Mental Health

Hot air balloon pilots are always looking for crew people. Balloon clubs are having their annual safety seminars over the next couple months.

Repair stations are performing annual aircraft inspections, which requires a visual examination of every single panel on the balloon. They love having extra hands and eyes.

Amazing how relatable this is and yet loads of us can still feel chronically isolated or without purpose in life. Do you have some idea what elusive condition might allow you to experience life as a gift? If not, I hope you find it.

I also hope to see you posting again. This may be a tangent, but I like your way with words! There's an understated grace in how you wrote this post. If writing isn't of interest to you that's cool. I just couldn't help pointing it out.

There's a lot in this world that will get you down, but you are wrong about the dog. There's a dog on death row right now that you could save. I guarantee it will be happier with you, even if you aren't perfect. And that dog will probably give you more love than any of us deserves. And that, often helps a little bit.

Go save some poor doggy, maybe they will save you back.

I don't know you, but boy I've felt that. Not as intensely or as long, for sure, but the helplessness and inner desire for... meaning? Adventure? But being stuck instead. Yeah that sucks.

If you ever want to just chat or whatever, feel free to hit me up with a dm. I may not be able to make the world at large better, but I can at least offer an ear.

What worked for me was to think hard about the reasons why I feel like shit, and what I could do about them - even the big, scary reasons. Especially the big scary reasons.

It's probably the only reason I'm still alive, because while I still struggle to bear living in this world, I can see the faintest glimmers of a new one that waits to be built. I just need to start (or in my case, to survive till I can start). I don't think I could keep going if I was just trying to achieve conventional norms of 'being happy'; those were never meant for me.

This isn't what I started with, but it is a good encapsulation: https://crimethinc.com/tce

It helped me to expand my idea of what it means to 'love' someone, or something: https://gl.crimethinc.com/2024/02/14/notes-on-love

And here's where I hope to be one day: https://crimethinc.com/2018/03/22/we-fight-because-we-like-it-maintaining-our-morale-against-seemingly-insurmountable-odds

I wish I could go on a one-way trip outside our solar system. I wish I could see the Universe and just die out there, alone and in peace...

Hey. I'm so sorry that you're feeling so spent, so tired, so helpless.

Faced with these feelings, you have tried what many sensible people do: we try to feel better by telling ourselves that it'll be okay, that tomorrow it'll stop raining. Sometimes that helps, especially if it indeed stops raining. However, if the rain doesn't stop, telling ourselves that it'll be okay feels fake. This is actually backed by research on the topic.

I don't mean to say that optimism is bad. I mean to say that maybe there's different paths that we can take, paths that I'll mention here. Maybe some of these paths are new to you (given that you mentioned wracking your brain). Hopefully they get you closer to where you want to be. Maybe you already know the paths (again, given that you mentioned wracking your brain). Hopefully there's a new way you learn to traverse them (for example by bike instead of walking, or looking up at the canopies and the valleys instead of looking down at the ground). Maybe they don't resonate at all with you, and at least you can have the certainty that you're not alone, that we have all struggled finding our path. It's all okay. Ultimately, it's up to you what you do.

This is a public forum and many others will hear my words. They may have heard me before and they will know that I tend to recommend a set of paths that lead to psychological flexibility. I do this because, regardless of what we're faced with in life, we will always be accompanied by our brain and its voice, our thoughts and their recommendations, and our sense of self and its aspirations. Psychological flexibility teaches us how to relate with ourselves, how to approach that machine that sometimes tells us that life is unlivable and we are unlovable.

You mentioned that your brain is telling you that the world is a mess, that you're lonely, that you're old. In a weird way, it's trying to take care of you. It's predicting where the tiger is hiding and how to avoid it. "Don't try dating or finding new friend-groups! It'll be exhausting and you'll leave there with nothing good". "The world's a mess. Don't even try." But our mind plays tricks on us. It's like a friend who is trying to take care of us but is sometimes confused. It's an advisor who sometimes nails it, sometimes fails miserably, and sometimes gets stuck. It's usually when our inner advisors get stuck that our lives become full of unnecessary suffering.

That's psychological rigidity. Our mind becomes a dictator, entirely sure of how the world works and what can and can't be done. Our thoughts become repetitive and our life shrinks, kind of like how you described the suffocating walls, closing in on you.

