the issue is not whether it is normal. that’s not even a therapist’s concern. the issue is whether it’s healthy. the perspective is skewed as well. a “normal” reaction to an extremely abnormal situation is by definition not normal. “normally” people aren’t perpetually angry because they don’t “normally” go through what you’ve been going through.
PTSD is a “normal” reaction to trauma. should people who suffer from devastating PTSD not seek help because it’s a normal reaction? completely skewed way to look at it.
Yup. Also we only have op’s perspective. So it may be as you said that they’re having a normal reaction to an abnormal situation or they could be having an abnormal reaction (like explosive anger or constant anger) that they don’t realize is very unhealthy for them bc their anger is understandable and justified and therefore op perceives it as normal and fine
Basically, life is complicated, we only have one perspective, and just bc something is understandable doesn’t make it good or healthy
I have long covid which basically is completely debilitating, and my conservative parents STILL talk about “haha wasn’t the pandemic silly. We really overreacted :P” meanwhile 4 million Americans are unable to work, and I’ve been to the ER twice because of something you have a 1/5 chance of getting from covid. Can’t believe we were so hysterical about it guys 🤭
Anger is not a productive emotion. It drains you, exhausts you. It doesn’t help. Transform it into something cold and calculated, and use it to get metaphorical revenge.
Nah, this is bs.
Plenty of people are fueled by anger, motivated by anger, focus better when they’re angry. Anger can already be cold and calculated, no transformation necessary.
But aside from all that, emotions don’t have to be productive. They aren’t productive or unproductive, they simply are. Emotions are largely involuntary reactions to our surroundings and circumstances, a lense that colors an individual’s world. They’re all valid, regardless of whether or not they’re productive, and pointing out that “anger is not productive” makes you part of the problem the post is describing.
The word productive scares me sometimes.
It’s an obsession born out of capitalism. They want you focused on “productivity” because it makes the line go up. Sometimes you need to be unproductive.
My thoughts exactly. Maybe I dont want to produce, maybe I want to sit on my ass and play Gothic 1 for 7 straight hours.
Emotions have to be not damaging. When they are, you feel like shit and it reinforces the cycle of you feeling like shit. They are “valid” whatever that might mean, but they can absolutely wreck your entire shit up. So we learn to properly process them so that doesn’t happen.
Your not recognizing that is actually part of the problem, you reinforce people being total wrecks, under the misguided veil of trying to appear helpful.You missed my point completely, and are arguing something I’m not actually saying.
You don’t help someone process an intense emotion by telling them their emotion isn’t helpful. That’s the whole point of the post.
Yeah, I got so angry at AI slop code that I started doing research for a video essay, and found the original form of AI coding, in the 60’s and 70’s. It’s called “natural language programming”, and it’s the reason why SQL’s syntax looks ass.
Or sometjing like this?
they ban you for threatening violence.
I want to hug OOP so bad ;_; COVID took my dad from us and yeah, it was like that. I want to listen to OOP tell me everything on their mind about their mom… without judging them. Without questioning them. With only accepting them and commiserating. Fuck this timeline and the world we built in it…
The problem is there’s no accountability anywhere. I’m a bit older so for me it’s been 9/11, Iraq with WMD lies, Afghanistan Taliban replaced by the Taliban, Arming the Latin Cartels, Panama Papers, COVID, Epstein Files, Bailouts for Wallstreet, there are more for sure but nobody is ever held to account for anything. The bigger the lie the bigger the corruption the more it just gets swept away like nothing happened. It causes you to lose faith in your country and die a little inside each time. So I get it.
Dude I’m older than you, so I remember all that, as well as Iran-Contra, AIDS, Watergate (the last scandal for which there were consequences), Vietnam, My Lai, Nixon, the Arab Oil Embargo, the insane inflation of the 70s, Kent State, a whole bunch of assassinations, the Iran Hostage Situation, and a lot more.
Imagine over 60 years of seeing your government do all sorts of stupid things, with virtually no consequences at all (except Watergate, a little bit).
Sorry brother, guess it’s par for the course.
I’d really like the next 60 years to go a lot better for my son and future generations than the mess of the last 60.
The problem isn’t anger nearly so much as “What are you going to do with that rage?”
