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0 pointsanon90016y ago0 comments

Maybe? Let's say I had a kid that got kidnapped, and I spend all night restless like a normal human being. Where has that actually gotten me? And if the kid never comes back, what's an appropriate "normal human" duration of restlessness?

People go to therapy for years to get over that restless stuff and replace it with some version of accepting that the world is not under your control.

No doubt that upsetting things are upsetting, but the guiding principle is that you have to accept the things you can't control, and do the best with the things you can control.

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coldtea6y ago

>Maybe? Let's say I had a kid that got kidnapped, and I spend all night restless like a normal human being. Where has that actually gotten me?

People don't respond to things just because it "gets them somewhere", and even less for such events.

One doesn't do a calculation "I'll grieve for X amount of time, because this has the best effects", except if they are a sociopath.

At best they can say after some time "I feel like I've grieved enough now, I should try to get back with life" -- and even that is not a decision, it's a gradual process with regressions, etc.

anon9001OP6y ago

We're in agreement. I'm just saying the goal is to process events, grieve, and find a path back to "normal". Where, ideally, "normal" isn't constant anxiety and existential crises. Eventually, you have to learn to let even the most traumatic stuff go, or it'll haunt you forever.

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