fear of happiness

[Nilsi]

there is a lot about myself that is nebulous and intransparent to me, but one thing that is quite clear to me is that i'm not happy - and i haven't been in a while.

this is something that my closest friends also notice. some of them get angry with me and call me crazy for pushing myself so hard, while others tell me they are sorry for me and express their love and concern in that way. something that all of them regularly bring up is the topic of therapy.

the thing is, i'm very much afraid that being happy and getting better will make me less effective, and there are multiple reasons for that. one being that i will likely end up less obsessed with making money and educating myself - two of the biggest levers in building up my agency to do shit in the world. another being that i suspect i won't be able to empathize with all the world's suffering as much and feel less motivated to do something about it.

i've noticed in my friends that are/were in therapy a quite noticeable shift. they are much more content and easy on themselves, and their ambitions have been toned down significantly. i'm pretty sure that's because therapy is nudging them towards being better adjusted to society and a "normal" way of life. on this issue, krishnamurti's classic quote "it is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society," as well as the general ethos of nietzsche's philosophy come to mind and assure me (although i can't say i'm very sure on this at all) that i'm right on this issue. on the other hand, another famous quote by nietzsche comes to mind: “beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” and i don't want to end up like mark fisher, who gazed a little too long into the abyss of capitalist realism and ended up killing himself.

now i certainly would like to be happier. i would like to spend more time with the people i love. i would like to experience more relationships with all sorts of people. i would like to spend more time in nature. i would like to have a decent relationship with my family. i would like a lot of stuff to be different, but it seems like all of it would take away from my capacity to be effective.

i'm seriously contemplating just giving therapy a shot, but i'm also fucking scared of what it might do to me.

i'm not expecting anyone to give me advice, i'm just trying to start a conversation on this issue and hopefully get some new perspectives on this issue that will shed some light on my situation.

 

 

[CARDOZZO]

Thanks for opening up.

I'm curious about one assumption that you are making.

14 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

the thing is, i'm very much afraid that being happy and getting better will make me less effective

Why do you have to feel bad to be effective?

What is blocking yourself to create an experience where you are whole, complete, powerful and productive?

[Nilsi]

18 minutes ago, CARDOZZO said:

Thanks for opening up.

I'm curious about one assumption that you are making.

Why do you have to feel bad to be effective?

What is blocking yourself to create an experience where you are whole, complete, powerful and productive?

this is precisely the assumption that always gets me into trouble with my friends. they often make the same argument as you, admitting that it is, of course, a privilege to be happy, but that i should be grateful for being well situated and it doesn't help anyone either if i'm feeling bad. i just feel like that's so out of touch with the situation of the world; all the suffering and impending catastrophe of the world, and you are drinking your chai latte, doing yoga and preaching to me about "work-life balance"?

just recently i had a conversation with one of my friends and this issue came up, whereupon she defended her position by telling me that she once worked in an orphanage while doing work and travel in australia (the audacity of this is actually stunning) and that she will use her wealth at some point to build new orphanages. what the fuck is that supposed to do? you sitting in your ivory tower, doing some philanthropy to clear your conscience, while being as far removed from the reality of those kids as possible?

perhaps i'm strawmanning this perspective a little, but i do have some serious negative reactions to this line of reasoning.

Edited June 7 by Nilsi

[CARDOZZO]

You are trying to control what you can't.

Of course, you will feel miserable playing horrible perspectives of the world on your head.

You can't save the world.

Adopt a stoic mindset, influence your environment and work hard on meaningful projects.

 

[Nilsi]

5 minutes ago, CARDOZZO said:

You are trying to control what you can't.

Of course, you will feel miserable playing horrible perspectives of the world on your head.

You can't save the world.

Adopt a stoic mindset, influence your environment and work hard on meaningful projects.

 

my point is precisely that adopting a "stoic mindset" is just a cowardly copout. i don't want to be stoic, i want to feel as deeply as possible, and that leads me to mostly feeling pain and suffering, even though i don't think i'm a very neurotic or negative person by nature, but that's just most of what i experience in the world (besides precisely this psychopathic stoicism and "positive thinking," nlp, think and grow rich bullshit).

i'm not saying there aren't moments of happiness, joy, and love - but i encounter this precisely in the people that have suffered most and are most in touch with this reality.

