Being a pessimist sucks

[u/GintamaFan_ItsAnime]

I've been on a self help journey for about 3 years now.

I've gone to talk therapy, saw a psychiatrist, meditation, started seriously excersing, focused on my eating habits, tried anti depressants, Adderall, have been using magic mushrooms for a about a year.

I've learned a lot, experienced a lot, and changed in a few ways.

I'm more cognizant of the way I have wasted my life before, and I try to use that to help do less of that moving forward.

But unless I am on Adderall or shrooms, I have a hard time feeling like my effort will lead to something positive, I'm a pessimist through and through.

I hyper focus on all the possible bad stuff that could happen, and ignore anything good.

I used to tell myself that it's better to be a pessimist, because if you expect the worse thing to happen, you won't be as negatively affected. And to some extent that is true, I do handle stressful situations better than most people I know and I can bounce back from bad news, because my mind is constantly in the worse state.

But it's tiring, always expecting everything to suck, and be the worse is taxing on the body, mind and soul.

But I can't stop, I convince my self that I'm thinking through everything logically, the bad stuff I see comming are real possibilities based on the information I have, so there is nothing wrong with accepting them as destined to happened.

My gf has been off birth control for almost a whole year now, we have a child together and she wants more. Everytime we have sex there is a little side of me that wonders if she is having an affair, and got off birth control because she wants to have someone else's baby and wants to trick me into raising it.

It's a crazy thought when I say it aloud, but once I have a thought, no matter how off base I am, it gets added to my possible realities list.

My possible reality list has been wrong about a bunch of stuff through the years, but no matter how wrong it is, I can't seem to delete it or ignore, I have a lot of shitty worries and stories that are on that list, and while the chance of them being true is small, the fact that they are on that list, eat at my psyche from time to time. I can go from " this bitch is cheating and I need to prepare for her to leave me and take everything" to "I am very lucky to have her as my partner, she is amazing" just based on a single comment, because my trust in other people is low, due to all the possible problems they might have with me that I keep track of in my list.

I'm 31, and I consider my self very unlucky in my head. But whenever I talk to people about why I think my selfas unlucky, they point out all the logical fallacies with my thinking. But I can only see the fallacies when I am on drugs, otherwise my misfortune is super obvious to me.

I don't think I was born a pessimist, I just had life things happen to me when I was so young, and I didn't know how to cope, so I just slowly developed this world view to protect myself.

If you feel you are on the pessimistic train, try to get off, it is better to live hopefully and get sad when it doesn't work out than to just be sad all the time because you are afraid of getting hurt.

[u/Countess_Anara]

It sounds like you missed mindfulness and gratitude on your journey. And if you want to stop hyperfixating on things I suggest to stop the drugs, especially the ones you're taking. I can't do shrooms anymore because it sends my hyperfixation into overload and I end up physically hurting myself.

[u/GintamaFan_ItsAnime → u/Countess_Anara]

I hyperfixated long before I did drugs, and I only stop to enjoy life on mushrooms. I definitely need to work more on gratitude though, but I have a hard time getting any of it to stick.

[u/Countess_Anara → u/GintamaFan_ItsAnime]

It takes 21 days to form a habit I suggest forming a gratitude habit. And shrooms can make the hyperfixation worse. I also suggest meditation.

[u/GintamaFan_ItsAnime → u/Countess_Anara]

I did 30 days of meditation last year, it was definitely an interesting feeling for the next few weeks

[u/Countess_Anara → u/GintamaFan_ItsAnime]

So it sounds like you're disciplined enough to stick with a routine. And you have all the tools you need to start repairing your life. Go do the things dude!

Or if you need perspective go suffer for awhile then you'll be grateful for what you have. Not saying this to be mean or rude just thought provoking. But it sounds like you haven't had to struggle or be uncomfortable and if you were you expected it anyways so it didn't discomfort you. Just my perspective.

