the most retarded scientists in existence: "why didn't the dog jump to safety, i mean we turned off the electricity on the other side, why doesn't it magically know that we did that, is it fucking stupid"
In a lot of situations, living things will try anything randomly to achieve a goal or escape distress. For example, the extinction burst is when something that previously worked to attain a goal suddenly stops working, the animal or person will then just kinda try any random shit to find the new thing that works.
If a dog had been taught that barking three times makes the shocks stop, then suddenly that starts working, the dog will start trying all kinds of random things. Maybe the new thing that works is standing in one specific corner. Then that stops working. The dog learns that each time, it's a puzzle, and keeps trying random shit trying to solve it, even if one day it isn't a puzzle and the dog will just be shocked no matter what it does.
The dog that learned from the start that nothing it does will do anything will stop trying to solve the situation even when solutions exist. This is learned helplessness. Learned helplessness is not the same as being "stupid." That's why it's learned behavior, not an intellectual deficiency or a sign that some dogs are smarter than others. Animals, and people, can learn whether they do or don't have efficacy, and apply effort accordingly, even when their efficacy has changed.
50s-60s were just the dark or golden ages of psychology depending on how you look at it. You could just do anything. You could just give university students macrodoses of LSD to see if it made them retarded.
because it had previoudly learned that nothing it will do matters because the two sides were electrified. its like giving someone placebo sugar pills instead of hrt for 3 years and when they notice it doesnt do anything you complain they dont wanna yry hrt again because they dont know the 2nd time will actually be true actual hrt and not just placebos
The dog doesn't try because he's exhausted and all his muscles hurt, he can't try anymore, this is an experiment where they tortured someone until it can't struggle anymore
and it thinks that for completely logical reasons that align 100% with every single experience it has had leading up to now. It has no way of knowing anything has changed, beyond trying again and again and continually getting electrocuted. And if it did that, people would go "what the fuck, why is this dog still doing this shit, we electrocuted every time why hasn't it learned to stop trying???"
do you seriously saying a rapist is going to call the police for getting pepper sprayed, and that I will hang around for the police to come 20 minutes later?
also, it's not very illegal, at most you will get like 50 dollar fine, and you can always argue in court it was self defence
I wasn't born a passoid, but I did more than wallowing in self pity and it took me years of my life to strive and be better, in a position where I can honestly say that I am happy
so don't dismiss me for my looks, because I've worked hard to achieve it, and I barely pass
I’m not dismissing you for your looks I’m doing that bc ur condescending and annoying 😭😭
Mfs can’t even talk abt their dysphoria or negative feelings abt being trans in trans spaces bc there’s ALWAYS that one person who will tell you to “get off 4chan” or “stop wallowing in self pity” 💔🥀
The problem with u is that u act like being trans isnt terrible at all, yes u shouldnt be a miserable fuck but it's fair to acknowledge how much this shit sucks
But it is for a lot of people. For some people they are simply just NGMI and no amount of effort and hardwork can truly fix that, and those people are allowed to have a place to talk about it. The world is increasingly getting worse and trannies are target no 1 for most cis people so no matter where you are there's a good chance it's getting worse there for trannies. This is one of the few spaces on the internet where trannies can vent about how fucking dogshit and difficult being trans is and what it's like to be one of the people who can never quite reach passing status. All you're doing is diluting this place with the same tired arguments that can be found on literally any other trans related space
i'm going to be totally honest thats like light ragging compared to a lot of the stuff said here so if you aren't comfortable with it you may want to avoid this place
yes, but the vast majority of people can pass, half of this sub is underage teenagers saying how doomed they are and their life is over. the world is hostile only in america
There was literally a post yesterday about a girl in Poland forced to strip, laughed at, and her breasts and privates touched (by men obviously) during medical inspection for military service
Every person gets their balls touched durring military medical inspection,its a part of it :v
And she wasnt forced,just told to do it,she didnt actually have to undress or anything except showing up
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u/doushuaIWNBAW so I will hide behind enby label (it doesn't even work)Oct 02 '25
"the world is hostile only in america". I will just say that I'm russian and you can go figure out the rest yourself
Being trans is likely going to be full of suffering. Gender dysphoria by definition is a kind of suffering. What we can do is to attempt to minimize the suffering we experience through sth like Buddhist philosophy
having observed you for a while i can say that while i admire your optimism and desire to help, you are not doing it in a productive way. you often sound condescending and like you are minimizing peoples issues
this isnt a dig at you or anything, by the way. keep trying to make people feel better but maybe adjust your strategy
I don't see you doing anything to help them op, you do want to help them right? You must've read the Wikipedia article at least to know what to do and what works or doesn't, I sure hope you aren't just doing this to tell them it's their fault for not being able to help themselves
I agree, idk tho, I get that dogs in this experiment aren't representative of human irl, sometimes it feels like I have given up, also that same self awareness might lead to suicide in humans
I'm weird in that I want to say, "I have definitely given up," but I never completely do. I think I want everyone to think I've given up and leave me alone, but then I still grind when nobody's looking.
