introspection, extrospection, mental health

a school of thought - with some evidence to back it up - says the most effective cure for depression is to look outward, to get things done without overthinking them. this school of thought says that dwelling on problems is pathogenic and to be avoided. one must learn to respond instinctively and decisively to negative situations. i get that, i see the sense in it. it's even kinda Tao-y, maybe.

what if introspection or something that looks like inertia are your instinctive states tho?

i don't want to type a run of questions so i'll try to express what i feel as statements, but i'm interested in the broader implications for other people and their world as much as who i am and whether i'm not functioning properly.

i don't know what i want out of my existence or what the point of existence in its most general sense is. i recognize that these are banal questions that are probably as old as humanity, but i don't care about that as long as i don't have satisfactory answers. i feel like introspection is one of the most valuable things i can do, even if that means trying to unravel a knot that can never be unraveled. because the process itself is the point, or as good a point as any i know. and this constant introspection - i don't know that it's a desire, or a habit, it feels like me and who i've always been - makes it hard for me to be an effective person in my social and economic environment. very hard. increasingly i find it impossible to focus on and perform tasks that my employer needs me to do. i think my frame of mind is leading me straight to unemployment.

i'm told the cure for that problem is to learn to have a different mental process. but that mental process feels alien to me, feels wrong to me, feels a little bit like killing myself. my instinct is that i need to dig deeper inside and work out a way that i can live, and support myself. at this point i don't think this is about illness or wellness, it's about the blunt impossibility of me doing the things that people demand of me, for any length of time.

i've lost part of my train of thought. the simplest question i wanted to ask was "does introspection always lead to failure?" at least in terms of simple minimal needs like a roof over your head and enough food to live on. is there a way to reconcile that search for your authentic self with an outside community that sometimes looks inauthentic and self-harming? and now i've hit hippy ramble.

going to post this and see where it does or doesn't go

i'm told the cure for that problem is to learn to have a different mental process

Never been quite sure how you pull this off tbh

I think that there are a couple of different 'yous' or 'mes' and the introspective internal-focus one is obv v personal and important to self but personally speaking he's never so much as made a sandwich for the other myriad mes that over the years have emerged that talk to other people, get basic housework tasks done, have a job and a partner and get the car fixed and plan for the future.

I think identifying with any one of those mes is correct, but i think that identifying with only one of them is problematic. Some of them feel less me than others (yes, work, obv) but i can't imagine im much different to anyone else in that regard, thats why they pay you to be that guy and not the guy who wants to live in the dark playing fm and eating icecream.

xp

i think you're supposed to train yourself to recognize an illogical thought process and reprogram it. it can be done, i'm sure, but it must apply more effectively when you see the thought process as negative. "i am worthless" is something you can address, i don't know if "the way humanity has structured its existence is worthless" is the same kind of question, or as straightforward to tackle.

it can be done, i'm sure,

Just not by me.

okay darragh you're onto something with "there isn't one consistent unified me". what if the mes that get things done abdicate or disappear?

okay money, you are a concrete problem. i get you. but to half-quote the guy in Office Space that'll only motivate you so far. and what if that motivation wears off? it'll come back soon enough when there's nothing in a fridge but we live in a world where you have to plan ahead, not react at the last second when your stomach's grumbling. it might be too late by then. what if forward planning gets impossible. on one level by definition you don't care, because

I dont know

I mean, I didnt invite these guys nor lobby for them, the motivation or recognition of necessity came first and as i said they emerged- often after long wait or after having to be dragged out or far too late.

I wish i could order them on demand id have an f1 driver or novelist or w/e spring forth.

i just remembered, part of what i was thinking was "how the hell can i 'get on with it' when i don't know what 'it' is or why i'm doing it?"

i've kinda gravitated from friends and fam saying "snap out of it" to "professionals" saying a jargonized version of "snap out of it"

i'm not sad tho or anxious, especially. i only get those things when i try to Get Things Done. it's almost like the cause of unhappiness is desire or something.