And the answer seems to be “Go on the internet and type in all caps at other people!” Which… hey, I guess that works. We seem to have a lot of very angry people online and they do seem to be venting their frustration at one another very effectively.
We also have a growing number of police, military recruits, and paramilitary forces who also spend a bunch of time online working themselves up into terrified rage. And then they get to go out with guns and batons and tear gas to square off against civilians who have been terrified in turn.
Then we have a congo line of politicians show up to say “Vote for me and I will end the terror!” And then we get an even bigger police and paramilitary state, which maybe gets used to suppress the political opponents some of the time. But mostly just gets used to attack the homeless, round up immigrants, and bomb brown people living abroad. So now the whole world can feel terrified and angry. And we can be terrified and angry of that in turn.
Just speaking for myself (as someone who tends to go online and speak in all caps) I think that is perhaps a better way to deal with my rage at the world than taking it out on other people in the real world, or picking up a gun and shooting at other people in the real world.
It might annoy the people at whom I am speaking in all caps, but on the other hand at least no innocent bystanders end up with bullet wounds in them.
It takes money to be batman.
Batman isn’t real. But we’ve got a bumper crop of Lex Luthors.
Kirkland branded Dr evils
We have to re-normalize anger against injustice.
Anger is pathologized primarilybecause our entire economic and social order is built of pure, unadulterated injustice, and if you’re allowed to be angry at injustices, the entire system might collapse.
Anyone trivializing or pathologizing anger is spreading the propaganda of the ruling class whether they mean to or not.
have you done research into what happens to old and retired socialists?
Yes, and from your comment history I’m quite sure you haven’t, but you’ve absorbed some US State Department propaganda and mistaken it for research, so you have that going for you.
The worst part about things like this is when you try to have a conversation like this with your average friend/coworker/acquaintance/etc. they’re all like, “calm down; you’re overreacting”. I’m like, “no, fuck you; you’re underreacting! People DIED.”
Has anyone else over the age of 35 notice a major shift the past couple of decades regarding how little people care about literally anything? It’s like humanity as a whole have turned into emotional zombies. You can’t even say hi to strangers in public anymore. They just stare at you like, “who are you and why the fuck are you talking to me”? It’s so bizarre compared to how people used to be in the 90s and 2000s. Nobody even wants to make eye contact with anyone anymore, let alone wave as you pass each other down the street. Not unless you’re someone they know.
It’s as if people forgot how to communicate with each other outside of the internet… Is it just me? Maybe I just have a bitchy resting face. IDK. But anyway this YT Short perfectly exemplifies exactly want I mean. (Piped link)
they’re all like, “calm down; you’re overreacting”. I’m like, “no, fuck you; you’re underreacting! People DIED.”
Worst part is the response I’ve gotten from this. “It was just some old people and those that would have died anyway from something else.”
Has anyone else over the age of 35 notice a major shift the past couple of decades regarding how little people care about literally anything?
Until it impacts them personally, yes. Knew someone who thought covid was a common cold (had relatives with mild symptoms of any), then they caught it and it rocked them. Suddenly it wasn’t anything to make fun of anymore. If they didn’t have bad symptoms, they still wouldn’t care.
It’s as if people forgot how to communicate with each other outside of the internet… Is it just me?
Definitely not just you.
“it was just some old people…”
This experience has permanently damaged my patience for alleged “human beings”. I’m with you on this, on how much it sucked, because my dad was once if those old people. This fucking plague killed him when he could’ve had at least a decade more to enjoy in life… My mother had just had a stroke and she needed him more than ever right when he got taken away. Now, every time I ever hear about someone dying, the math happens automatically in the back of my mind before I even get to recognize that it’s happening:
Was the person who died at least as good a person as my father?
Because if not, fuck em.
I have no patience for the continued existence of anyone who isn’t at least as kind, patient, generous, or warm as him. Which means VERY NEARLY every single fucking Republican. If they all died i would feel NOTHING. not even relief. But especially not grief. THEY DID THIS. I have nothing for them but revulsion. There is now a stark cutoff in my perception beyond which absolutely NOTHING matters. Only things that are better than that threshold are worth while. Literally everything else is beneath my attention.
Anything that is not at least going well enough, beneficially enough, to exist above that threshold, i have no time for. No room for in my perceptual horizon. I am one bad week from writing off all of existence and going out with maximal sabotage.
