The Nirvana Fallacy

[Anarchy]

This one is so pervasive that it would be unfair to pin it to an individual comment in a thread.

It consists of comparing something real and imperfect; lets say me with PTSD, getting dumped by a girlfriend (It's an example, apart from a piece of paper saying that I'm still "married", I haven't had a relationship for several years)

with an imaginary perfect alternative; how perfect my life and relationships would be if I didn't have PTSD...

the refutation would be; people who don't have PTSD, get dumped too

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy
Sh!te happens, PTSD or no PTSD.
@

 

[anthony]

Sh!te happens, PTSD or no PTSD.

Absolutely. I get a little frustrated at times when people pin everything to some relation of PTSD, when in fact, PTSD has nothing to do with some things, but does others. I guess to me, it would be like going through life with blinkers on (horse blinkers), where your vision is focused narrowly and you can no longer see broader scope of whats in front of you.

 

[Sandstone]

There is a difference though. When things dumped on me from great heights pre-PTSD I handled them - the major ones like death of a child, end of a marriage, the intermediate ones like moving house, changing jobs, and all the little ones. Now, even tiny things take hours or days or rebalancing afterwards. It's not that PTSD caused them, it's that PTSD made me need so much support with them.

 

[Go Hungry]

Yeah, I get what you're saying. No life is perfect. But I do think that having PTSD can aggravate the situation. Perhaps it's no different in an empirical sense, but it certainly does play a factor in a person's life. It can be difficult to keep perspective on things. I think that's part of why it's so hard. Because there is no 'right' or complete answer to things. Wanting there to be one is itself a Nirvana fallacy. *shrug*

Good post. :)

 

[Friday]

This is something frustrating the hell out of me right now. Cause I can't just deal with a one off. It's not just one limp boneless body of someone I loved. It's every single damn person I ever loved, hell even some I hated, all piling on. It's everyone I didn't save, couldn't save, gave mercy. It's everyone I wished I could have given mercy and didn't, or should have and no f*cking way cause I'm not a nice person. It's the feeling of dead weight lolling, and having to adjust your grip, versus unconscious weight, not once, but every time. And the terror of not knowing which, and my legs not being able to go fast enough... When I know for damn sure and am sitting down. It's bawling my eyes out, when I don't cry. And it's wanting to set the world on fire, but there's no one to blame. When I'm the dry & gallows humor one. When other people are upset I'm the one that's effing calm. Except now I'm not. It's a relatively minor thing, or should be? Except it's not, and I'm gutted over it. Or maybe it shouldn't be minor? Or they shouldn't? Or should? Or? And my judgement about everything is out the damn window.

I don't know if this is nirvana fallacy or not. I don't know if it's PTSD or not. I just know that it is what it is, and I'm all f*cked up, so I've got to figure out some damn way to sort it. And the only way I know how to do that is to change the way my life looks. Whether it's extreme & go the f*ck away, because if I don't love people, I can't lose people I love... Or more staid... Having work, and friends, and ABCXYZ, and the distance & cushion distractions give. Or what. I just know that what I'm doing isn't working. So I need to do things differently, so they can be different.

I am sick and damn tired of overreacting, and under reacting, and not knowing which is which. And there just has to be something I can do to untangle this effing mess. Something has to work.

 

[holdenmonty]

What if you wrote it down on paper? Just write down every thought that is going around in your head. That is what I have to do a lot of the time then I can break them down into separate thoughts or realize that a whole bunch of thoughts are pretty much the same thing and can understand the thoughts and challenge them if they are a destructive thought pattern.