I don’t get it. Your only post is “The Straight Dope”
a) I think it is useful to think of your own emotions as a relative gauge rather than an absolute gauge. I mean, imagine that you’ve got 98% of your shit sorted out and everything, or nearly everything, you planned worked out as planned and you’re sitting in the proverbial catbird’s seat, OK? Of what use would it be to you to have your emotions sitting constantly on a “this is totally groovy” setting? No, you need your emotional substructure to convey to you some dissatisfaction or else you can’t make a meaningful assessment of where improvements might be made. Or, to go to the other extreme, let’s say your starving emigrant carivan, in the process of dodging border security soldiers, ran through a bunch of cactus and you got impaled badly with thorns and are bleeding, and then your hiding place turned out to be atop a volcano that blew just then and you somehow managed to escape. Of what use would it be to you if your emotional substructure was all immersed in agonizing over your overall situation? You need it to react to circumstances, and indeed you feel glad to have survived.
b) You should seek people to talk to. It is always good to do that. I am available, as I am sure are many Dopers. It’s a characteristic of the board 
. You’ll be doing the therapy yourself, reacting to our reactions to you telling your story. That is as it should be.
c) Fuck. I thought I had a third item. Opal’s ghost would be laughing at me now.
In my opinion, the assessment of improvement mechanisms is not dependent on emotions but simply on a logical outgrowing of personal maxims that include “Help the less unfortunate”
Also, thank you for providing your information with the intention of helping people you see on this board. I think that’s great!
I truly hope this analogy comes through for you.
Say I have a small lump on my face. I come to these forums and ask “I have a lump of my face, what could it be?”. I get dozens of responses from it possibly being a pimple to a cancerous tumor. I keep asking, “How do I know what it is?” and give vague descriptions of how it looks and feels. I get dozens more responses, most of them leaning to it being a tumor. I finally give in and go to a doctor and he immediately looks at and says it’s a boil that will go away in a few days. Again, 0% positive proof of what it was until I saw a professional!
I appreciate you answering. But a more equivalent analogy would be “Every few weeks, I get a small lump on my face. It’s not a big deal, but when it happens should I complain to my friends who have lumps all over their body?”
Maybe you are just normally sad every once in a while. But it doesn’t hurt to check, and make sure with a therapist. And even if that’s all it is, there are therapists who just let you talk things out because that’s what you need. You don’t have to have a mental disorder to go to a therapist.
That’s the thing I think we need to get away from. This idea that you can only talk to a professional if it’s an illness. Sure, maybe you could also talk to a friend about your problems. If that’s available, great. But if that’s not available to you, whether because you happen to not have many friends, or have friends with their own difficulties, why should that mean you don’t get the benefits of talking things out?
Going doesn’t have to mean believing you are depressed or whatever. You can just go because you want to talk to someone, which is exactly what you admitted here.
And if it turns out you are depressed, guess what? You’re in the best place to deal with it. They will know what to do. And then you wind up not having so many sad moments, or learning how to deal with them, and having someone to talk to about them anyways.
Either way works fine. The only losing move is not to try.
But that’s just it. I don’t understand how “talking things out” makes anything better. That’s my conundrum.
Also, thank you for responding to this topic.
This probably sounds like gibberish, but I also did not understand how taking things out could make anything better, until I tried it, and it did. Professional counselors have experience of how to make the process work because that’s their job and they studied it. It doesn’t always work but when it does it is really worth the effort.
It’s not gibbersish. I welcome your input and I’m glad you were better off afterwards. But, how did it make things better for you?
One of the most important premises of AA is to come to believe that a power greater than yourself is in charge. A lot of the members of AA are atheists and often struggle with this early on. Turning things you have no control over to this higher power can relieve a lot of the anxiety we often feel. The trick is to find a higher power of your own understanding. Learning how to let go can be very healing.
The doctor will likely give you a cleansing routine and/or medication to help with dealing with the recurrences and you may even be able to pass on the information to your friends. This is a form of empathy. Your condition may not be a bad as others, but you can better relate to their issue because you’ve experienced it yourself.
Note the key word, recurrences. The cleansing routine and/or medication doesn’t mean you’ll never get a boil again, but with them if the boil comes back you’re better able to minimize and handle the effect of it.
When I went therapy for anger management/depression, the doctor helped me understand (through talking it out) why and possibly how I got the way I got I did. The talking was the mental cleansing routine and he gave me medication (a minimum dosage of Prozac) for the misfiring functions of my brain. After almost a year, he told me that sessions would end because he’s helped me as much as he could and the rest would be up to me. When I asked about my stopping the Prozac, he told me I had two choices, stay on it for the rest of my life or if I felt I could control my emotions myself, I could stop, which I did. He never said that I would never have bouts of severe anger or depression, but the 'cleansing routine" and the medication would help me through them. This was 25 years ago, and yes, I’ve had periods of severe anger and depression, but I’m now able to cope with them much better than before.
