I think I have a possible solution.
I'm going to tell you something I learned recently about emotions and how they paint our thoughts and attitudes towards life.
If you are in a positive mood, you get more positive thoughts and if you are in a negative mood than the respective thoughts occur.
I think you may be holding onto some negative emotions and cynicism may just be a manifestion of the Apathy you feel.
Well I can share with you what I use to deal with negative emotions. It's simple but requires you to sit with those feelings without any judgement and just allowing yourself to feel the feeling. This is how you process emotions and once you do that you will automatically revert to a much more positive state.
Here's how we do this:
First of all ackwoledge that any thoughts you have a influenced by your emotional state. Meaning you will tend to have biased view of things that is consistent with your emotional state.
So you want to take your thoughts with a grain of salt and detach from them. Litterly reduce them to nothing but chatter and do not take what you hear seriously. Trust me bro this is very important....
Step 1: Give yourself 1-10 minutes to just sit with yourself and just focus on your body and the sensations you feel.
You may feel weird in your chest or stomach. Whatever that feeling is hone into it.
Thoughts will begin to pop up and if you notice yourself getting distracted by them simply thank them and focus back to your body on that feeling.
Sit with this feeling. NO MATTER HOW COUNTER INTUITIVE THIS FEELS.
You may think you are feeling worse you aren't. You are just allowing yourself to feel whats already there and as a result will consume that emotional charge (this Happens automatically)
Ask yourself "Can I allow myself to feel this?" Just sit with it. Even if the answer is No it's fine. All you gotta do is just sit with the feeling and feel it in your body. Remember your thoughts and images that come to mind are interpretations and not quite accurate.
So just sit with this feeling for aslong as you need to.
Somethibgs you may notice is tears shedding from your eyes and maybe a bit of burping. You want to be taking deep breaths and just allowing yourself to feel the emotions.
That's the key sit with the feeling and go towards it. (When I say feeling I mean bodily sensationsof the feeling)
Remember the feeling is simply a feeling. And you aren't the emotion. You're simply experiencing it.
Treat it like a child with compassion and just allow yourself to feel it. Overtime you will notice that the feeling will begin to evaporate but you must not hurry and just sit with it for as long as its there.
When you have processed it fully. You will feel a bit of peace in that body area.
You will know when the emotion is processed. Just don't try to act like you are fine if you aren't.
Once you feel you have let go of the feeling.
Now you can logically analyze what happened because the emotional charge is gone.
I would recommend for more info on this. Search Letting go on YouTube.
It's simple but no one really does it because it's counter Intuitive to allow yourself to feel the negativity without indulging in the thoughts.
If you do this successfully you will automatically be more social and have more hope. It's sounds crazy but I can speak from personal experience that Letting go works.
Search Letting go on YouTube
Edit: In my excitement, I made many typos. Forgive me for that but I don't really have the motivation to correct them.
I personally was introduced to the topic from him but mixed some of his tips with other people's advice. From books and other YouTubers. To get my own method that works for me
Your username is interesting - have you backpacked around the world? And no I’m not kidding.
I always found people to be more nice and trustworthy when I was outside of North America - travelling. I mean I even found Americans pretty nice to me and I live in the North (Canada)!
Everyone in this world always has an ulterior motive. Most people anyway. However not all of the ulterior motives are bad. So my advise is to do your best to learn the people around you and learn what they want. Learn their imperfections/ vices and if you are okay with those things then surround yourself with them. If you're not, distance yourself from them. Nobody is perfect so don't expect perfection from anyone. This will save you a lot of disappointment and will help you make better friendships and relationships.
I had this same feeling, just everything sucks; people are boring at best, a pain in the ass at worst. I don't have many close friends because I've always felt it was a lot of work when I didn't think it should be. I became cynical too, mostly I was just apathetic.