[Cireeric]

I dont think I have anywhere near enough insight into your experience or understanding of your inner-workings to really make a good judgement. But do you experienced happiness for a reasonable amount of time and really made the observation that you will loose your drive or ambition? Also I seem to be working very different, since I rather think the opposite way like I need to be reasonably happy to be effective.

I am more confident when im happy, I show up more when Im happy, I have more motivation when Im happy. Overall I also hold the belief that more wholeness equals increased agency. I have no experience with what is conventional therapy, but the forms of therapy I studied and tried to apply on myself: CBT, IFS, WuWeiWisdom all seemed to increase my general happiness and my soverignty or agency in life. But I assume that compared to you I may give myself more time not hustling and just enjoying life, but still compared to most of my friends I am very "tryhard" and they sometimes tell me not to be that hard on myself.

If you aim for that David Goggins or Elon Musk type of performance and ambition, yes I can imagine that this really doesnt come from wholeness, but rather from being hunted by demons or childhood-trauma.

[CARDOZZO]

@Nilsi I get it.

I live here in Brazil.

We have a lot of suffering going on. 

The true question is: what can I really do about it?

[Nilsi]

3 minutes ago, CARDOZZO said:

The true question is: what can I really do about it?

not looking away would be a good start, if you ask me.

[Nilsi]

43 minutes ago, Cireeric said:

I dont think I have anywhere near enough insight into your experience or understanding of your inner-workings to really make a good judgement. But do you experienced happiness for a reasonable amount of time and really made the observation that you will loose your drive or ambition? Also I seem to be working very different, since I rather think the opposite way like I need to be reasonably happy to be effective.

I am more confident when im happy, I show up more when Im happy, I have more motivation when Im happy. Overall I also hold the belief that more wholeness equals increased agency. I have no experience with what is conventional therapy, but the forms of therapy I studied and tried to apply on myself: CBT, IFS, WuWeiWisdom all seemed to increase my general happiness and my soverignty or agency in life. But I assume that compared to you I may give myself more time not hustling and just enjoying life, but still compared to most of my friends I am very "tryhard" and they sometimes tell me not to be that hard on myself.

If you aim for that David Goggins or Elon Musk type of performance and ambition, yes I can imagine that this really doesnt come from wholeness, but rather from being hunted by demons or childhood-trauma.

that begs the question of what wholeness is. if you were truly in touch with the interconnectedness of everything, would you truly be happy seeing all the misery and pain around you? and would you be content just sitting around being "happy"?

i'm not trying to sound like some blackpilled doomer. i also feel happy at times, but those moments are rather rare, and perhaps that's how it's supposed to be. i love life. i'm an optimist at heart. it's just that the world is a dark place.

on the surface, i have everything one could ever ask for. i'm healthy and full of energy. i make a ton of money. i'm very intelligent and well-read. i'm jacked. i have a wardrobe filled with fine european designer clothes. i'm extremely charismatic. yet i'm still profoundly depressed and i don't really enjoy any of these things. the only thing that brings me real joy is connecting to other people, and that, in my experience, is impossible from a place of "stoicism" or "nirvana" or whatever you want to call being detached from shared reality.

Edited June 7 by Nilsi

[aurum]

5 hours ago, Nilsi said:

there is a lot about myself that is nebulous and intransparent to me, but one thing that is quite clear to me is that i'm not happy - and i haven't been in a while.

this is something that my closest friends also notice. some of them get angry with me and call me crazy for pushing myself so hard, while others tell me they are sorry for me and express their love and concern in that way. something that all of them regularly bring up is the topic of therapy.

the thing is, i'm very much afraid that being happy and getting better will make me less effective, and there are multiple reasons for that. one being that i will likely end up less obsessed with making money and educating myself - two of the biggest levers in building up my agency to do shit in the world. another being that i suspect i won't be able to empathize with all the world's suffering as much and feel less motivated to do something about it.

