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Besides money, if the was the case, what might prevent you from have a fulfilling life?
I would like to learn for me and my loved ones.
In my case is health issues and anxiety about deadly emergencies (I have been there). Also, professional growth potential have declined after certain age.
If you mean I had unlimited funds and wasn't required to work for a living? Nothing.
I currently have no S/O, no kids, no pets, and bills are my only responsibility. If I just didn't have to worry about them, I'd never work again.
I want to travel, see the world and experience much more of life. Take time to just go do things, meet people, see more. I've taken small steps, but it's not the grand vision yet. Even without money, I take time to learn new things and accomplish goals even if they're outlandish - so I don't feel professionally hindered.
I'm still young enough so I've got time, but I don't want to waste my youth trying to be able to enjoy it. I find joy in what I can attain, but I continue to hope for more. If you give me the chance to just enjoy life for a while, I'll do it.
One of the things I find myself thinking about frequently is the concept of regret.
I have lived my life in such a way that there isn’t really much at all that I can say I truly do regret. But at the same time I have specifically avoided thinking about all the things that I have missed out on because I didn’t have the resources to do them. I realize - no, I probably always knew - that if I did spend time thinking about those things that I would be truly miserable, to the point it would be causing me physical pain.
It is interesting how you framed regret as a thing of the present and not something in the past, which was the was I have looked at it. We do regret and we can stop doing it. It depends on us, not on the unchangeable past.
Thanks for the insight.
That's certainly a valid approach to that - but I think my attitude is more centered in knowing that I did what I could. I try to enjoy everything even when I don't have much, and so even things that I couldn't do are okay.
For example, I do think it would've been beneficial or fun to have done more extracurricular stuff in high school - but I did spend a lot of that time playing games with friends, and I still have the fond memories of that.
I don't live every day like it's my last, but I do try to make sure that I enjoy it more than just plan to enjoy it.
A 30+ man, kind of close relative, after a career change that made him to triple his already high salary told me that he did not want now to have kids, something he wanted to, because now he wanted to be the center of his own life.
It was kind of shocking for me. I deeply enjoyed my children and could not figure out what he meant.
However, now I understand that desire of continuing having no responsibilities except with oneself and do whatever you want to do. My concern is whether, I do not know that is why I wrote whether, that attitude may lead toward loneliness. Hopefully not but I think it is my fear.
Kids don't fix loneliness. Kids are just guarantee that you have several humans that you maintain a long term relationship with. Whether they decide to continue that relationship with you after childhood is not assured.
You totally can spend a long time building lifelong relationships with people that aren't your children. Granted it's probably easier done with other non parents as the parents will be busy with children.
Anecdotally I have found that having kids has greatly increased my own social world, mostly parents of my kids friends, but its also drawn us closer to family.
Oh it definitely can, and I'm lonely - but I'm not afraid of it. I hope to meet someone who can also add to my life, but there's so much of life I haven't even gotten to experience yet.
I would like to have kids, I'd like to build a normal life, but I'm still young and want to do things that I have the most energy for while I'm young. After I've gotten to cross a few items off the bucket list, it's time to find other fulfilling things I haven't done yet.
To me, life is about doing what you can with the time you have. So I'll continue to do that as much as possible.
At the end of the day, none of us knows how much time we have left on this earth. What that means is that we can't wait for something to allow us to live a fulfilling life - we need to find fulfillment in what we do.
And we don't need much to find that fulfillment, because the deepest fulfillment tends to come from helping others. Whether it's raising good kids, shoveling your neighbor's driveway, becoming a doctor, whatever - all of these can be fulfilling and none require much at all.
This touches me.
For a long time during my young and adult life I have been criticized because, I was told, I put other's people needs above mind. I was asked to take care of myself, to focus on what I wanted, to forget others for some time and be the center of my life.
I tried to follow those advices. Those people loved me, they still do.
However, kind of suddenly I realized that I was doing what I wanted and I was happier doing that than doing something that was not genuinely mine. I just stopped caring about having a "poor developed self," "low self-esteem," being a "pleaser," etc. I decided to do what I wanted and that was, more frequent than not, help others, offer my help, listen with interest, That is my selfishness and I enjoy it. I am in the group that finds fulfillment helping others. Maybe others do not, but you and I seem to be in the same group.
I like to use as metaphor the take-off advice we hear on the airplanes to put our oxygen mask on before we assist others with their masks. Like you, I like to help other people. I don't think there's anything wrong with taking care of myself so that I can help other people. This may look like I am putting myself first, but by keeping myself healthy, I am more able to help others and serve in my community.
