5d ago

We really don't want to talk about our problems

149 comments

29 days "lost" at sea, is therapy for all of the external bullshit we deal with every fucking day.
By "we" I mean people in society, not just men. Everyone struggles with making their way in "this world" we built for ourselves. We made it to be this horrible.
- I watch some trash reality TV and always find it kind of funny how contestants spend a long amount of time internalizing the stress of the situation the show they agreed to be on is putting on them.
  Half of Love Island is “Why did you kiss them?” “Why did you go on a date with that person?” “Why did you break up with me?” Guys it’s a SHOW. The SHOW is making you go through these completely unnatural circumstances!
  And then I think about real life and it’s like “why don’t I have energy? why am I so depressed? why can’t I be more productive?” …guys it’s CAPITALISM/SOCIETY. SOCIETY is making you go through these completely unnatural circumstances!
  …except of course I didn’t agree to be on this show.
  
  None of us did.
  I didn't get a say in whether or not to be born. I'm just here now and I have to deal with all of this shit.
- When I was deployed it was nice, I didn't have bullshit to worry about. I did my job, I ate, I took shits, and I slept.

The environment we created for ourselves takes advantage of our evolution and uses our biology against us.
Food is drowned in sugar to get us addicted. Social media is designed to keep us angry and upset. Entertainment is a recycled polished turd, designed to take no risks and challenge nothing and leave us only with shallow amusement.
We are losing our respect for the profound, our empathy for the other, and our curiosity for the unknown.
We have made a world of numbing poison for ourselves. A 29 day separation sounds like the most powerful “therapy” we could have tbh.
- i was a camp host for a summer and it was possibly the best summer of my life. no power, no water, no internet, minimal contact with people, cleaning toilets, and spending half of my day in a kayak.
  
  That sounds like a great way to spend a summer. I wouldn't mind running water but I'd probably learn to appreciate it after not having it for a few months.
- Damn, that is well said. This sentence in particular:
  We are losing our respect for the profound, our empathy for the other, and our curiosity for the unknown.
  is the kind of thing that sounds like an empty platitude when your mind/life is in a bad state, but after a few years of progress and healing I read that line and wish I could adequately express the years of reflection and learning that can be distilled down to such a short statement.
  
  Thanks stranger.
  I think a lot about daily life and the systems we’ve built and the way people treat each other and think about existence, and how we’ve changed and over time… or haven’t.
  We’re advancing so much faster than we’re evolving.
  I think that’s causing problems :/
- the unexamined life is not worth living
  
  That's snappy. You should put it on a coffee mug.

No, we'd rather be lost at sea than have to participate in the broken society that makes people need therapy.
- I lack the photoshop skills, but uh
  The 'plap plap GET PREGNANT' meme, but with a therapist shouting:
  'accept what you can't change'
  'don't blame yourself for things out of your control'
  'oh, the copay is $125'
  'you missed the last appointment so we charged you for not canceling in advance'
  'im worried you're not taking our sessions seriously'
  sorry psych professionals, there is no ethical therapy under capitalism
  
  i feel vindicated.
  
  The 'plap plap GET PREGNANT' meme, but with a therapist shouting:
  h'whut with h'whomb?
  
  there is no ethical therapy under capitalism
  Lol
- 100%
  But also, go to therapy
- You can just do that. No one is stopping you from buying a canoe and floating away
  
  A cursory glance implies a decent canoe starts at $2000, so my bank account is stopping me, at bare minimum

Oh fuck off. Therapy won’t help with… gestures at everything
- Agreed. It’s more like “people would rather be lost at sea than live in a modern society”.
  
  How bad can it be? /s
  
  To be fair we were breed to be lost at sea/forest/steppe, not live in a modern society. Like that's our natural place to live and die, not a city.

Theraphy, when it works, only solves internal causes of one's pain.
29 days away from present day society, will for a while suspend the external causes of one's pain.
(Which is why the former usually doesn't fully solve everything: the external shit, which often is what indirectly created much of the internal shit via things like trauma and coping mechanisms, is still there and pushing you)
- I'm considering hard getting "lost" forever.
- I felt this comment.
  Thanks, I hate it.

