people aren't legitmately unhappy, but i am saying that 'the world sucks!! life sucks and can't be improved!!' is a cultural meme right now. people will regurgitate this sentiment while putting absolutely zero thought into it, putting aside how legitimate the complaints are (i am a socialist, i agree). but that's something happening that is happening on a social scale. still a real problem, but as far as improving your own life goes, not the same thing at all. precision you have some specific complaints about being lonely and you seem more pissed off about your life situation than depressed about it to me. i think you would feel much better if you started identifying some small things you could do to make benchmarked progress. they don't have to be big or come straight at the loneliness thing but as soon as you start doing things and see any kind of positive result, you'll probably feel differently. not fixed, maybe, but in a different mental space where the available moves will feel different and may include things you have not considered at all so far. roomtone fucked around with this message at 17:36 on May 12, 2022 |
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May 12, 2022 17:24
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A Wizard of Goatse posted:going to offer a second opinion that that wall of words was the product of a dumb mind i think i am dumb for continuing to post things like this in GBS yeah, and i'm going to try to stop doing that because i inevitably get stuff like this in return. usually i don't respond to it because what's the point, but this is something i've thought a lot about and if you actually think the points are stupid - which i doubt, because i post so many words people just don't read it and laugh - then i'd be interested to hear what part i am getting wrong.
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May 12, 2022 17:44
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Big Beef City posted:No you're dumb because you post stupid poo poo that has no verifiable background to it other than how you feel about it and then get butthurt when you get laughed at for being a loving moron. What's worse is that you're actively hurting others by posting poo poo that might drive them away from resources that could help them instead of your crackpot lunacy. Stop literally hurting others with how stupid you are. i'm not just pulling this stuff from my own head - there are some books i read over the past year. the origins of unhappiness by david smail is where i'm getting a lot of the stuff in my post. he's a clinical psychologist. then also books about addiction like chasing the scream and the urge by carl erik fisher which aren't what this is about but inform my thinking in terms of learned helpnessness, how environment conditions you and how you can overcome ingrained habits. that's combined with a lot of my own personal experience of dealing with this stuff and referring myself to mental health services and support groups. i also didn't say don't try to get help, i always try and remember to say try these things if you haven't because i might be wrong and i know not everybody is subclinical but i've trawled the internet for help so many times and found a lot of either casual 'seek this number for help' posts, which were already complained about by precision, and a lot of circlejerking stuff about how rough it is which did nothing except make me feel worse. you say i might be driving people away from getting help, i'm saying sometimes people try these things, don't get what they need, and get worse, so why not consider a different approach to it. you've succeeded in making me wonder if i'm acting like a crackpot here, which is probably a good thing, because this isn't just important to me as a problem but something i am actually dealing with myself which i don't think you're getting - i'm inside of this problem, my life is and has been hosed up by all of this, and all of the things people say you need to do have not worked. so i come back and say well i've found some stuff which is helping me make more progress, maybe this will help you - and i get this 'how loving dare you, idiot child' response. roomtone fucked around with this message at 18:15 on May 12, 2022 |
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May 12, 2022 18:07
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i didn't mean trawling the internet didn't work for me, i meant going to counselling, medications and AA didn't work for me. i learned things through them but at the other end, wasn't where i needed to be, i needed something else because they weren't covering it all and i wasn't getting better. then additionally, the internet didn't just not help, but the negativity in mental health discussions and the robotic seek help posts actively turned me off - that is the reason i'm making these posts. do you think people who are posting online about how lovely their lives are, are unaware that counselling and meds and all of that exist? a lot of the time they have been doing these things for years. 'seek help'. yeah okay, i am, kind of still hosed up though so now what. my suggestion is not prohibitive of any additional support from established approaches, i've never said that. it's just not dogmatically restricted to those things because, like i said, a lot of this stuff is rooted in economics and can't be fully addressed via counselling, meds or support groups. i think people are ending up doing damage to themselves by restricting themselves to it, thinking they are just not doing these things hard enough, when maybe look - maybe this stuff just isn't giving you what you need. roomtone fucked around with this message at 18:35 on May 12, 2022 |
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May 12, 2022 18:27
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