I’m going to bring you all down. When I was suicidal and less stable (thank you Zoloft), I used to think like this. My thought process was less like “I can escape to the next plane of existence” and was more like: “hopefully heat death is wrong and big crunch is right. If so, we will endure infinite expansions and contractions. I’m bound to ‘come back’ in one of those instances.”
Thanks for sharing. My most toxic coping mechanism is humor, hence the post. The best way I can process things sometimes is by laughing at the idea of suicide.
Glad you’re still here. I think it helps to speculate that our lives very well could be a small moment of wonderful experience in a cosmically vast existence of our consciousness. There could be an eternity of boredom or pain or who knows what after this which we would experience and think “damn, I wish I’d enjoyed life more while I had it.” So cutting that short would be our biggest regret if we continue to experience anything afterwards, and if it’s not like that, well we’ll get there eventually anyway.
I was nearly suicidal at one point. I took a step back and realized “if I’m at a point in which I think I’ve got nothing to lose, then why not take a wild risk to try to get to a better place?” I made a ton of big changes between 2014 and 2017, and I’m much happier for it now. Career change to more than double my pay (quadruple at this point), dumped a bad gf that I didn’t realize I could do better than, met my current wife, saved more money, cut back on drinking by quite a bit, learned a lot, etc. When your down and near the end, swing for the fences; you could get the home run that gets you a win.
“if I’m at a point in which I think I’ve got nothing to lose, then why not take a wild risk to try to get to a better place?”
The problem I have with that is I know I can make things way worse rather than better by taking risks so I end up stuck where I am. I took a lesser risk a few years ago and thankfully only moved laterally, nothing really improved but at least I didn’t make it worse.
I just need a “fuck it” attitude, but that’s never been in my character. I’m more of a “worry about everything” person because “luck” is never on my side, I need to MAKE things happen or they never work out… If I don’t have control over it, it fails. I really envy people that just seem to float through life, having everything work out as they wanted lol
As far as the suicide goes, I’m basically “not allowed” to. I’m thankful that I have family that care about me and would be crushed if anything happened to me. Plus I know I’ll have to take care of my older brother when my parents are gone, so no matter how much I don’t want to be here, I have to be.
As far as the cosmos goes, I’m one that tends to believe what we have is all we have, there is no “again.”
If you could make things worse, then you haven’t hit the point where you have nothing left to lose. And if you still have something left to lose, then you’re relatively blessed. Mental illness notwithstanding, anybody who is reading this has a pretty decent lot on life given that they have access to internet and a device to browse here, plus some amount of leisure time. Those data points alone put you in a better living situation than probably more than half of the world population.
I can’t speak to your exact situation, but I’m optimistic that you’ll find yourself in a happier place within a few years. You seem like a thoughtful and caring person, and you’re right that that’s not all it takes, but it’s enough to get started with. When I get anxious, I envision a simple flowchart:
Can I do something about this situation to improve it?
If no, then don’t worry about it and just ride it out the best you can. Worrying is wasted time and energy here.
If yes, then do that thing. Try. If you failed to improve it, at least you tried. And you’ll wake up tomorrow and try some more. But don’t delay the trying by spending time and energy on worrying. Worrying is wasted time and energy here.
Both result in the conclusion that worrying is an illogical step that you should just go ahead and skip. And that’s how you can ease your way into a “fuck it” attitude!
My other lifehack mentality is to figure out how much more time and effort it would take to get an A+ result versus a B result. If it’s a significant difference for a pretty minor improvement, I say fuck it and move on. Beef Wellington is really good, and I’m glad I’ve taken the time to make it a few times in my life, but burgers are really good too and much much easier to make.
I hope this was helpful to you in some way. Rock on, my dude!
ive had that same response and it’s a pretty decent one. if you follow thru, some big changes can happen in a short time, stuff you’d never even imagined.
