Nihilism is ruining my recovery (TW? Depressive subject)

Started by hereforhope, March 13, 2018, 12:12:45 PM

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hereforhope

I'll get right to it. I enjoy science but reading certain things and having certain experiences has made me develope a nihilistic, darwinistic view of the world. I'm a pretty cynical person. As I'm currently making my way through "Surviving To Thriving" I realise how my views holds me back in my recovery. Same with using Walker's EF and critic management steps. I struggle with the concepts of unconditional love, and especially unconditional self love. While I get how valuable that would be for healing, I don't believe in unconditional love. I saw a nature documentary where a mother bird killed her weakest chick, and I could help but draw parallels to my own disappointed parents and how I've always felt that I was weak. While we may say "that's cruel nature", and and extreme example, certain revealing things in psychology makes it seem to me we're very much an animal and life not much more than a competition. I know I'm self-sabotaging my recovery efforts but I can't help thinking these thoughts. I just don't believe that love exist.

ah

If you were out to debate yourself on this point, what would you say to counter the argument that only cruelty exists?
Would you include examples of love in nature and human nature? Of different animals and people helping one another in random acts of kindness, or would you leave those out because they're not cruel?
Remember, if you're honest about appreciating science you have to include all the data, without bias. Even if you can't yet explain some of it.

What about examples of animals acting stupidly, not to mention people making idiotic mistakes and misjudging situations, not necessarily cruelly but just being dumb - would you add some of those, or leave them out?

I think I'd have to ask you here: if love doesn't exist, why do I answer you and seem to care about you?  :bigwink: I'm not kidding.
What I feel toward you isn't cruelty, it's more like comradery, and yes - there's some love there too. Sorry :whistling: not love that depends on you being or doing anything but just because, well, I can't explain it, it just is there.

It's not something I can verbalize too well. Sort of like trauma that leaves me speechless, so does caring. I can't say why, after a lifetime of abuse, when I see pain I respond by caring. It's natural to me (pun intended), I don't question it. I can't tell you why our parents and all my repeat abusers didn't have this reaction but I know it exists because it exists in me.

Since I can't explain love to myself, I feel I can't really explain it well to anyone else.
I often don't get love from others either, just like you. I think the reason though isn't that there's no love, it's that I didn't get it for so long and at such crucially important stages of my life that in order to survive that harsh, dry land of growing up unloved, I had to conclude it doesn't exist.

Maybe read about different areas of psychology - psychophysiology is especially interesting, to me. I get the sense being an animal isn't only about cruelty, it's about a lot of different needs and behaviors side by side. Sometimes working in tandem, sometimes totally separately and even contradictory. Nature is very messy and very interesting. My guess is if you only see one thing in psychology, you may be reading deeply just on one topic but not widely on a range of human behaviors and theories.

You've been dealt a lot of pain in your life, my friend. Through no fault of your own. :blink:   

radical

Hi Hereforhope,
I feel nihilism sometimes.  For me it is part of  a bitter anger.  I never know what to do with it.  I realise it hurts me to feel it, but i feel it is better to acknowledge and deal than to pretend feeling what I don't feel.
Ah's repsonse is great

ah

Something I said was great? Nah, impossible. Not me.
(ICr, be quiet and let the grown ups speak, will you?)

Sorry.

Hereforhope,
I wanted to add a P.S. that occurred to me now after reading Radical's words: I've been thinking about this too, struggling with nihilism every single day when I'm in a lot of pain, it's like scratching a chronic itch.
You're not alone.
Maybe the ability to notice the itch is a sign of growing awareness, not an obstacle to recovery but quite the opposite?

DecimalRocket

I like science too, hereforhope. And it's alright if you're being nihilistic. It's understandable when your past is traumatic enough for CPTSD. It may not be your view of science that creates this belief, but more something deeply rooted in your past that's making it hard to believe. I have to admit - there's as much violence as there is kindness in this world, and I can't stop that.

Maybe what we want to change is not your view of the world - nothing can change that too easily - and more of the view of the world around you. How you attract people who are cruel or kind, how you stand up in conflicts or trust specific people, how you see yourself as worthy of love and kindness and as you see it in others.

How the world is in general doesn't really inform the kind of people who'll be with you, and what you can do about it. Each situation is going to be different, and it'd be better to adapt your understanding and actions to each.

