The Meaning of Melancholy | Hacker News Reader

The Meaning of Melancholy

onthearts.com

64 pointskeiferski15 comments

On my journey healing trauma I find that it is when I feel a deep sadness that I feel more alive.

Gabor Maté confirms that grief is ultimately how we heal trauma. Sadness is an emotion that lets us move from the past. A way of saying "goodbye".

Crucially we can be stuck for years on end not allowing ourselves to grieve.

For childhood trauma for example it is quite challenging... you're grieving the loss of a father, mother that were never there physically or emotionally. Grieving the loss of safety, of a home that never was. Grieving all the things that didn't come to pass... but unfortunately grieving is necessary.

I've often felt a sense of melancholy in my younger years long before I looked into the nervous system and modern body-based trauma therapies like Somatic Experiencing, Polyvagal Theory etc.

So my hunch is while melancholy feels good at some level, it can also be like a stuck state. Like halfway through grieving but not really allowing yourself to grieve fully and move on. But I could be wrong and perhaps melancholy is a thing of its own. Grief certainly is very challenging as it comes in waves and is never really gone, it seems.

I often grieved and feel melancholy for my lost teenagehood through adulthood. I'm someone who feels fundamentally incomplete without a relationship that's both romantic and actively sexual but I've largelynonly had fascimiles of the first and only caught up to the second at the age of 27. It's been very rough being a male nerd in this predicament. The only times I've felt truly complete and happy were when I felt like I'd found those. It's all only slowly gotten better through an amount of self-work foreign to the average person.

I often think how I'd prepare a straight son of mine not to have the same black hole in his life from middle school to 27. Strict nutritional monitoring, at least one mandatory sports team enrollment (I would have hated that too but it would have made me more fit), some extra push to talk to and ask out female classmates (not sure on the right reward structure, something to do with allowance, allowed to quit the sport or the gym while in a relationship?), some structured knowledge given and tested on at home about how relationships develop and how to approach them from good sources like HealthyGamerGG, pay for photoshoots and such for dating profiles in college if he's not succeeded much by then (it's gotten insanely competitive how good a man needs to be on there). All based on what I think might have helped me in my dark years. My parents meant well but were clueless and naive, all they could say was the old "be yourself" and "there's someone out there for anyone", perfect mindsets to stay in the dust while your peers have the time of their lives.

Any parents had success in this area with a disadvantaged son?

For me, I feel melancholy when I get out old photos.

For times lost. Innocence left behind, carefree times.

Maybe somewhat like "All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain..."

(hopefully not "time to die" for quite some time)

i cannot agree more. took the words out of my mouth.

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.

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.

I wrote a long argumentative response and deleted it.

Ill just say this, I once read that a hormone called... adrenocortecotrophic hormone (took a sec to remember) builds up and excess is released in tears, as excrement, waste during crying.

Then potentially inhaled again as it passes over your nose and evaporates.

Reminds me of Victor Hugo's famous quote:

'Melancholy is the happiness of being sad,'

(La mélancolie, c'est le bonheur d'être triste)

This fits. The way the interviewee describes his relation witho Tolstoy couldbe the way I describe my relation with Hugo. I was obsessed with him for a few years, and read most of his fiction. It changed my relation with the world, and in particular obstacles and sadness

I can’t quite put my finger on it, but for me melancholy doesn’t imply sadness.

Steven Soderbergh's The Limey covers a lot of ground, but I think it expresses as powerful a sense of melancholy as any modern film. Highly recommended.

The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621)

  In his satirical preface to the reader, Burton's persona and pseudonym
  Democritus Junior" explains, "I write of melancholy by being busy to avoid
  melancholy."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anatomy_of_Melancholy

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