the uselessness of 99.9% of the self-help genre

[mechers]

There is a missing piece between, "You are responsible for your own happiness" and being happy. Deciding to be happy just doesn't cut it, and fuck you to everyone who says it's that simple. It's not. Beliefs are hard to change

Comments

[new2life]

Your two entries are directly related. Anyone can formulate a belief and truly believe, construct their own and everyone else's reality around that construct. Like the belief that if a woman resists her rape, she won't get pregnant. Believe I am a gender other than the body I was born into. Medical intervention has allowed me to construct a new reality and have others be part of that new reality.

What is happiness? Every morning I wake up I experience regret that I am waking up yet again and still alive. Am I happy? I would not know. I don't know what happiness is. There is no point. Call me passively suicidal.

I think I have read ever single self help book ever written. Why not? I wake up another day and I don't have a choice but to keep putting one foot in front of another.

There are no answers. Happiness is an illusion. Or it can be whatever you want it to be. Does self help or mental health have to equal happiness? Or deserving happiness? Ultimately, the true measure has to be what do YOU want? I have

[mechers]

It is an illusion. Therapy is imaginary solutions to imaginary problems. But illusions aren't necessarily bad, if they're about the attitude you take to life and not distortions of empirical reality. I do think happiness is my goal. My mother seems to have achieved it, and it looks like a pleasant way to live. I think, with my tendency to overthink, anything less than happiness is going to be a perpetual slide back into misery. I don't deserve misery. I know that much.

[icarus_after]

Have you read any Brene brown?

[mechers]

I haven't. I watched her TED talk on shame but didn't get around to getting the book yet. Should I prioritize it?

[taxishoes]

I dunno . . . I'm pretty sure that I don't deserve to be happy. I mean, objectively. At some point I had a conversation with myself where I forgave myself for being a total fuckwit, since I have to live with myself, I should get along with me and be nice. I'm all I have. Etc.

[mechers]

I admit I'm surprised by your and new2life's comments. For so long the one reality in my life was that I deserved to be punished. Moving away from that was monumental, but life still didn't get much better, practically speaking. I don't think I'm a bad person, objectively--anymore. So why not happiness?

[taxishoes]

I don't know. Why not? If you accept that suffering is random, you don't inherently deserve to suffer just because you are suffering, why do you need to inherently deserve to be happy in order to be happy?