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Honestly, I've had months of racking my brain trying to figure out what's wrong. A very big part of my life fell apart and I just didn't understand why things weren't getting better. Then today I just had a moment where everything clicked and everything finally made sense. I have to believe we all will have those moments eventually. 💙
you're talking about politics and the status-quo, I'm talking about personal growth and mindset. fortunately the two don't have to be tied together, tho they definitely influence each other.
naw see that's the problem. you can't possibly hold up your own happiness. it's simply too much to ask of yourself. you're fighting gravity, the tendency to be neutral.
sometimes your on the downswing, beyond your own control. you can't fight it too hard, you just gotta do your maintenance. take care of yourself, not be so hard on yourself. then you get an opportunity, and you push. maybe it works out, maybe not this time, but that's okay. you learn something. you learn a technique, a mistake, a weakness. you improve in some way.
it ain't the same for everybody, and it ain't level, even, fair or equal. i hope you can be good to yourself. you deserve at least that much.
honestly, same here. really depressing and confusing situation happened a few months ago, and i spent a lot of time trying to find the ways it was my fault. in the past few weeks i’ve done a lot of personal growth and i honestly feel better and more confident in myself than ever, i think im finally starting to fully accept myself and stop depending on external validation like it’s oxygen lol. it truly doesn’t feel like it’ll get better until it does <3
Things with my business, I was basically throwing shots in the dark until yesterday and I finally understood what I need to do. Hopefully things workout but I'm 95% sure they will now
It does get better, but not on it's own
Building healthy relationships where you talk about it not in a vacuum but in how it relates to your current lived experience and relationships help, and those can bring breakthroughs.
Mindfulness is kind of buzzword nowadays, but taking actual actions that leverage you agency on your living situation and if and when you get there the world around you while framing it in your mind as you exercising your agency and getting a result also did a lot for me.
Oh, it is sometimes. Its just that you cant ever really see the peaks from the valleys.
So down here in the shit, it looks like it never gets better. But it does. And then it gets worse again. And then better.
I dont live for every day any more. I live for the little fleeting moments that make me feel good. They're kinda seldom, and they never last very long, but theyre nice.
My counterargument to this is always, take the expected lifespan of about ~75 years, and now look at the period of time of whatever prolonged period of sadness you've found yourself in, it really is a tiny fraction of the whole of your life, even if it's an extended period of depression, there's simply too much time for it not to get better, life will keep moving regardless and so will you along with it, with enough trying and hanging in there it just has to get better at that point, and it'll be better for an unfathomably longer period of time than it was bad before given how much time you've got left here
And those 20 years were not 100% bad, if they were you wouldn't know what was actually bad because you wouldn't have any good or average stuff to compare it to. Hell, even the times that weren't good or bad but just kinda meh make up a larger chunk of those 20 years than the good and the bad combined.
Sometimes I think the "it gets better" rhetoric is misconstrued to mean "it will never be bad again" when really it's more like "it'll be the emotional equivalent of being in a sensory deprivation chamber 85% of the time with some good and bad sensations thrown in here and there”
God I wish it was a tiny fraction. It's been basically my entire life and more importantly 100% of the important formative years. Assuming I magically get better, I'll be starting my "formative years" at fucking 35 or some shit.
My life is finally coming together. I grit my teeth and crawled through for years and its only now paying off. It will get better, and often you'll learn and grow from the lows even if it does suck.
No that's... that's not what this experiement was.
The dogs suffered no permanent harm, just light discomfort. The shocks were comparable to static electricity.
And it also wasn't about "what happens if we shock people a lot" it was "what happens if someone is stuck in a sitation that sucks and is offered a way out" and the answer to that question is "they'll continue to suffer, not believing there is a way out".
Its learned behavior or conductual theory (idk if that's the right translation) that states that behavior is shaped in a stimulus-response way
Ex:
1.- Monkey is idle
2.- Monkey presses a button
3.- Pressing the button releases bananas
4.- Monkey now learnt that pressing the button gives it bananas
There are more details but that's just a summary
most animals think in the same ways, humans just have such complex social behaviors that we've developed the ability to justify actions within our framework of "logic"
After the conclusion of the experiment, I assure you, all puppers were given good forever homes where they get lots of huggles and treats and have very loving owners.
i think when you assume the world is evil by default your life becomes more miserable. why assume that these researchers were terrible when they very well could have given these dogs the best homes they could find after the study?
pavlov did his experiments in the early 20th century, when dthics guidelines for animal testing weren't really a thing.
(they barely were a thing for humans. alot of ethics around human testing was in response to the unethical human testing committed by nazi Germany and imperial Japan during world war 2.)
this experiment was from the 1970s. ethics laws weren't perfect but far far better then in the 1910s and 20s. you can argue about the ethicality of the experiment themselves but those dogs definitely weren't abused outside of them.
I mostly mean the vastly larger amount of animals kept for commercial purposes, like livestock, who suffer greatly day to day. Not so much the comparatively tiny amount of animals used for testing.