My completely unrequested advice: try your best to stay or become the person that those you look up to (including your departed father) would be happy with you becoming. If you feel like you’re overly frustrated and about to have a breakdown, do whatever you can to bring yourself back.
If that means you need to step away and take a vacation into a yurt or cabin in the woods with a Nintendo DS or a friend: do it. Therapy also helps if your insurance can afford it, and if you find the right therapist (most allow you to have a call to assess good fit).
Hang in there.
What if doing that for decades has resulted in nothing?
Unfortunately society feels like it’s headed to another historical event where the classes have to remind each other what the deal was, likely with violence.
Nobody even wants to make eye contact with anyone anymore
idk about you but i’m heavily autistic
So am I but I still force myself do it because I don’t want everyone to think I’m an asshole.
valid
i long ago stopped masking for the comfort of neurotypicals. but to each their own
Removed by mod
What a beautifully ableist take.
How’d
work with the normal rather than flat out rejecting it and somehow thinking you are special.
Work out for any minority group in history?
Spoiler: not well.
we’re turning into homogenised soup. Endless parade of milquetoast pillows with beige opinions and the depth of a puddle. Where is your passion. Where is your rage. “omg u so confrontational” I am human. if you cannot deal with a normal range of human emotions you are fucked
You’re so negative is what I constantly got from my ex wife. Yeah, the world is fucked, and I feel the need to talk about it.
This is by far the most crazy transition that has happened in my lifetime. And I remember being asked “smoking or non smoking?”
I think being overexposed to so many issues around the world is making people numb - especially when they don’t know what to do about it.
(There may be other factors - for example, less densely populated areas being more open because there’s more time per person to go around or something like that - but I think overexposure is a big bit of it).
We need more ways to act rather than just react.
For example, here’s a long Covid research fundraiser link
Today I saw someone on my morning walk, he said hi, I said hi back, and then he reacted like I hadn’t responded and got pissed off at me (“I guess its NOT a good morning, then!”). Every single human interaction outside my intimate circle makes me feel horrible. This guy just chose not to hold up his part of the bargain. It’s like he chose to react badly, no matter what I actually did.
What the therapist doesn’t understand is that the anger is not just about mom dying. It’s about how everyone around this person failed them in a moment of danger, and as a result of that her mom died a horrible death. And even later, her society was collectively unable to acknowledge its behavior and the consequences it had.
I did not lose my mom but I did work in a hospital as a physician throughout the pandemic. I remember the ICU being full from Covid patients to the point that the hospital had to open new sections up and nurses working overtime to accommodate all of the sick. Then I would leave the hospital after providing care to all of these sick and dying people… and go to the grocery store where everyone was refusing to even mask up and I would see ghoulish politicians who were talking about how it was a hoax. I could see this catastrophe happening in front of my own eyes and everyone around me just wanted to pretend it was fake.
I didn’t suffer the loss this woman did but those terrible experiences and the feeling that my community had completely failed its members forever changed how I see people and the society I live in. So yeah, I get why she is still mad.
My wife worked in ICU then COVID ICU. She still gets PTSD flashbacks from everything she dealt with when someone comes in with similar symptoms. I got front row tickets to seeing a person who’s entire job is to keep people alive go from “oh someone I had today coded and we couldn’t bring them back” every so often to “we had multiple people die today. A few more aren’t much longer. If we put them on their back, they’ll die. If we give them water, they’ll choke and die. They still refuse to believe that COVID is real as they are actively suffering and dying of it”.
Yeah, we get a touch testy when people say it was fake or overblown
My thought was that staying home and self medicate is better choice than ICU. Virus is new, nobody knows how to treat it properly, too many sick people and not enough doctors. Everybody sick thus constant exposure to virus and other patalogies that came from weakened immune system. And I did a right thing forcing parents to stay at home.
I worked at a nursing home at that time. So many people died or were impacted, an entire wing got shut down because of how many patients were lost. It then re-opened to be exclusively for Covid patients.
My grandma died there. I was the last relative to see her alive. The day before she passed, I called all of my aunts/uncles, siblings, and some of my cousins (the ones closest to her) so they could say their goodbyes. As anyone who’s worked with dying patients knows, sometimes people cling on and suffer in a terminal state until they get closure from a relative giving them “permission” to let go. I had to be that person. I told her that it’s okay, that we all love her and we understand. Although she appeared catatonic, right after I said that, a tear rolled down her eye. I think she heard me and understood, though there’s no way to really know. It was a hard day. She passed the next morning.