I only get happy when i Get Things Done, cos then the nagging stops temporarily

Admittedly, deciding what the Thing is and how to Do it can take years

haha maybe that's the answer, i've been haplessly liberated from nagging

:/

Nah. Its mostly -mostly- internal tbfttl

i feel like i'm at the point where i'm more scared of going to work than i am of not going to work, and i feel comfortable with that largely, because i need to know WHAT I'M GOING TO DO WITH MY LIFE MAAAAAN, but maybe i'm secretly worried that i've just lost my shit and there is nothing to do with your life maaaaan except get up and go to work otherwise you just end up sleeping in a ditch and eating tab ends, but maybe that dichotomy seems so fucked up that i'd rather eat the tab ends just to prove a point, but maybe there's no dichotomy at all and i'm just going a bit Howard Hughes and also maybe you owe it to the people who love you to get on with it and be like them and offer them the supportive model that their lives aren't dull and arbitrary and if you don't do that you're letting the side down, like deserters cracking up at the prospect of going over the top of the trench at Ypres, and there was another point or what if to make at the end here but i've forgotten it i think, oh yeah what if even if you want to be the exemplar you just DON'T HAVE IT IN YOU and you're kidding yourself that you're "choosing" not to opt in to the everyday bumpy grind because for whatever reason you personally just aren't up to it and you were always going to end up in the ditch or another hole of that ilk

which to bring it back round to a "point" is like "what if you don't even have a choice whether to introspect too much?"

the worry is that you'll convince everyone and bring em all to the ditch with you and then what

i do worry that sometimes! like oh shit this is contagious you all seem reasonably happy doing whatever you're doing i'll shut up, don't mind me, everything's fine probably

i mean they used to make prophets and sybils keep the fuck away from civilization, right?

Only the lost and shepherd ones iirc

This thread resonates. But introspection doesn't seem like the core of the problem here, rather it's what you're introspecting. When it was finally pointed out to me that I wouldn't tolerate anyone telling me I am worthless so why should I tolerate it from myself, it wasn't as if the solution was to stop inwardly judging myself, but to do it more fairly and tolerantly. "I am worthless" became an object of introspection in itself. Unfortunately as you say this doesn't help with your problem of thinking that our way of life is worthless, as that seems like an eminently reasonable thing to think.

yeah. and there's a very important distinction between "my life" and "our way of life" i think. i have an existential problem with the former, whoever expresses it, but the latter seems like a plausible value judgement. there's a bunch of responses to that sense of a worthless society and again i'd guess the most extroverted response wd be along the lines of "do what you can to change it" but any possible response to the state of human society is fraught with caveats and dead ends i think.

Aaaahhhhhh, you're a bloody mind-mirror, NV. I fell off the treadmill a year ago, after a series of nervous breakdowns. I've been trying to make an existence (can't say 'living') for myself outside the 9 to 5 (8 to 6, 8 to 8 often as not, 3 to 7 on Sundays) and I haven't brought in a bean or done a stroke of anything meaningful outside the bubble of myself & family. My savings are almost gone. Nevertheless, when people ask me when I'm going to back to work, I say "I don't know", and I think 'never, ta', because I can't see the point of it. I would literally rather sit in a hole, meditating, and starve to death than put on a suit and cram myself onto the 7:23 train with all the other corporate drones. As it is, I try to write about what I see & feel and hope that one day someone will toss me a few pence for my thoughts.

It's a good thing I'm not on benefits or I'd be hounded as a skiver. No work ethic!

it's almost like the cause of unhappiness is desire or something.

Craving is the cause of dukkha. I don't claim to understand dukkha, but thinking about it has helped me to contemplate my life and talk to my selves (darragh otm) without being so angry.