i've noticed in my friends that are/were in therapy a quite noticeable shift. they are much more content and easy on themselves, and their ambitions have been toned down significantly. i'm pretty sure that's because therapy is nudging them towards being better adjusted to society and a "normal" way of life. on this issue, krishnamurti's classic quote "it is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society," as well as the general ethos of nietzsche's philosophy come to mind and assure me (although i can't say i'm very sure on this at all) that i'm right on this issue. on the other hand, another famous quote by nietzsche comes to mind: “beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” and i don't want to end up like mark fisher, who gazed a little too long into the abyss of capitalist realism and ended up killing himself.

now i certainly would like to be happier. i would like to spend more time with the people i love. i would like to experience more relationships with all sorts of people. i would like to spend more time in nature. i would like to have a decent relationship with my family. i would like a lot of stuff to be different, but it seems like all of it would take away from my capacity to be effective.

i'm seriously contemplating just giving therapy a shot, but i'm also fucking scared of what it might do to me.

i'm not expecting anyone to give me advice, i'm just trying to start a conversation on this issue and hopefully get some new perspectives on this issue that will shed some light on my situation.

 

This post is basically what therapy looks like, so you're already half-way there.

In seriousness, I've done years of traditional talk-therapy and found it tremendously helpful. I still have more than enough ambition. And whatever ambition I may have lost I don't miss at all.

But yes, you may have to give up whatever SD Orange fantasies you have about what you want your life to look like.

Ultimately this is a good thing. Giving up toxic programming is the whole point of therapy, but of course your mind will resist.

I should also mention that I believe I had an exceptional therapist. So your results may vary if your therapist is subpar.

[Waves]

I'll share my experience recognising that we're different in the drive and personality we have, yours being much stronger and protagonist-like.

The therapy I've been doing relies on IFS and meditation and helped me get more in touch, in a gentle way, with my internal world.  You just become more accepting of all the parts that make you up and are active in a given moment. It's a beautiful process of reconnection and reconciliation with yourself, which makes your inner environment more spacious and pleasant to be in. Ideally it leads to you feeling more at ease with yourself and with life, especially with the pain and suffering you mention you feel deeply. 

It doesn't mean you'll become apathetic, disinterested or unmotivated in acting in the world if that's what you're called to do, although it could tone down your drive if that's coming from an over-reactive part that is trying to protect a wounded part or compensate for something. It actually gives you more agency because you're emptier and more adaptable to what you're called to do and be, instead of being trapped and victim of your internal reactivity (not necessarily saying this is your case btw).

If you want to fight for something out there, it doesn't mean that the battle needs to be fought inside too. You can make that a smoother process, so your energy and talents are focused on what really matters to you. 

Personally, my motivation came from reacting and avoiding what I didn't want to see, mostly in myself and the world. This worked at the beginning but only got me this far and I burnt out in the process. A more sustainable and ultimately effective way to go about my life's work and what I feel you're here to do is for my motivation to be self-sourced, coming from a deep contact with my body and intuition in the moment, and prioritising that over anything else. I should add that it was because my health was greatly affected that I was forced into this way of being, and I feel it's related to what I'm here to do (i.e. guiding humanity into more health and harmony with (their) nature).

A suggestion I feel like sharing is: can you be with the part(s) of you that are afraid to feel apathetic and unmotivated to act in the world? Can you allow them to just be there? If not, can you be with the part that says you can't?

 

 

[jimwell]

11 hours ago, Nilsi said:

that begs the question of what wholeness is. if you were truly in touch with the interconnectedness of everything, would you truly be happy seeing all the misery and pain around you? and would you be content just sitting around being "happy"?

That's a valid point. I embraced this idea when I was 20. I felt the suffering and problems of the world. I wasn't responsible for all the evil and suffering in the world, and my external situation was generally good; but I felt miserable because I instinctively felt connected to all humans and animals.

In retrospect, I realized that this mindset is not the best one to have. It's even an error in a way. So, what's the best mindset for this situation? It is this: YOU LIFT THE WORLD UP, NOT LET THE WORLD BRING YOU DOWN. Be happy and make the world happy, or at least better; do not let the world make you suffer with it.

But I must also say that embodying the mindset "The world is in immense suffering, and I feel connected to the world, hence, I also suffer." has a good side. It makes you more sensitive and empathetic to the suffering of others. It can also help motivate you to do what you can to make the world better. That way, you can grow as a person.

