If I just happen to hurt people, especially those I love, real hard, why shouldn’t I just kill myself then?
You must log in or register to comment.
Okay, I know that this will sound silly, but I’ll use my cat as an example.
She does nothing but sleep, eat, shit. She’s rather defensive of her personal space, and often hurts us for that. 3AM she woke me up with loud noises because she wanted to play. The floor, my clothes, my keyboard, there’s cat hair everywhere, and without her I’d probably need to clean a fraction of what I do.
Would I get rid of her? FUCK NO. Because even if she’s annoying, I still love her and I want her around. It would be certainly better if I didn’t get those annoyances but hey, nobody is perfect. And she gives me happiness on the small things, like when she headbutts my leg or “mrrown-wown?” at me.
It’s perfectly possible that you are in a similar situation as my cat. Except that, as a human being, you understand that you’re hurting people, and you can reflect on your behaviour and change it for the best of the ones around you. But it’s still perfectly possible that you’re underestimating the positive impact that you have in their lives. And at the end of the day, we all are like this, our social interactions are usually a mix of positive and negative.
Thankyou for saying this ❤️ that brought tears to my eyes
I reject the premise of your question. Human judgment is inherently biased and cannot be implicitly trusted. I believe it is likely that you hurt people from time to time, as everyone causes such pain and injury from time to time. However, I distrust the idea that you cause nothing but pain. An absolute conclusion like that would require absolute, unequivocal, objective evidence to prove, and I have zero reason to suspect you are some sort of omnipotent being capable of acquiring such evidence.
The most likely conclusion from the available evidence is that your ability to recognize your own value is somehow compromised. A rational course of action when you cannot trust your own senses is to reject those senses. If you can’t trust yourself to fairly evaluate your own actions, you can reverse the process. Identify an action that does not cause harm, but rather, helps someone, somewhere.
For this exercise, it is important that the action be small. The smaller the better. You aren’t trying to save the world here; you are trying to recalibrate your ability to recognize the value of your actions. Any idiot can see the “good” in saving a baby from being torn apart by a rabid dog. Not everyone can see the good in picking up a piece of litter. Not everyone can see the good in kicking a rock off a sidewalk, so a kid doesn’t trip on it. Not everyone can see the good in pushing in a chair, or wiping the water off the counter in a public bathroom.
Go perform a tiny, objectively good act, right now. The smaller the better. The least significant act you can possibly imagine.
One of two things will happen: either you will see the tiny, positive value in that act and recognize that you don’t just cause harm; or you will not see that act as “good” (or “good enough”) and you will objectively know that your sense of personal value is not properly calibrated.
It’s really easy to think that you’re a burden because of x, y, or z when, in reality, the people around you don’t notice or care about x, y, or z.
It’s also possible that the people around you are actually burdening you by ignoring your needs, and you happen to feel guilty because you’re being manipulated.
If you have undeniable proof that you hurt other people significantly, and a random stranger would agree that there’s no justification for the harm you caused, then see a psychiatrist. It seems to me that you have good intentions but have something that’s stopping you from being your true self. A psychiatrist and/or a therapist can help you remove those barriers.
Suicide devastates a lot more people than you realize, so if you want to do it for other people, you shouldn’t do it at all. If you want to do it for yourself, I think you should give yourself another shot by starting meds and seeing a therapist. It’s wild how much of a difference it makes.
If you want more info on mental healthcare, check out HealthyGamer/Dr. K on YouTube and Twitch. His medical input is US-centric, but he’s a really good resource.
May I ask in what way you think you’ve hurt others? Hopefully they know you are as human as they are.
Well I’m causing a lot of grief by trying to heal and struggling through the emotional&mental confusion I have from past things, and I’m hurting them because I’m doubting them, and it feels so horrible to me to experience myself that way so that I think/feel
How dare you u/TheLemming, that you don't trust those exact people that already invested so much effort into you!?!! How Dare You!!So that’s the whole extent of your hurting others? That you don’t trust them and you think it’s the wrong call not to trust them?
I think it’s okay not to trust people. Distrust is a useful thing. Sometimes it might get pointed in the wrong direction but you can fix that.
Maybe you’ve had reasons to distrust people in the past. Maybe you still do.
If people put a lot of effort into you, does that mean they must be trustworthy? Maybe there’s someone who’s put a lot of effort into you, but they haven’t put a lot of effort into themselves to be the kind of person you can easily trust.
The main point is that you are allowed to trust according to your own model of trust. What you’re doing is called invalidating your own feelings, and you need to honor your own sense of trust and distrust. It’s not a disease you’re carrying it’s a natural part of your mind, and it’s a necessary part of being alive to trust and to distrust, and to make your own decisions about that.
