The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
Difficulty coping with the world
pots+pans
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
For quite a while now I’ve felt very unhappy. I have a loving family, a close set of friends, attend a relatively good university and am fairly healthy, but still often feel incredibly miserable and discontented.
My university has a counselling service, and after Easter vacation I plan to make an appointment to see a counsellor. I am also going to improve my diet and begin regular exercise.
I think part of the problem is that a few years ago I visited India, and the level of poverty really shook me. I was aware of the pain, suffering and woeful living conditions millions of people face everyday but seeing it in person was horrifying. I find it difficult to justify ever feeling happy when so many people are experiencing so much pain.
Thank you for any advice.
My university has a counselling service, and after Easter vacation I plan to make an appointment to see a counsellor. I am also going to improve my diet and begin regular exercise.
I think part of the problem is that a few years ago I visited India, and the level of poverty really shook me. I was aware of the pain, suffering and woeful living conditions millions of people face everyday but seeing it in person was horrifying. I find it difficult to justify ever feeling happy when so many people are experiencing so much pain.
Thank you for any advice.
pots+pans on
0
Posts
Find God.
Go out and really search with an open mind and heart.
Things become so much more clear when you do, and it becomes possible to see the big picture. That this world isn't all there is to life, but there is life without pain, suffering and death waiting for all of us.
Cue disagreement. While some people find solace in this, wouldn't you rather fix the situation without resorting to self-delusion? Coping with religion is equivalent to coping with alcohol in my mind, albeit with less health issues.
Your best bet is to go with the counseling plan. Professional help tends to be the answer.
Personally, I'm in a relatively similar position, although not as severe. My plan is to start a few new hobbies once I manage to free some time, and possibly travel, try new things and the like. In the past that has cheered me up.
Yes. Do this. It will improve your mental state immeasurably.
That's a pretty normal and human reaction.
My suggestion is this: do something. Not saving the world, or taking it upon yourself to fix everything, but do something towards addressing the problems about the world that make you angry and sad. Do what you can.
At the uni I'm at, there are regular things like trips to Africa or India, where students help build schools or houses. I know students who, during holidays or at the end of their studies, have donated their time and gone overseas to teach where education is scarce.
This is all long term. Short term, make use of the counselling service. It's there for you to use it. Long term, plan to do something, and when you can, do it.
Also, what Rhan said. Religion is often a catch-all in these situations. Don't go there unless you already are there. You have to make sure you tackle the issue and don't hand-wave away the symptoms.
It is the only real answer out there.
By all means however, volunteer, donate money to needy people, do all the good things you can. They are important.
In the end however, the only permanent solution to the worlds problems IS God.
Thank you for the suggestion. I used to be Christian, but studying Philosophy and Religious studies at college made me change my perspective. I don't (and doubt I ever will) believe in God. I am aware that faith offers peace to many people, but it is not for me. I'd appreciate it if we could keep religious discussion out of this thread.
Thanks. I do have quite a few hobbies but I should probably pick up some new ones. I've been thinking about learning a second language for a while now.
Thank you very much for this. I was aware of a few different charitable organisations within university, but have never actively participated. I will do.
As for your plan to learn a second language, it would probably be worth your while to consider Spanish, Russian, Mandarin or French if you're going for the aspects of exposure and usefulness. All of these are useful depending on the part of the world we're talking about. If you're considering another language just for fun, then pick whichever seems the most fun.
I can recommend Shiva.
Shakti is cool too though.
Also, n+1 to the charity suggestions. This makes you Good People.
OP, if you worry like you do, only bad things are bound to happen. There will always be bad things happening no matter you do. Concentrate on yourself and your happiness and then worry about others. Volunteer locally for now maybe? See how that makes you feel? If not settled enough, try the Peace Corp. later? That's the best you can do really. Give back what you can without losing yourself. Unless you're going for sainthood or something.
Digressing, I do love Black Box Recorder. I just got finished reading Luke Haines' early auto-biography.
So, I totally understand where you're coming from here.
First of all, if it's really the poverty that you observed in India that bothers you - I think that's actually great. It's great that you are rational and morally-conscious enough to actually feel the worldwide inequity in being discontent with the western lifestyle. I wish the western world as a whole was more like you. Hell, I wish I was more like you.
And if that's the real reason you feel discontent, I don't know if that's a completely bad thing. There's a reason you feel bad. And it's not religious - your soul isn't searching for God or anything. The reason human beings feel any pain is because there's something wrong - and emotional pain is no different. If you felt pain in your arm - wouldn't you look at it? Get it checked out if it's serious? The same sort of thing is going on here.
Could you transform this pain that you're feeling into something good? Something that makes the world a bit more just? The Peace Corps sounds like the perfect path for you. It's not easy work, not by a long shot. If you still have time to add a minor or major at college, I'd recommend going to a Peace Corps recruiter right now and ask them what they need, then go study that.