'Craving is the cause of dukkha' should be in some kind of quote marks cause I'm pulling out Buddhist teachings not saying what I believe, BTW.

one think i can blame myself for is not thinking long and hard enough about dukkha, or indeed remembering the right word for it. i'm glad i'm not the only one who prefers metaphorical holes to actual desks, i find that comforting.

i am asking myself if it's easier to feel like this when it's sunny.

but i'm also thinking i cdn't be any quantitively less happy in the ditch.

also, stop kidding myself, not ready to live without desire quite yet

<3

I'm not sure Buddhism actually asks you to live without desire, but tbh it gets a bit fucking subtle. I mean, it certainly doesn't ask you (the lay-person) to do without sex, or creativity, or to be politically inactive. I think the nature of the desire that harms (leads to dukkha) has something to do with craving the impossible and / or beating yourself up when you don't achieve your desires.

shame about those corporate drones

a quick ramble:

I think introspection is fine as long you are clear and focused on specific things. As an example I've been thinking a lot about triggers for my drinking
and finding healthier ways of coping.

Introspection for some kind of self-discovery in general? I don't know. I don't think it's good to wallow or get hung up on anything. You have to keep moving forward, right?

I've also heard it said that the best way to discover yourself is by dealing with the outside world, like maybe climbing a tree will teach you more about yourself than sitting and asking?

the simplest question i wanted to ask was "does introspection always lead to failure?" at least in terms of simple minimal needs like a roof over your head and enough food to live on. is there a way to reconcile that search for your authentic self with an outside community that sometimes looks inauthentic and self-harming?

I don't at all think that introspection necessarily leads to failure, or even inertia. I think a part of understanding your authentic self involves relation with a community--what the community is organized around and what it looks like aren't as important as the act of being social to see how your sense of your authentic self will bend or give when it meets with the outside world.

I think of something like playing the guitar: first you have to sit in a room by yourself and get chords under your fingers for the first time and build up the callouses you need to play the kind of fleet and expressive stuff you'd like. Once you've done that, though, to really understand your authentic guitar playing self, it helps to play with other people and build a sense of context for the noises you make.

I guess what I'm getting at is that the outside world can bring your best qualities--and your flaws!--into sharper relief than hours of staring into the fireplace ever could.

hoos otm & thank u for the new display name

*solos*

i feel like i'm at the point where i'm more scared of going to work than i am of not going to work, and i feel comfortable with that largely, because i need to know WHAT I'M GOING TO DO WITH MY LIFE MAAAAAN, but maybe i'm secretly worried that i've just lost my shit and there is nothing to do with your life maaaaan except get up and go to work

maybe you owe it to the people who love you to get on with it and be like them and offer them the supportive model

even if you want to be the exemplar you just DON'T HAVE IT IN YOU and you're kidding yourself that you're "choosing" not to opt in to the everyday bumpy grind because for whatever reason you personally just aren't up to it

god, i have felt all these things

xxxp I gonna just take a moment to enjoy that use of the word "fleet."

ok i'm sorry to be the guy who breaks down words by etymology to explain their meaning BUT introspection qua "looking into" yourself is very useful if you think of it that way -- of just looking, or seeing what's up with yourself. not evaluating, or judging, or applying greater meaning to it. being aware of your feelings and your reactions and your desires and bodily sensations -- paying attention to what is actually happening, now.

there are other forms of self-directed forms of mental activity that are not so helpful or productive and i would not call them 'introspection.'

this is obv a personal definition of the word and ymmv

"i don't know what i want out of my existence or what the point of existence in its most general sense is."

why is "thinking" a good vehicle to answering these? are you saying it's the only one you've got?

elmo yeah good point, my wording is thoroughly ambiguous throughout here - almosting it - i've spent a lot of time lately just looking in, trying to grasp what i feel like, physically as well as mentally, trying to grasp exactly what feels wrong - grasp isn't observation either is it? - just this relentless "why can't i move?"