Quit crying. You'll be fine. Don't be such a crybaby. Man up. Put on your big boy pants. Boys don't cry. Boo hoo, gonna cry about it? Gonna cry like a little girl? Be a man. Face your problems like a man. Crying doesn't help anything. Take it like a man. Don't be a baby. You're acting like a girl. Grow a pair. Suck it up and move on.
Why will men do literally anything besides talk about their feelings?
- There's a community here on lemmy to counter that.
- To be fair it's also men doing this to other men mostly. Women participate in toxic masculinity too, but really, men give each other a lot of shit with very little support.
  
  Without giving away my age (But I do predates smart phones and home internet use), I've found men are perfectly fine with venting assuming the setting is right. Small group? Beer? Sure. Something embarrassing happens in the moment? Not so much.
  Its everyone but your male friends who will give you shit for showing any emotion but anger.
  
  anecdotally, as a guy in my thirties, even my acquaintances (wouldn't actually consider them friends tbh, since we only hang out at rec game times) are quite supportive. sure there's the surface level of shit talk, but if you start to get serious, they do too. a few of them surprised me with this.
  in my experience nowadays, it's equally just shitty people of any gender that say suck it up, no real bias one way or another
  but that's of course just my own circles. I tend to just drop out of (or not join in the first place) any circle that has shitty people
  
  For sure, women usually say they want a man who can show his feelings. It's just that the second he does cry about anything other than a dead child, she gets the ick and loses all respect for him, in my personal experience. I think they talk a big game but when the chips are down they find out they're not actually as into it as they thought.
  
  In my experience, when a man complains about their 'men' problems to anyone online they're given the treatment grueling_spool is describing by both men and women.
  But in more "insulated" face to face conversations its pretty varied/mixed. I suspect this is mostly an "all to all" online conversation effect. There are people who are absolutely ruthless online towards men complaining about problems men specifically face and they will find complaining men and mock them.
  
  To be fair, who said it wasn't also men?

Just goes to show how insane society has become that you'd rather go to therapy than take a 29 day break by being lost at sea.
- 29 days away from reality is therapy.
  There's a tiny town in northern California called Downieville that my wife and I love to visit. It's maybe 200 people, sits on the convergence of two decent sized rivers, and there is pretty much no cell service. Even just a week of sitting by that river is enough to fully recharge me and not want to break everything for at least 4 months.
- “Gee I love working, can’t wait to reduce my down time to work some more.”
- Society hasn't become that bad. It's becoming that bad again, and almost none of us are used to it.
- Being lost at sea is reality. Society is the dream

"men hate therapy"
Yeah not really. You just get beaten down after trying several therapists and paying a lot and not feeling better. Even if you went through that once, it's very discouraging.
- I have a great therapist these days who has helped me a lot. I still hate therapy. I did finally figure out why, though. Because, with the exception of therapy and a couple of really great people, everyone I've ever been vulnerable in front of has weaponized it against me. So even though I know my therapist wouldn't actually do that I'm still waiting on it to come back and bite me.
  
  Been dumped by three women, the day after they saw me cry. Good news! My wife is fine with it, as rare as crying is, and comforts me. But y'all women don't have a good track record in my book.
  
  See but I had a psychiatrist as a kid that would literally report what I said to my mother (and not like harming others or myself like is legally required, just like, shit that I said I didn't like about my mom and then he'd tell her and she'd punish me about it.) Legally, he was allowed to do that since I was a child, I'm not now and so legally they can't even if they had her phone number, but now I can't trust them even if that distrust is slightly illogical. Double distrust due to incentive to make me return and keep paying, but y'know the childhood "trauma" (if you can call it that) of having it weaponized against me using the therapist is still there on that one too.
  
  Yeah, the weaponization factor is real.
- Probably not what you want to hear, it really sucks to be in that spot, but it is possible to find good ones! I went through 3 therapists over the course of a couple of years before finding one that helped me.
- Not to mention it just doesn't work as well for men as it does for women.
  
  Please say why it is that you believe that. It's a fascinating claim.
  