We can't change the world, but we can change our little part of the world, hereforhope.

Take care, and again, it's okay if you're still hopeless. It takes time.

sanmagic7

i love you, hfh, just do, just like i love everyone here.  can't explain it, but then who can explain love? 

i, too, love what ah said.  excellent points.   (shush, ICr)

i think because we've often been so inundated with the neg. that it's difficult to find our way out of that hole.  i also know love exists because i feel it from people here.  from my d and hub, too.  it may be a small sampling, but it's very real, and tremendously monumental to me.  the kindness here brings my heart to tears, good ones, that help fill up that hole.

i honor your struggle with this, hfh.  it's a battle, for sure.   :hug:

Rainagain

This is a lovely thoughtful thread, so important.

Kindness is key, recognising it in others when it is shown, offering as much of it as you can.

Its the spiritual/emotional equivalent of having wads of cash, some people are rich and some are poor. But with kindness you can't earn it, you can only give it away or have it given to you.

I think a lot about kindness, I have an instinct to be unkind when stressed that I battle with quite a bit.

I think life, the world, fate etc. Also has an instinct to be unkind.

But I'm better than that.

DecimalRocket

Ah hereforhope, I'm glad you were able to feel better after all this. You seem to have a personal liking to Ah, and I'm glad you two have this thing going. I like her too. :)

It's great that you're feeling happy with your new therapist. I've seen how hard it is to find a therapist that's right for you around here, but you manage to find one and have a good relationship with one. That's wonderful. And how your view is changing on positive thinking too.

I can relate to that view on dolphins. Sometimes with all my view on science, I see humanity from the outside looking in too. We think of ourselves as separate from nature, but we're part of it. We come from it, and sometimes it has its own limits and curiosities around it. In our bodies, even the simple shifting of weight with each leg as we walk is something extremely hard for engineers to recreate in machines. Our minds are still too complex for scientists to understand even now, and our minds as an entire society is even harder to understand.

I remember the astronomer Carl Sagan talked about The Pale Blue Dot, a photo taken of our Earthly home from very far away in space. So far that it looks only like a single dot suspended in a sunbeam in the vastness of space. The first astronauts who saw Earth from the moon said it changed their entire understanding of the human race, and helped in pushing forward the green movement. Here was the world, not separated with colors and lines like maps show, but in its purest form.

That to me, is the ultimate outside looking in for our species. That we're human, and we're absolutely tiny compared to the universe. It's scary, but also humbling. It's to me a message of being more accepting to our limits, a message to protect our little world and our sense of wonder towards what may be out there, and in here.




hereforhope

#8
Thank you for your replies, I really appreciate it. I didn't reply sooner though because I was constantly hesitating with my perfectionism when I was trying to write back. I ended up deleting my first reply for this reason, the one Rocket replied to.

I'm having severe brain fog right now and literally can't think, so I'm sorry if my short reply seems arrogant or uncaring.

Ah, I got quite emotional when I read your reply. Thank you for writing to me.

sanmagic7

hfh, first, i do hope you can find your way to get help if SI comes onto the scene for you. 

second, i also know all about those things that others don't want to look at, see them clearly, understand what they most likely mean.  i can choose to live my life in despair if i want cuz i'll agree it's horrible.

on the other hand, i can choose to live my life believing in my capacity to love.  there's no hard evidence on what that is, how it is, where it comes from, and there are lots of incidents where it's shown not to exist.  however, i know it's there in my heart, and i will believe in it.

i will not argue with you as to your way of thinking.  i have nothing to share that might prove you wrong.  i have always just believed in the magic of life, and love is a part of that.  it's a choice, and there is nothing that can make it logical.   i hope you can find your way out of this, maybe by taking a leap of faith somehow.  there's nothing concrete there, but i'll believe it's as real as anything anywhere.

i'm saying this out of love for another human being who is struggling to find a reason to keep going.  that's all i can do.  what you can do is accept or reject it, as you see fit.  it's all any of us can do.   we're all in this together, trying to make sense of the senseless.   i hope you accept cuz i believe you're valuable and valid no matter what.  but, i'm just one person.  what difference do i make? 

hereforhope

I guess the difference is that you and Ah knows love exist to yourself because you feel it. I guess I don't. I'm so numb I don't feel anything aside from anger and bitterness.