Second of all, however, the pain your feeling might not be normal on it's own. (Going back to the hurt arm analogy, if your arm is feeling pain and there really is nothing wrong with it, there might be a problem elsewhere that needs addressing.) In this case, there might be something out of whack psychologically, and the trip to India is either the explanation your rational mind is giving for the inexplicable pain, or the catalyst for an unnatural problem. In other words, what I'm saying is you might be clinically depressed. A therapist will be able to help you to figure out if that's the case. I highly recommend you take up your own advice of going to see one!
*Edit: Whoops, I did not see your paragraph about not wanting to talk about religion. My bad. Just ignore this last paragraph here.
So, pots+pans needs to come to terms with the problem of suffering somehow before he can help do something about it. I'm not sure about counselling, people here tend to recommend it for any unhappiness, but being angry at the injustice of the world is not really the same as depression.
See the counselor. See an outside psych. Talk to someone about whats troubling you.
Good luck brother
i know what you mean! I was just about to have a good old rant, but instead i took a breath and will throw in my perspective:
Religion is brilliant as a personal motivator, and through it people can achieve the most wonderful, compassionate, loving, and selfless things.
Just the same as can people who don't believe.
For anyone to claim that we're misguided because we still believe that you can make a change for the better in this world without religious belief is both wrong, and arrogant.
People suggesting volunteer work, charitable activity, are giving the best advice here, since P+P will be able to go out and first-hand make a difference, without any shred of doubt. Two hands put to work will ALWAYS achieve more than a thousand clasped together in prayer.
@Pots + Pans: You seem to be on the right track already- changing your lifestyle is one positive thing that will certainly help your mood, and if you were to go on to carry out some charity works, you'd be making a real and valuable contribution to helping others who are less fortunate than you. Counselling will be the icing on the cake, as it may help you to rationalise your feelings, and even aid putting you in touch with other like- minded people who also want to make a difference.
However overwhelming it may seem, you can choose whether or not you're going to let the realization that millions of people around the world live terrible lives disable you or not. There are thousands of charities working to improve other peoples lives. Look into them, and see how you can help. Maybe its donating money, writing letters to politicians, or going overseas to volunteer.
You can also consider doing something in your community to help the poor and disadvantaged there. Volunteer at a food bank or soup kitchen.
Also, telling people there is a magical otherwold where their suffering will be ended is a fabulous way to deflect people from demanding change to their conditions and propping up the people perpetuating those conditions. That kind of bullshit is one of the things I find most disgusting about organized religion.
Focusing only on those who are miserable will only make you too unhappy to help where you can.
Not saying this to make you feel worse, but there are many people in the US as well who live in dreadful conditions. India isn't special in this regard.
I recommend volunteering at a soup kitchen or homeless shelter or habitat for humanity or another non-profit. That will give you an outlet to contribute to and improve those people's lives.
God as an answer to the problem of suffering has always seemed dodgy to me. If an atheist gets cancer, he can think "It was just random chance", but a theist who gets cancer has to think "why would a good God let me suffer?". So atheists are actually better off!
The problem with God as an answer to all your questions is that it just raises more questions. Why does God let people suffer? Religion provides many answers, but none have satisfied me 100%. I am still a Christian, and hope to find out the real answer one day, but it'll probably have to wait until the afterlife!
Oh yeah. You see, it totally depends on how you look at the world. Those starving people living with famine and disease, they aren't actually in such an awful position. If you apply some cultural relativism - you know, bend your mind a little bit - you'll see that they are actually living normal, clean, and perfect lives.
Right?
It depends. If you see a filthy, disease-ridden beggar, you are probably right that he is not happy with his lot.
But there are a lot of people in the world who are poor, but have sufficient food, shelter and clothing to live a dignified life. It is patronizing to assume a poor person cannot be happy. It is safe to assume that those who are poor would rather have more money, but to say that they are miserable because they do not have every frivolous luxury that we take for granted in the West is not necessarily correct.
I suspect the OP was talking about starving, diseased beggars rather than those who are poor but have sufficient shelter and food.
A few hundred years ago nearly everyone lived like the poor of India. Read up on the slums of London in the 19th century sometime. It is a thing that we can be proud of that nearly everyone in the West now has sufficient food. I have every hope that eventually this prosperity can be shared throughout the world. Things are getting better, even if they are not there yet.
not to derail, but I'm always disgusted when people say "wow, those malnourished kids sure seem chipper for people who have to spend their lives scrounging for scraps in a fetid gutter"
yes, without a notion of a sanitized and privileged first world existence to compare it to, without losing that they may not seem as miserable as you would be if you were uprooted and put in their position. they may still be capable of joy and not ruminating on their situation for any number of reasons.
this does not mean they're not traumatized and it does not mean that they do not suffer.
in your case, this sounds like pretty much all you need. god knows I find it easier said than done, but I'm a lot happier with myself and the world on the days I make it to the gym.