It bothers me to this day that people thought it was a hoax. A lot of people I knew who thought it was a hoax wound up catching Covid, though none of them were hospitalized over it, which honestly kinda sucks because it means they didn’t learn their lesson.
One of the doctors I worked with bought into the craziness and was arguing with the hospital about vaccines and masks even as our ICU was about to burst. Then his wife caught it and ended up in the ICU as a patient. He still did not change his mind despite her being in the hospital, and this was a physician.
I guess what I’m saying is they still probably wouldn’t have learned. I don’t mean to be so pessimistic but propaganda is so powerful.
Michael Shermer said this a long time ago but he said, “Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.”
Found out a few coworkers thought it was a hoax and casually brought up how it not only almost killed me, the guy I caught it from (a vocal antivaxxer!) DID die. I know dozens of people hospitalized and dozens more who suffered. I had jobs canceled because the client died.
They both worked office (then WFH) jobs during COVID. I worked 55+ hours a week in people’s homes and businesses. Who do you think has a better idea of the reality of the situation?
well, an aunt in-law got it, so did her husband, she was in a coma for like 3 months, he died, she can’t use one arm anymore and has a litany of other complications stemming from the ordeal (and the grief). Do you think she learned her lesson? I’ll let you guess
tbf, she can’t learn her lesson without realizing / accepting that her (and dead husband’s) actions are the reason for all her suffering, for him being dead, they are responsible for their misery, that she played a hand at getting her husband to the grave.
Sometime last year, I heard someone say something to the effect of “I think the pandemic had a pretty major effect on all of us,” and for a moment I thought “honestly I think I got through it fairly unscathed” because I was only considering my tolerance for the disruption to my life at the time. I was in a financially secure position and had plenty of social contact with friends through online gaming. I never felt any more depressed than normal throughout “quarantine” insofar as we even had one. Got my vaccines. Never tested positive. Didn’t lose anyone close to me (to the illness). Overall, I thought I’d made it through pretty alright.
Then I thought for just a few seconds more and I realized that the pandemic is what caused me to literally give up on humanity. Seeing how little everyone cared about anyone who was actually affected. People making posts online about how it was “fake” when people all over the world were dying. The ones who refused to wear a mask. Such a simple fucking request. Put this cloth over your face for a while and you can help not get people killed, but they still wouldn’t do it. I lived in a more rural area at the time, so it took a while for things to get really bad there. I remember thinking “you idiots will change your tune when it’s your grandmother dying” and then they just didn’t… Their own friends and family dying around them and most just slid further into conspiracy and paranoia.
The whole experience just fundamentally reshaped what I believe about humans and I don’t think anything will ever be able to switch things back. It reminds me of the scene in Terminator where John Connor says “We’re not gonna make it are we? People, I mean.”
Just a quiet resignation to the reality that left with nothing more than our own devices and all the resources we’d need to persist until the heat death of the universe, we’ll likely end up going extinct due to something completely preventable and probably caused by us. We choose our own destruction.
I didn’t feel this way before covid. I used to believe we’d eventually figure things out. Not anymore.
This is everything I wanted to say. Everything. Right down to the John Connor quote.
I was routinely being sent to places like Texas to work during the pandemic because they didn’t care. It made me so mad being down there and getting made fun of for wearing a mask when where I live, you couldn’t go into any building without one.
@greatwhitebuffalo41 I know the feeling. I walked around Texas with a bunch of fucking idiots who couldn’t be bothered to accommodate the sick and helpless. At least I did my part and wore a mask.
“Southern hospitality” my ass.
Yeah was not a good time to be honest.
It still isn’t. People still get Covid and Post Covid and governments are telling all these chronically ill people that they’re “lazy” and must work 40 hours a week or lose their insurance, pensions, etc.
Yeah and don’t forget about long covid. Ugh
There’s now long covid (up to 6 weeks after getting sick, when you might still have covid) and post covid (6 plus weeks).
