Quite the opposite. I’ve diagnosed CPTSD, and the only way out of hell, is changing your own perspective. Trying to accept, reframe.
It’s pain. It’s slow. It’s hard. It’s the only way.
EDIT: To anyone in need: I understand seeking professional help is hard. It took me over 20 years. I learned a lot from “Complex PTSD”: by Pete Walker.
Did professional help, help in any way other than just saying you have to work with people who have never suffered and go through life not thinking about their consequences?
Cause I don’t want to be like everyone else. I’ve seen them. They disgust me.
I’ve done some. And mine was trying to make me feel some kind of way when that is not, I felt, the point. I didn’t care to be my own blind hype man.
Out of my many therapists I have not found one that doesn’t want me to be either uncaring towards or otherwise unrealistic about my life.
What I am imagining is therapy which I have had. They insist on getting the right high from life but mine does not provide that and I don’t need it to. None of us should. I’ve yet to see a therapist offer other than what is the socially acceptable way to be.
I don’t know. That kind of advice is usually given by somebody who’s been through it and is on the other side.
It’s like many of the survivors of Auschwitz and the Holocaust in general said that overall the experience gave them a lot more than it took from them.
Of course, we’re only looking at the survivors and not the people who died, but it does kind of say that yes even if things are incredibly bad, if you survive them they can get better.
It’s like many of the survivors of Auschwitz and the Holocaust in general said that overall the experience gave them a lot more than it took from them.
This seems a bit of a stretch. But your general point stands.
I see a similar issue in designing systems that must stay operational. Designing for a single fault is pretty simple, but designing for 2 or more faults becomes difficult and expensive, fast.
Power supply for instance. You can get a 2nd power supply in case your 1st goes out. You can get a UPS in case your power goes out, you can get a 2nd ups in case your first goes out, you can get your own generator and generator maintenance service plans in case of a multi hour outage. At this point you’re still under $50k
You can design, zoning/permit, and build your own fuel reserves. You can have a separate grid interconnect agreement built. You can build a power plant with railway interconnects for for fuel delivery.
I think the ability to react to what life brings in a healthy way can be really great for you. I don’t think it’s bullshit.
But too often I hear this from people who are just trying to wave off the struggle of others. I know people who are scared to engage empathy when it comes to a person with serious bad luck. Perhaps they would be too devastated or it would remind them that they too could get unlucky one day.
So they blame the victim and say it’s in the victim’s head, the victim should try harder. And it makes them feel safe, because they, of course, have the right attitude. This way they also get rid of the feeling they should help the victim.
Those people make bullshit of this otherwise good advice.
To me, it is a balance of both.
Life is definitely what happens to you. That alone is strikingly important, as much of it is not stuff you have any control over. You are quite literally a victim of most of life.
However, how you react to what you can control is also critical in dealing with it, in that you can identify things you can very much directly affect in some way.
Stoicism includes the ability and skills to tell the difference between the two, coping with the former as best as possible (to retain your mental health), and actively strategizing on how to deal with the latter as effectively as possible in order to minimize any negative outcome or maximize positive outcomes.