Euler that point is also at the heart of the false dichotomy in this thread title. if somebody asked me about "the point" usually i'd say that was the wrong question about the wrong subject. i guess it isn't a general "what's the point of doing anything?" - i don't care, mostly, and that's okay - except if you don't care you don't work you don't eat - i'm thinking more "what's the point of doing these things that i hate/can't do for the sake of this form of survival that i don't care about" - outside of this is obligations to loved ones but i think fulfilling those obligations thru (badly handled) self-abnegation is really just passing on a bad faith vision of life?

i don't want to care. society says i have to at least feign caring if i want to participate. i don't think i'm capable of even that. so do you disappear into your own navel or try to struggle with your own lack of competence or just let go?

this is getting less sensical maybe. what if their are ways of being that don't qualify for medical assistance but don't function in human society?

Hoos i'm thinking about your points but there's something more difficult to grasp there - a separation maybe between nurturing communities and the brute facts of socioeconomic reality? i dunno yet.

Do you have to feign caring to participate?

What do you care about, as such?

okay. you have to produce something that looks like measurable valid work, mostly. digging up potatoes. i can understand that. most work isn't that any more. i am worried about what decades of work in hopeless bad faith might look like or do to you.

Relate yr work to the outputs you care about

If that boils down to the money and idk liveable work hours and conditions so be it we cant all have clean jobs from old aftershave advert copy i guess

But then im an acknowledged cynic and youve still got a dreamer in u imo

i can't do it. i'm shit at it. can't concentrate for 5 minutes, or plan, or pay attention, or stay awake.

speaking of which now mayn't be the time, my eyes are long past sensible thinking tonight.

i've been worrying about that a lot too. i'm not sure i should read this thread because i want to avoid these thoughts. but i wish i could go on disability just for being disabled by work. i feel like i am on an assembly line but a useless one, like i just take whatever comes to me on the conveyor belt and i throw it. i make enough money to keep being alive but i don't have the mental energy to do anything i like with the money. and that "can't" thing. i just sit there sometimes and i also can't clean up the mess i make of my desk.

thinking about this today has made me realize that if nothing else i need to change a lot about the situation i'm in. which isn't necessarily gonna be comfortable or fun times but that's ok. still leaves a bunch of questions about what to do next and a bunch of worries about just starting afresh to make the same old mess but that isn't totally off-putting.

i can't think of an obvious analogy. rolling your tongue is the best i've got. people who can roll their tongues can't really grasp why it's impossible for people who can't. just this unbreachable wall of recalcitrant tongue.

ok i just wanted to write that last sentence, it wasn't strictly necessary.

meant to add that changes are gonna have to be on my terms - i can't do fake positive attitude. i might always give up when a situation seems crappy enough. that's ok.

the problem i've found with introspection is when you get to a point when you realize you're a mortal individual. and that knowledge puts an obligation on you that every decision and choice is up to you... and it's an incredibly heavy responsibility. which in a way separates you from your family. your friends. your group. your job. your society. your culture. the history you belong to. the universe itself, maaan. it's a painful and difficult thing to face. sometimes i imagine it's better not to be aware of any of this shit, but some people can ignore it, some people can't. maybe there is a lack of free will in being who you are, because i can't imagine being any different than whatever the crap i'm writing about here.

life is some paradoxical bullshit

I relate to this thread a lot obv. And it's got many of my favourite ILXors on it so that's some comfort.

people who can roll their tongues can't really grasp why it's impossible for people who can't.

was thinking just last night how people (e.g. my ex) tell me about the sporting achievements of their friends (e.g. his new gf) and there I was trudging the 1.5 miles home on aching calves and a dead left foot, wondering how come I do this walk every day but never develop strong enough muscles for it not to hurt and all it does is get worse, how my entire body and mind and existence got so useless and out of control

and I keep hearing "you're not even trying" and sometimes I let myself wonder, not just wrt physical prowess but basically all areas of my life, what if I'm trying 10x as hard as all the people with amazing achievements and all I'm doing is... staying alive, basically? Treading water and only sliding a little backwards each day. Or sometimes I admit that I'm not trying, just spending work and free time alike making excuses that I feel too mentally drained to, and what happens if I can't start trying again?

