If you think need you therapy, and managed to find a good therapist, then definitely go for it, I am not trying to dissuade you. Just be aware that once you enter a therapist’s office, they will rarely ever say that you don’t need therapy (like, for example, a gastroenterologist would tell you that you need a orthopedist to treat you instead), and once you are in therapy, it is hard to see when it will be done. But there are some good therapists out there who, after learning about you, set goals and work towards them. [Admittedly, endless therapy is primarily a US-based phenomenon, depending on your location this could be less of a concern.]
For the neurodiversity part, I would talk to a neurologist about that, preferably one with extensive clinical experience. They have the context to evaluate symptoms. Self-diagnosis is very tempting but notoriously unreliable even for even simple matters, and stuff you find on the web is like horoscopes, more than half of them are written in a way so that people just think it describes them.
I personally find reading literature, playing a musical instrument, and hiking helpful. During a psychologically difficult period of my life, I found volunteering at a local animal shelter healing. I just happened to bike by accidentally, went in and asked if they needed an extra hand, they told me sure, just to grab a shovel.
Probably due to our lack of third spaces, crumbling of community and deep political divisions therapy has become a pay for friend for most people in the US. Most of our relationships are very transactional here and folks will huck you out of their life for the smallest transgression or difference of opinion. So for many interactions it becomes like walking on egg shells and hard find true connection. Social media has only made it worse.
It’s not great, but I’d rather someone do endless therapy if they just need someone to listen to them. The alternative are usually self harm or deep depression it seems. We tend to medicalize too many things here IMO.
That’s true. And (particularly when not viewed in temporal context) it seems to be the pendulum going the other way after decades of hush-hush about any sort of personal struggles. Decades ago there was a stigma attached to anything remotely labeled as “mental” that was very damaging. Now it’s swung largely the other way, exacerbated by socio-political division, among other things.
I realize this may or may not be seen as relevant depending on one’s point of view (and I respect that) but for me personally that’s one of many huge benefits of my church family: A group of – hopefully – non-judgemental “family members” who are interested in relationship, support, accountability and building up rather than tearing down. Of course, we’re still broken human beings and sometimes act less than perfectly but our calling is higher.
My experience with American Protestantism as a child was not great. My wife has similar stories of being excluded and judged constantly. For me it was largely a class thing. We were the poor family in a well-off church, for her it was just being the odd duck in a very rural church.
I think my generation (early Millennial) eschewed church for some good reasons. Prosperity gospel, overly controlling, judgement and what I take as a somewhat poor interpretation of much of the scripture. But we never replaced it with anything or worse replaced it with politics. All of the fervor of faith into something that was already hot with contention.
Getting into mid-life now I’ve become better read in western and eastern philosophy and have come to appreciate the cultural base, consistency, opportunity for mentorship and social connection a shared faith or philosophy brings. It gives on something to fall back on when the world appears precarious. I think previous generations took some things too literally or were easily manipulated by those looking to twist it for their own benefit.
Funnily enough cognitive-behavioral therapy has its roots in Stoicism. Proper Stoicism not the Broicism that’s popular online now. I don’t think everyone should dump their therapist and pick up Marcus Aurelius or Seneca as I think a proper mentor or master guide to understanding these things is important. But it’s probably not a bad read as a companion to such treatment. Japanese Shintoism offers a similar sense of self to the early western philosophies. Part of the world, not separate from it and to accept things unfolding as they are. Early Christianity falls in there somewhere too.
I feel like we’ve become too wrapped up in just living instead of asking what makes a good life. It would be nice to see more faiths of all colors to return to answering the latter.
Anyway, I’m a bit of an amateur at all of this myself. I barely got out of grad school alive so my scholarship on anything is questionable at best.
We can always talk about something more inflammatory like SystemD or PipeWire.
I wouldn’t take anything Abigail Shrier has written on mental health seriously. She is a journalist cosplaying as a therapist riding the conservative outrage wave to enrich herself. She takes more out of James Dobson’s books than serious medical study. Bad Therapy takes the standard antipsychiatry position that tries to cover the failings of modern society and structures and put the blame on the act of noticing that our youth are in crisis. It’s a very backwards position of “We now notice our youth are depressed, and its the way we treat that that is the problem” and not “We have defunded education, normalised mass shootings, driven the world into climate crisis and made every issue into left/right politics that we must monetise.” It’s no wonder they’re in crisis if this the world we are bringing them up in.