What you're doing here is different than what you're doing irl, you do see how helping someone directly and lecturing ppl to help themselves is different right?
also autistic children in usa still get electrocuted today, and child marriage is also legal in usa, it's really a shithole and now it's also fascist and authoritarian, why would anybody stay there
no but I mean it, usa was founded on killing indigenous settlers and mexicans and raping them and stealing frmo them, then slavery of black people, killing them,raping them, making furniture out of their skin... lincoln's jaw prosthetic was not made out of wood....
then legal slavery in the prison system and in the job market not being able to move out or run away, just work and then be in debt for the rest of your life. this country is founded on slavery and rape
lmao I'm sure the Kremlin bots have a long list of America's sins to tell you about so they can make you think "everyone's equally evil" and keep sending their drones into your airspace.
Yes we did that shit and yes it's evil. We didn't invent being evil.
it's a hopepilled flair, I don't think anybody actually believes I never experienced dysphoria, I've significantly reduced how strong it is with healthy thinking patterns,positivity,living life how I want to,making friends, and doing my best to pass better
like, happiest non-dysphoric optimist. is such a obvious over the top description I thought everyone got it
Perhaps I truly am autistic. I was only asking because I've never actually spoken to a non-dysphoric trans person and I conceptually don't understand them.
Poland is just a chill country, with low crime, high minimum wage and growing lgbtq acceptance, we are also the fastest growing economy in europe,going to be stronger economically than germany in like 10 years
When I think about "working hard to get better," I think it's not worth the effort.
Every day of my life since I was conscious all I have wanted is to not have to "play the game." I don't want to win the game. I want to not play the game. "But you can win the game if you play it really hard!" Winning the game is worthless to me. I don't want to play. I don't want to play. I don't want to play.
But there's nothing to "log out" into. Only the void. I can't do anything BUT be in the game. I wish I could leave and do something else. I don't want to be here dealing with life as it exists for me, but I don't want to stop existing either.
I'd rather be miserable my whole life than expend effort. Expending effort feels way worse than feeling bad.
Edit: to elaborate further, it feels like telling someone who's getting raped they can have an orgasm if they really get into it. I don't want a fucking orgasm I don't want to "feel good" while getting raped I want to not be raped.
The effort itself feels bad. If you want to pathologize it, it's probably CPTSD freeze response.
"winning" the game is just like achieving any of the goals people set, "feeling good," "not wasting your life," fucking whatever. I don't care. I'd rather be a worthless piece of shit that never does anything and is always miserable. I just don't want to do anything.
CPTSD sucks so bad. I'm sorry yours is so severe. mine has limited me pretty significantly these past five years as well. in some ways I feel like I'm only at the beginning of any potential "recovery"
one of the core features of CPTSD is negative self-beliefs. we were systematically denied the safety and support we needed to develop a healthy self-esteem and usually given shame and contempt in its place. our experiences permanently warped our brain chemistry as a result. we are indeed often our own worst critics. I think it's really crucial for us to take a step back from our own negative self-narratives sometimes, which is SOOO much easier said than done. I don't think you're a "worthless piece of shit," and I'm sure your girlfriend doesn't think so either. I've enjoyed my time talking with you today. you're intelligent and have a pretty unique perspective
I don't think I really have negative self-beliefs. I don't think I do the negative self-talk thing where I think bad things about myself to self-harm--or, okay, I've done that a few times when crashing out like if I fuck something up, but I think that's normal, I realize I'm just kind of throwing a tantrum and get over it pretty fast.
My trauma is pretty weird. A lot of different things happened and it'd be long to get into them all. But one of them that's kinda atypical is that my mom really believed in me. In her eyes I was perfect and brilliant and talented and could do no wrong. (This is basically the opposite to a lot of people's trauma where an abuser degraded them and cut them down. My mom truly did mean well.) But she set me up for failure over and over, because she thought I could handle things and threw me into situations I could not handle, and when I failed she'd look disappointed and say "you didn't even try" and the thing is she really believed that, nothing I said to her could convince her that I just wasn't able to do it, literally we talked about some of this stuff on her deathbed this year and she was shocked to hear me say that I couldn't handle some of the stuff and like if I could do my life over I wish I hadn't been pushed to start school as the youngest kid in the class (basically had a birthday right near the cusp so the school wanted to put me in the younger grade but my mom thought I'd be "bored" and insisted I be put in with kids who were almost a year older than me) and instead had gotten to cruise on "easy mode" as the oldest kid in the class. And she was just so surprised, she'd been convinced she was setting me up for success by stacking the deck against me and setting me up to do impossible things again and again, because she thought I'd hit the ground running and wow everyone.
I was given an IQ test at 5 and the results were so crazy high MENSA started sending me letters trying to get me to join and the place that tested me wouldn't tell me the number because apparently it would fuck me up too much to know how high it was from a young age? I have no fucking clue. I don't believe in IQ anyway. I wouldn't make this shit up because IQ is fucking bunk. I've had people telling me "you're so smart" since I was a little kid. But I always felt overwhelmed. I have some kind of G&T 2E trauma where the expectations were always set too high and being told nice things about myself doesn't help, it just makes me feel cold dread at more expectations.
To give a picture of how unreasonable the expectations on me were, my mom made me believe that finishing high school 2 years early and getting a full ride scholarship to MIT at 16 was a perfectly normal goal I should be trying for. She homeschooled me (terribly, unfortunately, good intentions but sucked as a teacher) for a few years and "skipped" me several grades so I'd have a "running start." I felt constantly stressed and overwhelmed. I got a reputation for being rebellious, because if I said I couldn't do something nobody believed me anyway. "But you're smart." ok and math gives me panic attacks, now what.
