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crypticway

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  1. I appreciate what you've said, and the link you've provided. If you could, could you provide me with some more information on your experience with Dr. Hurd either on the radio, as a newsletter/book, or personal experience if any?
  2. I've been thinking these things over. And I've been researching sense of life. I've been trying to determine what is my constant emotion/importance underlying my thought process, that is within my subconscious. The emotion that helps make up the integral sum of my personality. It's hard to describe but I've identified a 'happy sadness'. I'm sad about a LOT of things when I think about them or observe them. At the same time when I use my imagination a little or I think of times I've been happy, or even when I get happy, I can feel happy. However, that happiness is hinged on some appreciation of a fragility of whatever I'm observing, whether it's the fragility of a relationship, a situation, a person, or an object, etc. And that's sad. For example, when I observe people growing older, particularly through their teens I am saddened and a little frightened. Or when I consider my happy childhood, I am saddened by how special it was but I'm also happy. When I observe animals I'm saddened by their fragility or lifespans, but uplifted by their beauty. When I think of who I am, I am mostly saddened. For a while I was very angry trying to make up for this sadness, but the more angry I was the more suicidal I was. So that didn't help. When I accepted that I'd just feel sad or disturbed about some things I started to feel more in tune with myself and I had a small sense of relief. Yet the sadness didn't go away. So what does a person do with a sad sense of life? Is it possible to have a sad sense of life? Is it possible to 'change' your sense of life?
  3. He has no regard for his own life, but he may still have regard for others. He *could* have no regard for others lives, but that's independent of whether he has regard for his own. Not valuing your own life, which exists, is different than not valuing other's lives.
  4. I almost replied in total misunderstanding of what Mindy wrote but then I realized I was not understanding the whole thing. Thanks for the replies! I have one question though... how would I go about determining as close as humanly possible whether I have something physiologically awry with my brain chemistry? I don't see this happening through my nurse practitioner or therapist if it is the case of say like an fMRI or something. They would probably discourage it as unnecessary, and I don't really have funds to do something so possibly elective, though it's not totally out of the realm of possibility. I'll have to talk to my nurse practitioner about it I guess, but I think I can foresee her answer.
  5. I've been into and familiar with Objectivist philosophy and ethics since I was a pre-adolescent, adolescent, young adult, and now an adult. I may not have understood it all when I was younger, but it was around me. Growing up I was always so sure of myself, had barely any self doubts, was very driven in my own pursuits, and didn't seem to really 'think about life' (more on this)... instead I would experience it. When I entered college I broke down completely and attempted suicide. I was almost diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, but in the end I was diagnosed with Bipolar (Type II?) Since then I've been on medication and have continually seen therapists. For a while I did really well, held a job for an extended period of time (living at home). Then I moved out, and any time I'm not living at home I have trouble finding or holding a job. I am 27 and five/six years ago I met my partner and that's when I moved out. I'm gay, but I don't think it really makes a difference other than it affected some of my experiences growing up (such as my inability to truly *date* in high school, just carry superfluous relationships), and what we'll get to later. Then I met a horrible person three/four years ago who took advantage of my mental illness and schemed me out of a lot of money. By the time I kicked him out of my life, he was my best and truly only friend outside of my partner. That was really hard, but he had helped transform me into a mean person, and I wasn't going to take it anymore. I'm not mean anymore. Since then it's been downhill in terms of self-esteem and self-value. Last year I started experiencing 'shock obsessions'. I would become shocked about something, usually sexual (I can't go into any more detail, it's too much for me to say specifically), that usually was something happening out there in the world but not in my immediate life. I would become obsessed for days, weeks, and constantly have high anxiety. It was like the feeling of being horrified, but it doesn't go away for days on end. It put a strain on my relationship with my partner, and still does. I was prescribed a medication for 'atypical psychotic intrusive thoughts', but these thoughts still 'intrude' on my thinking daily/weekly. I just am better able to handle them emotionally. It could be linked to a bizarre sexual experience I had when I was 23 (unfortunately I can't say more here) that warped some of my immediate relationships in my own mind. As I said before, this has been going on for a year, which is a long time. I thought the hardest part of my mental illness was behind me when I was 18. For the last year I've been descending back into what I used to experience when I was 18/19, but much worse. Every day I can't not think about how the world is changing in certain ways, particularly sexual/media matters, or that disturbing things exist out there, and it gets to me. I've tried to ignore it, 'just stop thinking and get over it' as my partner has said after running out of things to say, but it seems impossible. He says I have to train my mind, and I try, but all I can seem to do is only try to control my emotional reactions to my thoughts. My thoughts, for all purposes, beyond my control. On top of that I believe I'm useless. I'm weak, and I should be eliminated from the herd. I am a broken man, seemingly incapable of full rationality (I'll elaborate in a bit). It's become just beyond a belief, but a reality to me that I am so small. I feel like a little boy trapped in a man's body, I feel like the guy who deserves to get beat up by bullies, that nature has destined me to fail, that I am nothing and sometimes I cry wishing I never existed so bad. I feel like I've failed at every virtue of Objectivism except honesty and integrity, and that that's all I have left. I'm not rational, I'm not truly productive (no job or significant value producing consistent commitments), I'm not independent in the slightest emotionally or economically, I have no pride, and I have taken advantage of others (in my eyes) to support me (even if they value me enough to do it on their own free will). Despite being gay, and having a partner, I find myself wanting to know if women find me attractive, or having the intellectual desire to have sex with middle aged women as if to prove to myself I have reason to exist. That I am really a man after all. However, I am so afraid of women, this will never be so. My partner is an Objectivist as well, and we have argued at lengths for a year as to why none of this is true, that there is no genetic destiny, that social darwinism is a farce, but it never seems to help long term. I try so hard to believe it, but somebody will say something, or something will happen and I'll fall right back in full force. I've gotten so angry before that I was fuming for 36 hours. Every day I try to do things that I like, like baking sweets, or playing the piano, or helping my father with the ditches or the cows, and that brings a little respite for a while. However, it seems that even when I let everything go, and I am just me... I hate existing at some level. I don't want to continue. I can't commit suicide, it is not an option for me. I just hate being human. I think of all my cells, and of life, and of the destruction and creation and survival of all living things and I just want to hide away inside myself where no one can reach me. I look at Objectivism, the one thing I've always believed in and I sometimes recoil in horror at the hero worship. Sometimes I find myself hating people who are just 'naturally better', or in other words, aren't born with things like Bipolar or other life difficulties, or who just seem smarter, or whatever. I know these kinds of thoughts and emotions are irrational. However, I have found very little around Objectivist halls or circles in my own searching about the 'average'. I am an average person with an above average intelligence. I am not a hero in any sense I can find. Thus, to me, I feel there is no place for me in Objectivism... so sometimes I think what else should I think? And I have zero answers... I plod through each day trying to enjoy it, and sometimes I do, but at the end and underlying my every action is a sense of ending my life as I know it, of just not existing anymore, of a not just a hatred... an actual pain of my soul. I think of people who have chronic physical pain... is it possible to have chronic pain of the soul? Do I just have to learn to live with it? I've been in therapy for six years, and it's helped me get better at some things, but I've been around the block with many different models and therapies and nothing seems to make the pain go away... Is this just something that everybody has and nobody talks about? I'm running out of Objectivist answers, and find myself in my darker moments running away from it... but I don't truly want to. What do I do?
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