100% agree. Sometimes, putting the mask first translate to do things that help others but provide even more satisfaction to the helper than to the person helped https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/study-volunteering-is-good-for-your-health/
Helping does not imply to deplete our resources, sometimes helping become a way to replenish our own resources.
I imagine it is draining helping others and not receiving back what is expected.
It's not giving at all if you expect to be receiving back. There is no virtue behind transactionally-performed good deeds, even if the expectation is some future karma. Any of us could be dead tomorrow, unable to "collect."
I think that putting others’ needs above one’s own works particularly well if you’re in a society and culture where everyone does that. But if you’re not, it can lead to emotional burnout as you give out way more than what you receive.
I think it’s severely underrated in America, which celebrates the individual self way over the collective, which has resulted in its tremendous loneliness crisis (and knock-on opioid and other mental health crises). A healthy society needs a strong web of fraternal/sororal love.
My C-PTSD does it’s best to prevent fulfillment - but thank god for medicinal psychedelics. Flip side too all the years of therapy with things like CBT means appreciating smaller things and getting fulfillment from less than I used to
Do you have any recommendations for C-PTSD? I'm struggling with my vision becoming poor and crippling C-PTSD for anything that involves my own wants or self determination, and I feel like I'm rotting away in spite of being in a better place than at any other moment in my life.
If I force myself, the C-PTSD feels like I'm flaying my flesh just to be normal, and any good things are outweighed by the negative internal reaction. If I take the path of least resistance I cease to exist and bed rot forever.
My biggest suggestion would be to see your state's equivalent of a Licensed Mental Health Counselor and see a trauma-focused one. When I first started therapy, I didn't have money so I was only able to see counselors, nurse practitioners, etc. Seeing a trauma-focused LMHC was a huge stepping stone in therapy for me.
Specific things that have helped for me in therapy, and is what I look for now when looking for a new therapist: Internal Family Systems (or other kinds of Parts work - but I enjoy the higher, more macro-level paradigm of IFS), EDMR/ART (sounds like bullshit [Eye-movement for trauma therapy? Really?] but actually is very helpful at getting emotions processed; I greatly prefer ART but harder to find), and CBT (for day-to-day maintenance)
The other was doing Ketamine infusions/assisted therapy. It is expensive, and I would not recommend doing it on your own if you have C-PTSD (I had trips there were so bad, I don't know if I'd be around if I didn't see a therapist after), but It's the best investment I've ever made on myself.
It's not some kind of quick-acting medicine, but it's what allowed me to finally get to places I wasn't able to reach before due to what reaching those places meant (and again, don't think I'd have responded well without doing therapy with it. Ketamine got me there, therapy made sure I did good work while there). It took about a year after my first IV infusion before I finally started actually feeling better - but I mean, like actually better. Like actually doing "good" instead of just not actively wanting to not exist. I'm not exaggerating when I say I've cried during sessions for the sole fact I actually got to feel a strong sense of happiness. If you can afford it, it's what has truly helped me - but it is prohibitively expensive (~$500 a session, plus potential other costs).
I can get more into ketamine therapy if desired (I've done IV [what I suggest], KAP, and I have a friend that does microsdosing). It's unfortunately still not available in all states. If you're in Colorado, they also de-criminalized mushrooms - so you can find a post-ritual therapist and it'll be SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper. I do not have experience with this though, but I do plan to try it out.
Ah, I've done therapy for years - I've just started hitting the wall in regards to resolving certain parts of my C-PTSD that I can't overcome with willpower as there's no will sometimes due to neglecting self care and self-abandonment.
I live in Texas, so my therapist believes psychedelic assisted therapy could work but I believe any institutional help is non-existent in this field.
I have done psilocybin in the past, and I could only describe it as feeling like "The Dude" from Sam Elliott's narration - "Sometimes, there's a man, well, he's the man for his time and place. He fits right in there.". Everything kind of 'fit' and I could shrug off the 12 billion background processing tasks running subconsciously and simply exist. It also helped me a lot in a very, very rough time in my life where I had to argue against my father's cosmic decision pendulum to commit my sister involuntary due to her increasingly erratic bipolar disorder.
Addressing the main thread of this conversation, my parents generation really struggled with PTSD and a fulfilling life. My mother abandoned herself and saw salvation in the salvation of others - my father abandoned himself to fulfill the role of provider and 1980's husband. Neither are particularly happy to the best of my knowledge, always seeming to superficially express happiness while being absolutely miserable after they both mentally abused each other and rightfully divorced shortly after I entered college.