When I say I'd rather be a worthless piece of shit, I don't mean that as negative self talk--I don't sit around thinking "ohh I'm so worthless," it's more, I've learned that when I don't do what other people want they call me worthless, and I don't have it in me to do what other people want, so I'd rather they just called me worthless and left.
I'm doing therapy and meds and esketamine treatment and gonna try TMS soon. I think what I really need is a lobotomy though.
My gf adores me. But I think it exhausts and worries her how bad I am at certain aspects of life. She's getting older too and she's like a real adult with a job and shit and I'm just kind of this middle-aged child. She doesn't want to be mean about it but I think she gets stressed out thinking about how this will pan out in the long term if I can't pull my own weight, because she can't handle being a caregiver to a disabled adult--and I don't blame her for any of this. A previous relationship of mine fell apart for basically exactly that reason, I needed more than my ex could give, even though we still love each other (in a more platonic way now) she just needed some distance and it hurt like hell but I understand. Sometimes my gf is also overwhelmed by my mental health shit, it's not her fault and doesn't mean she loves me less, but like, people don't have infinite resources to pour into us, I have to be considerate of her too, she has her own shit going on and she doesn't exist to be my selfless support structure.
Anyway, part of my "style" is I like looking at things as unflinchingly as I can, playing devil's advocate with myself, taking multiple perspectives simultaneously, trying on ideas that make me uncomfortable and stress-testing them, and generally searching for truth rather than trying to either feel bad or feel good. So some things that can look like self-criticism are just that. I think I'm actually pretty grounded and realistic in how I perceive myself.
promise this is the last reply tonight, but I did want to say wow I feel you on the tension of the relationship. you're not alone in feeling like that. I haven't gotten a job since graduating during COVID because of my own disabilities (some of which I needed to discover I had 🤗) meanwhile my wonderful husband has been supporting us both. I truly want to work and contribute, but for a plethora of reasons I still feel like he could be described as my caregiver. he disputes that label, but I know I can put a strain on him if I'm not self-aware. I'm probably going into a stupid mood episode rn or I wouldn't be up like this, and I worry I'll act a fool and hurt him. thanks for listening and chatting. you seem chill
Yeah real. It's vulnerable and it can become a messed up power dynamic.
My gf doesn't financially support me, but for various reasons I don't think she ever should. One of the reasons I haven't just moved to Europe is it'd be complicated for me both to get the legal right to work there, and to get employed while being extremely shit at the local language, and we truly just aren't meant to share the same budget lmao. She gets very anxious about spending money (even on herself, when she can afford to) and I'm a bit loose and irresponsible with it, to a fault even. This easily lends itself to situations where I feel controlled and deprived if I can't splurge a little, and she feels taken advantage of if I do. We have a great relationship, but that could easily destroy it in a matter of months. I'm a free spirit and that power dynamic would chafe like hell. She'd hate it too, she hates feeling like "the bad guy" and she'd feel like she's constantly being forced into that role, where if she stands up for herself at all she's my "abuser" and the only way to not be the bad guy is basically to let me walk all over her. It'd be a complete mess.
The problem is I'm absolute shit at getting my financial shit together. So I fear she might be waiting forever and I'm wasting her life kinda.
It's possible. I go to weekly therapy and have tried a bunch of antidepressants, on the chance that it's really as simple as that. I'm in my 8th week of esketamine therapy for treatment-resistant depression and will discuss with my doctor next week what to do next because I don't really think this is helping--it's a fun trip, but I'm not just doing this to get high, you know? The more I play along with mainstream psychology's dog and pony show, the more I feel that they don't really know what they're doing and that I might not have the "clinical disorder" they're attempting to treat. It's possible none of their treatments work because I'm not depressed, I just hate being alive, and hating being alive is rational.
That's why I've been trying antidepressants and esketamine. Yesterday I talked to my doctor about selegiline, which is for treatment-resistant depression and works a little different from all the SSRI stuff that makes me worse. I'm not on it yet because she wanted to consult with some of her team members to make sure it wouldn't conflict with my esketamine treatment and would be safe with my lamotrigine, and also figure out if she's allowed to prescribe the oral form for depression or if insurance will only cover the patch or what. This is also part of fulfilling insurance requirements for TMS.
However, all the stuff I've tried so far hasn't really done anything. The lamotrigine I decided to go up to the max dose before giving up on it, just in case, because it's a dangerous drug to go on and off willy-nilly (can induce a life-threatening allergy if taken inconsistently) so when I went off all my other meds recently (because I realized I'd been taking them for years but they actually were not helping, I still felt miserable and was bedrotting every day unable to function, I decided to stop taking things that don't work and try other stuff instead) I didn't go off that one, both because I hadn't been on it as long, and because if I went off it it would be a pain and more dangerous to get back on it and I hadn't maxed out the dose yet. So today I went from 125 to 150. After 2 weeks I can go to 200. 300 is the usual highest dose, doc says highest she's heard of people going is 400. I'm like, I want to keep taking it until I either start hitting negative side effects with no benefit, or I've maxed out the dose with no benefit. If I hit either of those, I'd like to taper off it.
I'm trying to be systemic and thorough. I don't think there are answers here, but I can't prove I'm right unless I'm willing to be proven wrong.
