The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Does anyone have tips for dealing with feelings of anxiety/hopelessness?
I feel like my mental health is being negatively impacted by things outside of my control and that these things are going to get worse in the near the future.
I attempt not to read too many news and other such things. It's probably not healthy to learn about so many problems which are outside of your control. I believe they might also distract you from your own personal life, and from your immediate surroundings, over which you do have some influence.
People who aren't chronically online seems to have it better, and you don't seem to be feeling unwell because you feel these problems personally, but because you hear that they exist and may affect you in the future.
I'd say focus on yourself, your family and friends, and spend your time on what matters instead of hedonic distractions. So that you do not spend effort on things which tire you out while causing zero positive changes in your personal life (I believe this might train your brain to think that effort is futile)
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Not to tell you how to feel, but I really don't believe that the source of your anxiety or bad-feel is world events or trends. They may be what your brain is coming up with to explain your mood, but that's because it's easier to blame a Thing rather than a Lack. If you had needy kids, a needy wife, a great career, millions of fans, an amazing social life it would sound totally insane to be worrying about Peak Oil or Arian heresy or whatever is going to damn us.
Agreed. Ponder (Stibbons? great reference) what are you doing to reduce your own interactions with social media and cell phone addictions? Where are you going to get to know new people in person, to date or connect meaningfully with?
It sounds like you also have some anxiety about money. What things about wealth are really bothering you?
I used to play Magic: the Gathering and there is a card called Ponder, so that was part of the inspiration for my name.
With social media and cell phones I remind myself that most information is just a variant of something I already know. I’m trying to restrict my media diet to only things that are new/novel information + improve my life in some way. I’m getting better at not scrolling through things because it is very rare to find anything worth my time anymore. My biggest weakness is wanting to stay up to date on economic conditions (like the housing market, because that does impact my plans to buy a home).
For meeting people to date I do well at getting attention at the bar, which I only go to a few times a month. I have a rule to always exchange contact info and wait at least a day so we are both sober. Usually, getting the attention at the bar is enough satisfaction for me and then I don’t feel like putting effort into arranging a date. I have a very low sex drive. I’m fine being single and dating feels like too much effort unless I meet a really low-maintenance woman.
The other places I connect with people are men’s circle and book club, but I don’t meet potential dates there.
With money I think it is a feeling of injustice mixed with anxiety. The economic system feels unfair/random. It gives too much advantage to those with inherited wealth, social manipulators, and unethical people. Working hard provides no guarantees of wealth and often people will take advantage of your work ethic to get you to work for less money than you are worth. The economic system encourages all parties to view each other as disposable/replaceable objects to be discarded when something better comes along.
I also believe that I have undiagnosed autism and it caused setbacks in my career, which led to missing out on a lot of passive wealth gains in the last 4-5 years.
I also think part of why the issues in my OP bother me so much is because I have nostalgia for the past (around the 90s). I felt like the world made more sense. I had a lot of untapped potential and hope for the future. These issues are kind of variances between that time and today.
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I don't know how helpful what I'm about to write will be, but I do write it in an attempt to be helpful and I'm not trying to be an ass.
Stop thinking about it. I know, that is really shitty advice, but let me expand on it.
When I was growing up in the 80s the prospect that we would all be annihilated by a nuclear strike was very real. It was spoken of by newscasters, it was the main plot line of many t TV shows and films , it was the subtext in many others.
And do you know how my generation dealt with that? We just didn't think about it. At all. We did not hold that fear in out minds, regardless of perhaps how much the popular media wanted us to do so. "In Europe and America there's a growing feeling of hysteeeria." sang Sting, But all we talked about was the way he pronounced hysteria.
There was a large white structure in the middle of nowhere out in the bumfuck area of the county north of mine, like way out in the Styx. I found it because I had a convertible and used to go on inordinately long drives. My friend and I convinced ourselves this was a missile silo, making us both inhabitants of a town at the center of liftoff and probably a target of a blast. And then we got a pizza and ate it in an unused parking lot.
I don't think we truly believed it was a silo. Or maybe we did. I know we didn't care that much. It didn't matter. If it was, it was, and if the bombs fell, they would fall. But it's always been like that. At least we weren't living through the 30s and 40s. I mean it could have been far, far worse.
What I'm saying is that I am not saying the issues you reasonably bring up are not reasonable. (Edit : Wha? I can't believe I wrote that sentence.) I won't try to argue you out of believing them. I will suggest that diverting yourself into the people and world around you (not in this Mottespace, but around you in what I still call the real world) may be helpful.
As usual my train has arrived and I have to book it to get to my next one. Sorry. If this is helpful, great. If not, I hope you work through this ennui, this, well, pondering.
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Couple of minor responses:
social media has a lot of upsides and there could always be a counter cultural push back against the all encompassing sides of it.
Inequality growing is a contested issue and I don't know how strongly to feel about it. I live in a low CoL city in Canada and I have lots of friends with highschool or less who own homes and have families. I think the extremes make it to our attentions. That said, housing prices are controversially a big problem right now but it can be solved, and there's lots of mainstream attention pushing that direction.
AI may not devalue certain kinds of labour in the short/medium term. And there's always a chance of it ushering in so much productivity that material needs are much more abundant and cheap. It's cheaper and easier than ever to purchase low-risk index funds and at least get a piece of the productivity pie.
Online dating sucks but again, you only really hear the horror stories. I used it for the first time after a divorce and met a long term partner within 2 weeks. I did not optimize for the system, I was 100% honest and straightforward in my profile and got a minor number of matches but they seemed to be higher quality for me.
Politicians have always done this. It's easier to find out what's going on and discuss it meaningfully than it used to be. I'm cynical about this one though so I say focus on local politics and things you can actually affect.
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I recommend a couple of things.