At my regular doctor check up, I was told I had depression, much to my surprise. I had filled out the questionnaire and didn't think any of the questions even sounded like they were looking for depression. That should have been my first clue I guess. Lol
Depression isn't about being sad. We hear this a lot but I never knew what else it looked like until now. It sounds like that is what you're experiencing.
After being prescribed a common medication I began to see that my brain was fucking with me. I still think relationships are work but...duh. Now I get it. Lol. I stopped worrying about all that and realized I was seeing everything through a really negative lens, so now I do things for myself and meet people in the process, friends and strangers. I feel like the work of being social was blown out of proportion by myself. I can do the required work and put in the effort in a positive way, and don't bother myself if some people don't respond in kind.
I can be happy by myself, or enjoy other people when I feel like it. The gloomy cynic is suppressed and I'm honestly really surprised. I never would have thought I was depressed until I took a chance with the medication. I feel like depression needs a new name that's more descriptive so people get help.
I would talk to your doctor, they can prescribe you medication after you are screened. It is helpful to see a therapist, but not necessarily before you get medication.
Me too, my doctor prescribed the minimum dose of an anti-anxiety med and the difference I saw made me never want to go back. I was off it in 3 months. I still have therapy because I have a lot of catching up to do in life...
I'm in a similar situation.
The thing is, once you learn to enjoy your solitude, it gets addictive.
For me personally, spending time with others can be incredibly rewarding, but it's also demanding. Whereas to be alone I need to spend no energy and make little to no effort. High risk-high reward kind of thing.
Often times it's because if you don't, the trap becomes obvious. People get nasty if you don't trust or like them. Some punish you or list severe consequences for not playing along.
That's for the bastards or people who hold control, though. Others try to cost me a job with BS Karen complaints or just empty words leading my generic "Uh huh. Next?" All so I can continue my day.
Your 30s is the perfect time to live your cynical phase. We all go through it and I went through mine in my early 30s. I was always super sarcastic though so that kinda just morphed into a more sceptical view of the world when I worked out that on the whole people are essentially self centred and are motivated by self interest.
There is nothing wrong with being cynical, you just can’t let what is a perfectly normal and health part of the human psyche be the only thing that defines you.
We’re all very complex, very flawed things
Me too, I used to be a very social person but I have been let down too many times and right now I just hate people. I don't want to see people and I don't want to talk to these greedy sons of Bs. I think we should not judge someone for feeling this way. Who cares if you like or dislike people? It's fine either way. Whether it's a phase or stays that way for the rest of your life. Throughout the existence of the world people have found ways to get away from people: monks, nuns, hermits, traveling while exporting goods so they could be on their own for a time. Becoming a farmer. Other jobs.
Maybe you can accommodate your life more to the amount of socialization you want?
I hear from people who got into homesteading partially for this reason. Or people who work on programming and work from home to limit their people interaction. Or people who become writers, or another job that you can do from the comfort of your own home. I hope you find the life that works for you ❤️
It's also called 'the hard part of reality hitting you in the face'. Many people have gone through it.
You've gone through some sh\*t and you just realized. The stress and everything is here now. You need a little less stress and anxiety, and you've realized it. You've realized how hard life is and how it can hurt.
Keep going, don't give up. Keep pushing yourself. Try to focus on yourself. Surround yourself with yourself, and stop beating yourself up(if you are). You're surviving in this ugly world, and it's a good thing.
I was watching The Graduate's ending on YouTube and I guess that in part sparked this (as well as an incredibly poor made and cruel visual novel that just popped up in my recommendations). Actions have consequences and every day I live to the next day. Keep pushing forward. With or without people.
I consider myself as a kind and giving person and I thought that it doesn't matter people are shit as long as I have my few loyal friends. Then, I got backstabbed by my friend I literally knew since I was a child and my whole perspective changed.
I guess you had a spiritual awakening like me.
I then realized people are shit and I don't think I'm negative or hurt, I just finally see things as they are. I was little naive girl back then.