  What??

Therapy doesn't help much if you have no power over the root cause
- Totally get where you're coming from. If you’re staring down the barrel of something massive like trauma, abuse, an entire system that's completely fucked and seems way bigger than you and the others fighting it are or ever will be, it feels like no matter how much "self care" you do, the external crap stays the same, right?? It's fucking maddening.
  But idk, to me, therapy (actual, good therapy with a non-shitty therapist) isn’t about giving us power over the root cause, not always anyways because like you said, sometimes it's impossible. Imo, a lot of times it’s about helping people stop handing more power to "it" (whatever it may be) than "it" already has. We don’t get to choose what happens to us sometimes, but we do get to choose how we respond to it, how we carry it, how we let it affect us, how we pass our pain onto others. It can be a super uncomfortable, yet extremely liberating, paradox. Like, okay, I might not be able to slay the dragon here (sorry, nerd here), but I can sure as hell stop feeding it in whatever way I was (constant unhealthy thought patterns, my own actions or the lack thereof, etc).
  Therapy doesn't fix the world for sure, but it can help us decide which parts of the suffering are necessary, or which parts we might be unconsciously choosing to carry longer than we need to. Idk, that’s where our power really is, imo.
  Edit: fixed some typos
  
  It sounds like you're telling me to stop caring about climate change cause I'd be happier
  
  Fair, it can teach you tools many people do not have
- My therapist is taking two weeks off for their own mental health, been hearing the same woes from everyone and it’s weighing

Therepy - costs money, needs an appointment, takes time to work out issues.
Lost at sea - free, no appointment necessary, immediate relief from the burden of living under capitalism
- But the ocean wants to kill you... (can't blame oceans for wanting to kill humans but it is not your fault..). Therapy can be obtained in many different ways. I think maybe going to a therapist is for people who need motivation to care for themselves, need help starting to be healthy, compassionate and forgiving to themselves and get some coaching to find good ways to get there. We sometimes are in a place too low to help ourselves and need some help, a hand... guidance, encouragement and reinforcement that we are worth the trouble and energy.
- Just get a project car. It costs money too, but you have a getaway from life, just go to your garage. And the end result is a cool car.
  I ask myself spicier questions than the therapist ever will anyway. I haven't gotten a project car though, that's too much therapy. My mind already wanders far enough in any situation.
  
  OMG that made me think of that episode in King of the Hill where Luann had to retreat into taking care of the pool when she was in an untenable roommate situation...

I read this as more "not having to experience the daily news for a month and being horrified".

This is therapy. if I could just drop out of everything for 29 days I’d come back refreshed and Zen as fuck.
- If I could drop out of everything for 29 days, I wouldn't come back at all.
- I'm getting major surgery in two weeks and I'll be on short term disability for an entire month afterwards. I'm honestly really looking forward to the time off, even if it'll be full of physical suffering. My burnout outweighs the physical trauma of having nearly all of my reproductive organs removed.
  
  I did the same, back during COVID lockdown. I think my body just started producing endorphins, because I stopped taking the painkillers and was totally at peace while everybody lost their minds over the isolation. I played The Outer Wilds and accepted that everything must end.
- Isn’t that called vacation? Just don’t bring any communications device ;)
  
  I don't know many people that can afford a 29 day vacation (I'm in the US, and yes I'm jealous of what I hear about European benefits)
- That's about 1 standard stint in rehab where I'm from
  
  It is sad when you start considering going to rehab just to get 28-30 days away from work to de-stress, get sleep, meditate, do some inner work and work on healthy habits. Because if you are single and not reproducing, you don't get maternity leave and if you are young or middle aged and relatively healthy, you aren't getting any orthopedic surgeries that render you temporarily disabled... and if you already lost your parents, there is no family leave... I mean, I can adopt or pretend to adopt I have some kind of addictive habit but would prefer not to-- Can't I just take a mental health leave of absence and then return to my job? One week here or there every 6 months (if I am lucky) is just not going to do it.