I’m going to bring you all down. When I was suicidal and less stable (thank you Zoloft), I used to think like this. My thought process was less like “I can escape to the next plane of existence” and was more like: “hopefully heat death is wrong and big crunch is right. If so, we will endure infinite expansions and contractions. I’m bound to ‘come back’ in one of those instances.”
These days, I can wait to find out.
Thanks for sharing. My most toxic coping mechanism is humor, hence the post. The best way I can process things sometimes is by laughing at the idea of suicide.
Glad you’re still here. I think it helps to speculate that our lives very well could be a small moment of wonderful experience in a cosmically vast existence of our consciousness. There could be an eternity of boredom or pain or who knows what after this which we would experience and think “damn, I wish I’d enjoyed life more while I had it.” So cutting that short would be our biggest regret if we continue to experience anything afterwards, and if it’s not like that, well we’ll get there eventually anyway.
I was nearly suicidal at one point. I took a step back and realized “if I’m at a point in which I think I’ve got nothing to lose, then why not take a wild risk to try to get to a better place?” I made a ton of big changes between 2014 and 2017, and I’m much happier for it now. Career change to more than double my pay (quadruple at this point), dumped a bad gf that I didn’t realize I could do better than, met my current wife, saved more money, cut back on drinking by quite a bit, learned a lot, etc. When your down and near the end, swing for the fences; you could get the home run that gets you a win.
“if I’m at a point in which I think I’ve got nothing to lose, then why not take a wild risk to try to get to a better place?”
The problem I have with that is I know I can make things way worse rather than better by taking risks so I end up stuck where I am. I took a lesser risk a few years ago and thankfully only moved laterally, nothing really improved but at least I didn’t make it worse.
I just need a “fuck it” attitude, but that’s never been in my character. I’m more of a “worry about everything” person because “luck” is never on my side, I need to MAKE things happen or they never work out… If I don’t have control over it, it fails. I really envy people that just seem to float through life, having everything work out as they wanted lol
As far as the suicide goes, I’m basically “not allowed” to. I’m thankful that I have family that care about me and would be crushed if anything happened to me. Plus I know I’ll have to take care of my older brother when my parents are gone, so no matter how much I don’t want to be here, I have to be.
As far as the cosmos goes, I’m one that tends to believe what we have is all we have, there is no “again.”
To paraphrase Neal Stephenson, you come from “a long line of stupendous badasses”. Why not take a flying fuck at life?
If you could make things worse, then you haven’t hit the point where you have nothing left to lose. And if you still have something left to lose, then you’re relatively blessed. Mental illness notwithstanding, anybody who is reading this has a pretty decent lot on life given that they have access to internet and a device to browse here, plus some amount of leisure time. Those data points alone put you in a better living situation than probably more than half of the world population.
I can’t speak to your exact situation, but I’m optimistic that you’ll find yourself in a happier place within a few years. You seem like a thoughtful and caring person, and you’re right that that’s not all it takes, but it’s enough to get started with. When I get anxious, I envision a simple flowchart:
Can I do something about this situation to improve it?
If no, then don’t worry about it and just ride it out the best you can. Worrying is wasted time and energy here.
If yes, then do that thing. Try. If you failed to improve it, at least you tried. And you’ll wake up tomorrow and try some more. But don’t delay the trying by spending time and energy on worrying. Worrying is wasted time and energy here.
Both result in the conclusion that worrying is an illogical step that you should just go ahead and skip. And that’s how you can ease your way into a “fuck it” attitude!
My other lifehack mentality is to figure out how much more time and effort it would take to get an A+ result versus a B result. If it’s a significant difference for a pretty minor improvement, I say fuck it and move on. Beef Wellington is really good, and I’m glad I’ve taken the time to make it a few times in my life, but burgers are really good too and much much easier to make.
I hope this was helpful to you in some way. Rock on, my dude!
ive had that same response and it’s a pretty decent one. if you follow thru, some big changes can happen in a short time, stuff you’d never even imagined.
yeah. state of mind can affect view a lot more than people usually realize.