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Because until you die you are alive. So why not aim for feeling as much alive as possible?

It's also possible to use self-help books together with a therapist and have that as a foundation. In some books that's recommended. It can be hard to find people who really are specialized in a specific subject, and not just some therapist that knows a little bit about everything, but lack a deeper understanding. Who wan't to go see someone session after session for years... Nowadays you can have sessions with experts on the internet over skype. That's underestimated I think. But it can also be more expensive.

What kind of affirmations?

Isn't it easier to just say that the personal self and free will is an illusion? Or is it too straight forward???

You win the prize for the best click-bait title haha

@blazed From my perspective Jim Carrey didn't come off as new-agy, that I don't agree on. But showing understanding and compassion for people who is very involved in the matrix, chasing the wrong things, having illusions of what will ultimately fullfill them and give them peace I think is good. I don't see the need going around talking like "it's all a dream" "we don't matter" "it's all meaningless". Respect that everyone is struggling and just doing what they think are the best way to get happiness is important I think. But at the same time I don't see this as so serious. I don't think he's really hurting anyone. If this is how he want's to do it so be it. It's kinda refreshing and fun to watch.

@Mad Max Thoughts? You seem to know about these things @Santiago You might be suffering from toxic shame from childhood. Many children will experience this shame at times when they're being yelled at. But some get stuck with the shame. Going around feeling like this all the time and believing you should be ashamed of yourself. This shame makes you feel flawed as a human being. This shame spills over on everything. Numbing your emotions. Leading to perfectionistic thinking about yourself and think others are perfectionistic about you too. Did you feel like you were not unconditionally loved as a child? That you got love when you did "good" and was unloved and abandoned when you did "bad"? Making you believe that you only deserve love, acceptance, respect etc if you prove you are worthy of it and deserve it. You might have experienced that you were emotionally abandoned at times. Even if your parents might be there physically, they were not there emotionally. Only when you were a "good boy". This leading you to feel that you are not worthy of love, acceptance etc and that you must prove that you are. And because you see yourself that way, you assume this is how others also think of you. Always something to prove. Do you think others can accept you just for being human or that you must do something to win them over? And how do you feel with friends? Do you think that one little "wrong-doing" might make them to stop accepting you, think bad of you, shame you and leave you? Do you fear people's anger? You become co-dependent. Imagine a drug-addict who is dependent on the person who gives them drugs. They only feel some pleasure when someone else gives this to them. And they're willing to do whatever to get it. To just feel something. But just as a drug-addict, if you don't love yourself you have this emotional need that needs to be fullfilled and you don't feel that you can get it from yourself. So you become dependent on others to give it to you just so you can feel something. And you become a people pleaser, so you can experience a momentary sense of self-love, self-respect, self-acceptance, self-worth etc. Read up on shame and inner child. Take help from a therapist and from 12-step programs if you are ready for that. I'm planning to give this a shot. See the thread I made about 12-step programs.

@Martin123 I agree. But it was entertaining to watch.

What does this mean?