Just as with a medical doctor, where 90% of your visit is talking about what your physical issues and concerns are, a visit with a mental therapist is your talking about what your mental issues and concerns are, which often results in a light bulb going off in your head. Oh yeah! That makes sense!
If you choose to talk to a friend and all they do is talk about how much worse off they are than you, they’re the one trying to use you as the therapist vs. the other way around (your coming to them for help), and you should seek someone else, possibly a professional. I’ve had numerous people (some I just met or in the case of one person, never met in person, just over the phone) tell me how comfortable and easy it was to talk to me. I often explain to them that’s primarily because I try to listen more than I talk.
But lingyi, you’ve posted way more text than was posted by Manson 1972. Yes, that’s because I’m purposely not trying to start or encourage an online dialog. Just positing my opinions based on what I’ve experienced and trying to point him into opening a verbal dialogue with someone.
BTW, people usually retain more of what they read than what they hear. However, because of the nature of forums and live chat, I notice a lower level of information retention because it’s easy to ignore what you don’t want to read. As humans, we have the unique ability to communicate verbally and visually, adjusting to what we say and how we move as reactions to the other person. Use that unique ability to your advantage.
Finally, Manson1972, as much of a concern I have about what you’ve posted, it’s not all about you. I post here and on other forums with the knowledge that whatever I write will be people around the world and will remain available for reading, criticism and judgement by hundreds, thousands or possibly more for years. You may only retain 10% of what I post and still not find it helpful and disregard the other 90% as not pertaining to or having no value, But there may someone who retains a different 10%,and thinks it’s not helpful at all, but maybe there’s someone who retains yes another different 10% and finds it helpful.
An additional thought. Many people experience bouts of sadness during the holidays, especially the period just before Thanksgiving through New Year’s.
Edit: Previous post, last paragraph, first sentence should be: "Finally, Manson1972, as much of a concern I have about what you’ve posted, it’s not all about you. I post here and on other forums with the knowledge that whatever I write will be read by people around the world and will remain available for reading, criticism and judgement by hundred, thousands or possibly more for years.
Umm, no offense but I always assumed you were male, in which case talking about your feelings is contraindicated.
You know how when you watch a movie for the third or fourth time and you suddenly notice that guy in the restaurant is the same guy that was in the park. It helps you notice patterns.
Also discussing it forces you to find words to express what may be nebulous feelings. You may find that your sadness is sometimes anger.
A therapist or counselor is someone you can talk to who won’t judge you.
As to the purpose of helping you feel better? At a minimum feeling less sad about things benefits your family, but simply feeling better for yourself is reason enough to make the effort.
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I hope this is sarcasm. Socially discouraged maybe, but talking about your feelings can be freeing when encouraged.
I think BeeGee has it right that noticing patterns is a big part of how it helps, and also that there is often anger buried in there someplace. My therapist used to say depression is anger turned inward, and at first I thought that was b.s. Then I came to understand it was true. I was often angry at myself for not being better in some way. Therapy helped me forgive myself by recognizing that pattern and why it occurred and that helped me get over it. (Oh yes, this is where I beat up on myself for not [fill in the blank]. Now, let it go!) Yes, talking to yourself can actually help!
When my Mom was in and out of the hospital during her last couple of years, I realized that much of the Doctor’s diagnoses were based on statistical probabilities. It really came to light when at 87, he said her probable remaining lifetime without any major medical complications (she had pneumonia) was two years. I then asked what her life expectancy was if she lived out the two years, he said two years. I laughed and said her probable life expectancy if she lived an additional two years was two years. He laughed and said yes! BTW, she passed away just short of two years later at 89.
My point is, Doctors, both medical and psychological heavily base their diagnosis on 'patterns". Friends and family may be able to recognize and relate to a small set of 'patterns" that they’ve experienced or heard of, but they don’t have the knowledge and resources, through education and available references that professionals do.
I spent a lot of years as a volunteer crisis counselor. People tend to think of active suicide and rape calls as what we handled. We got a lot of callers that were in places like you.
Find someone that you can trust to actually listen to your feelings and talk to them. You might not have that; why do you think people called to talk to me as some random stranger? You might only have people trust that still tend to be dismissive, like you are being of your own feelings. They may care but not be able to guide you past your own attempts to discount the validity of your feelings. Find someone else. A professional mental health might be a bit much but is an option. Your company wellness plans might offer a hotline with relatively well trained, but not state certified, para-professionals like I was. You might try checking for a local crisis intervention hotline. If there isn’t one near you the joy of cell plans means you can probably call any one of them in the US. If you message me I can give you the number for the center I used to be a part of.
There’s lots of options if you don’t have someone close. Most of us don’t have that person that will start the conversation though. You’ll likely need to make that first step to reach out and find someone to listen. When you find them… talk…about your feelings. You might be amazed how something so simple can help.
Speaking of patterns, we tend to associate with and seek advice from family and friends whose personalities are similar. While at the Thanksgiving table look at and think about who you choose to associate with and seek advice from and you’ll likely see patterns. They form a zone around you and sometimes you have to step outside that zone and associate with and seek advice from someone that breaks from that pattern.