In any case, on a personal level, therapy has helped me greatly though times where I have needed it, and I have been fortunate enough to not need it ongoing and long term. Meds have also helped greatly, I’ve had 2 rounds of SSRIs that helped me manage depressive episodes in my life until I was in better circumstances. I also have plenty of friends who will never get there and who have chronic depression that will need management forever, it’s just how you are built sometimes and there’s no shame in needing and getting help for it.
I’m also autistic (undiagnosed) and ADHD, which are both correlated. If you’re autistic you have a higher chance of being ADHD and vice versa. I was only diagnosed with ADHD last year, in my late 30s, and being treated for it has changed my life completely. I had no idea so many of my struggles were symptoms of my condition. Alcohol abuse, being bad with money, intrusive thoughts, fidgeting and needing stimulation to concentrate, and decision paralysis were all things I thought were simply personal failings. It turns out that no, something was actually wrong, diagnosably and treatably so, and it has given me a new lease on life.
So, in saying all that, for those who are considering getting psychiatric help please do try. That first hurdle is so hard to overcome. You make a booking and it’s for weeks or months away. You change your mind, you feel different now, better even! It’s easy to convince yourself you don’t need help, or you feel like it’s a personal failing and other people do just fine so it must just be you, but there should be no shame in seeking help. It’s a massive failing of our deeply individualistic modern society that so many of us feel that way.
Yep. It also drew a lot of ideas from Buddhism and there is even physical evidence that the Buddha’s ideas reached Greece, which is a really cool thing to think about.
I too have had a run in with illness. Diagnosed last year with an immune mediated chronic illness, ulcerative colitis, which thankfully is in complete remission, but can cause serious damage in the future. Two to three years before diagnosis I had extremely bad anxiety which I am almost sure was a gut-brain axis system going haywire since I had some physical symptoms already. I improved to near normalcy after treatment. This connection is not well understood but evidence it exists is overwhelming and studies have started to happen with more frequency. It sort of wrecked my life 23-27 and I feel like I sort went off the rails of the normal progression for a person my age, such as a lot of relationship, socialization, etc, so now I am “behind” in the eyes of others.
I have been reading philosophy for a decade at least, but what really helped me of late was buddhist/eastern philosophy. I don’t identify with any of the religious ideas such as rebirth, karma, deities, etc. Learning about non duality, that you don’t need to identify with your thoughts, learning how to be mindful and identify thoughts before you ruminate on them, learning about equanimity and accepting things and people as they are, etc, are sorely lacking in our western thinking. I believe resistance to circumstances are a big source of our unhappiness. This is not to say that we can’t do anything about it of course, we can, but we don’t need to suffer from it when acting for a change.
I also practice some theravada meditation here and there, which helped me identify thoughts more as they arise and letting them go, instead of letting them run over uncontrolled. It’s really helpful, sort of as a way to train your own brain, which is completely ignored in our western world. Probably because it goes so much against the dualist thinking governed by christianity.
The curious thing I find about the Buddha is that he taught people to see this “truth” for themselves, instead of telling them it was so. This is completely opposed to almost all other major religions. Indeed it’s not a hard exercise to realize for yourself all the things I mentioned above, even if putting them to practice is some work.
In conversation with this, I feel western society puts a lot of importance on self improvement, as opposed to self acceptance. On top of that our corporate and education structures celebrate individual success instead of group achievement. Self improvement naturally implies failure of self as well, and I think has contributed greatly to the hostile nature of hustle culture and the increased monetisation and clout chasing in our hobbies, where if you’re not doing something to improve you’re wasting time, doing something for fun or self fulfilment is not allowed!
Eastern societies prioritise cohesion and the group more. I’ve lived in China and the concept of saving face and being very aware of your group identity is very strong and leads to more consideration of others and their feelings. It can outwardly feel like this kind of society destroys self expression and individuality but it still exits as either purely personal pursuits or in clubs and groups.
Chasing either to its extremes is bad, but i feel like we are further towards our individual extreme than the east is towards the homogenous extreme.
Just a quick comment (not to derail the prevalent topic)… I would agree those distortions can be very compelling reasons, sadly. Their relative absence from my church family is one of the big reasons why I’m thankful for it. It’s really counter to “natural human instinct” to live out the true intent of the gospel and is exceedingly prone to failure at the purely human level.
There are many ways in the which the church fails to be as it ought; that is because the church is full of sinners, just like the world. However when the church, as well as proclaiming the Gospel is also living the Gospel, it is a power of good (or of God).
“Bear one another’s burdens” is a Biblical imperative (Galatians 6:2), that is a practice also to be found in a community such as this one on pixls.us. The church does not have a monopoly on exercising humanity towards others; sometimes the church needs the wake-up call of other parts of society acting more humanely than she does.