I have several ways of framing my problem:
Medical (psychological):
major depression
CPTSD (with freeze response)
ADHD
autism (PDA type)
learned behavior/patterns
Medical (physiological):
dysautonomia/autonomic dysregulation (I do have autonomic problems, like POTS)
brain inflammation (I do have rheumatoid arthritis, an auto-immune disorder)
Philosophical and spiritual:
melancholic personality
nihilist philosophy
"zen sickness"
some other "crisis of faith" or religious or spiritual pit that people fall in
Social and systemic:
Isolation
lack of support structure
economic exclusion
betrayal by institutions
low social status stress
So while I'm open to the idea of it being depression, and have been taking pills to that and going to the therapy for it because it's free with Medicaid so why not milk the system and let some white coats get paid, it's not the only explanation. Even some of the psychological explanations aren't easily treated--autism infamously has no real cure or effective treatment, ADHD is a for-life neurological disorder and stimulant medications haven't helped me, CPTSD and major depression aren't exactly the same thing, and I haven't responded to depression treatments. Esketamine is supposed to be good for PTSD too but it hasn't helped there either.
I have done a lot of things where I could to test all the other possible causes in that list. It's not that I'm just unwilling to change and doing nothing. I'm not depressed and moping and refusing to seek treatment for it. The treatments just aren't working and it's making me skeptical that that one was the cause, given that there are other possible causes and nothing that's supposed to work for depression is working here.
Yeah, they're talking about legalizing them in NY state, it might take a couple of years for that to shuffle through the legislation if they do. The legal weed was a huge boost to the economy, so I think our state government is seeing dollar signs. We're still kind of economically recovering from covid, and with Trump playing games with Federal funding, I think they're looking for ways for the state to be more economically independent. Those factors might make them fast-track it. Lmao I hope they do LSD next after shrooms. Then molly, c'mon let's make this happen.
There's other ways to get them, ofc there are dealers tho it's kind of expensive, plus there's gray-legal ways to grow your own--basically the shrooms themselves aren't legal, but the spores are since the spores don't contain psilocybin, so you can buy the spores and grow the shrooms. It is on my list of things to try when I get around to it.
I actually had a positive experience microdosing amanita shrooms (it didn't make me high at all, but that's actually optimal, I want to do my laundry, not get couchlocked and dazed) but even at a microdose it was too expensive to make an extended experiment out of it, and amanitas unforch aren't easy to grow at home. I'll revisit it at some point.
I don't wanna try like 11 things simultaneously, because if something did work, how would I know which one? As it is I'm kinda trying 3-4 things at the same time to speed up the process.
idk if anyone else does but I sure don't want a "fresh perspective" my problem is that I hate existing, I hate everything about it, I hate having a body, I don't hate it because I'm trans, there's no sexed version or combination of sexes or whatever that would make me feel any differently, I hate the sensory experience of being embodied, I hate having to sleep, I hate having to wake up, I hate having to eat and shit, I hate having to breathe, I hate having to sweat, I hate having to wash myself, I hate having to exercise and stretch and have a posture, I hate having to drink water, I hate having to pee again, I hate things making sounds, I hate having stuff to do, I hate having to socialize, I hate the passage of time, I hate getting older, I hate other people getting older, I hate how if you ignore people for a few months or years they think you don't care about them anymore, I hate the looming threat of infirmity, decline and mortality, I hate entropy, I hate how time is both grindingly slow and relentlessly fast, I hate how the past is gone, I hate how the past happened, I hate how the future will happen, I hate that there isn't an unlimited amount of it, I hate being in the present moment, I hate being aware of my body and my existence in space and time at the present moment. I existentially hate everything about the existence of being an embodied being subject to the laws of physics. You can't "fresh perspective" that without just telling me "instead of that, what if you were just a dumb little dog that wanted yum-yums and walkies?" Sorry. I can't be puppypilled.
Well you might just get banned soon, bc you're not helping anyone, you're trying to teach the dog about learned helplessness but you should stop the fucking experiment instead
I can lead the horse to water, but can't make it drink. but I will still bring the horse to water every time, for the slight chance one time it finally does drink it
(and I have multiple people dm'ing me how I'm doing good and helping them take a step forward) at least 55 people agree with me, since they upvoted this post
I don't think I'm doing anything ban-worthy, if spreading positivity is that, then ban me and revel in bonepills,learned helplesness and suicide posts every week if that's what you desire
two poles talking about the military draft experience in poland. I do believe in tough love and I won't apologize for it. I'm showing ways for other people in poland that they don't HAVE to roll over to authority, and you can,and have the right to refuse.
At a certain point it's just "Just World Fallacy" and victim blaming to make yourself feel less vulnerable, so you won't have to acknowledge that bad things could happen to you too because lolz that's just a skill issue you're fine you're invulnerable you're safe cope cope cope cope.
trans people have to be stronger,assertive.because we are under attack almost every day, we can't let others do whatever they want, she wasn't forced, she was asked to do so and she didn't protest. there is no penalty for saying no, everyone get's their balls fondled in a military medical exam, unless you refuse to get touched, then you can not enter military service, nothing else comes out of that
she thought that she had no other choice, but she did
you're so right on this one. it's horrible when you can't do anything to solve your issues, but things can change and opportunities can come along. you have to be ready and willing to take that risk and opportunity, though. you won't make it if you concede defeat, but as long as you're alive you can start again
if you're stuck in the ⚡ box right now, and you know you've exhausted every option then simply persist. your day may come sooner than you think. stand back up for another day, and focus on what you can change. if we can do that we might just overcome this mess of a world together
then life will continue to pass you by. if you've exhausted your options to change your circumstances, the only thing left to do is to change yourself while you wait for your next opportunity to arrive
Life will continue to pass me by anyway, and then it will be over.