Well, boo-hoo me, I guess.

oh it's like when people tell you you need willpower, like you can buy the fucker from Aldi. how do you gain willpower? thru willpower. and so on and so on ad infinitum.

i do think that repetition of routine tasks in a non-introspective way probably develops personal habits and skills that are useful to most of us, or all of us, in our own lives. but again that repetition presupposes a lot and it all smacks of trying to fit in, as if you're failing to match up to the required standards of conduct of your society and it's your fault and your duty to catch up.

i feel crass even mentioning disabled people in this context but there's some good work on how assumed standards of physical and mental "competence" - which vary historically and have tended to steadily increase in industrial/post-industrial economies - have broadened the sphere of disability and increased the disablement of people with impairments.

My problems like this have been kind of tied to physical illness but the introspection element is sort of weird to me. I did CBT for a while and I can remember talking a lot about indecision or judging myself, and it did seem a bit like the advice (as far as CBT offers any explicitly) was that you'd be happier if you acted without consideration after the fact.

I got a few key "you will never be happy unless you do this" things out of it, and it began a process that's made me happier, for sure. And I definitely am less inclined to analyse my actions obsessively. I do wonder if that can mean you're a less nice person but I dunno, more effective or something creepy.

I feel like people liked me less when I was in a vulnerable more apologetic frame of mind, like I dunno, there is some dark stuff about the world in the way happiness is re-taught.

oh it's like when people tell you you need willpower, like you can buy the fucker from Aldi. how do you gain willpower? thru willpower. and so on and so on ad infinitum.

i do think that repetition of routine tasks in a non-introspective way probably develops personal habits and skills that are useful to most of us, or all of us, in our own lives. but again that repetition presupposes a lot and it all smacks of trying to fit in, as if you're failing to match up to the required standards of conduct of your society and it's your fault and your duty to catch up.

What do you mean when you say "that repetition presupposes a lot"?

For me it's not so much about 'trying to fit in' or trying to match up to a social or environmental standards for my output or conduct--it's about whether or not I'm willing to put *myself* behind what I do, whether I'm producing something that I can say I'm proud of, that's an expression of my capabilities or my work ethic. Even if it's just a pile of paperwork.

It's not like the successful pushing of paper is the most satisfying and meaningful work there is to be done, or that it's the Thing That Makes Me Feel Alive. It's just that I've made a choice to see well-done output, of whatever kind, as a product of my abilities. There are dangers here--"is this paperwork all I'm capable of?" Or differently, "these mistakes in my work make me feel like I'm worthless." I think, though, that this is a separate and maybe less pernicious problem than failing to get anything out of toil altogether.

I get it from my father, I think, but I find myself very much defined by the Stuff I Put Out.

Introspection has taught me a lot of the details about how my mind functions, which of course has uncovered a ton of design flaws, delusions, and miscellaneous shortcomings. Rather than convince me that I am the worst person on earth, this has taught me to have greater patience and forgiveness as I confront a universe of people, all shot through with design flaws, delusions and miscellaneous shortcomings.

the problem i've found with introspection is when you get to a point when you realize you're a mortal individual. and that knowledge puts an obligation on you that every decision and choice is up to you... and it's an incredibly heavy responsibility. which in a way separates you from your family. your friends. your group. your job. your society. your culture. the history you belong to. the universe itself, maaan. it's a painful and difficult thing to face.

I know just what you mean here, especially in the profound sense of responsibility brought on by recognizing the degree to which our decisions have consequences--I find it difficult to face too, but not painful as much.

I mean I guess ultimately everything I've been saying itt boils down to 'one must imagine Sisyphus happy,' you know?

btw, I don't equate "introspection" with sitting still and staring into space while my mind runs in its hamster wheel. I equate it far more closely with mindfulness, the simple act of paying attention to my thoughts as they arise within the context of living and acting in the world.

i agree, up to a point. i think where i disagree might be where thinking about this stuff leads to a kind of dualism.

i think my whole initial impulse is founded on a problematic dualism, and not just the obvious one in the title. i think partly what i was trying to say was

"how do you manage to get up and go if your get up and go has got up and gone?"

and the questions that follow after are about illness vs nature and how those ideas are constructed and so on.

