I don't look at much on Reddit but I like reading r/fatpeoplestories occasionally. Anyway, I've been reading the Chibiham series and this was in one of the stories:

�No, no one is perfect as they are. We are given this time in our lives to steadily improve ourselves. The moment we let our guard down and become selfish enough to think we have obtained perfection, is the moment we have lost the battle, and lose all right to command respect.�

I thought it was a nice quote. The author sort of implied it was from Bushido, which I'd heard about but never looked at before, but I skimmed it a bit just now and it's somewhat interesting. Reminds me of that guy who used to be obsessed with me, the one who was kind of weird and seemed like he wanted to be a samurai. He seemed kind of... tortured, for lack of a better term, by my impassivity at the time. I guess he's not the only one, though.

When I was talking to my therapist on Wednesday I tried to explain a bit about my perspective on my emotions and my approach to dealing with them. I've pretty much been expecting for years now that I'll have issues with depression for the rest of my life, so my problem-solving strategy has evolved with that in mind. I don't use outside help if I can find a way to do it on my own, and as far as I can remember that's how I've been most of my life.

(Sometimes it just straight up doesn't occur to me that there is anything that can help me, honestly. Not because I think my problems are beyond help, but I just... don't think about what things exist in the world to address my issues. For example, even though I know painkillers exist, I basically never use them for anything except menstrual cramps)

I guess I don't really expect my depression to significantly scale up in intensity, so I sort of just do everything I can to prepare for the worst I can guess it could be, based on past experience. That wasn't worded very well, so maybe it would be better to say... I expect the depression to stay the same strength, so my approach has been to strengthen myself so that I'm stronger than it?

What I do to myself is sort of like exposure therapy I guess. I told my therapist that basically I try to think through things as thoroughly as possible and find different perspectives to see them (versus just ruminating, or thinking about the same thing over and over, which is unproductive and unhealthy) until I have no more desire to think about them, and that's sort of how I get over them? I feel like if I ignore or run away from things I'll never learn how to deal with them and then if I get into a situation where I have to deal with them, I'll be totally unprepared, and that could do a significant amount of damage to me (I think it's unlikely that I'd ever commit suicide but I know there's always a slight possibility). I'm not obsessed with having control for its own sake but I think it's very important as a safeguard.

So yeah, building up resilience. I don't ever want to be in an emotional state I can't handle. The idea of having an emotional breakdown isn't romantic to me anymore. I'm writing this post more as a way to document my own thought processes than as any sort of advice to other people. What works for me clearly doesn't work for some people, though I do advocate trying different things before fully dismissing them, of course...

---Edit---

Every now and then I look at Jasper Fforde's website to see what the status of the next Shades of Grey book is (it was originally supposed to come out in 2013... then 2014... then 2015...) and there isn't even a sequel listed there now... only a prequel scheduled for publication in 2016. I've been waiting so long for this book, and I wonder if it'll ever come out. :'( I loved the first one so much and I'll be sad if the story never gets continued.

I have been thinking about this in terms of the country as a whole-- people are like, "No one should ever have to ::Insert difficult thing here::" but I think instead of trying to shelter every American from hardship, we should realize that hardship will always be a part of life, and that we should work towards ways of making every American (and our economy as a whole) more resilient to shocks and world events, so that everyone will be stronger and less vulnerable.
» Zanzibar on 2015-02-07 05:16:12

I would have to agree with that quote... I feel like there's a big difference in accepting your current life situation and understanding that there is always room to improve, and thinking that things are perfect and nothing needs to change. It kind of goes along the same lines as never wanting to learn. If you don't learn then you're not living. Or the heartbeat meme ... "if there are no ups and downs in you're life, then you're dead"
» LostSoul13 on 2015-02-07 06:56:01

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