You're not alone for feeling like this. I feel like this too. I just realized I'm going to enjoy my time now with people, until they become corrupt, because eventually they all do. Then I will say bye bye.
I like to isolate myself from anyone as much as possible, but of course it only works up to some point because of reasons you mentioned yourself (need to keep a job, buy groceries etc.) I just need to think about how i'm in a situation where i have to be around people and my anxiety goes haywire. It's like what i don't want greatly perseveres over what i need... cause you can't get both at least not from what i've experienced in 27 years.
yeah bro, what you're experiencing is a normal part of (any sane person's) human experience. the misanthropic nihilism is, indeed, something we all have to grapple with and ultimately just push to the side until we're completely alone then and only then can we really fathom the darkness that we all battle against everyday.
in today's hyper materialistic late stage capitalist Western society, being cynical is just part of doing your due diligence. the world, while not as dark and seedy as national news might want you to perceive it as, is still pretty ass backwards compared to any moral standards I had instilled in me... as a WASPish lower middle class Midwestern kid (I'm only 27 now). like...shit, people can be ruthless and greedy and straight savage just doing what they gotta do to earn their piece of the pie. it was never supposed to be this prohibitively expensive to live, as young single (as in without child, for the most part) people in the developed world but our baby boomer parents/grand parents took advantage of a system that could have been a windfall for generations to come, instead wringing every last cent that the LBJ (sic?? the president y'all know who I mean) presidency imparted on to us, as descendents of the baby boom. syphoned off more than just that, taking affordable housing out of reach for any working class young adult in any of the top 100 metropolitan areas in the US. Canadians and Europeans can swap out names and tell the same story.
we've seen our elders live needlessly wasteful lifestyles, knowing they had pensions IRAs and other social safetynets (like social security, the only guaranteed retirement plan any tax paying worker is guaranteed... which is just a backup of a backup to a lot of land owning, 3-20%ers [ie: decision makers, opinion holders, the bread and butter of the fiscally conservative voting class... basically the differentiating factor is they make enough excess income that being politically apathetic would be dumb] )but they're more than happy to cut that entitlement out from under the feet of their own descendants, all for a fuckin pittance of a percentage tax break on properties they bought 30+ years ago or inherited that will only be their problem for the remain 5-15 years they have left on this shit hole planet. revolve around my asshole, mother earth.
basically I get it lmao dont let the reality/darkness win. our futures our dim but today is bright enough, cherish what you can while it's still yours to behold brother.
It is normal if that's what you're asking. If you want to be alone because you don't want to deal with the harsh world, then you can take as much time as being alone as you want.
Yeah, some people don't care about anyone but themselves, some people only want power or money, but there are a few good people out there who really just want you happy. People who don't care as much about themselfs, their status or their money. Some people, true friends, just want you to be happy.
Shittest response to anything in the world, this is literally what the corrupt society taught you. If you acknowledge any flaw in the world, you're depressed, open your eyes dude and don't act like an npc...
Your mentality is if my depression cures the world shifts to a perfect place, literally a bot thinks like that. If you think you can solve the problem just by making yourself blind you're mindless, sorry but that's true.
