Comment by prhn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by prhn | Hacker News Reader

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I'd agree with some other comments here that you are pretty far away from rock bottom.

Rock bottom is a complete dismantling of your life. Failed relationships (romantic, friendly, professional, etc), lost job, bills piling up, apartment a disaster, inability to build a mental model that can cope with your current situation.

It looks more like you're in a relative minimum. From what I understand about psychology a healthy balanced life generally follows a pattern of building yourself up to a relative maximum, getting something completely wrong that challenges the framework you've built to orient yourself in the world, hitting a relative minimum, and learning to build yourself back up to a new relative maximum.

Consider the alternative, where there are no relative minimums. That would imply you either know everything, in which case your trajectory would be completely flat or ascending indefinitely. Well, that certainly can't be the case because not even the most brilliant people in history knew everything.

There is no advice or shortcut we can give that your therapist hasn't given you. These things take time. There is something about life that you've gotten wrong. This is your opportunity to learn what it is, fix it, build a new mental model, and prepare yourself to not make the same mistakes again.

You're in the fortunate position to have a lot of opportunity. More people are in the dysfunctional family history boat than you think. Sounds like you've done well, despite that.

Keep going.

> I'd agree with some other comments here that you are pretty far away from rock bottom.

“Rock bottom” is whatever negative experience is sufficient to get you to volubtarily rethink and commit to changing the life choices that produced that experience. It's where you personally decide to draw the line, not some objective maximum acheivable misery.

Sounds like a local minima, not ‘drinking yourself to death in a foreign country where you don’t speak the language while everyone thinks you’re dead’, which is more what I associate the phrase with hah.

Personally, yes. Outside in, not really. If you've broken up with your GF, think life is shite and that's your rock bottom, then yeah you've reached your rock bottom. The floor where you tow it.

However, I disagree and would agree that rock bottom in essence is where where the maximum achievable misery has been met. If life is a ladder, your still on that ladder, you can still progress. All you've done is fallen and experienced life in reality; you can grow from and continue.

If your not attached to the bottom peg, your at the bottom of the ladder with nothing but yourself, you've reached rock bottom. Being homeless is rock bottom.

Heh. I was briefly homeless some decades ago, and likewise had to give up drugs and drinking (actually, BEFORE becoming homeless)

There IS no bottom so long as you're able to dig. There is no such thing as maximum achievable misery. It's just a question of whether OP is able to go on, and whether that is the lowest he could go is NOT at all an interesting question. I would say by definition you can always go lower, so it's a moot point.

I'd look into stoicism, in the sense of 'identifying something that counts as virtue, or rightness, or goodness', and I'd ask whether there's anything you can do today that would count toward that.

If you can do that, it doesn't matter how big the pile of broken glass is. Only whether you're able to do something good about it, however small, today.

I've been there. around 26, I wasn't in greatest mindscape. Lonely, fired from my job, crashed my car, credit card debt, took drugs, spiraled out of control, got arrested and six years later I now own my own apartment and just redecorated it with new carpet. I've had a harsh life but I turn 34 on Monday and I feel I've done well to be where I am and still not where I was.

Change is hard, to throw away everything and start from the beginning when it really isn't your fault is a path not many choose. I walked the wrong path, ended up in the wrong puddle which eventually lead down the wrong rabbit hole.

I am extremely grateful for the window of opportunity that exposed itself to me, for what I was given, the support I was given. And now all I want to do is return the such. I do what I can, when I can, how I can. I volenteer regularly, not to gloat, donate. It's hard. Its hard for everyone. I feel more balanced then how I was and now do feel I now seem to have a sense of urgency to fight for others who don't get such luck. Especially the animals.

We are in control of our destiny but are restricted from the freedoms we should have, with the world in dismay is concerning but it only takes one to start the shift back in to motion and change everything for everyone. Whether my dream becomes a reality, I better get back to coding.

This is something that caught my interest outside of OP’s problems.

From wiki: “A period of extreme mental stress, often characterized by being homeless and being rejected by all friends and family.”

To me rock bottom is a storytelling term. So it’s relative to the story that is being told.

Agreed. Synonymous with "An all-time low".

Saddest pissing contest ever

I'd avoid the comment that "you are pretty far away from rock bottom" - because it does not help the OP.

Like, "Really? Criticize them?" That is why I'd avoid it.

Everything else written about "takes time" @prhn is great and healthy IMO.

> Failed relationships (romantic, friendly, professional, etc), lost job, bills piling up, apartment a disaster, inability to build a mental model that can cope with your current situation.

I've realized this is kind of what my mental model has lead to, the worst part is I don't really know how to fix it or change. Fortunately I have years of living expenses if needed, have insurance and a number of close friends. However, WFH has gotten me to a point where it's a struggle to even do a few leetcode problems a day, work on contracting or even make a youtube video. Insurance doesn't cover mental healthcare and it never really helped before.

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