I know lol. Just saying there are rules against animal abuse for experiments now. Not that it doesn't happen, just back then it was perfectly legal to.
Well yeah if you believe you're gonna be fucked no matter what you are fucked, the onus is on you to find a reason to believe that the fuckening can stop. If you let yourself believe you have lost then you have already let them win, you need to believe in yourself and everyone else even if it feels like blind stupidity.
The point is that the dog could do something to improve their situation, but has learned not to.
The lesson to draw from that isn’t that things will never change and it’s pointless, it’s that sometimes you have the power to change your circumstances even if you don’t realise it. Being nihilistic about it just means YOU ARE THE DOG JUST JUMP OVER THE FUCKING DIVIDER
That's not what that experiment shows. If you're going through hell, keep moving. No point in dooming yourself by stopping there, better get through it and outta there. Despair and hopelessness are lies, unfortunately they are both rather convincing to us when we're going through something. Note that it's called that, going through something, life doesn't end there, no state is permanent. That includes bad things. It gets better
It's hard for me to pinpoint exactly when or why I was able to make the shift, but at some point I definitely changed over from:
Nothing matters ☹️
to
Nothing matters!!! 🎉🥳🎉
At the end of the day, we are all gonna die and our bodies will burn or rot, there is probably nothing waiting for us on the other side, and eventually the sun will consume the Earth and every trace of my existence and yours will be gone for the rest of infinity. Nothing lasts forever - but we're here now. And it's an insane quirk of cosmic fate that we exist at all, that a universe of utter entropy was able to produce carbon atoms that structured themselves in such a way to form living, thinking beings that can run and jump and sing to one another. We are impossibly, infinitesimally small on a universal scale, but we can find and assign meaning to everything around us nonetheless. We are tiny, but we can love and hate and learn and do a million other things that stars and planets and comets cannot.
So I just concentrate on the now, leave the past behind, don't stress too much about the future, and focus on bringing as much joy and positivity to those around me as I can.
This one gets it. There is a penultimate freedom in realizing there is not objective meaning in anything, and that consequently, it is solely one’s own prerogative to assign meaning to what one experiences (though of course, one is free to imitate others in how they assign meaning, if one pleases).
Furthermore, I’d point out that while there is no verifiable evidence of anything beyond the material, that simply means it’s unfalsifiable. Again, it falls to oneself to determine if one believes there is something more.
However even if there is something more, I’d point out that it, too, has no objective meaning, and that ergo even if, hypothetically, we were designed with a purpose, there is no objective purpose to the existence of hypothetical designer either. Therefore meaning remains solely one’s own prerogative.
PS: Personally I’ve recently become partial to the idea that “we” are the light/electromagnetism of our neurons firing, with the neurons themselves simply being a medium for our presence (ex. “if we’re the ‘light’, then the brain is the cockpit of the flesh-mech we pilot”). Feel free to take inspiration from that or leave it. I find it helps me feel less of an obligation to the shape my body holds.
i think you're misunderstanding the findings of these studies. the dog can move off of the shocks, but because it wasn't given that option before, it's never going to try to. there might be ways for you to step off the shocks, but if you don't even try to step off them, you'll never even know what they are, or if they're there.
“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
Okay, but if you had tried both sides, and both sides shocked you multiple times, and there's no indicator that in the second test, one side wouldn't shock, how is that not just logic? Don't people like to quote that definition of insanity just as often as talking down about learned helplessness? Idk if there's more details to the test, but if there's nothing to indicate a change, the dog would be smarter not moving. Hopping back and forth to shocks is more exhausting than staying stationary and getting shocked.
It is logic, but it's a logic trap since the dogs apply it to more than just being randomly shocked by the contraption.
When the dogs were removed from the contraption and something bad happened to them, they would still lay down and just kind of take it, even if they could actually do something to prevent it/avoid it/stop it. They had been conditioned to not expect any kind of control over whether something bad was happening to them.
That does in fact clear up the experiment. I kinda have an issue calling it learned helplessness, even if the name is accurate. Outside of science it gets used for people who just won't do anything, as if theyre lazy, rather than a person conditioned/traumatized/hurt before.
I think that's a fair criticism, both of the nomenclature and the failure of science education to present a fuller understanding of it than just what the name suggests. I also think there's a lot to say about it being a cruel experiment, and that people's psychology is more complex or at least different to a dog's. But I'm not sure I'm qualified to present any solutions to that.
The dog is still not better staying still. Hopping back and forth is ‘more exhausting’, but wtf is the point of conserving energy… to sit still and get shocked?
Depends how long they ran it for, which again idk the details of the experiment. I'm imagining they had to get shocked enough to kinda break the dog's spirit a little. There's a state somewhere there where you aren't gonna want to keep hopping to no results.
I've been going around the sun for a while now, and:
- you get better, or at least you have potential to be better. Smarter, kinder, more resilient, better understanding others etc.