First, make sure that you moderate both social media and news sources. Don’t marinate in those things as they tend to skew toward the negative or making you feel less than other people. Both things in large doses are bad for you. I think following the news is fine, just limit it to an hour or less a day, and from a fairly neutral perspective (I use AP most of the time). Do the same with social media, limit your exposure to an hour or less a day.
Second, make sure you have a creative hobby that you enjoy. I’m a duffer of a fiction writer. But I find that doing that gets me away from the consumption cycle of social media and news and gaming. It’s quite cathartic in a lot of ways to tell a story the way you wish things were rather than how they really are.
Third, take up a sport or activity that involves moving your body. Do yoga, play soccer or baseball or go hiking. I find active hobbies are great for clearing your mind of negativity, plus you get a lot of health benefits including better sleep.
Fourth, get real life friends and prioritize spending real life time with them.
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Do you read a lot of news or social media? Try cutting all that out for a while.
The Reddit algorithms get me to waste more time than I would like. Intuitively, I know they are feeding me variants of the same things and that it is all a waste of time. I need to do better at not opening the app. I don’t use Snap/Instagram/TikTok at all.
I feel a little bit of conflict about cutting all news and social media out though because I like to stay connected and informed. I want to be able to keep up with IRL conversations (which often involve online trends and news) and know about trends that can impact the stock market.
I suggested it because I feel like your anxieties come from reading the news and feeling like you have a duty to be informed and concerned about what you read. Your worries aren't about personal problems. If you weren't reading external sources, would you notice these issues in your day to day life?
Worrying about these things is net negative. It makes you feel bad and doesn't actually change anything. You are not obliged to stress about the state of the world.
Mostly yes because I initially noticed something IRL that caused me to dig for explanatory data. The triggers are things like:
However, once I have the information that I need I don’t stop digging. At that point it becomes unhealthy and causes anxiety. I agree that I need to reduce the time I spend reading news/social media, and I need to be more intentional about filtering the information to get just the small amount I need.
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Try uninstalling the app to make it less palatable. Forcing yourself to use the normal interface on your phone will definitely slow and annoy you.
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What leads you to believe this and when do you perceive it as starting? I finished a postdoc a decade ago and had pretty close to zero net worth at the time, but I'm doing great now. I've seen a decent number of friends go from near zero or negative net worth at the time to quite wealthy since. All of us that have done well do have some sort of specialized skill but saying that making money is greatly helped by having a specialized skill is very different from claiming that labor can't build wealth.
In 2019 the us median numbers were around:
In 2023 the us median numbers were around:
Since 1/1/20 the S&P 500 has increased by at least 67%. If someone owned a house before March 2022 they were able to lock in a 30-year mortgage rate around 3% (vs. around 7% today). People with wealth had huge gains in the last 4 years and those gains will continue to generate more passive wealth in the future.
A new grad isn’t going to be able to save/invest much. Meanwhile, the people with extraordinary returns in the last 4 years are generating tons of passive wealth because they locked in a low mortgage expense and have more money to invest/save. They are also earning passive income faster now because they have a larger asset base.
When inflation is normal for long periods of time and mortgage rates are similar between new/existing homeowners this wealth disparity effect is much less of a problem.
For a new grad starting around $0 (or in debt) to build substantial wealth they need to be on a path to earn much more than the median salary and/or make sacrifices to greatly lower expenses (like living with their parents for a few years after college).
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The economic situation seems to be a lot more grim for GenZ. I don't know if its reflecting in the youth unemployment numbers in the US, but the future points more towards a East Asian/ European like labor market. Not the end of the world, but certainly not what it used to be.
Definitely a global issue, finding employment as a college grad seems to be an increasingly omnipresent issue.
Anecdotal but I can't ignore the noise, something is definitely off even if the numbers haven't caught up yet.
Maybe that's right, maybe it's not, but if it's a signal that's sufficiently weak that it's hard to detect in the data, the advice for any given individual should be to get their shit together rather than moping about systemic decline that makes it impossible for them to profit from labor. Get a degree in petroleum engineering or accounting or chemistry or literally anything else that has a plausible practical use and get to work. Even if there is a broader problem, being a Debbie Downer and giving up before even getting started is a poor approach to life. Being a Debbie Downer in the context of the American economy circa the present isn't just a poor approach, it's comically ridiculous if one takes even a slightly zoomed out look at history.
Yeah, even if it were indisputably true that the US economy is in decline, it's declining from the highest heights in human history. Even if Gen Z ends up being a bit worse off than Millennials, they're still better off than the vast majority of people who have ever lived.
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Gen Z is more likely to own a home than millennials at their age.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinehamilton/2023/04/21/gen-z-ahead-of-millennials-and-their-parents-in-owning-their-own-homes/
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Is this actually true, though? Millennials felt the same way 15 years ago, that's what all the Occupy and "I am the 99%" stuff was about. People understandably feel poor when they're starting their careers. They often have a bunch of debt and relatively little income. But that situation generally corrects itself over the course of a person's working life. Life is a struggle but this stuff is not insurmountable.
Things are, simply, not that bad in the US. Unemployment is close to the lowest it's ever been. Real (i.e. inflation adjusted) wages are close to the highest they've ever been. Cost disease has hit certain sectors like housing and healthcare, but there are still plenty of places where housing is affordable, and young people generally don't need a ton of healthcare. I'm not claiming everything is perfect or couldn't be improved, but I can't see how economic doomerism is warranted under the circumstances.
There appears to be a consensus between Millennials and late X-ers that, say, for the average fresh college graduate looking for a job, or for a college student looking for a summer job, the job market was better in 2001 than in 2011, and was better in 2011 than it is now. Also, the overall sentiment of doomerism, anomie and stagnation was much less palpable in society even back in 2011.
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