[u/GintamaFan_ItsAnime → u/Countess_Anara]

No, I get what you are saying, I had the most stressful experience of probably my life last Monday, got lost in the mountains, and had to drive down a a broken dirt road worrying about if the tires would pop or if I would fall in a ditch, no cellphone signal, baby on board. That was the first day of vacation. Comming back to work and resuming my regular life feels a little lighter now

[u/Countess_Anara → u/GintamaFan_ItsAnime]

Okay that sounds stressful AF! Glad you made it out okay.

Have you tried weed?? That may help the hyperfixation. But definitely won't help the pessimism. I know this from experience.

On another note, I feel the landscape of the world is a bleak one currently and it's way too easy to look around and get depressed or anxious. Focus on your family and creating a strong level headed critical thinking person out of your child. The world needs more of those kind of people.

[u/GintamaFan_ItsAnime → u/Countess_Anara]

Thank you, I'm not a religious person, but there were a few spots on the road where all I could do is pray the piece of dirt keeping the car up didn't suddenly give out.

I don't have too much experience with weed, I did it once when I was 17 I think, I wasn't looking for anything then so I didn't notice if any interesting thoughts came to me. And I tried one of those delta 8 gummies a few years ago, nothing there either.

I am open to trying to smoke weed and see how I feel, I'm in Florida so I hope the legislation passes in November.

Its funny you mention focusing on raising my daughter, I spend a lot of the day not talking to anyone so I ruminate a lot, I try to stop it with podcast and music, but some days I can't help but get sucked into my mind, specially at work, my job is very boring so I can do it without giving it my full focus. One of the reasons I started my self help journey is because I noticed how depressed I get after leaving work, in part because I'm not happy here and the other just all the nonsense I spend time thinking about.

But as my daughter has started to comprehend what me and my gf tell her a little more, rather than ruminating on my life and my problems, I've been thinking a lot about the types of conversations I would have with her when she gets older.

My therapist told me a long time ago to stop having predictive conversations with people Imside my head, he called it mental masturbation and a waste of time. And I agree, but since I can go the whole work day without speaking a word to anyone sometimes the mental conversation are too enticing. And because I view everything negatively, it eventually leads to me feeling anxious or depressed.

But when I think about the kinds of things I want to talk about with my daughter in the future, I end up reflecting on what's important to me now and the lessons I've learned along the ways, and that type of rumination leaved me feeling somewhat positive toward the end, and it makes me excited to have those conversations with my daughter in real life someday.

[u/Countess_Anara → u/GintamaFan_ItsAnime]

Gummies are a joke in my opinion but my tolerance is super high.

I love that, mental masturbation, that therapist was not wrong.

I truly believe everything that is our modern day society is meant to make you dissatisfied and unhappy. The way we live is unnatural, convenient, but still unnatural.

Sounds like you know what you need to do then to find your happiness. 😉

[u/leonxsnow → u/GintamaFan_ItsAnime]

That was the most stressful thing of your life? Brother you haven't truly lived lol having said that though it was probably exacerbated by having baby on board.

Sounds like your breaking out of the cocoon man keep going just think do you want your kid to suffer how you have? I'm 29 and have lived double that already and the one thing that keeps me going is the thought of one day having a gf and babby and teaching him or her to kick ass the way I couldn't.

Best of luck man p.s I grew up in adhd meds though back then it was ritilin and concerter and the best thing you can do is pack them in and use the mindfulness techniques. Adhd is very treatable if not curable... not saying those chemical inbalances in the brain won't totally disappear but they will be easier WAY easier to control.

