(05-04-2018, 08:19 PM)kiwii Wrote: Deleted the other stuff cuz I'm feeling really uncomfortable and discouraged.
Here's a pep talk for ya:
There might be no good reason to feel that way. Are you sure the situation is all that bad? If you're not sure, try to forget about it for a while by distracting yourself with other stuff. Or as the British saying goes, "Cheer up; it may never happen." I think that's generally said just before hoisting a pint in a pub.
You know the Serenity Prayer that the twelve-step folks use, right? I was interested but not surprised to learn recently that one form of it is at least as old as the Stoics. When I consider that serenity thing I prefer to omit the silly irrationalist component of the AA version of it (asking, or even demanding, that an Invisible Pink Unicorn should magically give us courage, patience, and wisdom), but aside from that it makes a lot of sense.
In a bad situation that I want to make better, the first thing I need to do is to figure out, honestly and rationally, which parts of it I
can change. Then I need to come up with some plan of action for those parts, and put it into practice. At the same time, I need to stop worrying about the parts of the situation that I
can't change, because obsessing about those does no good and might do some harm (even if the harm is only psychological).
I'm not being holier-than-thou; we've all been through it many times and we know what it's like. It's difficult, and it could even be that the third thing in my formulation of it above is the most difficult. (Sometimes I foolishly worry about worrying too much.)
When all else fails, try taking the advice of James Thurber, as updated by Gregg Allman one time when he was all bummed out & despairing and writing a song about it: "Leave your mind alone (and just get high)". Sometimes it does seem that the best you can do is to say "Foo" and turn your attention to something else for a while.