The good news is that there is a way of pivoting from psychological rigidity to psychological flexibility and that there is solid science behind this. Here's something I've said elsewhere some time ago:

Imagine the longest essay you've ever had to write for school. A dozen pages? Two dozen? Now picture it in front of you, printed out, on a desk. Imagine there's ten copies of your essay spread around the desk. Add another layer of essays on top. And another. And another. A hundred times. If you organized the documents into a single stack of paper, it would be 1.2 meters tall. That is how many randomly controlled trials there are on the effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).

Here are two places where you can look at the evidence: one and two.

ACT has changed my life and that of hundreds of thousands of people. While I would suggest to get an ACT therapist (and a good one!), there is evidence that you can learn the skills of psychological flexibility if you engage in the appropriate mental processes, regardless of how. You can learn about how to do ACT exercises in A Liberated Mind, which you can find here https://stevenchayes.com/.

I hope you can see how those same words apply to this context.

Now, you mentioned crying daily with a stiff upper lip. But you also mentioned that you can feel your innards wanting to live, to truly live. These two are related. We hurt where we care and we care where we hurt. The crying and the yearning are two sides of the same coin. You have a yearning inside of you for life-affirming experiences. It hurts to see yourself not having them.

I just wanted to point out that this pain that you feel is tied to the passion for living a well-lived-life that you have inside of you. That energy that you have spent trying to tell yourself that things will get better, crying, putting up a facade— that energy can be redirected to a life that you find valuable. Hopefully the tools I mentioned earlier help you do exactly that.

Two things before I let you on your way.

First, you may consider the program "Healthy Minds". It's an app/program developed by a non-profit that has been tied to the research of meditation and human flourishing. I donate to them because their research is well grounded, their app is well designed, and they're life-changing. If you cannot do the investment of time or money or effort for ACT, Healthy Minds is the single easiest thing that you can do daily that will have the biggest impact in your life.

It's important to note that, while Healthy Minds is the easiest thing with the biggest impact, it's not a replacement for ACT or otherwise therapy. Here's a very cartoonish way of thinking about it, but it exhibits my point. Let's say you have been crawling on the floor. Healthy Minds helps you to walk. ACT is like the high-speed train. Walking is not a replacement for the high-speed train.

Second, as to feeling like a rusty and corroded car, it's worthwhile to point out that there are ways of removing rust and reinforcing existing structures. Heck, there's even recycling! A phoenix can arise from the ashes in the same way that people can grow from trauma (it's a thing; look up "post-traumatic growth").

I hope this helps.

I don't have anything poignant to add, but I get that feeling. I sit and look out the window just wondering what it would be like to "live."

I reached the point in my chronic depression that I finally needed to do something about it almost a year ago. From what you've written it sounds similar to how I was feeling. I don't know if you've tried therapy or antidepressants or anything, but I can tell you that I felt incredibly stupid for not trying them sooner and just living in misery for years.

I was lucky and Zoloft worked for me. I just stopped constantly hating myself and feeling like I was just waiting to die. I'm starting to end using it now, but I found it incredibly helpful to get a sort of "break" from the way I was feeling. It was like I was able to get my head above water and breathe again; I had been drowning in my depression for so long.

Just using my experience to say I hope you try some things and are able to find success with them. I thought I wouldn't get anything out of therapy and was skeptical about trying medications, but it happened to help me and I felt silly for waiting as long as I did to try something.

... it's as though I'm one of those old cars abandoned in parking lots, with busted wheels and corroded bodywork, with weeds growing through the upholstery.

Since you put it this way, I would like to introduce you to The Holey Goat.

And if you want to see the whole thing, there's a playlist.

It might sound stupid, but this project hit me in the right place at the right time. It's never too late.

This sounds like you're describing an "Identity Crisis". source

I have no professional expertise. I recommend you reach out to a professional for good guidance. The one thing I can offer is that it sounds like you've been someone else for some many other people that you've may never been able to explore who you are or who you want to be. If you at this low right now, then perhaps this is the lowest point and, with your actions, it only gets better from here.

I'm only seeing you from miles away, but you are in my thoughts.

Try a big dose of psychedelics

Watch this kid ride a unicycle around the world

Sending you hugs. ❤️