One family living down the road from me lost an adult son to COVID because the 3 men of the house, father & 2 sons, believe(d) that the vaccine makes men sterile and of course they refused to wear masks. Despite mandates against large indoor gatherings, the family opted to have a funeral service with 100+ people packed into the church. A bunch of attendees ended up with COVID in the week or two following, one of which died. Very likely, the bulk of those folks got it at the funeral, as there are photos showing that almost nobody was wearing a mask nor social distancing.
Another set of neighbors, the wife was homebound due to poor health, but otherwise she still managed keeping up with yard and house work, cooking, cleaning, taking care of herself, etc. The husband spent his days of retirement out gallivanting with his buddies, hanging out unmasked and unvaxxed at bars, and places like that. The wife who never left the house, ended up with COVID. Pretty obvious he gave it to her considering he was feeling under the weather the prior week and she never left the house, but since he refused to take a COVID test, he would insist he never had it. She survived, but it left her physically and mentally disabled, not really able to take care of herself, forcing him to become her care taker. Then he passed away, largely due to ignoring his health and troubling signs.
I know I should be angry, but mostly I’m sad.
See now I am angry for this person.
And that seems pretty reasonable.
Yeah society start to make people feel angry.
To be fair (lol) how can therapy work in an insane and unjust society? Shouldn’t your therapist advice you to join the fascist party since your white and cis anyway, it’s better for your mental health (lol). Here are some pills to make you forget, the alternative is joining the resistance and fighting and likely dying (which is definitely suicidal)
EDIT: Just to be clear, I’m being very sarcastic here, there are always productive things you can do even in these times.
Something like radical acceptance from dbt is my go to for someone with your argument. I can acknowledge injustice and also acknowledge that much of it is out of my control. I can work towards correcting injustice whenever possible but I also have to recognize that fixing everything is far beyond me. For my own mental health I need to be able to recognize when I am ruminating on an issue that cannot be fixed and learn to let go of that attachment to suffering
Alternatively I can be miserable, forever dwelling on injustices that I cannot fix myself. But how does that help change anything? Really would argue it’s just giving the fascist party what they want. If “the resistance” is beaten and broken simply by business as usual then is that not great for them?
In a non political context think of an emergency veterinarian or ER doctor who got into the field because they truly care for animals/people. They undoubtedly will deal with unfair death, seeing the results of abuse, systemic failures about cost of care resulting in premature death or disability, etc. probably on a near daily basis if they live anywhere with people. Should they simply resign themselves to misery because of this cruel and harsh reality? Or should they find a way to let go of the attachments to the misery involved in these tasks so they can do their (very necessary) job that already desperately needs more of people like them
Yeah well said. In a way realizing just how broken our civilization is helped me let go of some personal issues, like demands I put on myself.
But I’m lucky and privileged, I haven’t suffered great traumatizing injustices like OP. I do think it’s an important question how therapists deal with systemic injustice and oppression and environmental collapse on a global scale. I don’t think psychotherapy really developed to deal with this, the ideal would be to get people out of these situation and let them heal. But there is no getting out.
OP is a good example of the psychological terrorism inflicted on most sane people by Trump and MAGA. Deliberate. We’re in an abusive relationship but there is no halfway house and we can’t divorce. People don’t even understand that neoliberalism is driving all this, and most therapists do not either.
So I do think it should be radical acceptance. But there is the dichotomy: Anger gets shit done. People should get angry and channel that anger into productive or well, subversive ways. At least if we want a chance to defeat our “abusers”.
Is civilization ‘broken’? It seems like people have the perception that the world should be just and good things should come to those who somehow ‘deserve’ it. That’s not reality and never has been. Civilization in general is the movement to better for all in my mind, but that’s a slow, grueling path and we haven’t gotten close to it yet. We are one dumb monkey away from ending civilization as we know it every day. Or just a couple meals away from civil war.
That’s not reality and never has been.
But it could be, and anyone who learns that it’s not reality and has any reaction other than “well why the fuck not?” and a determination to make that the reality by any means necessary isn’t a good or even neutral person.
Your complacency is actually a bigger problem than the greed of the people benefitting directly from the world’s injustices.
The only appropriate or morally acceptable reaction to seeing injustice is to resolve to stop it by any means necessary.
In the 100,000 years of humanity it hasn’t been and you suddenly are the bright one who thinks it will change because ‘it could be’?