The old-fashioned idea of vocation is very much behind this, whether within the church or without it. Effectively, each person needs to asking him/her-self: Whom do I need to love and serve?
I love and serve myself by looking after my body, my health
I love and serve my immediate family by providing home, clothing, food etc
I love and serve my community through the work I do
I love and serve my country through paying taxes and participation
Living out vocation is the antidote to selfish in-humanity.
You can always count on interesting career stories from those high ranking officers. I was at a luncheon where the US Coast Guard Commandant spoke fondly of his first command on a buoy tender at the rank of lieutenant. The Commandant at the time visited the base and asked him what he wanted to do with his career and he answered that he’d love to command that boat for the rest of his career. The Commandant replied “well son, the Coast Guard does have a place for people with no ambition”
Interestingly, I find some of those supportive traits on this very forum. Of course, there are always a few people less interested in being kind or helpful, but generally it’s a good group of encouraging, intelligent people.
I think any community of like-minded individuals has the potential to display the same traits as what churches provide.
My parents are strong proponents of the church community in the UK. Whenever they move to a new town, they try out all the churches to find the one they feel is most welcoming. And they always find one and make lots of friends there. They are very happy, optimistic people who believe in the good of humanity, and I credit their church community with a lot of this.
It’s not my scene at all, but I do think the type of Christianity I grew up in and around in England is much more what the Jesus in the Bible would have wanted. Over here in North America, I see a lot more of the hardline, antiquated, exclusive-club mentality, rather than the quaint, accepting, visit-the-elderly-parishioners support that I witnessed in the Church of England. While the latter tends to be dominated by older generations, it is surprisingly progressive - there are female and gay vicars, for a start!
I can comment only on what I’ve personally experienced and personally believe, but there’s no doubt genuine Christianity as taught by the New Testament (and foretold in the Old Testament) is often not what you find in “church” in general. And there’s no excuse for that. I grew up deeply embedded, as it were, in what many would think of as old style southern US Christianity. Not that I was a Christian because of it (in fact, I wasn’t a Christian at all then, until later in my mid-30s) but it certainly had its share of negative – and plain wrong – baggage. That’s another way of saying, we weren’t always on-target in regard to modeling biblical New Testament Christianity.
Not to focus on my present church specifically, but it’s an example of a “imperfect-but-genuinely-trying” NT Christianity: Both in biblical belief / theology as well as in social, societal and personal respects. We believe the Bible defines that – indeed, how could we claim to be Christian and not follow what Christ taught? Logical, in a sense although there’s far more that just logic.
Anyway, not trying to preach – Just explaining a bit.
The more people use any means to justify their fallen desires the more the world burns. That is the self-fulfilling sad irony. Christianity is supposed to be counter-cultural at its core. The litmus test to false and nowhere-good-bound belief is when it strives to have power over the vulnerable. A certain self-proclaimed adherent of a certain persuasion recently said of their enemy: “punch them while they are down”. Okay sir, what about loving your enemy? Even if false religion were to go that route, it would exercise a cruel kind of love and in turn claim that compassion is dangerous and deadly. All this is truly being said in our generation and for ages past. We cannot make this stuff up. Sorry for this reflection, but we all live in such a world right now.
On a lighter note, does anyone have a recommendation for durable car cover that protects from UV? The 40–50 EUR ones I get from Amazon last 2–3 years, crumbling into fine dust because of the sun. Such a waste of money and I feel like I am just polluting the environment with microplastics.
Since I got an electric bike, I am not using car much, and want to protect the plastics, from the sun mostly.
I don’t have any idea how many people in your location have garages that they don’t put cars in. Maybe there is someone nearby that would be willing to rent space in their garage to you at a reasonable price.
The garage is storage for things other than cars for most people. Ours is almost too small for modern sedans. Need to be careful not to scratch the sides.
It’s suburbia, with most houses having 1 garage. There is a shortage of garages.
Thanks, I am looking into that. I am currently thinking about hemp (a dense fabric such as hemp twill or hemp denim), which should be UV resistant and durable.
Before I had a garage I used this to cover my new at the time WRX that sat a lot:
Worked well but only had it out a year before we bought a house with a garage. It shed water but also breathed so fungus didn’t grow. Keep in mind: a covered car can attract attention. Mine was half uncovered a few times from local students trying to mess with it. Probably disappointed when they found it was just a Subaru hatchback. I had the optional cable lock that kept it mostly in place.
Not sure of any resellers on the other side of the Atlantic but Covercraft might be able to push you in the right direction.
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