As for the India/the shittiness of the world, you aren't responsible. you're privileged and perhaps on some grand scale you live in a society with an unfair advantage that may be partially due to colonialism, but as a person, none of it is your fault, and you have a right to live whatever life you can make for yourself without making yourself miserable over something that has nothing to do with you. Which isn't to say you shouldn't care- it is your responsibility to be interested and aware, to be curious enough to research and keep up with the machinations that cause and continue to cause these things, and it wouldn't be a bad idea to share what you learn with others.
But to be overly emotionally invested in something you didn't cause and can't do much about? that helps no one, least of all the people you're upset about.
I'm not talking about kids in Ethiopia with bloated stomachs and flies swarming them. There are a quite a few communities of people who have done much worse by having "cultured civilizations" try to help them. I'm just saying, look at the big picture. It may help.
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
I think he did.
Then don't justify your happiness. Ask for yourself nothing but essentials and try to make others as happy as you can. Think about necessity rather than value (The Great Depression was necessary rather than bad). Embracing determinism is also good. So is realizing that all life is self interested works too.
Yeah, but perhaps in a better way than the other posters in this thread. I think the worst thing that this discussion can do is foster strife on behalf of the poster, seeing as how the poster already has strong feeling of guilt.
OP, do you have medical insurance?
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
If you follow through with this, I don't think you could get any better advice.
How does your pain help them? It doesn't. If you feel you can do something to help impoverished people, by all means, do it. But don't torture yourself or feel guilty. Life is not fair - that you were born into a loving family and a region with a good economic/political standing is simply a matter of cosmic coincidence. You have nothing to feel bad about. It's not your fault
A feeling of discontent means you aren't content with something about your life - can you nail that down? If you're not happy, well join the club. A lot of people aren't happy. Happiness is a mental state of satisfaction, not a goal. Being miserable however, is something you can get through with an attitude change or some careful meditation on what you want in life. Having goals and purpose help a great deal.
As someone who's been to developing areas of the world and studied cultural anth a little higher than 100 level, universals exist. Cultural relativism doesn't really come into play too much when you're talking about squalor, famine, and disease. It's fucking terrible in any culture, in any situation. It is a universally shitty thing to experience.
I'm going to go against the grain here and say you should feel a bit guilty. Just a bit.
The more people that realize how disgustingly and insanely privileged people the middle class in the first world are the better. You do have it better than the vast majority of the people in the world. You throw things away that other people would fight for.
Now how you deal with this is going to fall somewhere between acceptance and rejection. Full acceptance being either FUCK YOU GOT MINE or 'life is hilariously cruel'. Full rejection is selling all your stuff and going to work for a charity in India. Full acceptance is bad because it a) makes you a dick and b) makes you a dick. Full rejection is bad too, but for a different reason. Every person who I have met who has devoted their life to helping the most unfortunate gets worn down by the sheer depressing constancy of it all.
Specifically relating to India: things are changing. More and more indians are getting to experience western style luxury. Plenty are still roadside begging, tarpaulin living, get hit by a car and no one cares poor.
But to me this isn't really about percentages or how many people have what. This is about the first exposure to the kind of suffering that trivializes 95% of the cries for help that exist on HA. In between wearing fisherman pants and visiting temples you actually managed to notice to the grinding poverty in india, which is better than the uncomfortable 'pretend to not notice' most people do.
My advice to you would be to seek out that kind of suffering, and interact with it more often. It exists in your own country, in the form of the disabled and the homeless. Get some kind of casual or volunteering job involving them. This will a) make you feel less guilty and b) let you see the mewling wretches of the world as actual people. Once you can see the human face behind incredible misfortune it makes it easier to accept. But this is just me.
https://medium.com/@alascii
Also this is an attitude I fucking despise. Happiness is absolutely an attainable goal. If you aren't happy with your life then maybe you need to fucking change it. Or if you are too lazy to do that get some fucking perspective. You know the thing that is actually really fucking easy due to all our fucking western privilege?
Or hey, accept the world as it is and accept your life as it is and go on anti-depressants.
EDIT: Oh hay you changed your post to be less defeatist. That is nice.
https://medium.com/@alascii
It's amazing how varied lifestyles are, even in the less affluent parts of India. I visited pretty much my entire family in West Bengal back in 2004 and some of them lived in villages, while others lived in areas with full plumbing, TV and internet.
I myself take a very passive approach to the problem. I acknowledge it as an issue, and have been a part of several groups during my time. I don't know if your university offers Rotaract (Rotary International's university branch), but organizations such as those are a good place to start.
You'll eventually have to accept that you will be able to do very little to help the situation. That still doesn't mean that you shouldn't try.
Steam: CavilatRest
Repeating myself here. This is not what I was referring to. There are many people from "developed" cultures that look at others and see poverty and squalor where there isn't any. "Poor" is a very relative term. Again, people with bloated stomachs starving on the street is not what I was talking about.
but this is clearly not what the OP is talking about. The shit you will see in India is abhorrent.
https://medium.com/@alascii
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
https://medium.com/@alascii
yes it is possible
If you lose sight of perspective, or even if you just fixate on something, it could be indicative of a biological condition
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.