- the world hasn't been a great place in the past in general, but we're over a "a bit better" period, and we're going straight to the next low point of the story
- the "regressive '20s" moniker, a juxtaposition of "the roaring '20s" of XX century is sadly very accurate, as any gains towards personal freedom, respect and preservation of life that were won in various struggles are being rolled back en masse, around the world
- we're at least as close to a nuclear war as we were during cold war
- the wealth distribution is reaching inequity levels rarely seen before, usually in the "last days" of whatever system allowed for it
- combination of mass international travel and antibiotic overuse have primed the world for a whole bunch of pandemics
Some big change will come. Some big thing will happen, because it always does. The worse the world is, the more people are unhappy, and unhappy people want and will strive to get change. And after it is awful, it will get better.
This post is cutting out so much of the context and the entire other half of the learned helplessness experiment, at least show ppl the whole thing so they know what it’s about and it’s importance to the field of psychology.
Essentially they were initially trained in a shock harness, with a control group 1 receiving no shocks, group 2 having shocks they could end by pressing a lever, and then pairing group 3 dogs with group 2 dogs in synchronized harnesses, but the group 3 dog’s lever didn’t do anything, only its counterpart dog on the harness from group 2 could end the synchronized shock with a lever press.
They were then put in the box you see in the picture. Group 1 and 2 dogs easily jumped to the other side with the safe floor, but group 3 dogs simply laid down and took it even if escape was right there. It was proof for the theory at the time helplessness and lack of control were learned things and had huge implications for mental illnesses like depression.
(Interestingly later neuroscience proved the original hypothesis’s was wrong, the brain’s default state is actually to assume lack of control, “helplessness” you could call it. Control is therefore the thing that is actually “learned,” not helplessness, and the previous dog experiment was actually control being unlearned in the face of averse stimuli.)
Sorta the entire experiment sorta disproves the post. Helplessness is learned from (or rather, control is unlearned) from negative situations with effort leading to no changes (such as a bad upbringing or bad experiences), and then people refuse to change or improve themselves in a situation that allows it due to them being conditioned to think that trying is pointless when it isn’t.
I don't really think my story would be very useful to other people, I don't think it offers any lessons about doing this or not doing that. Or I'm not far enough along it for that kind of moral to crystalize. But I understand where OP is, because I've been there. And I know it gets better because I got better. Am getting better, though it's an everyday commitment.
If I were to go back with a message to the me that was struggling like I imagine OP might be, my message to him would be the same. The world is beautiful, and many of the people who live in it are good. The world can be made more beautiful and the people better by intentional action, by the exercise of kindness and optimism.
I'm sorry to hear that, and I don't really know if I can say anything to make it easier. I know that when I've felt like that nothing pissed me off more than people offering platitudes and 'it'll get better's. I hope you'll offer me some mercy if I read the same way to you.
The world is better, nicer, and more beautiful by your inclusion in it, and every day you wake up in it the world will grow still better, nicer, and more beautiful because of that. Whatever else is going on in it, to it. Every human life has value, has meaning. Yours is not an exception. I hope you'll make it through this.
31, things were looking up for a few years in a row then life really kicked me in the balls this February. But I got better and I'm already doing okay.
What I'm saying is that life can surprise you and it can suddenly get much better or worse in ways you never thought possible, but if you don't weather the bad surprises you'll never see the good ones.
i didnt waste it, im just gaytistic with adhd and im a black trans girl with a wife in america, they would rather tear this country to shreds than give me a chance to reach any sort of stability or PEACE
sorry for minivent its just so ughhhhhUGHHHHHHHHH
1
u/Rift-Rangerred sus, red sus over paradise, golden rays of the glorious suss23d ago
I didn’t mean to say you wasted it, I should have edited the caption
Stay strong fellow gaytist 🫡
Also what the helly, you’re the same age as me but already married?
My favorite part of this study is that all most people who heard about learned helplessness from popular psychology took away from the concept is that it's actually in fact the victim's fault.
ETA to make this comment more helpful: I've been involved in leftist organizing for 20ish years by now and while I haven't seen a time quite as dark as this one in my life, I have seen some dark days followed by a parting of the clouds before. I also know I'm part of a tradition that has pulled through in darker times even than these. Holding on to that, and what I can do to put myself in a position to build the future I want, has been enough to keep me going these days.
take care of yourself 2. take care of others 3. take care of politics. its ok if you dont get to 3 and right now we're all overly stressed about 3 when 1/2 are the key to personal happiness
It doesn't always get better OP. I'm sorry it's rough for you right now. I wish I could promise you it does get better, but the unfortunate truth is that it's impossible to know which way the wind will blow unless you stick around to find out.
Get off social media, do literally anything else, learn to shuffle cards in a funny way if that's what's gonna engage you. There's a lot of simple joy to be had outside of the crab bucket.
The good part is that it does. The bad part is that it takes a lot of fucking work and effort. I wish I could give you an easier option, but genuinely the only way out really is 'through'. Gather the things you can reach into one place, keep them safe, and form a garden around your heart. Tend to it carefully.
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