Therapy has become the new buzzword to prescribe to any individualistic issue because most people don't know what it is or who its for, they just think it's a silver bullet solution to everything because everybody else says so... but it's not.
Therapy is great for specific people with specific disorders, it's there to help provide these people with solutions and treatments to improve their conditions. It's not meant to be a replacement for a social circle or to fix the problems in your life.
Not to mention that therapy is either expensive or hard to access or the therapist you do get to see are usually not that great. It is very hard and very rare to find a good therapist that's affordable and nearby. Even then, a therapist can only do so much. They're trained to work through common disorders using several established methods, but not much beyond that. Therapists can help you overcome your anxiety, but they can't help you find meaningful relationships.
This is doubly true for men, because a lot of men are facing issues related to finding purpose and meaning in life, and that's something that's beyond the scope of therapy. Maybe these issues could be resolved as a result of treating a disorder, but that's not always the case. The point is that therapy is not a magical solution, and it's not going to solve huge societal problems like men turning their backs on society.
- You say men are turning their backs on society. I would argue it's the other way round. Modern society has lots of problems unfortunately, and can be quite hostile especially to men.
  
  I don't think these two things are mutually exclusive
  
  This is, of course, the fault of women.
  
  men built society. whatever problems are inherent in it were practically designed by men. as a matter of fact, the further we go, the more we slip away from the feminine qualities of our humanity (our more egalitarian hunter-gatherer roots). and as it begins to collapse around us, you incels are gonna cry about how it's unfair? fuck you. put your big boy pants on and deal with it. or better yet, retreat completely from it and let the people with honest consciences rebuild it.
  god, i fucking hate incels.
- therapy also teaches a lot of sociopathic traits.
  my SIL went through therapy recently (after getting into a weird polygamous relationship which allowed her the $$ to do so). she and my wife had lived through a pretty traumatic upbringing after their wonderful father died and left them to deal with a BPD mother who blew through the family money and left them to practically fend for themselves while being batshit crazy.
  all the therapist taught her was to be selfish. she practically cut off contact with both her sister and mother and just got really good at doing what was best for herself and herself only. since then, her mother has become disabled and now my wife is having to deal with it all alone while the sister lives a very lavish life on a farm.
  fuck therapy and fuck modern life in general. no wonder we're all becoming assholes.
  
  If the mother is so bad and abusive then why is your wife helping her? I think the sister did the right thing here. The state has mechanisms to take care of the elderly for good reasons.

therapy costs money

"lost at sea"
mf land right over there
????

did he have a volleyball with him.

It seems that being a castaway is preferable to dystopia. https://thedailytism.com/autistic-man-stranded-on-desert-island-asks-rescue-team-for-a-couple-more-weeks/
- You do realize that is a comedy site, right?
  
  But that's the only nonpartisan site I could find!

Depends on the kind of "lost at sea"
In a perfectly functioning oceanworthy boat stocked with food, but the GPS fell overboard and I have no idea where I am so I'm going to sail West as much as I can until I hit land, then sail counter-clockwise around the coast until I find something I can identify or someone I can ask? Sure let's go.
Ship sank, I'm alone in an inflatable raft with a flare gun and a blinkenlight? Nah you go ahead.
- Ill still sign up. Rafty and Flare Gunny sound like great new friends and we would have all sorts of adventures.
  
  I can think of two adventures you'll be going on a lot: Sunburn and wave slosh. Meh.

Eh. Therapy is overrated. Tried it a bunch of times and it’s not nearly as effective for me as just… thinking.

I hate how I understand this.

My best friend spent a week in the hospital with a life-threatening condition. Besides the almost dying part, it was the most relaxing and life-refocusing event of their adult life and they're grateful to have experienced it. A forced reset and some compulsory solitude can be a blessing sometimes.
Were I to ever go to prison, I think I would personally love to get some solitary confinement time.
- Solitude? Damn, are your hospitals made out of gold as well?
  If you're unlucky over here you get up to 7 other patiens in the same, unventilated room. Including patients who have air-transmittable infections because why not?
  Air conditioning doesn't exist in hospitals either by the way. That's a luxury hospitals aren't obligated to (and as such never) provide. Enjoy dehydrating in 30°C+ rooms.
  I'd much rather just stay in solitude in my home for a week.
  
