Asklemmy

Turn off your phone and enjoy real actual life as in the situation right in front of you. Make it happy. Fuck the noise.

i dont :'(

but seriously: community, therapy and eating better has been nice. And allowing myself to feel messy.

One thing I've been doing is doing random online classes instead of doom scrolling. There's a ton of free ones that you can do at your own pace and spend an hour or two each day learning new stuff. Just generally being more mindful and curating my media inputs and replacing algorithmic rage inducement with better stuff. Here's a few examples, but there's tons all over the web:

Basic web dev @ theodinproject

Blender 2.8 Fundamentals

Your First 2D Game

I help out at the local food bank and spend a lot of time on Imgur looking at not politics

Organize in your community. Doing something/anything will help alleviate the anxiety and stress you are feeling.

There is always something going on. The world is always falling apart. The locations just vary.

In other words, this too shall pass. Do what you can to make the world a better place, survive, and let go of what you cannot control. Can't carry the world on you shoulders all the time. Sometimes it has to save isself or deal with the consequences.

Avoid news. Turn off internet. Literally, stop looking for like two weeks. The difference is palatable. I've used this technique a handful of times over the years.

Poorly, to be perfectly honest.

Stoicism.

It does not make sense to worry about things outside my ability to change. Humanity has survived significantly worse. All I can do is prepare, run, lift weights, and whatever else can be useful.

Look on the bright side, when's the last time you ever heard of the word famine?

I don't.

I think most people yearn for the past, and always have. People who grew up in communist East Germany (the country) even long for the glory days of the German "Democratic" Republic too. The term Ostalgia (East-algia) was coined for that. I think everyone long for a past that never truly existed and was only rose-colored by the innocence of childhood and early youth. Fewer people die in violent conflicts each year (at least up until the invasion of Ukraine), childhood deaths decline, yet the world seems extremely violent and polarized. I think the world was always violent and polarized, but we didn't have social media and the internet to broadcast and amplify the violence and our differences.

Who says we're coping

I weigh the pros and cons of committing suicide every single day.

Spread awareness about it and change my actions to mitigate the impact of it if I am able to do so. For example by protesting or boycotting.

Only reading about things and taking no action tends to pile up the emotions.

I recently started learning to play guitar and am addicted to it. Really keeps you in the moment and makes your forget the current state of the world while playing, at least for a bit.

I also live in the past probably to an unhealthy level. I have a pretty massive data hoard of old 90's/early 2000's everything, tv shows, movies, old commercials, radio songs, magazines, and a huge collection of old games. I collect as many pictures as I can find of old things I remember, old home videos from the time period of people just like walking around in malls and stores that no longer exist, etc. I draw on that past period of happiness, because I haven't felt genuinely happy in over 10 years at this point.

I try to fully immerse myself I guess as a form of dissociation/escapism. When I'm dragged back to reality or unable to preoccupy myself my mind goes to dark places. I cope with weed and alcohol. I take naps when I can when my mind is breaking. Sometimes it builds up till I have psychotic breaks, or self harm. I guess that's an 'outlet' but it's really not good. Therapy can help sometimes, but only insofar as helping me to cope with the outside world, but there's only so much that can be helped there when the problem is external and almost entirely unavoidable. There's only so much I can tell myself "this is fine" while the house is burning around me.

I'm a wreck. I do not cope well.

Therapy.

I saw my need for therapy coming over a year ago, and wait was so long I didn't get therapy started until October.

That and I am hoping to start writing. A blog of some sort. Help me think through everything in a way that might help the two or however many readers I manage to gather.

I read theory so I can better understand why the world functions in the way that it does and better predict where its heading. That's the first step in knowing how to make things better. Eventually, when I get the chance, organizing will be the way to put theory to practice and directly work towards making the world a better place.

Trying to ignore or hide from the world around me doesn't make it any less scary, only understanding it better does, and understanding is useless without action.

I avoid the news entirely.

I found that not caring about what happens in the world beneficial to my health. It's a lot less burdensome when I'm not worrying about what X person is doing or what Y company is doing to their customers.

Therapy, family, plotting to overturn the system in my head, imagining carrying out those plans with them going swimmingly, imagining myself as the warlord-poet of the enlightened utopic society I would erect afterwards, imagining other things.

There's a lot of imagining.

I'm not American, so not only am I distanced from what is going on there, but also from Mr Rogers. Regardless, I take his advice for children- When something bad is happening, look for the helpers. They aren't in the headlines of the day, but they are there.

Following on from this, one of the things that I believe made me an adult was when I started helping the helpers.

Go volunteer for a cause you believe in. You'll not only feel better about the cause, but you'll feel better about yourself, and you'll help other people feel better.

I'm traveling to a different Quantum version of our universe. I'm done with all this shit.

Weed

Quit running from myself. Sit in silence. Leave bits of fruit about for birds and squirrels because they make me happy.

You think it’s rough now? Give it about 15 minutes, he’s about to address congress…

sounds like you're doing a decent job of managing what you're using your brain for pretty well

i avoid most news and focus on my own day to day and look to make progress there. i stay informed but realise i'm just doing my little part and don't allow things that are not in my control to affect my mental health

I take a different approach.

I more lean into now than on a faded memory skewed by time and misremembering. Don't get me wrong, I like nostalgia too, but I'm careful to not get too wrapped up in it because those good times were also found while wading neck deep in bullshit then too. Not to mention, my world view was much more naive, less discerning, and simplistic.

This isn't the world I grew up in, but just like then, there are good times to be found now. I just have to open myself up to them in spite of myself because of my natural tendencies toward a realist/pessimist view.

Weed, psychedelics, gaming, and my least/most favorite alcohol (work in progress, it's complicated).

If you're upset or feel bad, just do what you can and hang on. If you make it through a year, a month, a day... thats a victory. Thats doing something. Things won't be like this forever. Nothing lasts forever.

We don't have to go back to the previous status quo after we weather the storm either. We can make things better for all. Don't let the tiny box thinking people with low standards convince you otherwise.

I read the news just to entertain myself. And then I ignore the content because most news are just depressing: Armed conflict here, murder there, capital offense, you get the gist.

For several months I didn't read any news, that works too. You'll realize that most of the stuff in the tv and tabloids doesn't affect you.

And for the third point I do whatever it takes to distract, lose in or occupy myself completely. That could be a book with a nice story or some outdoor activity. Yesterday I did some kind of mini-camping. I took my bicycle and brought a camping chair, gas stove, water and cocoa powder and rode a bit into the woods. And then I had some quiet relaxing time reading a book on my phone. The hot chocolate and a thick jacket kept me from freezing. It was only 10 °C/50 °F and a bit windy.
I'll repeat that tomorrow but this time I'll switch the cocoa to tomato-soup-in-a-cup. The cocoa was too sweet for my taste.

Not well