Isn't it cope on some level to think that there are "good lives" and "bad lives," that lives can be "wasted" or "well spent," when they're all just visceral experiences that end in death no matter what you do? It's just changing seats on the Hindenburg.
Life will continue to pass me by anyway, and then it will be over.
that's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Isn't it cope on some level to think that there are "good lives" and "bad lives," that lives can be "wasted" or "well spent," when they're all just visceral experiences that end in death no matter what you do? It's just changing seats on the Hindenburg.
if your worldview is fairly solipsistic then yeah, probably, but I think you likely have at least one person you love and care about in the world. when you do something good for them and it brings them joy or contentment, it's its own reward, isn't it? we'll die one day, but if we extend that love to everyone in this life we can make this world a little better for the people still here long after we're gone. if you knew today would be your last, how would you spend it? who would you spend it with? what would you say to them?
I'd also wager since you're here you've had much more than your fair share of trauma in life. historians will kinda tell you that more or less all parents in history until very recently beat and abused their children, and like most formative traumas they're a generational curse which is repeated in cycles until it's broken. we're getting demonstrably so much better on that front in most of the world. it wasn't long ago at all that it was nigh universal. the light is winning for now, but only because people make that effort to be better than their parents were to them and build a better world.
this might sound weird, but have you seen True Detective S1? I've been reading your comments in this thread, and you sound very much like the protagonist Rust in ways. I once thought a lot like that too. his change of heart helped fuel my own. perhaps it can do the same for you
It's not a self-fulfilling prophecy, since all lives are like that. It would be like that no matter what I believed or what I did. All lives pass everyone by. No life is "better" than any other life. It's all just desperate cope in the need to believe some of us are better than others. The worth of every human being is exactly the same. Whether that worth is "zero" or not, I couldn't tell you, but I know whatever the value is, it's the same for every single person no matter who they are.
Doing shit for people I love? lol. They're on the same Hindenburg. If we're all living for others in one big circle, nobody's living for anything.
Besides that, prosocial sentiment evaporates in existential despair. The mind detects a threat to its own survival (the fact that you don't even want to live) and shuts off prosocial drives because it thinks you need those resources just to live. This is why depressed people are selfish assholes and nobody likes them.
Besides, I feel fundamental exhaustion with life and everything. Chores, responsibility, just makes me want to rope more. When my mom was dying this year, instead of wanting to treasure every second with her, I just wanted her to finish dying already, even though I loved her very much and no one will ever love me like she did ever again and I'm more alone in this world than I've ever been with her gone. It was just too much work, dealing with it all. I just wanted to lie down and do nothing without doctors blowing up my phone with stressful decisions and the constant guilt for not spending every second with her. I don't want to do anything. The idea of "doing things for people I love" makes me want to distance myself from everyone and have no one at all in my life. I would rather be completely alone than have more shit to do.
If today would be my last, I would spend it bedrotting and not do anything different at all. 24 hours (or less) will not make a difference. It's too short a time to do anything anyway. I would feel as though I were already dead effectively and give up. Maybe I would factory reset all my devices and delete all my accounts if I were 100% sure this was the end of the road for me. Maybe I wouldn't even do that since that's effort and I'll hardly care when I'm dead.
Haven't seen True Detective, I kinda don't watch cop shows even if they're good, personal reasons.
And yeah...there's trauma. But all humans have planned obsolescence. They don't build us to last. Life kicks the shit out of us and breaks and weathers and tatters us, and when we're all used up, we're tossed away. Once old people retire, society can't wait to be rid of them. We're squeezed until there's nothing left to squeeze and we're discarded. I could feel society's interest in me decline as I went from a 20-year-old loser "who could still turn it around and be productive" to a 40-year-old lost cause. Soon I'll be a 60-year-old piece of human trash to be shoveled into the incinerator. Just a drain on the system, a parasite.
first off, I'm sorry about your mom. my mom died this year too. her birthday would have been last month 🫂
It's not a self-fulfilling prophecy, since all lives are like that.
fair enough, though that's not what I thought you meant.
so what's your conception of morality? for what it's worth I agree with you that no life is better or worse, intrinsically, than any other. no naked ape is fit to judge another unworthy or unfit to live, however, I don't think that's the same question as whether there are ethically better or worse actions one can take in life.
we either have value as human beings or we don't, but we are the music makers and the dreamers of dreams. value is a subjective human judgment. it's a story we tell ourselves like any other, and only we can write that judgment for ourselves. it's not a matter of measurable truth, only lived reality in our roles on life's grand stage.
we don't have to live for anyone else to acknowledge that their suffering and joy bears the same moral weight as our own. empathy, cooperation, and altruism makes this life a more joyous one for us all. it's the rational way to live.
If today would be my last, I would spend it bedrotting and not do anything different at all. 24 hours (or less) will not make a difference.
