Comment by Notatheist | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Notatheist | Hacker News Reader

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I feel like this stoic approach to dealing with problems is a fear of fear so overwhelming you abandon hope for the sake of comfortable stability. Hell, Seneca explicitly tells you to abandon hope (as does the author of this piece, although he stops short of telling you to commit suicide if life gets too difficult).

Instead of just being terrified as the eastern counterparts recommend, you deny it. Constructing a limit-case for every obstacle you face downplays your emotions, making them shrivel away so you can maintain a straight face through extended torture. I've spent the past two years undoing the damage that therapy did to me. Trying to get my ability to suffer back isn't something I ever thought I'd do but here I am. I'll have a brutal, soul-crushing failure turn me into a miserable sobbing pile of person long before I accept only being intellectually aware of all my setbacks without a shred of crippling emotion. If that means I don't have any "impressive accomplishments" because I was sitting in a corner in the fetal position wailing about my dead hamster, so be it.

I think it also depends on the type of therapy involved. There is a thing called intellectualization [1], which sounds similar do the thing you described. This is actually a coping mechanism and therapy should work to mellow or remove it and allow you to live your emotions.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectualization

All of my therapists have told me I have to feel the painful feelings, not try to escape them.

Doing that is another story.

But they have been very much focused on feeling emotions and not downplaying them, not being scared of unpleasant feelings. The therapist with a buddhist psychology background especially... it's like literally the opposite of where therapy has led you, they teach me that the fear of fear is worse than the fear itself, that the things we do to escape fear, or out of fear of failure, are worse than the fear itself or the failure itself, and can stunt our lives... quite what you are saying.

I'm sorry you had a bad experience with therapists.

> I've spent the past two years undoing the damage that therapy did to me.

I feel like our entire society will be spending decades undoing the damage that the “therapeutic” approach to mental health has wrought.

These are very sweeping statements about therapy without evidence or exposition.

As someone who fully believes I'm alive and typing today because of an excellent therapist, I'm curious to understand what you're referring to, and how it differs from my experience.

What do you mean by "therapeutic" here?

I found this comment very striking, and descriptive of my own experience, always trying to keep a straight face.

"cease to hope and you will cease to fear"

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