What Forgiveness Is: • Forgiveness is a by-product of an ongoing healing process. Many of us grew up believing that forgiveness was an act to be performed or an attitude to possess, and the reason that we could not forgive was that we were not trying hard enough. But what really keeps us from forgiving the people who hurt us is that we have not yet healed the wounds they inflicted. Forgiveness is the gift at the end of the healing process. We find it waiting for us when we reach a point where we stop expecting “them” to pay for what they did or make it up to us in some way. • Forgiveness is an internal process. It happens within us. It is a feeling of wellness and freedom and acceptance. Those feelings can be ours at any time, as long as we want to heal and are willing to try. • Forgiveness is a sign of positive self-esteem. It is no longer building our identity around something that happened to us in the past, realizing that there is more to us and more we can do. The past is put into its proper perspective, and we realize that the injuries and injustices are just a part of our life and just a part of who we are rather than all of us. The religions in which we were raised presented forgiveness as a moral obligation. To be considered “good” and worthy, we were supposed to “turn the other cheek” and forgive our enemies. We believe, however, that forgiveness is instead our moral right— a right to stop being hurt by events that were unfair in the first place. We claim the right to stop hurting when we can finally say, “I’m tired of the pain, and I want to be healed.” At that moment, forgiveness becomes a possibility— although it may not become a reality for quite some time. • Forgiveness is letting go of the intense emotions attached to incidents from our past. We still remember what happened, but we no longer feel intensely angry, frightened, bitter, resentful, or damaged because of it. Forgiveness becomes an option once pain from the past stops dictating how we live our life today and we realize that what once happened to us does not have to determine what will happen to us in the future. • Forgiveness is recognizing that we no longer need our grudges and resentments, our hatred and self-pity. We do not need them as an excuse for getting less out of life than we want or deserve. We do not need them as a weapon to punish the people who hurt us or keep other people from getting close enough to hurt us again. We do not need them as an identity. We are more than a victim of injury and injustice. • Forgiveness is no longer wanting to punish the people who hurt us. It is no longer wanting to get even or to have them suffer as much as we did. It is realizing that we can never truly “even the score,” and it is the inner peace we feel when we stop trying to. • Forgiveness is accepting that nothing we do to punish them will heal us. It is becoming aware of what we did because we were hurt and how these attitudes and behaviors have also hurt us. It is deciding that we have simply done enough hiding and hurting and hating and that we do not want to do those things anymore. • Forgiveness is freeing up and putting to better use the energy once consumed by holding grudges, harboring resentments, and nursing unhealed wounds. It is rediscovering the strengths we always had and relocating our limitless capacity to understand and accept other people and ourselves. It is breaking the cycle of pain and abuse, ceasing to create new victims by hurting others as we ourselves were hurt. It is recognizing that we have better things to do with our life and then doing them. • Forgiveness is moving on. It is recognizing that we have better things to do with our life and then doing them. • Forgiveness is something you do for YOU. What Forgiveness Is Not: • Forgiveness is not forgetting. By forgiving the people who hurt us, we do not erase painful past experiences from our memory. Nothing we have done so far has been able to turn back the clock and remove the unpleasant incidents from our life history, and forgiveness will not do that, either. We cannot forget, nor should we. Those experiences, and even the pain they caused, have a great deal to teach us, both about not being victimized again and about not victimizing others. • Forgiveness is not condoning. When we forgive, we lessen the past’s impact on our present and future, but this does not alter the fact that the injuries and injustices we experienced were painful and unfair when they occurred originally. By forgiving the people who hurt us, we are not saying that what was done to us was acceptable or unimportant or “not so bad.” It was bad. It did hurt. It has made a difference in our life. In fact, true forgiveness cannot occur while we are in any way denying, minimizing, justifying, or condoning the actions that harmed us. • Forgivenessis notabsolution. Many of us who were raised in the Catholic religion regularly confessed our sins and then received absolution. We performed whatever penance the priest suggested, and the slate was wiped clean until we next sinned, confessed, and were absolved. Many of us still associate forgiveness with this sort of absolution, but that is not what we are expected to do when we forgive the people who hurt us. We do not “let them off the hook.” We do not absolve them of all responsibility for their actions. They are still responsible for what they did and must make their own peace with the past. What’s more, “I absolve you” are words spoken from atop our mountain of self-rightousness and demonstrate that we have not yet healed our wounds or let go of pain from the past. They let us play God, a benevolent God this time rather than a punitive one, but still a God who judges and then condemns or absolves the sinner. Absolution is just another way to be “one up” on the people who hurt us. And that is not forgiveness. • Forgiveness is not a form of self-sacrifice. Forgiveness is not gritting our teeth and tolerating the people who hurt us. Plastering a smile on our face and “making nice” is not forgiving. Forgiveness is not swallowing our true feelings and playing the martyr, saying it’s all right when it is not or getting by somehow in spite of the pain. The “grin and bear it” approach to forgiveness makes life less joyful and more difficult. Actual forgiveness has the opposite effect and cannot be undertaken halfheartedly. We either forgive or we don’t. Being honest about the fact that we are not ready to forgive yet is better for us in the long run than pretending to forgive. • Forgiveness is not a clear-cut, one-time decision. No matter how sincerely we want to let go of the past and move on with our life, we cannot expect to wake up one morning, think, “Okay, today’s the day I’m going to forgive someone who hurt me,” and then blithely do it. We cannot make a five-year plan that designates the first Tuesday of every third month as a forgiveness day or finish reading this book, make a list of people who have hurt us, and systematically forgive them. Forgiveness just doesn’t work that way. It cannot be forced. Forgiveness is what happens naturally as a result of confronting painful past experiences and healing old wounds. From the book: Forgiveness: How to Make Peace With Your Past and Get on With Your Life.

Great. I like this one too:

[gun pulled] [cops called] "It's just a prank bro"

RIP I actually bought my first book by her yesterday.

Start with a daily practice of gratitude. It doesn't have to take more than 5-10 minutes. As long as you're doing this you know you are moving forward everyday in some way even if it's a little bit, when other habits might be on and off. You'll feel you aren't completely stuck even if you start all over with other things.

@Richard Alpert @Visitor Thanks.

Anyone have any experience of 12-step programs? Is it necessary to believe in god???? . I've read several books about childhood shame and co-dependency and there's a strong link between it and they always recommend these program. Addictions seems to very often be rooted in childhood shame so a lot of focus is in resolving this. Because it numbs all other positive emotions and you feel empty. Therefore you often get addicted to alcochol/drugs etc in order to feel something. The 12 steps can vary a little bit based on which kind of 12-step program you participate in. In my case it would be; Adult children of alcoholics/dysfunctional families. And the twelve steps would look like this: 1. We admitted we were powerless over the effects of alcoholism or other family dysfunction, that our lives had become unmanageable. 2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. 3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand God. 4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. 5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. 6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. 7. Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings. 8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. 9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. 10. Continued to take personal inventory and, when we were wrong, promptly admitted it. 11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understand God, praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out. 12. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others who still suffer, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

@Heart of Space When I mentioned meditation to my therapist he looked like a question mark, lol. It's sad that they don't got knowledge of it. But I guess it's getting more common. But slooowly. Mindfulness/meditation seems to be introduced more and more in different treatment methods it seems like. But will the time ever come when kids will be introduced to it in school I wonder.

Ok I can answer my own thread now. lol The answer is no. You don't need to believe in god.

And in the evening we could all go to strip club.

Hey keep going

Self-acceptance.

You're getting out

OMG!!! I will burn the book I have by him right away!!!

No not me. I'll better stay away from this. lol