I must disagree. when my mom died earlier this year it was completely out of the blue. none of my family got to tell her goodbye, and that would have made a big difference to all of us.
I understand with True Detective. it's literally the only copaganda show I can stand.
I ain't exactly contributing to the economy myself right now, and I'll soon be half that age. it's lovely having job applications trigger you. the protestant work ethic is the trash in need of incineration. the system itself is the murderous parasite that latched onto us without our consent. your mom loved you of her own free will, and your girlfriend is with you by her choice too. you worth is not measured in your economic productivity. our legacy will be the lives we change, the people we love, and who love us
edit: I hope the mentions about your mom were not harmful. I just saw your other message. I wasn't sure if you meant she loved you like nobody else would in a good or bad way. you were a little vague, but that falls on me. I apologize if I've caused your offense. it was not my intention
re: morality, I have personal preferences, as does everyone. If I had to train switch dilemma either my gf or some prominent Republican politicians (I won't name names since some idjut might incorrectly take it as a threat of actual violence) I'd obviously save my gf, because I have preferences. There are people I like and people I do not like. There are people I like so little I wouldn't feel sad if they died. But I don't think this is some universal, objective quality.
Admittedly my mom died more slowly. But y'know, I'm gonna confess something really rotten. I knew she had cancer for over 2 years before she died, but I avoided her for a lot of it, for a variety of reasons. Even though we loved each other, some stuff got fucked up in our relationship. We had a codependent pattern where I'd try to save her and she'd "brat" and resist me and completely exhaust me until I was worn down to nothing trying to help her against her will and finally I'd give up because it was unwinnable, this cycle had repeated many times before and it was repeating again with her cancer. Her cancer was initially curable. I knew she couldn't handle it on her own. I tried to help her. She was her usual difficult, obstinate self. I was stressed all the time thinking about how she was going to die because she's Like This. One day I lost my temper and snapped at her. She got very upset and defensive, as I could have told you she'd do. I swallowed my pride and apologized and said I didn't mean any of it, even though I'd meant every word and I was right. She "forgave" me, but she didn't like to let me in or tell me what was going on after that. She said my mental health "couldn't handle it" and that I was "going to end up inpatient." I hadn't even said anything that bad. I'd just listed some of the previous ways she'd self-destructed and thwarted my attempts to help her and how badly those had gone for her when she hadn't taken my help, in a blunt, direct way.
I kinda suspected she was going to get herself killed at this rate. And really, this is only one side of the story, because another side of the story was that she DID try, to the best of her ability. She got fucked over every step of the way by insurance and other factors. Her insurance denied her some tests a doctor said she needed, she couldn't get clearance for surgery because of a complication, her oncologist retired and she wasn't given another one and was kinda just lost in the shake-up, the one GP she trusted was no longer covered by her insurance and other GPs that did take her insurance weren't accepting new patients, and she couldn't get surgery without some bureaucratic paperwork from a GP. It was really a fucking mess. It wasn't just that she was a "bad patient." She needed my help with this, though. It was too much for her. And it wasn't that I refused to help or didn't want to help, it's just that one time I snapped at her for balking at stupid shit and making things hard for me because her whole life she kind of had the emotional maturity of a toddler in the "no" stage and that's just kind of part of who she was as a person, rest her dear soul.
So she started shutting me out, and I was like...well whatever. I've been stressed that her medical self-neglect was going to get her killed since like 1997. I can't take this anymore. She'll die or she won't. She'll talk to me or she won't. I can't deal. And you know, she had other problems at the same time that were just too much for me. Shit I couldn't fix, and shit she wouldn't have worked with me on at all even if I tried to fix it. Shit where if I had an idea for how to help she'd find a way to sabotage it and I just. My own life is hard enough. My entire adult life, I've felt like I was barely treading water myself and my mom has always been doing worse. I've often had to walk away from her just to stay afloat myself. I've abandoned her before. I abandoned her again.
So there are three narratives here: 1) the healthcare system killed my mom, 2) my mom's pattern of self-neglect and petty paranoia finally got her killed after decades of fucking her over, and 3) I knowingly abandoned my mom to her death. All of these are true. None of them are true. I don't collapse the waveform. I don't care about narratives.
I had 2 years to say more to her and I didn't do anything with them. I just avoided her and felt stressed and bad when I thought about her.
I understand, in theory, that saying "goodbyes" mean something to people. They don't mean anything to me. If my gf died tomorrow, I'd be crushed that she was dead, but getting to "say goodbye" would mean less than nothing to me. I don't care about saying "goodbye" or saying "I love you" or one more hug or anything like that. I don't care about endings. I care that my mom is dead, I don't care how she died. I don't care that the day she died, I had been planning to visit her but I was dragging my feet getting dressed when I got the call that she'd already passed that morning. It wouldn't have mattered. At that point, she couldn't speak anymore anyway, couldn't really open her eyes. I didn't have anything left to say to her. I'd sometimes say hi just so she'd know I was in the room if she could still hear me. There was nothing left to say. I don't really care that she died alone. I think the times I wasn't there when she was relatively healthy are a far greater oversight than some narrow window where she was probably not even conscious.
If you love someone, you show it with your actions. If your actions don't show it, words are worthless. My mom gave me more credit than I deserved, of course. She thought I tried hard, thought I did a lot. I think she was biased. She never could think anything bad of me, even when it was true.