It's all stages of development. One must experience one stage first before going to the next one.    

[UnbornTao]

But what is happiness?

If it is independent from circumstances (perhaps it is a relationships that you adopt towards life and events), then why would it have to imply complacency or laziness? You won't just be motivated to pursue stuff in order to compensate for your sense of lack or inadequacy, which everyone seems to experience at least from time to time.

In other words, you may be able to be happy and ambitious at the same time, pursuing whatever you want while being happy.

The issue is that we may not know what happiness is.

Hey, maybe happiness increases your effectiveness, so why not consider that perspective?

[Rafael Thundercat]

13 hours ago, Nilsi said:

not looking away would be a good start, if you ask me.

I feel you brother.

From my POV I can say that in many ways I am also not being fully effective in doing some good action in the world. The balance between self care, self-study, or self anything, and actually contributing to make something that turns the world around us a little better is subtle. Balance in Individual Growth and Colletive or Selfishness and Selflessnes. 

I left the company of many friends, even people from the so called "spiritual community" from where I live. As far as I see mostly they are focus on their survival daily life, and keep the pose of spiritual elevated people, and is all good, I do it too. But at same time no matter how many plant-medicine ceremonies people do, temascals,meetings, woman circles, Men Circles etc.. and all the spiritual paraphernalia, in the end my question is how much of this really creating shifts in the structural part of society. For the ones who ready study a bit of Gabor Mate and others, we are aware that much of what happen in society are not only due to individual acts but the very structure of society and incentives ( Daniel Schmachtenberger go firgure). 

I came up always with this question:

Of all the various things one can Do to generate good impact in the fabric of this world, what are those that can actually be the most powerfull? Like Imagine that the Whole is Interconnected as a spiderweb ( And it is ) So in what strings of the web one could touch to make the act reverbate to all levels?

To bring to the Real, if I start a list of works one could do It could go from most simple daily thibgs things to more suble stuff, from things that dont affect the grand scale to much to others that impact far from the local act. Some things involve money others not:

• Helping a mate to clean his or her garden, plant food, trees, create a zen garden for meditation,get involved in permaculture,off-grid stuff,and all things related to be more connected with the earth and have less carbon print etc.. ( The naive side of this in my POV since I know people that are fully into it is that all this can be made but better not get hopes that this will stop large industrial extraction, pollution or greed to keep with the ecological destruction.
• Bet on the work of spreading conscious living with the prefencial method one choose: Music,Art,Writing Books, Stuff Online, similar with Leo do, that can be made online or offline, to be a coach,mentor,advisor,facilitator,teacher. The question here is there are thousand things one can spread awareness about so the point would be " What are the things in this Times that need to be seeded in the minds of everyone most to bring the collective consciouness up, assuming ine is ready doing it for him or herself.
• Work in the Health side of things, promoting good diet,hygiene,purification practices,detox,nervous system regulation. This coming from the awareness that no matter how much the mind hacks one have, in the end the body must be good to be able to rise up to new levels of knowing. 

So, sometimes I see this community here, debating about all things meta and all, and yes, there are space for it. But what if we join forces to  create a syntesis of ways to create real change in many levels of Reality. If will keep wating to the Infinite to do it we will wait for a long time. Yes Is all a dream as we keep saying but even my nigth dreams can be affected by how I eat and if I drink some adaptogenic ayurvedic plant for example. 

Is not my aim to give solutions here, just to raise the question about the most effective ways to do something that is more Reality Changing than flip burgers or Cleaning Windows (Nothing against those acts of course) 

 

 

Edited June 8 by Rafael Thundercat

[Cireeric]

14 hours ago, Nilsi said:

that begs the question of what wholeness is. if you were truly in touch with the interconnectedness of everything, would you truly be happy seeing all the misery and pain around you? and would you be content just sitting around being "happy"?

 

Yes, sometimes I question my integrity there too. I would guess im quite above the median in empathy but I dont really feel the present tragedy of the world in my day to day experience that much, despite being well cognitively aware of it by watching tons of hours of Daniel Schmachtenberger. 

[mmKay]

@NilsiSome food for thought , from different perspectives : 

Even if you were to spend every single second of your life working, getting minimal sleep and optimizing your productivity to your maximim, working your ass off to the very fullest, you would barely move an inch towards solving " humanities pain and misery " .