Maybe someone has been guilt tripping you, and maybe it’s got your head all mixed up about whether you’re allowed to feel what you feel. That does happen sometimes.
Hypothetically, if someone asked you how they could earn your trust fair and square, what would you say to them?
Maybe with
Well then please give me the chance to doubt you, please allow me to doubt you, … for three months. To learn through your consistency that I’m in a different world now! Please. I need it ❤️
It’s a tough question, honestly… I don’t know how to answer it actually 😭
spoiler
shit’s too real
If I doubted them, that behavior is unacceptable to me. Like, right a couple of hours ago - I thought how could I doubt them, what kind of … who’d do such an “evil” thing?! maybe they do have my trust already, otherwise I wouldn’t try to process my trauma with them 🙈 I can’t stand myself causing even the littlest annoyance in anyone’s world
Well, you might have trusted this person with your trauma because you were foolish. Just because you trusted someone before doesn’t mean you are obliged to continue trusting them.
Far more than you owe anyone else trust, you owe your own self trust. You owe your trust to … your own sense of trust.
If you don’t feel that a person is trustworthy, you must trust that feeling. Trust is not, primarily, a social signal you use to be polite to others. You never owe anyone your trust more than you owe it to yourself to trust or distrust honestly.
What I’m hearing from you is a conflict between a part of you that does not trust someone, and another part of you that thinks you owe them trust and are rotten for not giving it to them.
There are two potential forms of harm at play here:
- The harm of feeling insulted or sad that another experiences when they see that you do not trust them.
- The harm of being unable to avoid danger, seek joy, find people you truly connect with, and feel secure in life that you experience if you sacrifice your personal sense of trust/distrust to protect another’s feelings
You seem to be totally ignoring #2. Perhaps you don’t know how much you’re endangering your sense of trust by trying to play people pleasing games with it. Perhaps you don’t know how utterly valuable and life enhancing it is to have an intact ability to assess trustworthiness, and the vow to live by that sense.
For whatever reason, you’re really devaluing your own feelings to weigh another person’s claim on your trust, more heavily than you weigh your own natural sense of trust or distrust.
Develop it and be skeptical of it by all means, but please don’t abandon it or be ashamed of it. You’re allowed to distrust people.
deleted by creator
What puts you in a dark place today? Maybe just maybe I have something you might value.
deleted by creator
It’s alright, there’s no rush. My first instinct would’ve been to help with money, but you mentioned you didn’t want to do online philanthropy (which there’s no shame in asking for, if you ever change your mind).
Your community sounds incredibly insensitive, with how your extended family and community treats you. There is strength in numbers and you only have two people in life. If leaving is out of the question, I would gather everyone else who disagrees with how the community is run. There must be more, and every hole in a bad system must be exploited, in every sense of the word. A system that is reliably bad can be relied on to be bad in one’s favor. I might disagree with other Lemmings on most things, but they’d be surprised at how familiar I am with the system.
In times like these (which I can at least partially relate to), the one thing I’m grateful for is my dog.
Purely philosophically, that something happens/exists doesn’t mean we have to do anything about it. I’m sure that’s not helpful, but like…there’s optimistic nihilism.
Optimistic nihilism views the belief that there is no underlying meaning to life from a perspective of hope. It’s not that we’re doomed to live in a meaningless universe–it’s that we get the chance to experience ourselves and the universe we share.
So, you hurt people. Okay. Do what you can to genuinely apologize and make amends. And if that means confronting yourself about how you perpetuate a cycle of hurting others and shaming yourself for it, then do that to break the cycle.
Because if you just so happen to be a joy to everyone around you, then why shouldn’t you just live for as long as you can to share that joy?
And there’s also existentialism that basically says that we have the ability and the need to create our own meaning and value in life.
A small dose of existentialism or nihilism has certainly helped me get through hard times, because both make me realize that the meaning of life is totally subjective. We all have the potential to decide what value life has and whether it has meaning or not.
In any case, I find that it’s enough to simply exist and survive through hard times, but life is better if I’m doing something that makes me happy. Its never too late to change yourself and start doing things that are less hurtful to yourself and others. In fact, today is a great day to turn things around.
deleted by creator
Your life is valuable as well. And you can live it without hurting anyone.
Step one - stop doing it. If you are hurting someone, move as far away from them as you can. Yes you will lose them, but that’s inevitable.
Step two - create a new life for yourself, away from any people or situations that caused problems before.
