Particularly - America.
I personally have found that, I live in the past to cope. Nostalgia is my drug. It sometimes doesn’t help because all it does is that it makes me yearn and beg for things to be back to where things were. Because it warps my mind into opening time capsules whenever I watch an old show or listen to an episode of some niche radio show that long stopped producing new material.
However, it helps because, it at least reminds me that there are some things that I can revisit. If I couldn’t revisit anything, play the games I played, read the books I read, watched the movies/shows I used to, then I’d be up shit’s creek because I’d have to face the fucked up things people consider what are the ‘best that’s offered’.
Turn off your phone and enjoy real actual life as in the situation right in front of you. Make it happy. Fuck the noise.
I help out at the local food bank and spend a lot of time on Imgur looking at not politics
i dont :'(
but seriously: community, therapy and eating better has been nice. And allowing myself to feel messy.
One thing I’ve been doing is doing random online classes instead of doom scrolling. There’s a ton of free ones that you can do at your own pace and spend an hour or two each day learning new stuff. Just generally being more mindful and curating my media inputs and replacing algorithmic rage inducement with better stuff. Here’s a few examples, but there’s tons all over the web:
Oh look. I’m not the only one. Additionally I started reading (I would say “again” but that would be a lie) and engage in smaller social circles instead of the global rambling. It’s actually been a nice experience so far. Sadly the reality around me still exists though but nothing I can do
Organize in your community. Doing something/anything will help alleviate the anxiety and stress you are feeling.
There is always something going on. The world is always falling apart. The locations just vary.
In other words, this too shall pass. Do what you can to make the world a better place, survive, and let go of what you cannot control. Can’t carry the world on you shoulders all the time. Sometimes it has to save isself or deal with the consequences.
Avoid news. Turn off internet. Literally, stop looking for like two weeks. The difference is palatable. I’ve used this technique a handful of times over the years.
The old “ignorance is bliss” strategy. Tried and true.
Poorly, to be perfectly honest.
Stoicism.
It does not make sense to worry about things outside my ability to change. Humanity has survived significantly worse. All I can do is prepare, run, lift weights, and whatever else can be useful.
Who says we’re coping
I think most people yearn for the past, and always have. People who grew up in communist East Germany (the country) even long for the glory days of the German “Democratic” Republic too. The term Ostalgia (East-algia) was coined for that. I think everyone long for a past that never truly existed and was only rose-colored by the innocence of childhood and early youth. Fewer people die in violent conflicts each year (at least up until the invasion of Ukraine), childhood deaths decline, yet the world seems extremely violent and polarized. I think the world was always violent and polarized, but we didn’t have social media and the internet to broadcast and amplify the violence and our differences.
I don’t.
I weigh the pros and cons of committing suicide every single day.
As long as there’s a chance of revolution, I’ll stay alive to see it. I don’t see a reason to take my own life when I’ll soon have an opportunity to give it willingly.
When I was a teenager I was way into eastern spirituality and meditation, taoism. People think meditating is having no thoughts. The thoughts are still there. They speed through your mind like cars on a train. Meditation is letting each individual car pass you buy. You let the cars blur by, not trying to focus on the individual cars. It’s a blur, and you eventually see them as a train going by not the singular box cars.
I bring this up because during some of the darker days in my life, I let time pass by me in such a way. Each day fading into the next, slipping through my fingers as though it were sand. It helped me not focus on the train car I was currently in. Carrying on autopilot. Like fast forwarding on that Click movie.
Sorry this was so long winded. I just have shared your feelings for a long time throughout my life, and this stuff helped me through what I felt trapped in earlier on life. Addicted to spooky drugs. Homeless. No jobs. Felt like I was at the bottom on the ocean there was so much pressure. I hope you find your way through these feelings. Not tryjng to tell you how to feel or what to do. I definitely understand how you feel. Some one else cant make you feel better.
Better circumstances would be a huge help i know that. I made it to the next day bitter and jaded and pissed. I wish life could be easy, and giving up is easy. I can’t tell you for sure things will get better, but time will carry us forward. If you can’t find something in the now, live for the maybe.
Peace.
Thanks for taking the time to share your experience. I appreciate it and your perspective. Logically I can understand and accept what you’re saying, but emotionally I’m not so lucky.
I’ve struggled with my mental health for most of my life anyway, but I lost my wife, 2 cats, FIL and everything I owned in a house fire that I, for whatever reason, walked away from last April. I’ve spent the last year trying to understand it, and the conclusion I’ve come to is death. No matter the highs or the lows, the recognition of the present or the expectation of better days, death seems to hold the most weight. I’m tired, you know? Not like a long day tired, but like my soul, if it exists, is tired.
I’m in therapy and have been for years, and I know the tricks pretty well. I have a cat and a few friends that for better or for worse guilt me into staying, but they don’t know this pain thankfully. We’re all going to die one day anyway so what’s it matter if I, 1 meaningless person out of 8 billion, goes early? That’s where I weigh the pros and cons.
Don’t an hero when there’s cool games like super smash bros and mar!o party.
Look on the bright side, when’s the last time you ever heard of the word famine?
That’s a valid and useful thought.
Therapy.
I saw my need for therapy coming over a year ago, and wait was so long I didn’t get therapy started until October.
That and I am hoping to start writing. A blog of some sort. Help me think through everything in a way that might help the two or however many readers I manage to gather.
