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Living every day as if it’s your last

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As I have improved, positive thinking hurts less. I have a couple books. When I feel down I can't read them, they are spiritual/motivational. When I was depressed, it made me want to kill myself. I didn't understand why I couldn't think/read/practice my way out of it. As depression lifts, it becomes easier. I have anxiety still. It makes everything look black but it passes. Depression is different. I'm not depressed, though I am afraid when I remember it. I hope you feel better.
 
Quality not quantity. (sorry for the cliche I know you hate them) I'm sure your son would rather shoot hoops with you when you're feeling good. Not when you have a headache and don't really want play. Then you'd have two people not feeling good.

You did the right thing by getting some rest. And he got to play with his friends.Win, win. And I'm sure you told him you love him before he left the house.

No advice here. Sorry!
 
Totally agree with @scout86 's post, but I can't quote it all (too bad :) ).

Though I can see it as being influenced or magnified by depression, for me it comes more from straight-up lived experiences and fear. Fact.

However, another work around I thought of is this: the intention (even of the motivational posts) is to live life to the fullest, with the most joy. The way I see it, the end result has to match the intention of the efforts. These analogies aren't the greatest, but for example: you don't make a party or birthday because you love someone and then end up so tired you can't celebrate with them; you don't go to church to learn about how to love more strongly and give the finger to someone who backs out of the parking stall poorly as you leave; you can't appreciate the 'now' when focused on the other's death or yours. Etc. Just like the self-blame or fear after is not energy-giving but torturous. I think, too, that's where depression/ exhaustion/ illness could be adding to it.

FWIW my sister's bf thought it was weird we give each other a kiss when we part- he doesn't get it. But now, he feels 'shortchanged' if he doesn't get one to. It's awareness, gratitude, dotting the i and crossing the t on the Love Equation.

I suppose it is a fuller way to live/ more genuine? (Subtracting the silly quotes; such as:- "Dance like no one is watching!" -> should be "Dance if you want and have fun, and don't feel badly if you don't like or don't want to dance! ffs" IMO lol :) )
 
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This post is enlightening. I've found the same. I've read a lot of positive self help books & find them wildly unrealistic.

My Dad sends me things like this constantly & it winds me up, I now get why.

I am beginning to learn that balance is crucial & too much positive thinking can be as bad as negative self talk, especially for someone who has PTSD.
 
(I should maybe make my own thread about this of some sort, not sure if this is not OT or too general)

I am not sure if it is just the quote positive thinking and not understanding the depth of the issues, though. As in that positive thinking stuff is from a wildly different experience frame, it is like telling someone to put a bandaid on a cut off limb while they are trying to protect someone dear to them. Not only unrealistic, but actively unhelpful in the situation, and distracting from the severity of the issue one is dealing with.

Because feeling guilty and sick to the bone over not protecting someone 24/7 or not being There enough is nowhere near feeling guilty over, I dunno, forgetting a friends birthday, or those Just happens, Just life, things. It is a different sort of guilt, sadness, grief, rage at what makes it happen. And a different powerlessness that is hard to reframe.
 
Yep. It’s all very much in line with -although different- the example I sometimes give about trying to do laundry whilst your house is on fire. You don’t DO your laundry whilst your house is on fire. You grab your loved ones and you get the hell out of the house. The sheer level of exhaustion it creates to calmly wash clothes as everything inside me is saying the house is on fire, when you know it isn’t -or probably isn’t- is :confusing:

Eat, drink, be merry... for tomorrow we may die.

If you know you’re going to die tomorrow? Or that someone you love may be dead tomorrow? You live... differently. Or I do, at any rate. The petty bullshit? Doesn’t matter. Long term plans? f*ck em! They’re not real. Now is real. All we have is now, this minute, this last time. For real, why the f*ck would you not seize every last possible moment you can... when it’s all about to end? When it could end at any moment?

It gets very, very hard to wrap my head and heart around the idea that tomorrow is real.

That this isn’t my last chance.

That I’m not blowing it, by not going balls out in everything that I do. By living as if I’ve still got time. As if there will be another chance to play ball, or make breakfast, or laugh across a fire, or... do anything... ever again.
 
If you believe that after death there is a spiritual continuation and eventually a reunion with those you love, it can really take the pressure off. My T once told me that we are all equipped to survive, and then one day we don’t. We both laughed about it, we were dealing with a mass shooting nearby and she was part of the crisis team, and for whatever reason, telling me that was very comforting. I think that just living our life as if the next day we will still be alive is a better approach. Gives ourselves a reason to be positive and hopeful.
 
I would not find that useful: I don't feel equipped to live, and I have no idea what today or tomorrow holds, so my brain and heart wouldn't believe that.

Similarly , though I believe in something after, that does little to reduce grief, or in my mind it hasn't been much lost. But does an 'afterwards' exist? Maybe- maybe not. Would I get there? Maybe- maybe not. Are others there? Maybe- maybe not. Would they want to see me? Maybe- maybe not. Would I even want to get there- with my own shame, and with memory dwindling, or too much? Maybe- maybe not. It's rather like one foot is not here anyway, and neither seems applicable.

I don't think that that kind of knowledge can be undone. Only worked around.
 
Similarly , though I believe in something after, that does little to reduce grief
This.

It can also add additional layers of grief and other issues. As in, if that person is still out there, somewhere, I cannot even do right by them *right now* by living right, am not and will not be worthy of them in that After, stellar: failed them in life and would just continue doing it, or if still here: Not being and doing enough to keep them, so that great after is not control, is not something that can actually help, more just time laughing its ass off at incapable me and a point in existence that is not even sure (and cannot be secured.)

(Hope that makes sense, having a hard time to put feelings around that to words and words into something coherent.)
 
As in, if that person is still out there, somewhere, I cannot even do right by them *right now* by living right, am not and will not be worthy of them in that After
I've only found one way to deal with that, that doesn't just end up being me, beating myself up. I ask myself "What would they think?" Or feel? Or want me to do now? Sometimes, I suppose, we don't know that. Sometimes we can have a pretty good idea. In one very special case, I know the answer because that friend wrote it out and had it read at his funeral. You know what he said? He said he wanted us all to go out and live every day, as best we could, and appreciate the world a little bit for him too. I made some huge mistakes where he was concerned, and have plenty of reasons to feel I'd let him down. (Mostly because I did.) But he kind of gave me a way out, and I use it. And with the other people I've let down, disappointed, failed in some way, I try to do the same thing. I remember the reasons I loved them, the lessons they taught, the things they liked or hated, what they valued, and I try to honor that stuff as I go through the world. I don't know that it counts for a darn thing in the grand scheme of the universe, but it makes things seem a bit more like they have meaning.
 
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