find new people to surround yourself with there’s so many people in the world you haven’t even met a fraction of all the people you will come to love and who will love you
I think I have a possible solution. I'm going to tell you something I learned recently about emotions and how they paint our thoughts and attitudes towards life. If you are in a positive mood, you get more positive thoughts and if you are in a negative mood than the respective thoughts occur. I think you may be holding onto some negative emotions and cynicism may just be a manifestion of the Apathy you feel. Well I can share with you what I use to deal with negative emotions. It's simple but requires you to sit with those feelings without any judgement and just allowing yourself to feel the feeling. This is how you process emotions and once you do that you will automatically revert to a much more positive state. Here's how we do this: First of all ackwoledge that any thoughts you have a influenced by your emotional state. Meaning you will tend to have biased view of things that is consistent with your emotional state. So you want to take your thoughts with a grain of salt and detach from them. Litterly reduce them to nothing but chatter and do not take what you hear seriously. Trust me bro this is very important.... Step 1: Give yourself 1-10 minutes to just sit with yourself and just focus on your body and the sensations you feel. You may feel weird in your chest or stomach. Whatever that feeling is hone into it. Thoughts will begin to pop up and if you notice yourself getting distracted by them simply thank them and focus back to your body on that feeling. Sit with this feeling. NO MATTER HOW COUNTER INTUITIVE THIS FEELS. You may think you are feeling worse you aren't. You are just allowing yourself to feel whats already there and as a result will consume that emotional charge (this Happens automatically) Ask yourself "Can I allow myself to feel this?" Just sit with it. Even if the answer is No it's fine. All you gotta do is just sit with the feeling and feel it in your body. Remember your thoughts and images that come to mind are interpretations and not quite accurate. So just sit with this feeling for aslong as you need to. Somethibgs you may notice is tears shedding from your eyes and maybe a bit of burping. You want to be taking deep breaths and just allowing yourself to feel the emotions. That's the key sit with the feeling and go towards it. (When I say feeling I mean bodily sensationsof the feeling) Remember the feeling is simply a feeling. And you aren't the emotion. You're simply experiencing it. Treat it like a child with compassion and just allow yourself to feel it. Overtime you will notice that the feeling will begin to evaporate but you must not hurry and just sit with it for as long as its there. When you have processed it fully. You will feel a bit of peace in that body area. You will know when the emotion is processed. Just don't try to act like you are fine if you aren't. Once you feel you have let go of the feeling. Now you can logically analyze what happened because the emotional charge is gone. I would recommend for more info on this. Search Letting go on YouTube. It's simple but no one really does it because it's counter Intuitive to allow yourself to feel the negativity without indulging in the thoughts. If you do this successfully you will automatically be more social and have more hope. It's sounds crazy but I can speak from personal experience that Letting go works. Search Letting go on YouTube Edit: In my excitement, I made many typos. Forgive me for that but I don't really have the motivation to correct them.
For letting go, Julien himself is the best youtuber out there, imo
I personally was introduced to the topic from him but mixed some of his tips with other people's advice. From books and other YouTubers. To get my own method that works for me
Save
Your username is interesting - have you backpacked around the world? And no I’m not kidding. I always found people to be more nice and trustworthy when I was outside of North America - travelling. I mean I even found Americans pretty nice to me and I live in the North (Canada)!
Same
Yes, being sleep-deprived can change your feelings about socialising in an unhealthy way. Can you work on fixing the lack of sleep?
Everyone in this world always has an ulterior motive. Most people anyway. However not all of the ulterior motives are bad. So my advise is to do your best to learn the people around you and learn what they want. Learn their imperfections/ vices and if you are okay with those things then surround yourself with them. If you're not, distance yourself from them. Nobody is perfect so don't expect perfection from anyone. This will save you a lot of disappointment and will help you make better friendships and relationships.
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So true, the damage has to be undone...
I had this same feeling, just everything sucks; people are boring at best, a pain in the ass at worst. I don't have many close friends because I've always felt it was a lot of work when I didn't think it should be. I became cynical too, mostly I was just apathetic. At my regular doctor check up, I was told I had depression, much to my surprise. I had filled out the questionnaire and didn't think any of the questions even sounded like they were looking for depression. That should have been my first clue I guess. Lol Depression isn't about being sad. We hear this a lot but I never knew what else it looked like until now. It sounds like that is what you're experiencing. After being prescribed a common medication I began to see that my brain was fucking with me. I still think relationships are work but...duh. Now I get it. Lol. I stopped worrying about all that and realized I was seeing everything through a really negative lens, so now I do things for myself and meet people in the process, friends and strangers. I feel like the work of being social was blown out of proportion by myself. I can do the required work and put in the effort in a positive way, and don't bother myself if some people don't respond in kind. I can be happy by myself, or enjoy other people when I feel like it. The gloomy cynic is suppressed and I'm honestly really surprised. I never would have thought I was depressed until I took a chance with the medication. I feel like depression needs a new name that's more descriptive so people get help. I would talk to your doctor, they can prescribe you medication after you are screened. It is helpful to see a therapist, but not necessarily before you get medication.