I guess that makes me my parents child after all. In spite of having alright finances and a loving relationship, I still find that the number one thing working against my happiness is myself, and the fact that day by day I feel mirth and life drain from thr possibilities of the future. Every failed attempt to make myself happy or even try to enjoy myself becoming future shackles or crippling failures, like food turning to ash upon my tongue.
At the very least I know I have to keep trying, as my parents are evidence of the path of willful abandonment of the self being something that self deciept cannot fix.
My physician banned psychedelics for me. I have never tried and I want. Asked her and she was adamant, 'no psychedelics for me because I have had enough brain injuries already and it was unclear for her what it could happen to me. She wanted more research before authorizing me.
I still want but I am afraid that her caution be proven right.
I guess the thing that could one day really stump my personal growth is if my anxiety came back. For so many years, all the way up until about December of last year really, I had extremely crippling anxiety. I spent all day shut into my room playing video games with character creation pretending to be the hero that went everywhere and did everything, and then I shut myself in at my dorm room which was even more isolating.
After a few brushes with self-harm, I decided I had to make a change. I got myself a medical marijuana card, and started doing some version of "yes therapy," or just saying yes to everything that was asked of me in the hopes of using exposure to "cure" my anxiety. Doing that, with enormous help from smoking a daily serving of weed, and I'm mostly on the other side of it now. My grades in college are up, I've got a few romantic relationships under my belt, and I'm pursuing my passion for filmmaking and writing by way of interacting with the respective communities in my city. I've got new friends, the bonds with my old friends are stronger, I'm healthy and I feel like a real person for the first time in my life. I'm sure that discovering my gender identity and getting onto a regular hormone therapy played no small part, too.
But still, occasionally I'll find myself in a new situation, get a tightness in my chest, that familiar panicked feeling in my gut, the sudden inability to string a sentence together, otherwise known as a panic attack; it'll throw me back to the less happy times in my life. That's the thing about anxiety, it never really goes away, it's just something that can only be managed and I wonder when the next time will be that it doesn't go away for awhile.
I suppose the difference between then and now is that I have tools to help myself out of it. Having the bravery to remove myself from a situation is a skill that I've really fought to develop. Having a supply of weed nearby, as funny as it sounds, is an actual lifesaver. It's insane how this plant can just stop a panic attack on a dime, and it's done a lot to make those attacks a lot less scary when I have a short-term solution for them. Developing those close friendships that I now feel affirmed and comfortable leaning on when I need them is a big help, too. Hell I'd even call myself an extrovert these days, which is not something I thought I would have ever said.
I see myself on the other side of the worst parts now, but were those bad parts ever to rear their head again that'd be the biggest hurdle to leading a fulfilling life.
I smiled while reading the your post. How full of hope now but hypervigilant with the symptoms of that nasty anxiety.
One question, do you use any specific type of marijuana. I ask because I know that in some people marijuana causes panic attacks but in your cases it stops them.
I'm glad you found it comforting! Sometimes I think that I am too long-winded with my posts so it's always nice to hear when someone connects with them.
I'll give you the short form first before going into a longer explanation because you can get pretty in-depth with weed and tailoring your experience. Basically, I smoke Indica-dominant weed in joint or vape form for a slow and euphoric high.
~
Marijuana can have drastically different effects for different people, so it's not guaranteed to work for everyone, but it did work for me. There's a couple different ways to change the effects that weed has on your body and mind, one of the most important ones to know is if you're smoking Indica, hybrid, or sativa. To simplify it, Indica slows you down, Sativa speeds you up, and hybrid will have a combination of both. All three should have euphoric effects too. Probably due to my anxiety, sativa is too much for me and can give me a bad trip, so I stick to Indica. Indica is great because these panic attacks are usually caused by my mind going a mile a minute, so it slows me down along with that feeling of happiness and euphoria so I get into a good mood and out of that bad mental state really quick. There are also a lot of different strains, but it's mostly trial and error to find what you like. Personally, I like the strains 'Romulan,' and 'Watermelon Wonder'
That's the most important thing to remember, but the way you smoke can also change the way it effects you. Personally, I like joints as they taper your intake so you're not inhaling everything at once like with a bong (though I still love bongs). Eases the high in instead of hitting you immediately. If I'm out and about and need something immediate though I carry a vape on me and keep it on low to medium power for a similar effect, though I do prefer flower.
Thanks so much for your thoughtful reply. TIL about marijuana. Happy that it worked very well for you.
