Practical strategies to cope with being alone?

[Tammy]

Tell me about it...



You lost me here. What do you mean?


1. Sex-positive is great! A fairly reasonable and normal sex life is fine too.
2. She does not have to be black. I have had long term relationships with women of other backgrounds. And I am expanding my preferences.
3. If she is minimalist that'd be amazing.
4. Again: Religion is not that big of a deal as long as it is live-and-let-live.
5. Not having kids is a deal breaker. No doubt.
6. Harlan and I are a package deal. No negotiations on that.

And you totally skipped the last part of that sentence, after numbers 1-6. About finding a person willing to hang out with you.

[Tammy]

"likes the idea of being the companion of a morose, moody, glass empty and dry as the Mojave kinda guy, you should probably cultivate the joys of solitude. Or any joy at all."

I think that is what Steve was getting at. I would be afraid to commit to you simply because you would want me to be your psych nurse all the time. 😄

[ApatheticNoMore]

APN and UL: you two are birds of a feather. Gloom and doom and therapists are all rent a friends, nothing will help, the world is stacked against me, etc.

I was making a critique of therapy which I realize was taken personality even though I was very careful not to make things personal.

I guess my main point is therapists have their own human biases which can and sometimes DOES interfere with therapy. They often have no special insight. I think above average insight into other people is a kind of gift or aptitude that can't really be taught in school. There are many areas of life they are often ill equipt to advise on and yes often don't have the humility to say: "I don't think I have anything to offer you on that topic, I am simply out of my depth there". But this last part, that therapists are not experts on many aspects of life, is obvious if one doesn't expect therapists to be magic men and women. But I think part of their appeal to many people is they do.

[Teacher Terry]

Therapists do turn away clients when it is not a good fit. Also some can't work with certain clients because of their own triggers so they will refer them out. Some will refer out if they and the client are not making progress. There are lousy people in every profession. It takes a lot of training to be a therapist. After graduate school they put in many supervised hours honing their skills. I am not taking it personally because I chose not to practice in that area because
I found it too depressing. Instead I used my degrees to test, evaluate and make recommendations to help people with disabilities and their counselors develop a plan to return to work in a capacity that fit them. I found that to be rewarding. I was a SW for while working with abused kids and their families and after 4 years was burned out. In human services you need to find your niche.

[frugal-one]

Krishnamurti: "It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society."

At the same time, you just posted a beautiful thread about moments of peacefulness, and that's how we overcome our environment. As Viktor Frankl said, "“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way."

There are so many wonders in life, despite the yucky stuff, that we waste our time on earth by not acknowledging the wonders as well as the woes.

There were people in the death camps who survived and did not succumb to depression, etc.... Read the bolded part above. I think this is why. There are people I know who have TERRIBLE things happen to them, yet they remain positive. And, there are people I know who are drama queens... that is, make a big deal out of EVERY little thing. I believe the choice is yours to make.

[LDAHL]

We live in a world where/that is:
-Overpopulated by like 8 times
-On the verge of an antibiotic efficacy crisis
-Trump is President
-Terrorism and war are rampant even in the most advanced nations
-Cancer kills children and adults daily
-Starvation and access to clean water a huge deadly problem for millions and millions if not billions of people
-Reality TV
-Global Warming
-Murder and crime rates
-There are gun nuts all over
-North Korea probably has nuclear weapons
-ISIS and other terror organizations are seeking out nuclear weapons
-We still have to struggle to keep things like Creationism out of public schools
-AIDS and other STDs
-Boy Bands
-At least a third of all dogs die without a forever home
-Literally every body of water is polluted in the world
-The rain forests (the lungs of the planet) get deforested more each year
-There are huge islands of plastic waste in the oceans and they grow every year

Should I go on? Are you seriously -- like seriously -- going to tell me that having anxiety and depression in a world like this is an inappropriate reaction and I should just take some pill whose efficacy probably is not even evidence-based?

Wake up and smell the burnt toast! Or don't, because it will only depress you and make you anxious.

I am seriously like seriously going to tell you that a lifetime of angst-in-the-pants is in fact an inappropriate reaction to a world like this. I mean, how has it worked out for you so far?

Today, it's global warming, Kim Jong Un and cancer. Yesterday it was the little ice age, Attila the Hun and the Black Death. You're going to die, as is everyone you know. Until then, you get to scratch out a living in a world oozing with stupidity, alienation, violence and gratuitous cruelty. Are you going to let something as trite as mortality ruin your day? Are you going to let tomorrow's darkness steal today's sunshine?

I recommend William Irvine's book, A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy. I think he makes a good case that the fact that the world often or even mostly sucks does not preclude a happy life. No self-delusion required.

[catherine]

I recommend William Irvine's book, A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy. I think he makes a good case that the fact that the world often or even mostly sucks does not preclude a happy life. No self-delusion required.

Yup, I can second that recommendation.

[Ultralight]

Okay, I am going to to address many of the points you all have brought up here, from what I consider the good ones to the rather questionable ones and those in between.

I'd say yes, I am in a rather deep depression now. I have got a few physical health problems at the moment I am struggling with too. So that is making it all the worse. But I would rather not get into those in detail now.

I want you all to remember that this is just one of my threads on here. I have created numerous upbeat and/or feisty and/or interesting threads ranging from weight loss to cooking to book reviews to vacation stories to reflective threads (such as a recent one about moments of peacefulness).

Rest assured, no ex-girlfriend of mine would ever report that she had to be my psych nurse. lol
My ex-wife was not all that nurturing and was often quite cold. She and the other significant others experienced me at my depressive worst but they also experienced me at my silly best and my thoughtful best and my noble best and my loving best and my supportive best.

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” -- George Bernard Shaw

When I was a young man I was unreasonable in Shaw's sense.

But as I got older and the weight of the world crushed my spirit and I lost the grand hope for humanity I thought: "If I cannot change the world, perhaps I can at least keep its adverse effects off of me."

That is no easy task either though.

[Ultralight]

I recommend William Irvine's book, A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy. I think he makes a good case that the fact that the world often or even mostly sucks does not preclude a happy life. No self-delusion required.

I am going to check this out.

[LDAHL]

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” -- George Bernard Shaw


When I was a young man I was unreasonable in Shaw's sense.

So was Stalin. I think much of the world's misery is the result of people trying to replace gradual, hard-earned cultural evolution with the imposition of some shiny new looks-good-on-paper social theory they thought up last week. That's why I'm a conservative.