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Comment by lordfrito | Hacker News Reader

Thank you for this. I can completely relate. Something about sadness making you feel alive. And being stuck for years not grieving, not knowing how, or even knowing that's what you need to do.

The challenge of being stuck like that is that you can't really communicate that or share it in a meaningful way with other people.

I wonder sometimes if it's a self imposed purgatory.

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Yeah there is really no way to "do" grieving. I have been crying on and off late in the evening in recent years - but only with a few channels on YouTube I like.

I think it is a body based process ultimately so reason doesn't help. It seems that music really helps to move emotion.

Snatam Kaur has always been very helpful, especially when I feel more disconnected. Always come back to her. All her music is free on YoUTube pretty much. Here is one of my favorites

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLpWqulUgtk

I also love Trout and Coffee. Something about the channel, the family, friendships, nature ... his cabin videos are amazing. The music on his earlier videos has really helped me cope with those emotions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbZu4gXg-7w

PS: also one of my favorites is this channel "TABI-IE", really soothing..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpWcZOPhFwU

I have noticed no matter how safe a person makes me feel for example Steve Wallis camping videos - I don't think I've ever cried while watching one of his videos. It's really the music coupled with something that feels genuine, that helps move emotion (but I guess this could vary a lot from people to people).

Ayahuasca can be a huge boon for processing grief. Sometimes you are mentally over it, but it is indeed still stuck in the body. Psychedelics can help what you cognitively know to percolate through the body.

Genuine question: if grieving is, ultimately, thinking about the experienced loss, isn't melancholy the exact same thing, but experienced through rose-tinted glasses?

I think grieving is more about accepting the loss than just thinking about it. You can move on once you've accepted the loss, and really feel that acceptance of it. It's about letting go of things you can't have.

Melancholy to me is like feeling both the good and the bad simultaneously. Not just the rosy part as you asked. And also I think there's a sublime aspect to it, something about understanding the mystery and all it's aspects. There's a sublime clarity in melancholy.

I do think you can get stuck in melancholy, when you should be grieving.

Also the article really makes me think that nostalgia is potentially a very dangerous emotion. We all feel it, but I think it's a retreat from a suffering you're facing, an avoidance mechanism. All growth comes from suffering, so by avoiding suffering you get stuck when you should be growing. Still it's very hard to let go of the stuff that was good in our youth, like the feeling of opening up that Nintendo on Christmas when you were ten.

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