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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   2599 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for June 12, 2024

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

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Does anyone have tips for dealing with feelings of anxiety/hopelessness?

I feel like my mental health is being negatively impacted by things outside of my control and that these things are going to get worse in the near the future.

  • Social media is doing a lot of damage to people’s mental health, attention spans, and ability to connect with people outside their bubbles. Over time social media continues to become more addicting and gets better at identifying people’s emotional buttons and how to push them. This results in anxiety, anger, conspiratorial thinking/paranoia, and other mental health problems. The people in power have no incentive to address any of these problems because they get money/power from the status quo.
  • Economic policies have exacerbated wealth inequality. If you don’t already have substantial wealth then it seems nearly impossible to build much wealth through selling your labor. Asset ownership seems to be a much more viable path toward wealth generation but young people that didn’t inherit wealth are at a huge disadvantage in this system.
  • AI is going to make it harder for people without wealth to build wealth because it devalues their labor.
  • The shift to online dating has made it harder for many heterosexual people to find meaningful long-term relationships because it selects for superficial traits. There are fewer places where it is acceptable to flirt in-person which makes it harder for men to attract women by demonstrating character/virtue over time. Additionally, the high ratio of men to women on dating apps makes many men feel invisible and many women feel overwhelmed.
  • Politicians are not addressing these problems in any meaningful way and are actively making things worse by distracting us with bullshit.

Not to tell you how to feel, but I really don't believe that the source of your anxiety or bad-feel is world events or trends. They may be what your brain is coming up with to explain your mood, but that's because it's easier to blame a Thing rather than a Lack. If you had needy kids, a needy wife, a great career, millions of fans, an amazing social life it would sound totally insane to be worrying about Peak Oil or Arian heresy or whatever is going to damn us.

Agreed. Ponder (Stibbons? great reference) what are you doing to reduce your own interactions with social media and cell phone addictions? Where are you going to get to know new people in person, to date or connect meaningfully with?

It sounds like you also have some anxiety about money. What things about wealth are really bothering you?

I used to play Magic: the Gathering and there is a card called Ponder, so that was part of the inspiration for my name.

With social media and cell phones I remind myself that most information is just a variant of something I already know. I’m trying to restrict my media diet to only things that are new/novel information + improve my life in some way. I’m getting better at not scrolling through things because it is very rare to find anything worth my time anymore. My biggest weakness is wanting to stay up to date on economic conditions (like the housing market, because that does impact my plans to buy a home).

For meeting people to date I do well at getting attention at the bar, which I only go to a few times a month. I have a rule to always exchange contact info and wait at least a day so we are both sober. Usually, getting the attention at the bar is enough satisfaction for me and then I don’t feel like putting effort into arranging a date. I have a very low sex drive. I’m fine being single and dating feels like too much effort unless I meet a really low-maintenance woman.

The other places I connect with people are men’s circle and book club, but I don’t meet potential dates there.

With money I think it is a feeling of injustice mixed with anxiety. The economic system feels unfair/random. It gives too much advantage to those with inherited wealth, social manipulators, and unethical people. Working hard provides no guarantees of wealth and often people will take advantage of your work ethic to get you to work for less money than you are worth. The economic system encourages all parties to view each other as disposable/replaceable objects to be discarded when something better comes along.

I also believe that I have undiagnosed autism and it caused setbacks in my career, which led to missing out on a lot of passive wealth gains in the last 4-5 years.

I also think part of why the issues in my OP bother me so much is because I have nostalgia for the past (around the 90s). I felt like the world made more sense. I had a lot of untapped potential and hope for the future. These issues are kind of variances between that time and today.

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