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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   1545 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for November 5, 2025

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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So, my birthday is tomorrow. Any advice for fighting the "birthday blues"? Particularly around feelings of having wasted one's life, being an utter failure as a human being, and yet likely still having so many more (pointless, futile) years ahead to suffer through?

I turned 40 this year, and one thing which helped me was to just stubbornly insist "I'm going to have a good time, fuck my inner voices". Specifically I didn't want to be depressed because I'm (approximately) halfway through my years on this earth, because it seemed to me like it would be a waste to spend my limited time worrying about my death. I know that's not exactly what you're going through, but perhaps a similar approach of trying to focus on the good things and enjoy them might help you?

because it seemed to me like it would be a waste to spend my limited time worrying about my death

It's not so much my death I'm worrying about — again, there are times I consider hastening it to the present — but the utter purposelessness and futility of my existence. Why live another 30 (miserable) years, when there's just no point to any of it? When no matter how much longer I live, it won't amount to anything?

perhaps a similar approach of trying to focus on the good things

What good things?

and enjoy them

That would require that I enjoy something. I don't. Nothing brings me enjoyment. Every moment I continue to draw breath is misery… and it will always be this way. I will never be happy. There will never be even a moment of joy between now and my death, only pain.

So why keep going, if not for some purpose? For some reason to keep going through this miserable existence, instead of just ending my suffering now? But I don't have one that I have any hope of pursuing.

(And don't recommend meds or therapy. This is me on meds, and I'm seeing a therapist pretty regularly.)

Much of the time what we perceive as misery is closer to disappointment. Buddhism has a lot to say about this (nearly all of it, imo, total bunk) but the whole "desire brings suffering" thing is spot on. Take twenty minutes, sit somewhere without pressing distractions, and focus on the moment. Push all of your worries and expectations out of your mind and just take reality in. The physical sensations, the sights, the sounds, the internal experience of being you. I think you will find existence itself, moment to moment, quite pleasant.

"But why should I let go of my expectations? They're correct! I absolutely should have a healthy marriage/kids/a great career/fame/fortune/health/popularity/a fulfilling hobby. I deserve at least one of those things. Isn't that the bare minimum?"

Of course, I don't mean to downplay what you're going through or tell you to give up. Those desires are still healthy. I just want you to know that there's a very pleasant base-level reality that exists on a much deeper level than your goals and self-conceptions, and visiting it, even staying for a few months, is perfectly fine.

Take twenty minutes, sit somewhere without pressing distractions, and focus on the moment.

This sounds like meditation, which I've been informed is a very bad idea for schizophrenics like myself.

Push all of your worries and expectations out of your mind

I have no idea how.

and just take reality in. The physical sensations, the sights, the sounds, the internal experience of being you.

"The internal experience of being me" comes with a lot of angst, and the potential return of the hallucinations despite the meds that currently suppress them.

I think you will find existence itself, moment to moment, quite pleasant.

I haven't before.

I just want you to know that there's a very pleasant base-level reality that exists on a much deeper level than your goals and self-conceptions, and visiting it, even staying for a few months, is perfectly fine.

I think you're wrong. "Base-level reality" is horrible.

Sitting on a park bench and taking everything in is not meditation. There may be meditative properties to it, but probably less than going on a run or taking a hot shower, or heck trying to fall asleep. The point isn't to empty your mind, or be more conscious of your own thoughts, it's just to experience life and physical sensation without worrying about higher-level things like goals and regrets.

The way to do this--to forget worries, expectations, and ideally your own self-conception--is not to remove them or push them out per se, it's to replace them and focus your attention on other things. Preoccupy yourself with more immediate things like the way the light filters through the trees, and other things will naturally take a back seat. You can't successfully order yourself not to think about pink elephants, but you can make your mind busy enough with other things to accomplish something similar.

There were a few months in college when I had just been broken up with by the only girlfriend I thought I'd ever have, I had bad grades, I was taking steroids that made me extremely anxious around everyone and about everything, and I had severe ulcerative colitis, which sent me to the bathroom every thirty minutes or so to experience waves of searing-hot pain and crap out a few ounces of blood. The physical experience was by far the most painful thing I've ever felt, and if anything the surrounding life circumstances were even worse.

Still, I found that taking it moment by moment--ignoring the higher-level stuff my brain was telling me and focusing on reality itself--even the worst moments of pain were not just endurable, but downright pleasant. David Foster Wallace puts it better than I can.

But he’d also gotten a personal prickly chill all over from his own thinking. He could do the dextral pain the same way: Abiding. No one single instant of it was unendurable. Here was a second right here: he endured it. What was undealable-with was the thought of all the instants all lined up and stretching ahead, glittering. And the projected future fear of the A.D.A., whoever was out there in a hat eating Third World fast food; the fear of getting convicted of Nuckslaughter, of V.I.P.-suffocation; of a lifetime on the edge of his bunk in M.C.I. Walpole, remembering. It’s too much to think about. To Abide there. But none of it’s as of now real. What’s real is the tube and Noxzema and pain. And this could be done just like the Old Cold Bird. He could just hunker down in the space between each heartbeat and make each heartbeat a wall and live in there. Not let his head look over. What’s unendurable is what his own head could make of it all. What his head could report to him, looking over and ahead and reporting. But he could choose not to listen; he could treat his head like G. Day or R. Lenz: clueless noise. He hadn’t quite gotten this before now, how it wasn’t just the matter of riding out the cravings for a Substance: everything unendurable was in the head, was the head not Abiding in the Present but hopping the wall and doing a recon and then returning with unendurable news you then somehow believed.

I'm not telling you to give up on your ego entirely. For that matter, I'm not convinced the many people who say that they have are being honest. But there are stories we tell about our own lives that do more harm than good. We all need stories to get by, goals and dreams and aspirations and regrets and self-conceptions, but it's valuable to be consciously aware that this story-level reality is not base-level reality, that there exists a level of experience beneath and supporting all of that. It is possible for your stories to be wrong. They do not define you, they just preoccupy you and disappoint you. You can find better replacements, stories that inspire you.

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