So in your mind causing further injustice to stop an injustice is morally acceptable? You said any means necessary.
In the 100,000 years of humanity it hasn’t been
In the 100,000 years of humanity it has been, most of that time. In the 8000 years of the existence of domination systems we’ve been moving away from that ideal and not towards it, and for the 300 years capitalism has existed we’ve been sprinting away from it like it was an apex predator, but it was the norm up until fairly recently on the scale of human evolution. There were even a few generations between the invention of the ox-driven plow and the waves of kurgan invasions where people likely got to enjoy the benefits of agriculture and urbanization without the crushing demands of laboring for the good of an oppressor.
So in your mind causing further injustice to stop an injustice is morally acceptable? You said any means necessary.
Punishing the perpetrators of injustice or violently preventing them from doing further injustice is not an injustice, so your entire point makes no sense.
In the 100,000 years of humanity it has been, most of that time.
Every historian would disagree with you. For almost all of humanity the mass majority lived short brutal lives, and often starved or were flat out killed. Hell, that was if you were the lucky few that survived childhood to begin with.
Domination systems? Seriously? Yes, absolute rulers and domination over the world has worked out so well for humanity.
Capitalism isn’t the best system, but like democracy, it’s the best until some bright group of monkies come up with a better one that can be implemented.
You could be the first buddy.
And yes, solving injustice with more injustice is the same logic the Nazi’s used to kill people they didn’t like.
Perhaps you’ll grow up, get out of the basement and actually live life, realizing it’s a whole lot better than 99% of history has allowed for.
Well my minimum standard is that we as a civilization do not steer towards extinction. Or that we reasonably minimize the risk of extinction. If an alien would look at our failed action on climate change, it would think we failed a very basic test for a “rational intelligent civilization”.
We are incapable of acting rational as a civilization. This hasn’t always been the case, even though people have always been assholes.
There has been much technological progress and social progress for minorities, but negative progress in quite a few very important areas. Raising children, news / social media, propaganda and disinfo, wealth inequality, climate change, consumerism, resource depletion. Gaza, Ukraine, Iran and other wars. Or the insane investment into AI and datacenters is just bonkers. Crisis in science and research. Autonomous killer robots will soon allow complete totalitarian control.
Outdated voting systems that do not allow better democracy. The US can’t be called a democracy at all. China as a one party system with is taking better care of their people than the US, because of their socialist roots they actually believe in something besides self serving unlimited greed. The elites and plutocrats in the west believe in nothing.
And the trouble is that with technological progress it becomes increasingly more possible to make ourselves extinct. Right now even with all out nuclear war it would be pretty impossible to scrape us off the planet. But add some bioweapons or use mass killer robots or AGI then it becomes feasible. The richest man in the world is actively trying to create a malicious “anti-woke” super intelligence.
We are incapable of acting rational as a civilization. This hasn’t always been the case, even though people have always been assholes.
This has literally always been the case. When has it been the case for the world for say 100 years? Please let us know.
Raising children, news / social media, propaganda and disinfo, wealth inequality, climate change, consumerism, resource depletion. Gaza, Ukraine, Iran and other wars. Or the insane investment into AI and datacenters is just bonkers. Crisis in science and research. Autonomous killer robots will soon allow complete totalitarian control.
All of this is opinion rather than objective fact. Progress has been made for everyone. Look at 1950 to now and certain groups have improved much more than others, but all groups have improved. That’s progress. It’s never equal for everyone, nor could it be, unless you only move progress for the lowest common denominator.
You sit here and type on a device made by slave labor, wear clothes, likely eat meat, want or have had children, all things further destroying others and the world.
Its incredibly easy to blame ‘them’ but real hard to look internally. Companies don’t exist without people to buy their products, which you do not have to use, you do not have to buy, and yet you continue to do so.
And the trouble is that with technological progress it becomes increasingly more possible to make ourselves extinct. Right now even with all out nuclear war it would be pretty impossible to scrape us off the planet. But add some bioweapons or use mass killer robots or AGI then it becomes feasible. The richest man in the world is actively trying to create a malicious “anti-woke” super intelligence.
None of those can ‘eliminate’ humans. Will it make it tougher for 8 billion people to survive? Absolutely. The planet shouldn’t have that many people to begin with. When humans are long gone as every other species that has come before us, the earth will carry on without us, and probably will be better for it.
