EmperorNero

Yes, that is correct. No, I wouldn't say they made good decisions or were trustworthy. More like predictably irrational.

First of all, thank you so much for making this long reply. I greatly appreciate it. It does does feel good that someone seems to care enough to write this much. And making me think about this is valuable, even if you just offer an opinion. I will try to respond to the other posters, but writing is moving slow on this. Yes, through doing new things we change. But trying to change my self is what I've always done. The decision would come from a place of "I need to change myself because I'm not enough", and then that bad "energy" gets transferred into the future. But it's mostly that I would later know that the decision came from such a mood, and then I would not trust the activity and could not commit to it properly. I would always fear that I'm clinging to a bad decision just because we're creatures of habit and repeat what we did yesterday. So trying to change myself would be doing the same thing over and over. Not trying to change my self would be the new thing. Most alcoholics want to quit. The urge to change is part of the habit that maintains their use. E.g. it causes guilt for repeatedly breaking ones intention. Say he could stop trying to quit, the habit might implode, because a big part of what keeps it going is removed. I always think that. But as I mentioned, not listening to my thoughts has been thing. Let's say that is the case, what do I do about it? Yeah it's something on top of the real me, that shouldn't be there. That's why I feel I have to get rid of this influence before I make big decisions that project themselves several years into the future. Making choices because I have to do something was precisely the problem in my past. Exactly. It would be the prefect reason to ensure I don't do anything. Ultimately, I think all my mind-chatter is just backwards rationalizing the habits I happen to have. That's how our minds really work; our subconscious does stuff and then we invent reasons why we did it. Stef said this. In my case, I have the habit of being remarkably avoidant, and mistrust of my decisions is how my brain rationalizes it. I do notice that I have trouble making decisions. It's like crossing the Rubicon of deciding is too hard. It's like moving a giant rock in my brain. My brain doesn't have the energy sometimes. Good question. I don't know. Possibly my parents. I do know for a fact that my dad likes me to not be too confident. He likes to pretend being something he's not and as long as I was in a bad state, he could manipulate me into confirming his lie. I am doing better than most people in that I'm aware there is a problem. Other people seem to just push through the misery because they "have to". They keep themselves busy to distract themselves from their feelings. That might have been necessary up to the 20th century, but I refuse to just be miserable. I actually think that is what we have in common here on FDR, we are not more messed up than the general population, we are the vanguard because they are aware of there being a problem and dealing with it. Well, because I'm not sure I'm doing the right thing. I am making is progress, but it's slow. At this pace I'll be old before I get a life. I'm exaggerating. The last time I came here for advice, about a year ago, it made a huge difference.

True. But the mistrust doesn't just come from failure. I was being brief. In many ways I'm doing way better than most people. That I'm not in statist groupthink, for one thing. It's more that I have an inherent mistrust of human rationality, because I'm more honest about it. Other people act irrationally, they are conditioned by groupthink or happenstance, but they pretend they want it that way. I'm just more aware of my limitations. Sadly, this has in a way crippled me with distrust about my decision-making. We all need some positive illusions. I thought I was being vague for privacy reasons. But you might be right that I am hiding my story to avoid responsibility. But there actually wasn't that much bad stuff in my childhood. None of it was the kind of horrible abuse that I hear some people on FDR talk about. I just don't trust myself at all. I personally judge that my issues have relatively recent origins. It's habits and conditioning I built in my late teens and early twenties. I just got pushed into a corner where I couldn't perform, and now I have no expectation of being capable of making anything happen. But it's not about my childhood so much. It's true that I have little attachment to my history, no emotion to draw from it. I don't know why that is so. That sentence caught be my surprise. Because, yes, my problem is that I tend to abstract everything. I've never connected this to any cause within my history. Mental health professionals have said that I only have access to my feelings on this meta-level. I'm thinking abstractly about having the feeling, rather than having it. And in a way my life is entirely devoid of "first hand" emotions. Yes exactly, I'm disconnected. "The self" is this thing inside me that I have to deal with. It's not me, it's a problem, a nuisance. I keep having to deal with this self-thing that needs to be made sane, get a job and girlfriends. But I don't want to. My self is like a broken leg; a problem I want to heal with as little time and effort as possible. Something I wish I didn't have to deal with. Maybe you're right, it's not trying to destroy me. It sure seems like it's trying to hold me back though, keep me out of the crossfire. It's terrified. I don't know how to not ignore it, because I don't know which part it is.

Sorry, I've been avoiding it because it's hard. I'm working on a response right now. Thanks for everyones input.