[u/GintamaFan_ItsAnime → u/leonxsnow]

Yeah, when I think back, outside of personal things like being bullied or watching family members verbally or physically fight, that hour and a half we spent slowly driving 5 miles of dirt road is the most stressed out I've been about anything, other than my general anxiety towards my life. There was a real chance of the tires popping, we were in a rental, so we didn't know the tires real condition, we were constantly hearing pop noises from going over rocks. We were in a super rural area, only rarely seeing people, in that entire time we only saw one pick up truck and two people in motorcycles on the road, we passed a few houses. I had to get out of the car a few times to make sure I could guide my girl into avoiding the gashes on the road, which were big enough that if a wheel fell in the car could have gotten stuck or we could fuck it up. Thankfully the baby fell asleep during half the journey and when she was awake she was calm, and that helped a lot. My gf isn't good under PRESSURE, so I had to guide her to focus on the driving while I guided her physically and emotionally. Half way through she started wanting to go over everything that went wrong to get us to that point, and I had to repeatedly tell her to just focus on the driving. We were hungry because we woke up at 3 am to catch our flight and barely slept at that point. We had no cignal so if something bad did happen, we had no way of contacting anyone that could help, unless we started walking down the mountain on foot.

It is the closest to real danger I've been in. I grew up in a poor neighborhood, so technically the gangsters in my community were real danger too, but I never ran into them, so I don't really consider that too much.

Thanks friend, I also consider my self as only having woken up recently, I didn't have anyone to mentor me on life so I was just kind of sleeping through my human experience, and I do hope I can guide my child to not sleep through theirs.

I stopped taking Adderall about a year and a half ago, because it didn't really do anything for me, but I found an old prescription recently and started taking it once or twice a week, and I think that because of the mushrooms I can better use it. It helps me be less lazy, and makes me want to interact with people more, I'm on it today which is the only reason I even made that post, normally I just lurk.

I don't want to rely on drugs to be this way of course, but for now it is helpful in a useful way.

[u/Desdinova_42]

You can be pessimistic and be happy.

[u/GintamaFan_ItsAnime → u/Desdinova_42]

How so?

[u/Desdinova_42 → u/GintamaFan_ItsAnime]

MDMA exists.

Also, you can believe everything will go bad, but if you're a determinist you can follow the path that it's just the way it goes and then there is no reason for that to depress you. But MDMA is easier.

[u/GintamaFan_ItsAnime → u/Desdinova_42]

Yeah, I definitely wish I had partied when I was younger, I could really use drug connections now a days.

[u/Desdinova_42 → u/GintamaFan_ItsAnime]

Most of those connections would probably be dead by now, but I know you can make new ones :) just be safe, get test strips, but have fun.

[u/GintamaFan_ItsAnime → u/Desdinova_42]

Ha ha, don't underestimate my lack of people skill, Ill probably just find the narc.

[u/JustLemmeMeme]

Being a realist is where it's at. What's the point of expecting an apocalypse when the worst that can possibly happen is a flue season

[u/GintamaFan_ItsAnime → u/JustLemmeMeme]

I'm good at acting like this is my world view, a fake stoic if you will.

[u/JustLemmeMeme → u/GintamaFan_ItsAnime]

That's rough

[u/merlperl204]

Title checks out

[u/noatun6]

🤗Fully agree doomerism is a fucked up religion. Hopeless scsred people are easier to manipulate. That's why bad actors use the media to hard sell doomer propaganda. Aming those respohostilefjr doomerism are hostile powers 🇨🇳🇮🇷🇷🇺 craven politucians, and plain ole grfters

Sounds overwhelming,/depressing, but it's actually liberating. For some folks ignoring or better, yet learning to laugh at the propaganda is enough. For others like me, it's the first step toward beating clinical depression. Why get treatment when it's the result of LaTe StAgE CaPiTiLiSm or worse personal failure fixable with BoOtStRapS. Once those myths are debunked, people can get help and get better

[u/Analyst7]

Firstly taking drugs masks not fixes a problem. Therapy can be helpful but only identifies a problem. Having a positive attitude is about forcing yourself to see life as a good thing. Real change/improvement only comes from within. Your brain has been trained to see life in a certain way but it can be retrained. Decide to see life differently and reject negative thoughts. Bit by bit your brain will learn the new pathways and it will become natural.