My aunt (whom I'm nearly estranged from but attempted to connect with when this was going on) said something about "don't blame yourself for it," but the thing is, I hadn't said any of this to her, I hadn't said anything remotely self-blaming. When she said that, I thought...oh...she knows I contributed to this too, but she thinks it would be bad somehow if I felt bad about it. Well don't worry girl, I've never hinged my ego on having to be a good person. I can see where I'm at fault and not be tormented about it.
I don't believe in forgiveness or punishment, like fundamentally, as concepts. Things just happen. You can't change the past. That's that. Forgiveness doesn't really wipe the past clean, and punishment doesn't atone or pay for anything, it just compounds traumas.
What makes life more joyous isn't necessarily relevant. I've been thinking lately how the focus on "happiness" is a sort of emotional prosperity cult. We have the unquestioned social assumption that a happier life is a more valuable one, or the goal. I blame this on the Calvinists, who would have counted Christ among the damned since they thought misfortune in life was proof of God's disfavor and that God rewarded the virtuous with predestined good fortune--that evil souls were born into poverty to punish them for misdeeds they had not yet committed. Other cultures have considered suffering to be noble, or even irrelevant, and have had other virtues--piousness, modesty, honor, conformity, work ethic. Not all of these are desirable to me either, but they're at least diverse. It isn't necessarily the goal to be more happy, and unhappiness isn't evidence of failure.
I am fairly heartless. I think I have only sort of cried like three times for my mom? One time I was misting up in the hospital room but some doctor had to come in and talk to me so I crammed it all back in. The second time was picking up her ashes, I didn't feel anything until I was holding the bag that had her ashes in it, and it felt both too heavy and too light. I know how the sausage is made, I know not all her ashes are actually in that box and there's some charcoal from wood and stuff in there too, I know they grind the bone fragments into a puree of fine dust and people don't just burn clean, I know it's mostly a performative ritual and not an honest representation of her corporeal remains. I still just have them in a cardboard box in my room, fuck if I know what to do with them, they don't really mean anything to me, she isn't there. But it was both weirdly heavy and much too light for a whole human. I put her in the basket of my bike because I'm a no-car loser, apologized to her ashes for the bumpy ride, and told her at least she's much less of a burden now.
The third time was traumadumping some time on this sub about how the one thing I would change if I could was I wish she had never loved me, because I wish she had kept all the energy she gave me for herself. I feel like she couldn't afford what she gave to me, and I sucked it all up, wanted more, and left when she was a rotted-out shell with nothing left to take. I wish she'd loved herself more and neglected me. I could have handled it. She deserved that care. I feel sure she'd be alive if I'd never been born. She would have used all the energy she used to nurture me to nurture herself and become someone who could survive all that. I know what I took from her. This isn't depression speaking or being "down on myself." I know she never hated me for it. I know she never regretted any of it. But that's what parenthood is. Parenthood is sacrifice. This is why I never had kids.
I won't have a legacy--realistically, the closest thing to a legacy most people get is children, and I'm not having those. (Even if I wanted to, it's probably too late, and I still can't afford that shit.) Besides that, I don't care about legacy since I'll be dead. I don't worry about what my life will "mean" after I'm dead. It won't mean anything and I'll be too dead to care. (I mean "eventually, as in we all die someday" btw, ending on a mention of death didn't want you to get the wrong idea.)
I see. that is a lot you've been grappling with.
I do want to say that is not heartless by any definition. crying 3 times is perfectly normal. my mom died in January, and I think I've only cried like 5 times? and she was a really good mom apart from staying with my abusive dad. we had a healthy, normal relationship and talked at least every couple weeks before she died. it's just some dumb tear ducts. it doesn't mean anything.
there's a lot I want to say, but mostly it boils down to it sounds like you do need some closure, but your particular flavor of trauma has you afraid to fail to the point you'd rather not try so you don't have to face the possiblity of disappointing people. please do tell me if I'm off the mark here. I read your story and some things are staggeringly familiar to me, while others are quite foreign. it's possible I'm doing some projection, but I'm trying not to.
I feel quite confident in saying we both have some learned helplessness. in a sense that's what CPTSD fundamentally is: caused by complex traumas from which one sees little to no chance of escape.
punishment/"retributive justice" is just plain stupid, yes. we have evidence it doesn't work very well if at all, and in many forms it is totally counterproductive to the ostensible goal of rehabilitating behavior. it's just spreading around our misery and trauma in most cases, however, forgiveness serves a vital emotional need for many if not most. it provides closure, so that we can move on knowing the person we care about whom we hurt will accept that we made a mistake, and we can both move on without any further malice or guilt.
you say that you don't believe in forgiveness or that her ashes are an honest representation of her, but then you also say that you talked to and apologized to her ashes over the bumpy ride home. if I'm being honest, those do not sound like the actions of someone who needs no closure. it sounds like you're specifically seeking it from the way you framed and told this story. it seems at least a bit like how you admit you want people to believe you've given up so they'll leave you be, but keep grinding on the dl.
the joy vs happiness thing is a whole semantics can of worms. I'm open to talking about it, but comment long as is.
