Ask HN: What are you suffering from? How do you cope with your suffering? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What are you suffering from? How do you cope with your suffering?

6 pointsde_or_ca8 comments

Hello,

I've been suffering lately. And feeling rather frustrated and demoralized by it.

It comes largely from pain from various injuries: a shoulder injury, RSI, bad knees. Some were the result of poor judgement. Others just bad luck. I also have tinnitus from a firecracker that went off by my head when I was 17 (we can heap that one into the "bad judgement" pile).

I'm in my mid-30s, but feel like I blew my body out by the time I hit my late 20s. I catastrophize the affect these ailments have on my life. At times I find it hard to focus at work (I'm a developer). Other times I obsess over the pain and find it hard to enjoy a moment with family or friends. I know the suffering isn't caused directly by the pain/ringing, but rather my emotional response to it. But I can't seem to shake/change those emotional responses.

I also think part of what makes suffering challenging is the isolation of it. We only feel and understand our own suffering. So often we have no idea the ways in which other people are suffering.

I'm wondering: who else is out there suffering? How's it going? What do you do to manage it?

Anxiety and loneliness. Loads of friends, but majorly lonely.

Would love to cease to exist, but can’t because the impact it would have on my family. So just accepting I’ll need to ride things out for years to come.

Is there a reason you have loads of friends but still feel lonely? Do you think it stems from something you can control, such as having deeper conversations with them, and opening up more?

friends is different than acquittances

I agree, but acquaintance always sounds really stilted in a casual conversation, so I use the word friend in a wider context depending on the situation.

Well at least you got a family and friends.

I believe this is not unique to a lot of people unfortunately.

Loads of friends != satisfaction from the sense of belonging and meaning.

I don't have an answer for you, but just trying to get to people where you can have meaningful and thoughtful conversations helps a lot for the belonging. Alternatively, a therapist should definitely help here to at least find ways.

It seems like there are a lot of men health communities these days focusing on this issue as well.

CFS or it might be fibro. It is very isolating because life and culture is designed assuming you don’t have limited mental and physical capacity. I have less capacity than say someone living a sedate lifestyle, coding all day, drinking regularly when I am ideal BMI, go to gym often, eat little sugar, no alcohol etc.

In my fifties I realized I don’t deserve to suffer.

Eventually that led to realizing I don’t deserve to be unhappy.

And that to giving myself permission to be happy and healthy.

To be philosophical about it, Saṃsāra factors out of both sides of the equation.

Good luck.

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