Of course! You're doing it the right way, to start. Like I said in a previous reply weed can effect everyone differently, where it helped me manage my anxiety, it might not be so helpful for others.
Doctors usually say that CBD is better for anxiety, while THC could potentially increase anxiety depending on what type and strain of flower you take. It's worth noting that a CBD plant will have some THC present still (usually 1%-5%), as well a THC plant (aka cannabis) will have trace amounts of CBD (< 1%). Many products you can buy will contain a mixture of both depending on what effects you want, I imagine that CBD would be sort of like a better version of a cigarette, and they even have CBD cigarettes which contain no nicotine (note: CBD does not get you the "high" or euphoric feeling, only THC does that). Strictly following the doctors advice that might be a place to start, but if that doesn't do much you could ramp up your THC dosage.
That being said, cannabis flower helped me manage my anxiety and I've never really had much experience with CBD outside of trying some friends CBD cigarettes (which were good). I started off smoking D8 THC vapes, a widely legal variant of regular THC (aka D9 THC) which is slightly less effective but still provides psychoactive effects, in other words it'll get you high. That got my tolerance up to switch to the "real deal" and start smoking D9 flower, which gave a better result in more satisfying highs and decreased anxiety over the next day. Sometimes I do get a little anxiety at the peak of a high, but it's never persistent and due to the intense euphoric effects and diminished attention span it's very easy to just put on Midnight Gospel and have the time of my fucking life. The anxiety relief comes from having those strong euphoric effects, and beyond that you still have cannaboids in your system the following day(s) which provides longer lasting relief, which was enough for me to start to overcome the anxiety on my own.
It's important to note that neither THC nor CBD will get rid of anxiety on it's own, they both relieve it. That relief was what I needed to address the issues at the core of my anxiety so going in with it's therapeutic components in mind you should pair that with some personal (or professional) therapy and self-care. As someone who's anxiety was never respondent to traditional prescribed treatments (Prozac, Xanax) this is what finally did the trick for me.
I live in Missouri, and here we have "Budtenders" in all of our dispensaries. You can tell them the exact effects you're looking for and they'll be able recommend you some strains that will get you that feeling. I recommend doing that when picking out your first strain. Also, it's a good idea to get your first high with other people, friends who you're comfortable around in a comfortable place so you're somewhere safe when figuring out how THC effects you should you decide to go down the THC route.
Read my other reply to this comment for some more info on different strains and types of weed and what I personally use to achieve the effects that work for me!
You're welcome to send me a private message and I'd be happy to direct you to some websites for further reading on strains, or for more pointed questions. and while nothing I've said is untrue, it's also not medical advice. The journey I took was without the consultation of medical professionals, I went to a service that charges a fee for medical cards instead of one which issues them based on a patients needs, so what I say is entirely my own experience. I do hope this helps!!
I think that's the perfect place to get started, I wish you luck!!
Mortality. I'd be happy with things right now and I wish I could freeze moments for longer. The fact that everyone I love will at one point be no longer around keeps me from feeling fulfilled.
Once I read that grief is the impossibility to love that one who left us. I was traumatized by the death of my son. I do not want something like that again.
I know there are things that I can do to make my own life more healthy and prevent health problems down the road:
but beyond a certain threshold it is difficult to care. If I had more money then I would try to outsource the solution more aggressively but different plans to prevent future problems have different risk profiles. Some plans to be more healthy are less probable to make an impact. This correlates (but imperfectly) with the cost of each plan: some ideas hemorrhage money more than others.
Money can solve most problems but only if one is willing to solve their problem and one knows how to solve it.
Another related problem is that once you have some money you see a different world of possibilities than you saw before. Your new worldview might even require less capital than you had before but your perspective has changed (even if your Identity has only changed superficially). But it's also possible that your new goals require even more capital than you correctly have. Both of these worldview changes are "first-world problems" but they are very costly.
Depending on your personality type this dissatisfaction with the present is either entertainment or annoyance but both possibilities distract from living in the moment and feeling fulfilled.
Completed goals are a "fulfilling" but if uncompleted goals are over-emphasized they are antithetical to feeling fulfilled. And if uncompleted goals are under-emphasized then there is no motivation for becoming "fulfilled". So I see this as a balancing problem between multiple-sized animal-skin liquid containers and everyone has different-sized animal-skin liquid containers and the liquids are motivation and feelings.
Climate Change destroying the beautiful places and peoples I would like to visit and preserve.