I dont share this for you to get depressed and unmotivated. It's a truth of life that is actually freeing you to choose WHAT DO YOU PERSONALLY FIND MEANINGFUL 

 

Consider that unless you consciously choose it,  it is not your job as a human being to save others from suffering and pain.

And if so, choose a specific niche problem that you find meaningful solving, that aligns with your personal strenghts , values, prefered medium, domain of mastery and zone of genious ( yeah a Life Purpose ) and make your life's work about solving it. You triangulate all of this so that the time of your life that you spend on it is as meaningful , fulfilling and rewarding as possible .

Remember that a Life Purpose is your career,  your life's impact and contribution to the world.  It is a big part of your Life , but it's not the entirety.

Chronically spending more than about two chunks of 4 hours per day on your Career, no matter how much you love it, will most likely end up being counter-productive . It will end up negatively affecting the other areas of your life . Work-life balance is real. The balance looks differently at different chapters of your life .

A  Human being has more needs besides a Career and Life Purpose.  You have social needs, sexual needs, physiological needs, finantial needs,  cognitive needs, biological needs, curiosity for life, etc

Identify what are your needs and work on fulfilling them consciously rather than unconsciously. In what way is your career not fulfilling ? Work on that. In what way do you find meaningful connecting with others?  Architect your social life so you can meet this need in that specific way.

 

More food for thought : Empathy is self manipulation. You don't have access to others suffering. You imagine it.  And mostly it's less acurrate than it actually is .

Your negative emotions and suffering is manually generated by your mind, in an unconscious way.

I see that you are aware that if you "stop looking" and imagining others emotions and difficult situations, your suffering dissapears . And you say you want to feel deeper, which is a noble desire, but I advise to learn how to turn "empathy and that negative imagination" on and off on command .

You already have it partially turned off. You are not connected to the suffering of  the current 8.000,000.000 people. you are not connected to the suffering of the 100,000,000,000 human beings that have stepped on this planed, and not to talk about all the animals, insects, vegetation and so on, currently alive and throughout all of time . 
Not being able to turn off empathy and disconnect imagining others suffering would be acertain OCD in my opition, and is a recipe for unnecesary suffering .

 

More food for thought : Desire is an unconscious contract we make with ourselves to be unhappy untill we archive what we want. Over and over .

It allows you to leverage negative emotions for extra fuel you wouldn't have if you knew how to be satisfied with less. It is absolutely useful- but for a certain stage of your life. Think deeply before letting go of it .

 

I have spent my early twenties  deconstructing my motivational systems and have access to  " unconditional happiness " and " bliss on command" states. It's great, but on the other hand this doesn't fit my personallity since im very creative and have yet to establish a fulfilling career as a finantial backbone for my life . I have accidentaly unraveled it at the wrong stage of my life, because I didn't know better . Now I'm spending the second part of my twenties manually reconstructing my reward and motivational mechanisms  from the ground up.

Unconditional happiness to that extreme degree makes you a lazy sloth and ends up backfiring in multiple ways, as you have correctly intuited.

 

It's very counter productive to what the mechanics of being a part of society requiere of you. Unless you have nailed your LP or have enough income for a lifetime, I'd think twice about letting go of that mechanism .

 

But let's not get stuck in black and white thinking here .

What I advise you here is to be more open to your intuition rather than relying on negative feelings and drudgery.

You can find motivation, meaning, happiness and guidance in other ways : What do you love doing ? what do you find beautiful ? what sparks your curiosity and interest ? What absorbs you so much you want to master it ?  What inspires you ? What kind of contribution or impact on the world / humanity / others do you find meaningful ? How can you leverage your values, strenghts and interests to build a meaningful career ?

If you follow that intuition, unless you have serious health issues, you will still be productive without having to rely on negative motivation and suffering.

I'm happy to elaborate more if any of this has sparked your curiosity . 

Edited June 8 by mmKay

[jimwell]

1 hour ago, mmKay said:

Not being able to turn off empathy and disconnect imagining others suffering would be acertain OCD in my opition, and is a recipe for unnecesary suffering .