DecimalRocket

#11
I believed the same thing before hereforhope. I was numb to the point of believing love can't exist. I believed it had no point. It was utterly useless. Everyone secretly hated me and is trying to manipulate me in some way. I had no emotional connection with anyone, and that left me with a feeling of something entirely missing from my life without knowing why.

But I did feel love eventually. I had to do several weeks of loving kindness meditation — a meditation to feel love — before the slightest feelings of warmth came up. But the fastest results came when other people showed me kindness. I hated everyone as much as they hated me, but eventually their kindness to me touched me in ways that things have started changing.

I can't say I fully understand your life, but maybe there's hope in changing. I hope you can keep at it — keep coming here, and keep looking for love. Maybe the only way you can feel it is if you can understand it from others first.

I agree with San. Love isn't something you rationalize about to understand the most. It's something you have to feel to understand. All my love with thinking, science and rationality was a gift, but it wasn't a gift suited to this situation. You'd have to see it from an entirely different angle than what science creates.

Take care, and it's okay again if it takes time. The things worth having in life are often the ones that need the most work. It's alright to fail. It's alright to be numb.

We'll still be here for you.

Ps : Maybe try to take a look at the terms Enneagram 5 and after understanding what it is, google for advice around the term. Your view of life is less experienced, but in a way, ridiculously similar to mine. Maybe check that out if it applies to you?

ah

Quote from: hereforhope on March 21, 2018, 10:09:51 PM
I guess the difference is that you and Ah knows love exist to yourself because you feel it. I guess I don't. I'm so numb I don't feel anything aside from anger and bitterness.

I put effort into love too. I do loving kindness meditation every day, it's my medicine, literally. I guess for me it's a cause, not a result. And when it's too hard I definitely feel numb, like you. Very numb sometimes. When I'm able to do it I feel more grounded, less numb.
I can't feel it for myself though. Maybe one day. Or not...

Love isn't easy for me. I guess it takes work when you need to teach yourself how to feel it because no one showed you. I had a friend once who told me he "never knew that beautiful animal, love, growing up" so he had to discover it on his own as an adult.
Hatred is easy, in my experience, love is harder but oh my is it worth it.

Also, I feel so disgusted by my abusers' behavior, so disgusted I feel I just refuse to be like that and that pushes me to try to investigate this unknown ocean (unknown to me, maybe not to others who had an easier time).

I think the opposite of hopelessness isn't absolute hope, but rather cautious, partial, gradual hope. It's sticking just the tip of one toe out of the utter hopelessness that I'm used to, and testing the waters again and again.
Maybe it's hope that takes a view that begins by being 100% black, and says "Okay, I'll experiment. Try" and starts trickling just 0.0000001% of other colors into the mix.

Slowly, one step at a time is how I'm trying to do it. I'm with DR on this, it's okay if it takes time.
And it's okay if you just try considering trying it out here and there, without committing to believing in it. Numbness and anger are extremely familiar, don't give them up too fast, they've been taking care of you your whole life. It's okay if it takes time, it takes time, and we'll still be here for you.

hereforhope

Thank you, Rocket. I absolutely will try your suggestions.

And thanks for making me feel less alone. I'm sorry that you love struggled like this too. Maybe we're similar in some ways like you suggest. I guess I also have a rational, cold logic kind of mind, together with high sensitivity and too strong emotions. You said you're on the spectrum for Asperger's? I believe I might be too, to some extent.

My new contact gave me a feeling that she cares. I'm terrified of getting "hooked" on her opinion on me now.

I'm interested in consciousness and paranormal research since I saw a lecture on it on youtube that I thought was convincing. Search "Dean Radin google lecture" - you got to check this out.

Tom Campbell, an ex-Nasa physicist, has a lot of interesting lectures up too, including his own "theory of everything: where the deepest goal in life is to decrease fear and increase love, which has a real effect on reality as Dean Radin shows in his lecture.

I think getting into this could be a way to get out of cynicism. Like everything positive to me, it seems too good to be true. But if it is, love (positive intent) definitely is something very real in the world, and this will erase all my cynical doubts.

hereforhope

Thank you for the reply, Ah.

Reading about the effort you put to being positive makes me realise that you also have similar feelings, and also how little effort I put in.

I really am a "baby", I think.

I think you're an amazing person, Ah. As is DR. You put effort into feeling better while I don't do anything, and just complain instead.