Perhaps stop being part of the system that is causing the issues to begin with.
I am really tired of being emotional being an insult when its a major point of humanity.
Crazy: The government planned COVID! Me: This government couldn’t plan a fucking beer run.
This is a very valid feeling. But it doesn’t sit well in the context of therapy. Like, this is individual therapy dealing with trauma from systemic problems. Like, if it’s outside of my locus of control I can either let it affect me forever or try to do something about it, even if that something is letting go (or even forgiving, as far-fetched as that ideal seems these days). Part of going to therapy is taking agency. There is a problem, in some small way I will do whatever I can about it.
I can’t just be mad with this and raise my mental pitchfork bc this is an illustration of someone rightfully truly struggling and their mental health physician pointing them towards the painful way out. I think the takeaway is less “how could anyone expect anyone to get over anything this heinous” and more one of horrible feeling of trying to hold onto the one thing you’re left with when someone is taken from you like that --anger-- and coming to terms with the fact that that anger is still hurting you long after. Your therapist is not going to start the revolution or the purge for you. They are literally there to help you and you alone with things that trouble you and you alone. When they talk to survivors of abuse as children, rape victims, they aren’t going to go out and slay the offenders, even if they want to. They are just trying to work with the tiniest amount of control a victim still has after the crime to help the victims make real change for themselves.
I guess overall it might not be productive to take that private struggle and put it out to your tumblr mutuals to validate you and build resistance to letting go but Idk. Healing can take many forms.
The angler is valid, but validity doesn’t mean that it can’t also be complex grief and that he isn’t coping. There’s nothing wrong with anger as an emotion. It’s the expression and impact that can be a problem (and can be pathological).
Exactly.
Y’all are missing the point.
With the societal trends, it doesn’t matter even if OP gets better, the world is trending to cold, unfeeling, corporate, zero privacy garbage and basically no one is fighting back, or if they are there is no visibility.
To have people everywhere, all the time reference covid as the cold and not wear masks when they are sick means we learned NOTHING from covid as a society and we’ll likely repeat something similar.
I have two neices. Their mom and dad both said covid wasn’t real or it was a government psyop or it was Obama’s fault or whatever.
Then their mom died of covid. Their dad still doesn’t think it’s real.
I don’t understand it. I got two jabs and wore a mask, and the worst thing that happened to my wife and I throughout the pandemic was a sore spot on our arm for a day. Neither of us has ever had covid, or we had such a mild case that we never noticed. And all we had to do was… take some really basic precautions.
but, you see, those basic precautions require having empathy and caring about other people… and, sadly, the idea of America Exceptionalistic Individualism, has destroyed empathy and the ability to care for anyone outside of yourself in a disgustingly large swathe of the population.
Which is why they mock, deride, and laugh… until it affects them, then, and ONLY then, must there be decorum and understanding.
It doesn’t even require empathy. It requires an appreciation for basic cause and effect slightly above that of a toddler. Covid denialism is an ego thing. These people made a decision and are so fragile that they would rather deny basic observable reality before admitting they are wrong. “Don’t look up” fucking nailed it.
require having empathy and caring about other people
Sure, but they also require that you believe what you’re seeing on the news.
I have empathy and care about other people. But, my mom is a conspiracy nut. She goes on rants about chemtrails, or the dangers of fluoride, or 5G, or nanoparticles. I want what’s best for her, and I sympathize with her, but I don’t believe any of these things are true. So, if she tells me I should change my behaviour because of these conspiracies, I’m not going to do it. The fact I continue to use WiFi doesn’t mean I lack empathy or don’t care about other people, it means that I don’t think her conspiracy theories are correct.
My mother is (more or less) a person who cares about other people, but she wouldn’t put on a mask during COVID because she didn’t believe that it was a real disease, and didn’t believe that masks worked, and she also did believe conspiracies that masks were dangerous to wear.
My mother thinks that the mainstream press can’t be trusted about anything. Unfortunately, the people she believes are telling the truth are essentially anonymous accounts on some conspiracy forum. Many of them get their news from Newsmax or Infowars or the KGB.
I think the mainstream press can be trusted about many things, but that they’re also in bed with big business and will often uncritically just report what a lot of big companies say without challenging it.
