Roy Batty knew how to die, so why don't I?

Unfortunately, usually I can’t get five sentences into a discussion before they change the subject to God. No thanks. It’s like talking to a cop, basically.

Unitarian might be a bit different. They are out there a bit. They are non-creed, so you might hear a Mary Oliver poem during a sermon, something from Navajo myth, etc. They do not require a belief in god.

Unitarian Universalists have many ways of naming what is sacred. Some believe in a God; some don’t believe in a God. Some believe in a sacred force at work in the world, and call it “love,” “mystery,” “source of all” or “spirit of life.” We are thousands of individuals of all ages, each influenced by our cultures and life experiences to understand “the ground of our being” in our own way. Unitarian Universalists are agnostic, theist, atheist, and everything in between.

My wife and I used a Unitarian minister for our wedding. She’s (ethnically) Jewish, I was raised Assembly of God and so am now an atheist. The Unitarian worked out great. No mention of dieties at all.

You know, surprisingly, that HBO series “In Treatment” was quite eye opening to me in terms of what therapy involves, and what it can do:

You really get to know these people over the FORTY TWO (!) episodes in a season, just by essentially “listening in” to their sessons like a fly on the wall. I found it compelling.

So for anyone skeptical of therapy, I do recommend watching at least the first season. And it can be an example of good, functional therapy, since obviously it is a bit dramatized… but it never seemed contrived or fake. I was surprised how real it felt to me by the end of season 1.

Just curious, what level of income do the patients in this series tend to fall into?

In this, you are not wrong. My gf spent years being bounced from therapist to therapist at a low-rent clinic that she could (almost) afford, retelling the most painful parts of her story again and again to overworked, underpaid doctors who’d be gone in a month or two, no doubt. It sucked fucks.

Yep. Mental healthcare sucks in this country (along with healthcare in general). If you have money, it can bankrupt you. If you don’t have it, you don’t get to see anyone (or anyone good).

This line resonated with me, as a parent:

[Becoming] a mother was very difficult, very painful…That’s when I went into deep therapy because of the pain caused by being a mother and loving this child so much that instead of being happy it felt painful. I thought, why can’t I just feel happy?

There is a big inflection point around kids, in my life anyway.

If I trace the themes in the original post back to their source, it really did begin when I had kids. I now have feels of a depth that I kinda don’t … want to have at some level? It’s the emotional equivalent of suddenly deciding to take up freestyle BASE jumping. Except you didn’t really want to be a BASE jumper, someone pushed you off the edge and said GL;HF so that’s your new hobby now. I mean, unless you’d rather not be here at all.

The highs become so much higher; the lows so much lower.

That person sounds mentally ill and like they need help. Did that part resonate with you? Because that’s message I got.

Postpartum depression is specific to women (afaik?), so not that part, but the intensity of the feelings being difficult to bear, very much so.

Sorry to hear that buddy. Be well.

As I get older, I’ve finally realized that there is no “normal” - we all have our bumps and bruises, quirks, and aspects/interests/behaviors that others would find weird or incomprehensible.

And not to be glib about mental illness, but I think everyone is damaged to varying degrees (or looks damaged to others who find their behavior incomprehensible). But just as when you’re in mid-life you develop health issues or physical injuries, I think you’re also more likely to be battered and have bruises mentally too. Maybe it’s because of a damaging relationship/job that has affected you in ways you’re not even conscious of, maybe it’s a traumatic event like the death of a relative or close friend, maybe it’s a chronic illness or other hardship that you’re forced to live with, maybe it’s from isolation, maybe it’s from life disappointments or events viewed as unjust; but at least just as likely it’s normal and more subtle “bumps and bruises” of life, just as you might have a knee that you now favor when you didn’t previously.

I think it’s important to live in the “now” and try to enjoy and take advantage of every phase of life. I’m probably a bad example of that, as I basically lived a standard mid-20s lifestyle an additional 20 years. As a result of that choice I missed out on some other opportunities and experiences - some deliberate, like not having children - others more questionable, like being relatively under-ambitious professionally (although I’ve certainly done fine).

I’m finally a little more at peace with this phase of life. An important question that a friend recently asked me was “if you could change places with people you know, name them and explain why”? And, somewhat to my surprise, the answer was nobody, despite the fact that I am encumbered with many, many regrets about my own life. I would definitely change some things or want a mulligan on some aspects of my own life, but I wouldn’t really want the life of other people I know. In part that may be because I am the least competitive person I’ve ever met and I don’t much care about wealth/assets unless it prevents me from satisfying my relatively modest wants and needs. But more importantly I’m horrified by aspects of their lifestyle even if they’ve objectively been incredibly successful - whether it be their frenetic lifestyle, unhappy or bland marriage, job that would drive me crazy, or even just aspects of their personality that are abhorrent to me.

Realizing that just made it clear that I should try to address aspects of my own life that I’m unhappy with, to the extent possible, and otherwise just be at peace with the annoyances of aging. And realizing that although people can certainly be sympathetic, only you are truly invested in your own life to both sufficiently understand it and make your own happiness on this troubled orb.

For some reason, human company helps. In fact, it is the single thing that helps the most. But not the kind of company a sad person needs. What a depressed person needs is simply to talk to people, not about their problems or their negative thoughts or their depression, but about anything else - music, animals, science. The most helpful topic of conversation, I’ve found, is absurdity - just talking about utterly ridiculous things, gross things, vulgar offensive things, bizarre things. Shared activities, like going on a hike or playing sports, are OK, but talking is much, much more important. I really have never figured out why this works, but it does.

🤔

It’s one of the cruel ironies of depression that depressed people need contact and socialization with other people, yet the disease both makes the depressed person isolate himself, and makes others not want to be around him.

Which then can heighten the depression. It’s a horrible fucking feedback loop.

Yes, that is why it’s so sneaky (and deadly). It is actively fighting against the thing that is its actual enemy.

Sunlight and exercise are the basic weapons. Seems banal, but that is the start of the resistance.

(yes, I’m using war terminology for a reason)