You are right that I mostly look at myself when analyzing this. Sure, my issues were caused by my parents and forced school, but what does that matter now? I'm in my late 20's, what's the point of identifying the fault in other people? I pretty much know what went wrong there; the same that went wrong for everyone else in the late 20th century. I hate conceptualizing myself as some consequence of my early past, I did a lot of stuff since then.

Good example. It was definitely a good thing that I joined, but I never really rationally made the decision to to so. I suppose brainstorm good decisions I made, as I seem to not recognize them properly.

I successfully overcame the very issues you talk about this year. And yeah, that's how you do it. Also, you will notice yourself change the more you go out and talk to people, so try it.

That's a remarkably good question. I had to think for a while, because I couldn't come up with anything. For some reason my brain doesn't seem to even register good decisions. In a way, no. I'm not particularly glad of any conscious decision I can think of. All the big core choices that really define me, like that school or this girl, made me miserable. Even when I succeeded, I think I would probably have been much better of with the alternative. There was lots of good stuff that happened to me, of course, but that always just happened without me rationally making a decision. What I decided with words in my head, I'm pretty sad about.

Oh, you talk yourself out of it, I see. I'm no mental health professional, so you shouldn't blindly take my word for it, but my first advice is do a lot of breath focus meditation, to reduce that negative self-talk. Just look up a guide online. You will notice that that inner chatter isn't really voluntary and you don't have to listen to it. Just go out regardless of what it says. Make it suck, who cares. You have the right to be weird. In fact, you have to collect 1000 weirdness-points before you can move on to the next level. So the more you get the better! As long as you don't get yourself beaten up or arrested it's fine. You will notice, people are pretty sheepish and nobody cares what you do. Then, go out and talk to people... and fail. Start slow. If you have barriers, reduce the difficulty. If you have to, just ask loads of old ladies for the clock. Then move on to short conversations. Just doing a few conversations unstifles your brain. Aim to fail, that's how you improve. The best advice I ever got on the topic is: "You know that guy in the bar who is drunk and just starts blabbering? Be that guy." The issue here is that we are so conditioned by society to be predictable. We are trained from our earliest days to never make people think. At the coffee shop, please stand in line quietly, look to the ground and don't do anything that might force people out of their auto pilot. Everyone, from parents to teachers, wanted us to be one thing: manageable. We're supposed to be like eggs: all the same shape and placed in neat rows for easy storage. It's not that we think that being weird will turn out badly for us, that's just the brain rationalizing what we are conditioned to do. It's that we are too fucking polite to not be a zombie. People want you to be easily understood. They don't want to process new stuff. But as a human being you have the right to be that undefineable shit that they don't understand. I mean, they see themselves qualified to force statism down your throat, why should you be so damn polite?

What is it that practically keeps you from having friends and relationships? Do they reject you or are you too anxious to ask? I can interact with people, but it feels like a chore. I don't get the point of it and I get no enjoyment out of it. So I don't really feel particularly motivated to go out and interact. I'm curious what keeps someone who does seem to have the desire from just walking out and talking to people for, say, a few hours a day.

Let's just say there's been a lot of failure in my history. Both personally and professionally. Now I have an immense mistrust of my own decision-making faculties. I don't trust myself to make decisions at all, because I expect them to be bad. The thing I am has made all these bad decisions, if I let it pick a career path or commit to a hobby that would just transfer this horrible current self into the future. It's like making decisions when you're in a bad mood; you transfer that mindstate into the future. The solution is to not make decisions until you feel better. And that has worked really well for me. But I don't see this mistrust ending and at some time I need to start doing shit. Got any thoughts or advice? I appreciate any input, even if it's just throwing something out of the top of your head.

Do you actually feel lonely, or just abstractly feel you should connect? I don't have many connections either, but I don't get lonely.

Sounds like you have a lot of meditation ahead of you.

I've read that the pain of being ostracized piggybacks onto the same pain neurons that are used for feeling physical pain. Although later I read that's not really true. Depends who you ask, I guess. Here's a really interesting article on how being ostracized gives you low willpower.

For some reason I think like that. I identify myself through my actions. I am the thing that does X. If I want to do X, but I can't do it, then I am the thing that is not capable of doing X. I didn't do X until yesterday, so I am the thing that did not achieve X within my early twenties. I can do it now but that does not change that I am the thing that couldn't do it in my early twenties. That, I will forever be. The thing that could do X in it's early twenties is better than the thing that could not do X in it's early twenties. It's like an apple. It contains this much of that vitamin. The apple that contains less of the vitamin is less good/useful/valuable. I know its a silly thought pattern, but how do I get rid of it?