babauzhis Posted October 5, 2014 Posted October 5, 2014 Recently I've been having a lot of trouble making decisions. I come up with problems to which logic and evidence don't provide a clear answer for and I feel paralised. For example recently I've been thinking whether I should make effort to meet people. On one hand I would like to make friends, but on the other hand I'm not interested in having small talk and I feel like it is a waste of time, because most of the time it just ends in an akward silence and i don't get to know them anyway. At this point I'm thinking that the logical thing to do is to act on my gut feeling in every situation, but that doesn't satisfy me. I can't trust my feelings... For me trusting my feelings looks religious. A lot of people say they feel god in their heart and shit like that.. So I end up in this position where I can't come up with an answer using logic and I won't accept anything else. I get really manic about it and sometimes can't focus on anything else. I don't have money for therapy so it is up to me to solve this. Could anyone suggest what I should look into?
dsayers Posted October 5, 2014 Posted October 5, 2014 I get really manic about it and sometimes can't focus on anything else. Have you considered that this adversity may be a reaction to you essentially ignoring half of yourself? Feelings are not evidence of a deity; this is true. This does not mean that your feelings and emotions are useless. In fact, they can be quite helpful in terms of problem solving. Rational thought is a luxury only possible when the emotional part of our brain is satisfied we're not in danger. I speak of this in terms of self-preservation because we live in a world where rational thought is ostracized. For somebody to conceal that aspect of themselves to strangers for the sake of fitting in I don't feel is something worth holding against them. I think the more you pursue self-knowledge, the more you'll be able to know about others. And therefore the easier it will be for you to sift through whether or not a person is worthy of your time or not. Have you begun to process the traumas of your formative years? Have you studied how such things could alter your brain and influence your thoughts/feelings? For example, I'm guessing that the discomfort you feel with regards to your feelings was something that was inflicted upon you for the convenience of somebody that was abusive towards you. I don't know how valuable it would be for you, but Stef's An Introduction to Philosophy gave me a HUGE head start in learning about myself, how to think, and the truth about the traumas I didn't even realized were problematic.
Drew. Posted October 6, 2014 Posted October 6, 2014 I'm sorry to hear that, man. I know that you said that you don't have money for therapy, but I would like to put this out there that I offer reasonable rates. The emotions are a huge part of the human experience. Fear has helped us to avoid creatures and situations which could have killed or severely harmed us. Anger has told us when something has been taken from us. Our joy is our reward when we get something we want. Our sadness comes when we lose something important. We would not have emotions if they did not benefit us somehow. They would have been selected out through evolution if they harmed or offered us no benefit. Does it make sense to use less than all of your capacities to live a fulfilled life? How can emotions be beneficial? Anyway, that's really cursory. There is a great distrust of the feelings. I don't expect that my post will yield any kind of enlightening thoughts, but I do think that it's a good place to start in exploring these things.
Triangle Posted October 6, 2014 Posted October 6, 2014 For example recently I've been thinking whether I should make effort to meet people. On one hand I would like to make friends, but on the other hand I'm not interested in having small talk and I feel like it is a waste of time, because most of the time it just ends in an akward silence and i don't get to know them anyway. I don't see any particular need to commit to something big. I'd suggest you start with one small action to meet people, such as going to a single event, and then go home and think about how you felt about that. Plan your next action accordingly. The alternative is to not go out to meet people but the existence of this thread implies that not doing so would be an impediment to your happiness. If you cared enough to start a discussion on this, you're not going to magically stop caring in a few days, right?
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