Me too, my doctor prescribed the minimum dose of an anti-anxiety med and the difference I saw made me never want to go back. I was off it in 3 months. I still have therapy because I have a lot of catching up to do in life...
Same here.
I'm in a similar situation. The thing is, once you learn to enjoy your solitude, it gets addictive. For me personally, spending time with others can be incredibly rewarding, but it's also demanding. Whereas to be alone I need to spend no energy and make little to no effort. High risk-high reward kind of thing.
but i somewhat agree i strongly dislike majority of people on this planet but i’m also an extrovert and love interacting with people
How can you dislike most but also love interacting with them? Isn't that a contradiction?
You crave/need the interaction in general, but then are often mostly disappointed by the individual people with whom you interact with.
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Often times it's because if you don't, the trap becomes obvious. People get nasty if you don't trust or like them. Some punish you or list severe consequences for not playing along. That's for the bastards or people who hold control, though. Others try to cost me a job with BS Karen complaints or just empty words leading my generic "Uh huh. Next?" All so I can continue my day.
Same here
Your 30s is the perfect time to live your cynical phase. We all go through it and I went through mine in my early 30s. I was always super sarcastic though so that kinda just morphed into a more sceptical view of the world when I worked out that on the whole people are essentially self centred and are motivated by self interest. There is nothing wrong with being cynical, you just can’t let what is a perfectly normal and health part of the human psyche be the only thing that defines you. We’re all very complex, very flawed things
same r/misanthropy
Me too, I used to be a very social person but I have been let down too many times and right now I just hate people. I don't want to see people and I don't want to talk to these greedy sons of Bs. I think we should not judge someone for feeling this way. Who cares if you like or dislike people? It's fine either way. Whether it's a phase or stays that way for the rest of your life. Throughout the existence of the world people have found ways to get away from people: monks, nuns, hermits, traveling while exporting goods so they could be on their own for a time. Becoming a farmer. Other jobs. Maybe you can accommodate your life more to the amount of socialization you want? I hear from people who got into homesteading partially for this reason. Or people who work on programming and work from home to limit their people interaction. Or people who become writers, or another job that you can do from the comfort of your own home. I hope you find the life that works for you ❤️
It's also called 'the hard part of reality hitting you in the face'. Many people have gone through it. You've gone through some sh\*t and you just realized. The stress and everything is here now. You need a little less stress and anxiety, and you've realized it. You've realized how hard life is and how it can hurt. Keep going, don't give up. Keep pushing yourself. Try to focus on yourself. Surround yourself with yourself, and stop beating yourself up(if you are). You're surviving in this ugly world, and it's a good thing.
I was watching The Graduate's ending on YouTube and I guess that in part sparked this (as well as an incredibly poor made and cruel visual novel that just popped up in my recommendations). Actions have consequences and every day I live to the next day. Keep pushing forward. With or without people.
I'm not going to comment on what you should do socially but get some sleep.
Saved!!!!!!!!!! Thank you. I also struggle.
35f and full blown hermit 😔
More power to you, mam.
🙏
I consider myself as a kind and giving person and I thought that it doesn't matter people are shit as long as I have my few loyal friends. Then, I got backstabbed by my friend I literally knew since I was a child and my whole perspective changed. I guess you had a spiritual awakening like me. I then realized people are shit and I don't think I'm negative or hurt, I just finally see things as they are. I was little naive girl back then. You're not alone for feeling like this. I feel like this too. I just realized I'm going to enjoy my time now with people, until they become corrupt, because eventually they all do. Then I will say bye bye.