This downplays or even invalidates the sense of the Oneness-Suffering worldview. This is one of the reasons I dislike psychiatry. It's all too material and "chemical". They miss the metaphysical and spiritual aspects of human "mental illness".

If you think about it, Leo would be considered mentally ill by traditional psychiatrists. Of course, tell a psychiatrist what he thinks of a human who spends most of his time and energy investigating truth via injecting psychedelics into his ass; spending thousands of hours contemplating the nature of consciousness; and who is willing to neglect socialization and other survival needs, and even die for it. That psychiatrist would respond with "mentally ill." A normal human doesn't do what Leo does. Only an insane and "mentally ill" human would do such things. 

I was diagnosed with OCD when I was a teenager. I was told by my psychiatrists and OCD books that my OCD thoughts and anxieties were meaningless signals from my brain caused by a chemical imbalance. How simplistic and reductionist such an explanation was. Having high love and respect for literal and metaphorical cleanliness is NOT normal; it can only be OCD.

 

Edited June 8 by jimwell
rectified grammar

[mmKay]

@jimwell can you elaborate? I don't understand where we disagree. I was pointing out that when you suffer because other's suffering ( aka empathy ) is because you are imagining their suffering 

It's the difference between stepping on an ant consciously and feeling negative emotions , and stepping on it accidentally and unconsciously and feeling nothing, and imagining the pain of an imaginary ant that's being stepped on in your mind

You are generating the emotions . You don't actually feel others suffering.  If you don't imagine it you don't suffer yourself.

This is actually pretty advanced metaphysics and many people will not be able to make sense of it

Since this is the mechanism of how Empathy works, if OP is miserable because of other's suffering, it is a valuable skill to turn it off on command, and turn it on after a break 

I called it "OCD" very lightly, not in the clinical sense. He compulsively imagines others pain and suffering making himself miserable. That suffering is just a partial truth, and if you focus on it too much it will make your bitter, resentful, restless and overly emotional 

Edited June 8 by mmKay

[jimwell]

19 minutes ago, mmKay said:

You are generating the emotions . You don't actually feel others suffering.  If you don't imagine it you don't suffer yourself.

The OP did not imagine the suffering of others. He saw and knew the suffering of others. One of the horrors he saw was probably a Palestinian girl whose skeleton was shattered and powdered by an Israeli bomb, with her mother crying in extreme pain. The OP did not imagine the pain, nor did he speculate whether the mother and the girl actually felt pain. The OP saw and knew the pain, and then felt the pain.

 

20 minutes ago, mmKay said:

That suffering is just a partial truth, and if you focus on it too much it will make your bitter, resentful, restless and overly emotional 

Yes, I agree. Balance is the key.

 

20 minutes ago, mmKay said:

Since this is the mechanism of how Empathy works, if OP is miserable because of other's suffering, it is a valuable skill to turn it off on command, and turn it on after a break 

Correct.

 

26 minutes ago, mmKay said:

I called it "OCD" very lightly, not in the clinical sense.

I had a problem with not emphasizing that the Oneness-Suffering worldview is valid. Calling it OCD is too simplistic and reductionistic. That is why I started with "This downplays or even invalidates the sense of the Oneness-Suffering worldview." in my last post.

[Nilsi]

thanks for all the replies. i actually experienced a big hit of clarity earlier today.

i've been spreading myself too thin, trying to do too many things at once. i'm always striving for excellence, and it's hard to pursue too many things simultaneously while meeting such high standards. i think a good chunk of my discontent stems from not being inspired by myself for some time now.

i need to focus on furthering my career, which is in sales and marketing. i've been delving too deeply into abstract philosophy lately, and it’s been quite overwhelming. the core skill set i'm trying to develop is negotiating complex deals and understanding power and influence as deeply as possible, using those skills to help bring about a more good, true, and beautiful world for all. of course, the deeper i understand reality in all of its complexity, the more informed choices i can make, but i've been pushing a bit too far lately and need to return to the basics again.

i will take a hiatus from this forum for a while now. i've been thinking too much lately, and that's what usually gets me into trouble if it’s not in service of my goals and current situation.

when i return, i will have grown and developed a lot, and i'm looking forward to it. until then, stay safe, friends.