  Where I live, hospitals are way better than this. My dad got slashed by a stingray in the ankle and was treated and admitted to a two bed room with air conditioning, circulation, TVs, and a whole host of other stuff, all for free.
  Which country do you live in by chance? I'm in Australia, so Medicare's pretty solid here, I'm quite curious on how it works over there.
  
  over here you get up to 7 other patiens in the same, unventilated room. Including patients who have air-transmittable infections
  That's a surprisingly apt description of Hell, at least for me.
  My friend was at a much nicer hospital, albeit they didn't see anything made of gold. They had their own room. It certainly wasn't paradise; I think the recovery from sepsis gave them a clarity of mind and purpose that transcended the casual discomforts. Plus they were medevac'd 400km from their home, so they were more socially isolated than normal. Sort of like a monastic experience? Thankfully they have excellent insurance, so the medical costs weren't a giant concern like they would be for most people in the US, which probably would have been mentally debilitating otherwise.

Then again, have you seen reality?
- 1.8/10 on IMDB
  
  So even with bots it's only 1.8...

Therapy just wants you to be back as a member of society. I don't like society. It just sees me as a part of the economic machine. A stone to be squeezed for blood.

Honestly if I had the means and skills to survive that semi-comfortably, I'd be down for making that an annual tradition.
- I think it's not quite the same if you decided it, and can leave or connect to the internet at any moment.
- I’ve always wanted to sail.

Therapy, trying to make you seem ok with the absolute bullshit you have to deal with which you know is wrong.

If I had everything to survive, a way to go back and couple of books - sign me up.

If things didn't get bad, I could absolutely see myself saying the same thing.

Shameless plug for !Reprieve@lemmy.zip for male identifying people to talk about these and all other issues with other men without any judgement or dumbass alpha male bullshit. It is meant to be literally this - a reprieve from the outside world. All of the people posting here hopeless and alone is why this place exists now.

therapy might get covered but costs money somewhere along the way. it might also lose you a job for 'unrelated' reasons.
you presumably get paid while lost at sea if you are part of the crew

I think I'd rather be lost at sea than be anywhere near any portion of our current civilization.

Yes I would, I hate therapy.

Depends on which is cheaper tbh.

Have you tried going to therapy?
Of course I've tried going to, there's a sea.

So jelly 😌

Here’s my thing with therapy. I know the issue, i know what’s wrong with me, and I know what I’m supposed to do to fix it, i just don’t. I can’t see how therapy will help beyond what I’ve got
- You can talk about why you dont want to fix it. Maybe there's something there. Sometimes there's just a hump you need to get over and wont unless you push yourself.
  If not you can kind of live in that space for a while and see if the barrier is even real in the first place.

Would pay to "get lost at sea for 29 days".

hey we need a rest from capitalism and zoom meetings.

As someone in n therapy. Sure, yes. Its not great.

I just go camping or backpacking out of data range. But his way works too.

Is this the guy who fell off a boat and claimed he built a raft and ate a stick and befriended a dolphin or something? There was a tumblr post about this a while back that was quite funny, there were a lot of inconsistencies in the guys story.

Weak men can't admit to their faults nor face their shortcomings, lackings and fears. Entire sections of the internet have been devoted to allowing men to avoid reality and remain immature...
- I hate this 'weak men' bullshit, sure some fit the popular definition, but do you know their pasts? Their trauma? The reason they fit such a description? I'd say it's pretty damn difficult to know these about anyone you never actually talk to.
  Also, sometimes escapism works in favour of people and gets them to put their lives back together, although it can also cause negative changes as well, although it's not guaranteed. It's not a maturity or immaturity thing, it's just an act.
  
  You have to be kidding, men don't have trauma. If they do they're weak.
  Wait..
  
  I understand, and I honestly wasn't trying to hurt anyone nor make light of their trauma. What I said was simply descriptive. And there's a difference between losing yourself in media sometimes, perhaps to cleanse your head, and the pro MTGOW/incel narratives and communities that pollute online spaces, which is what I was referring to.

149 comments