[i am slowly piling up a mountain of irl problems and calmly watching the pile keep growing]

What makes u recognise them as problems

lack of money, impending likelihood of unemployment leading to more lack of money, aches and pains and listlessness, lack of people to share feelings with apart from imaginary internet friends

thoughts inexpressible

ah man, lists

http://philosophy.uchicago.edu/faculty/files/nussbaum/Narrative%20Emotions%20Beckett's%20Genealogy%20of%20Love.pdf

blech nussbaum

she is fab, or at least, was fab; boring these days but I'll stand up for The Fragility of Goodness and Love's Knowledge, terrific works

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/sep/07/column-change-life-bullshit-job

I keep hearing "you're not even trying" and sometimes I let myself wonder, not just wrt physical prowess but basically all areas of my life, what if I'm trying 10x as hard as all the people with amazing achievements and all I'm doing is... staying alive, basically? Treading water and only sliding a little backwards each day. Or sometimes I admit that I'm not trying, just spending work and free time alike making excuses that I feel too mentally drained to, and what happens if I can't start trying again?

∆∆∆∆∆

the horrors in this post I mean my god

haunt yr thoughts 4 lyfe stuff

fucking "atmospherics", "putting on a show".. i just work here, dammit.

it's kind of strange, to look back on myself in some kind of crisis, and now realise there was a path thru it

which led to some new kind of crisis, lol

the things you learn to crush down in yourself in exchange for being well thought of. or yr imaginary obituary as much-loved semi-crazed old loner of umpteen years.

i mean

yeah no doubt. i'm trying to embrace living totally, experiencing the ground collapse beneath me... for years my m.o. was "learning to exchange being well thought of for crushing oneself down"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zjYu1rsxTE

i forgot starting this. and i probly ignored some of the sage advice at the time. i don't think i'd left the house in 3 or 4 weeks, things were getting pretty head sketchy.

not sure how i turned that around, it still lurks a little. now is appreciably less worser. but the hopelessness, dammit.

suppose there were things you really wanted but you cd probly never achieve them, is it better to think about them anyway because they are important to you or they stir something in you or is it better to ash that shit, become yr game face, let go of (more or less) the only stuff you have any desire for because the desire makes you less functional?>

welp i can't find a permanent job in my field, can't get anyone outside it to hire me, can barely even contemplate looking for jobs of any kind since i feel pretty much like i don't count for anything with anyone, so realistically i should be like, struggling to discipline myself to make modest gains, keep myself in the game, lookin ~profesh~, yet what i find myself compelled to do / drawn to since it's the main thing that gives me some meaning, is to try to write a little idiosyncratic fuckin book despite all inefficiency, blundering about, feckless fealty to obscure ideas about what it would look like if i ever finished it. i dunno.

writing a book is just the kind of crazy thing

np: warren zevon - "werewolves of london"

NV, because you asked a direct question this time: the former obv, I say. Here at wins's house we are passionate about prodding "probly", not that we have a vested interest or anything

the only thing that's making me indirect i guess is a sense of embarrassment at having the emotional needs of yr average adolescent and the philosophical inquisitiveness to match

if you can scrape together enough funds to keep body and soul connected while you write your little idiosyncratic fuckin book, then it is at least in the realm of possible ways to spend your life and time. if you'd starve or freeze or end up on the street long before you could encompass the task, I'd advise against it, otherwise, give it some further thought. writing a book isn't always about selling a book.

haha oh it ain't gonna sell that's for sure

good you know that going in

suppose there were things you really wanted but you cd probly never achieve them, is it better to think about them anyway because they are important to you or they stir something in you or is it better to ash that shit, become yr game face, let go of (more or less) the only stuff you have any desire for because the desire makes you less functional?

look the ashing as you well know is just the usual minus whatever, that is not a gain imo