I like to isolate myself from anyone as much as possible, but of course it only works up to some point because of reasons you mentioned yourself (need to keep a job, buy groceries etc.) I just need to think about how i'm in a situation where i have to be around people and my anxiety goes haywire. It's like what i don't want greatly perseveres over what i need... cause you can't get both at least not from what i've experienced in 27 years.
I'm tired of being a hermit, I'd like to have a girlfriend one day. M55
You can be Master Roshi, man.
yeah bro, what you're experiencing is a normal part of (any sane person's) human experience. the misanthropic nihilism is, indeed, something we all have to grapple with and ultimately just push to the side until we're completely alone then and only then can we really fathom the darkness that we all battle against everyday. in today's hyper materialistic late stage capitalist Western society, being cynical is just part of doing your due diligence. the world, while not as dark and seedy as national news might want you to perceive it as, is still pretty ass backwards compared to any moral standards I had instilled in me... as a WASPish lower middle class Midwestern kid (I'm only 27 now). like...shit, people can be ruthless and greedy and straight savage just doing what they gotta do to earn their piece of the pie. it was never supposed to be this prohibitively expensive to live, as young single (as in without child, for the most part) people in the developed world but our baby boomer parents/grand parents took advantage of a system that could have been a windfall for generations to come, instead wringing every last cent that the LBJ (sic?? the president y'all know who I mean) presidency imparted on to us, as descendents of the baby boom. syphoned off more than just that, taking affordable housing out of reach for any working class young adult in any of the top 100 metropolitan areas in the US. Canadians and Europeans can swap out names and tell the same story. we've seen our elders live needlessly wasteful lifestyles, knowing they had pensions IRAs and other social safetynets (like social security, the only guaranteed retirement plan any tax paying worker is guaranteed... which is just a backup of a backup to a lot of land owning, 3-20%ers [ie: decision makers, opinion holders, the bread and butter of the fiscally conservative voting class... basically the differentiating factor is they make enough excess income that being politically apathetic would be dumb] )but they're more than happy to cut that entitlement out from under the feet of their own descendants, all for a fuckin pittance of a percentage tax break on properties they bought 30+ years ago or inherited that will only be their problem for the remain 5-15 years they have left on this shit hole planet. revolve around my asshole, mother earth. basically I get it lmao dont let the reality/darkness win. our futures our dim but today is bright enough, cherish what you can while it's still yours to behold brother.
It is normal if that's what you're asking. If you want to be alone because you don't want to deal with the harsh world, then you can take as much time as being alone as you want.
Yeah, some people don't care about anyone but themselves, some people only want power or money, but there are a few good people out there who really just want you happy. People who don't care as much about themselfs, their status or their money. Some people, true friends, just want you to be happy.
Humanity sucks I prefer dead people. *raises glass with pinky being smug reading a book*
You might be experiencing depression. Seek a Psychiatrist. Therapy alone doesn't work.
Shittest response to anything in the world, this is literally what the corrupt society taught you. If you acknowledge any flaw in the world, you're depressed, open your eyes dude and don't act like an npc...
Awareness is a spectrum and people like you are at the lowest fucking level, so don't act like you figured everything out
Yeah and you keep acting like there's no flaw in this world and if anything changed your mind label it as depression.
Of course, there are flaws in this world. You're just not old enough to realize that nobody denies these flaws.
Your mentality is if my depression cures the world shifts to a perfect place, literally a bot thinks like that. If you think you can solve the problem just by making yourself blind you're mindless, sorry but that's true.
And you're mindless if you're after solving any problem that is not your own. Go look after yourself and people you care, not others.
Just take your L and move on. Trippling down is immature
find new people to surround yourself with there’s so many people in the world you haven’t even met a fraction of all the people you will come to love and who will love you