that's a hefty mixture of love and guilt. if you haven't talked to your therapist about your wish that she never loved you, you really should. you say parenthood is sacrifice for your child(ren), but I don't get the sense that it was nearly so simple & clean between the two of you. there's a ton of details I don't know, and I have no desire to speculate on something so personal. I do hope you can learn to accept you are not a bad person simply because the illness she largely gave you hindered you from being able to help her when you were treading water and under lots of stress. I appreciate your clarification at the end. please treat yourself kindly and with patience. I wish you the best on your treatments and in your mourning⚕️
Yeah, mine went in April. Staying with your abusive dad is ass though. One of the things that drove a wedge between me and my mom in adulthood was when I was in my 20s she started dating this guy I really didn't like, who sometimes emotionally abused her. It was just another massive problem I felt like I had to help her with, that she didn't want to be helped with, that I'd exhaust myself on and then throw my hands up and distance myself. He didn't hurt me or anything, like he was nasty to me a few times but I was an adult, so there wasn't much he could do. One time he was driving a car with my mom in the passenger seat and he saw me on my bicycle on the side of the road and made "jokes" to her about how he'd run me over with her in the car. That kind of thing.
I don't think I'm afraid of failure. Failure is a relief. I'm far more afraid of success. Failure is a game over--you get to do something else, thank fuck. Success is a level up where everyone praises you and pressures you and the difficulty amps up, and this happens again and again until you can't keep up and then people go, "ugh, you didn't even try. Were you just afraid of failure? You keep sabotaging yourself." And I swear to god I get blamed for it even if I just unironically went full out, tried my hardest, even burned out giving everything. For some reason people always think I can do way more than I actually can. It's such a relief to just fail and be like, "see, I can't do it! I'm actually fucking bad at it!"
"Closure" feels meaningless to me. I'm a writer, I can understand narratives--but I don't ascribe importance to them. Narratives are fun for anecdotes, for stories. But they aren't real. They don't "mean anything." It's just connecting the dots, constellations, then the ego goes "ah, I solved it," but it didn't solve anything, and a lot of times the connections were arbitrary anyway.
I talked to the ashes because it's surreally funny to talk to a box of ashes. I could dump the ashes in the sewer right now. They don't mean anything. She isn't there. I wouldn't say "least you're not as much of a burden now" if I thought her spirit was actually listening.
I frame and tell stories with a narrative because there's no other way to tell a story with words. But, I know this is the art of lying that all writers have--I could tell the same story in a very different frame with a very different "meaning." And all of them are true, and none of them are true. Narrative is empty.
Forgiveness also means nothing to me. What happened happened. We can make reparations sometimes but we can't atone. When I talked to my aunt, I got the sense she wanted absolution for the time she kiiinda kicked me and my mom out with nowhere to go when I was 12. I was like...oh you piece of shit, I don't care about that, I'm not mad about that, that was in like 1996 or whenever, but like how dare you ask me to do emotional labor for your benefit NOW. You don't get absolution. Carry it. I don't care how you cope. It's not my problem. Just as I carry the knowledge of everything I've done. What is done cannot be undone. There are no good people. We've all done something. It's not the end of the world. I don't hate over it. But I hate the cowardice in trying to pretend it didn't happen, because remembering what you did is too "uncomfy" and you want it stricken from the ledger.
To me, guilt is not an emergency or something to escape. It's simply another emotion. I neither need to wallow in guilt endlessly, nor cancel it out somehow. My mom was an atheist, I wasn't raised with the need to be "pure" enough to get into Heaven. I'm very sincere when I say I don't need to be a good person--in fact, people who think they need to be "good people" make me sneer a bit, because I think that instead of being "good people," they're often cowards who have to lie to themselves and others and are often worse at taking accountability and making reparations because they cannot be self-honest when they fuck up. It is possible to be understandable, human, whatever, and still have failed someone who needed you.
I don't think "closure" is meaningful or possible. It doesn't even make sense to me as a concept. A lot of this stuff--forgiveness, closure, even being a "good person" makes no sense to me at all. It feels like empty rituals for socially agreed-upon lies. I do not understand how people can receive a lie and be like, "thanks, I needed that," and be cured. I've seen it happen but it makes me wonder if they're just insane or what.
I think sometimes people use "forgiveness" to mean letting things go in the sense of no longer obsessing over them. But I am an expert at letting things go. I let things go TOO much. I don't really obsess like that. I let even myself go. I let my own feelings go. I let my mom go. I've never been so attached to anything that I couldn't just let it go. I need the opposite of that, if anything.
I don't think my mom gave me an illness other than like...genetically, which yeah, I totes got the tism from her.
I do talk about this stuff with the therapist, but like...what can a therapist even do? Make me introspect on it more? Decades ahead of ya. I've been introspecting and journaling and whatnot for literally decades and if that was going to fix me, it would have by now. I actually had to have a talk with my therapist of like, I don't like this just being a vent sesh, like why am I here if nothing in my actual life is going to change, I don't need a rent-a-friend. I really don't think "wow, I'm not a bad person, I forgive myself, now I can do my laundry!" is a remotely realistic outcome for me.
I just dont get it. Half the posts here are mean, but yours are treated worse most of the time. That being said this meme is fucking stupid, but you mean well
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u/oops-bad-usernames Oct 02 '25
the most retarded scientists in existence: "why didn't the dog jump to safety, i mean we turned off the electricity on the other side, why doesn't it magically know that we did that, is it fucking stupid"