Climate change is going to be a blessing for a few already affluent places after people adapt. Even on those few places, we, those who are alive, will experience the "I-do-not-know-how" and will have a lower quality of while gaining knowledge for the future generations.
For the other 85% of humanity, it will be a disaster. A hot and ugly disaster.
I am with you.
CPTSD, OCD, gender dysphoria and loneliness have made my life agonizing and too much to bare. I am not even sure I'll get to see 20 at this point. Had it not been for my love of programming and music i probably would already be leaving.
Programming has helped me immensely with making sense of my brain's dysfunction. Interrupts, object reference is not a reference to an object, index errors, priority stacks and queue handling, all have been useful tools for tackling issues that normal frameworks didn't do much for me due to the vague and obsequious advice prevalent in much of the mental health world.
As a Stoic, the only thing that could prevent me are my own decisions and my own perceptions.
Could you, please, elaborate more. What is the meaning of stoic in your day to day life? Where are you and does being there help?
There's a quote from Hamlet: "There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so." What Hamlet means is one of the core Stoic principles: that we have to accept reality, and whether we like it or not is not determined by reality, but by our preferences about reality. In Latin, the phrase was "amor fati", the love of fate; not "fate" as in future events, but past events, things you cannot change. You cannot change events, I repeat, but you can change how you feel about them.
So if I am unfulfilled, it's because I have chosen to be so, either by viewing my life as unfulfilling, or by pursuing a life I find unfulfilling. I choose to both "love my fate" and also do things I find fulfillment in, like helping others and making the world a better place.
I feel like this kind of disregards things like chronic pain, which is kind of objectively bad and can't just be ignored or accepted as neutral.
Chronic pain may be disliked but must be accepted, because if we do not accept it then we will grow frustrated and angry over this thing which exists outside our power. As we are distracted by our own self-added feelings about it, we're even less able to focus on the other parts of our life where we can make a difference.
Sure, chronic pain is unpleasant, sometimes crippling. It's an obstacle to happiness at the very least and almost always a constraint on action. But to quote Marcus Aurelius this time, "the obstacle in the way becomes the way". One can't just wish things to be different than they are. If chronic pain is a part of someone's life, she can't ignore that or try to live the life of someone without it; she needs to find ways to seek virtue and fulfillment that are in accordance with a life of chronic pain.
To the Stoic, happiness isn't good and pain isn't bad. Nothing that happens to us can be, because they're out of our control; only our decisions can be good or bad.
That was clear, thanks.
It reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27s_Search_for_Meaning Victor Frankl.
However, I still imagine that there are important parts of our mind that are out of our rational control. Trauma survivors do not have the freedom to choose. Therefore, if I understand you well, something devastating that eliminates the possibility of living stoically may make you live an unfulfilling life.
Am I right?
The Stoic knows that she is not her brain, she is not her mind. Having a defect or disability of the mind is the same as having one of the body, in that it is an external factor outside of her control, and she must accept this limitation and make the best of it.
A lot of non-stoics mistakenly think that Stoicism, with its emphasis on limiting the effect of emotion on decision-making, is a rational system, but that's dualistic thinking. Rationality can lead one astray as easily as emotion. It is virtue, not reason, that guides the Stoic.
Long Covid. Although that's not a "might". After more than 3 years of getting worse I seriously doubt I'll ever be healthy again.
Thinking about long-covid it is the combination of suffering from a chronic disease plus everything is being learned as we go. Hopefully, learning will get what you need. to heal. I read a few days ago that there are genetic markers for some symptoms in people with long covid (https://www.news-medical.net/news/20230302/Study-results-provide-strong-evidence-for-association-of-genetic-markers-to-long-COVID-mappable-to-fatigue.aspx)
I'd say not having friends and struggling to make any due to untreated social anxiety certainly makes living a fulfilling life pretty difficult.
Alcoholism
That is such a difficult addiction to get rid of with so many cultural stages in which alcohol consumption is glorified. It would destroy may life, per sure.
For me, it would probably be not having a following on social media. It's hard to accept that I've spent the last 10 years learning to draw with nothing to show for my work while it seems like everyone else tries their best to accomplish their goals and actually succeed. I wish I picked something better to do with my life, but now I'm in way to deep to ever be able to quit.
Do you have any draw you can take a pic and link here? I am interested in seeing it.
Like many others the constant lack of money - in a world where everything is getting more expensive and finding someone - we make each other happy and content.
Questions like this don't make a lot of sense, because the answer is always Money. Money buys freedom and time.
Nothing else on this planet makes as big of a difference to anyone as money.
my mental health
I wish you can get access very good quality care.