So, when the mainstream press says there’s a pandemic and that we need to adopt certain behaviours to avoid it spreading, I believe it and want to do those things, my mother doesn’t. But, when the press says that OpenAI has a new model that’s on the verge of being sentient, that broke out of its containment and hacked another site, I think that’s an absolute bullshit way of framing what happened.
It really comes down to how the US has slowly allowed the rich to take control and to warp everything to benefit themselves. Schools are not funded properly, and kids graduate without critical thinking skills. Media is captive to the wealthy interests, and at best is sensationalist and shallow, with talking heads yelling at each-other, or showing helicopter-shots of car chases. At worst, it’s outright lies and propaganda favouring one party or one special interest group. And, because the US is such a big force in the world, and such a big source of media, this affects the whole world.
If people can’t agree on a shared set of facts about the world, they can’t make rational decisions. So, someone not wearing a mask might mean they lack empathy, or it might mean that they don’t believe the news about COVID, or it might mean that they think the story of a major CHEMTRAIL attack that was leaked on the conspiracy forum wasn’t actually real.
My balls would like a word with you regarding nanoparticles…
I don’t want to talk to your balls.
I had a lot of fun when people would hassle me about the mask. Id say it was to hide my face from the HillaryObamaSoros facial recognition cameras, and that they were free to give their face away if they wanted.
It helps if you can figure out how to get through the propoganda to talk to people. Directly pointing out how fucking stupid they are won’t work. But making it look silly to their eyes does work. I’ve recently been able to convince some people in my red state that solar panels are a way to make power that is independent of oil, coal, amd nuclear. That if they get solar panels they will cheat the power company out of their money.
The best part is pointing out that I can’t make a gallon of gasoline, but I can make a kilowatt-hour of electricity with things I have lying around my house and charge my car.
require having empathy and caring about other people
Sure, but they also require that you believe what you’re seeing on the news.
I have empathy and care about other people. But, my mom is a conspiracy nut. She goes on rants about chemtrails, or the dangers of fluoride, or 5G, or nanoparticles. I want what’s best for her, and I sympathize with her, but I don’t believe any of these things are true. So, if she tells me I should change my behaviour because of these conspiracies, I’m not going to do it. The fact I continue to use WiFi doesn’t mean I lack empathy or don’t care about other people, it means that I don’t think her conspiracy theories are correct.
My mother is (more or less) a person who cares about other people, but she wouldn’t put on a mask during COVID because she didn’t believe that it was a real disease, and didn’t believe that masks worked, and she also did believe conspiracies that masks were dangerous to wear.
My mother thinks that the mainstream press can’t be trusted about anything. Unfortunately, the people she believes are telling the truth are essentially anonymous accounts on some conspiracy forum. Many of them get their news from Newsmax or Infowars or the KGB.
I think the mainstream press can be trusted about many things, but that they’re also in bed with big business and will often uncritically just report what a lot of big companies say without challenging it.
So, when the mainstream press says there’s a pandemic and that we need to adopt certain behaviours to avoid it spreading, I believe it and want to do those things, my mother doesn’t. But, when the press says that OpenAI has a new model that’s on the verge of being sentient, that broke out of its containment and hacked another site, I think that’s an absolute bullshit way of framing what happened.
It really comes down to how the US has slowly allowed the rich to take control and to warp everything to benefit themselves. Schools are not funded properly, and kids graduate without critical thinking skills. Media is captive to the wealthy interests, and at best is sensationalist and shallow, with talking heads yelling at each-other, or showing helicopter-shots of car chases. At worst, it’s outright lies and propaganda favouring one party or one special interest group. And, because the US is such a big force in the world, and such a big source of media, this affects the whole world.
If people can’t agree on a shared set of facts about the world, they can’t make rational decisions. So, someone not wearing a mask might mean they lack empathy, or it might mean that they don’t believe the news about COVID, or it might mean that they think the story of a major CHEMTRAIL attack that was leaked on the conspiracy forum wasn’t actually real.
“iT wAs JuSt PnEuMoNiA!”
… pneumonia caused by… a respiratory infection called… COVID-19!
How can he still not think it’s real ? what’s even the reasoning ?
I’m really not sure. He has had covid. I do know that his children have both mentally browbeat him to either get him to accept reality, or shut the fuck up.
