Do your beliefs make you happy?

Jainarayan said:

No. I am happy with my beliefs but not happy because of my beliefs. They give me a certain measure of comfort.

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Same here.

Jainarayan said:

But in my life I am unhappy, even to the point of deep depression (which comes along with my bipolar 2 anyway) and despair. I like to believe my faith is steadfast despite what we've been enduring in these past years. However, my faith does not change my mental state.

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I am not always unhappy in life but I have dysthymia so I am never really happy, although I have moments of happiness. like when I see my older cat eating, when I am watching the birds and squirrels on my deck, or when I achieve a task I did not think I could do.

My overall living situation would make most happy people depressed, but they would probably do something to make it better whereas I can do very little to improve it because I don't have the time or the motivation. I to do al I can to stay afloat and hot go into a depressed state. That means keeping busy with things that help my depression, like being on here talking to people.

Going around the house cleaning and rearranging things usually only makes me feel worse, and I know that, which is why I don't do it, unless I feel like doing it. A big deal for me was when I cleaned out the bird feeders and the refrigerator this week. I felt good from that since it improved my morale. But if I even think about all the things I could be doing around here I just get depressed so I cannot afford to think about them. Since I live alone and nobody ever comes to my house I am not bothering anyone else. I am just trying to survive day by day.

ChristineM said:

It's not actually the cars that make me happy, its driving to their limit on a track.
View attachment 90924
Hit that accelerator just before the apex, the power is orgasmic

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I have had just as much fun driving snowy / icy dirt roads in my Subaru, no guardrails or gravel, just trees and ditches.
Way better than the 75 mph you get to go at Watkins Glen on track day.

Not particularly no. But it can and often does contribute to it. My actions are the source of my happiness.

Pogo said:

I have had just as much fun driving snowy / icy dirt roads in my Subaru, no guardrails or gravel, just trees and ditches.
Way better than the 75 mph you get to go at Watkins Glen on track day.

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To each his or her own. I don't get that much fun out of driving fast. And hey, I lived in Germany (home of the autobahn for the record).

ChristineM said:

It's not actually the cars that make me happy, its driving to their limit on a track.

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I am lucky if I can even dive my car out of town.

Pogo said:

I have had just as much fun driving snowy / icy dirt roads in my Subaru, no guardrails or gravel, just trees and ditches.
Way better than the 75 mph you get to go at Watkins Glen on track day.

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My fear of accidents is one reason I don't drive very far anymore and I never drive when there is any snow or ice.

Sometimes I want to die, but I am not ready to die yet, at least not until I have my will in place.
Basically, it is my love for the cats that gives me the will to keep living, because I would never leave them purposefully.

Vinayaka said:

Reincarnation changes EVERYTHING.

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Do you mean that you would like to come back to this earth and live another life?
I cannot even imagine anything worse that that.

Trailblazer said:

Your beliefs about God or gods.

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I don't have any.

Kathryn said:

Hey, my mom had bipolar 1 and my brother is schizophrenic. Of my mom's four sisters, one other one is seriously mentally ill. That side of the family jokes around a lot and calls it 'the Hawkins blood' but I personally believe that it's hereditary.

I do believe I dodged that bullet though.

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Oh I do believe it's hereditary. My mother suffered from depression and I think my father was bipolar. There are a few members of my family. including me, on the autism spectrum. And bipolar and autism often go hand in hand. It's difficult for the "uninitiated" to tell the difference between a bipolar rage and an autistic meltdown.

Jainarayan said:

Oh I do believe it's hereditary. My mother suffered from depression and I think my father was bipolar. There are a few members of my family. including me, on the autism spectrum. And bipolar and autism often go hand in hand. It's difficult for the "uninitiated" to tell the difference between a bipolar rage and an autistic meltdown.

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Now you're making me wonder if my mom was also autistic. I don't believe she was though. I think she just had bipolar 1, which was certainly bad enough.

Trailblazer said:

Same here.

I am not always unhappy in life but I have dysthymia so I am never really happy, although I have moments of happiness. like when I see my older cat eating, when I am watching the birds and squirrels on my deck, or when I achieve a task I did not think I could do.

My overall living situation would make most happy people depressed, but they would probably do something to make it better whereas I can do very little to improve it because I don't have the time or the motivation. I to do al I can to stay afloat and hot go into a depressed state. That means keeping busy with things that help my depression, like being on here talking to people.

Going around the house cleaning and rearranging things usually only makes me feel worse, and I know that, which is why I don't do it, unless I feel like doing it. A big deal for me was when I cleaned out the bird feeders and the refrigerator this week. I felt good from that since it improved my morale. But if I even think about all the things I could be doing around here I just get depressed so I cannot afford to think about them. Since I live alone and nobody ever comes to my house I am not bothering anyone else. I am just trying to survive day by day.

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Have you been spying on me or reading my mind? I've been through just about every antidepressant out there you are describing my life to the point that I have spent much of today chatting on this forum instead of doing things I "ought" to be doing like finding a new car so I am not stuck in my hovel. Heck I researched procrastination this morning instead of doing those eah things like making breakfast and the laundry can wait till tomorrow, not like anyone will notice.
Anyhow, I have stopped worrying about it and accepted it as that's just me and has been most of my life. Do try to get out, it does help and stop believing that if only???

Spice said:

I have been depressed to some degree most of my life, but I didn't know it.

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I don't remember much of my childhood, but what I do remember was no picnic, although one thing I enjoyed was spending the summers in a rustic cabin on a remote late in Canada. I cannot remember feeling depressed even after my father dies when I was 12, but I think I was in shock, since I was closer to my father than my mother.

Fast forward to my adulthood, I had an eating disorder for 12 years of my early adulthood, and I think that suppressed my depression because the first time I remember being depressed was after I got psychiatric treatment which ended the eating disorder. The antidepressants worked at first but that did not last long and then I was depressed. After about five years i got homeopathic treatment tat ended the depression for good although I still have situational depression.

Spice said:

My religious (of my youth) influences oftentimes made things worse. I could not live up to the "goodness" expected, or so I thought. I wasn't even sure what that goodness was! And I asked, only to get incomplete answers or references to scripture.

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Fortunately I was not raised with any religious beliefs since both my father and mother had dropped out of Christianity long before I was born.
My first religion was the Baha'i Faith which I joined when I was 17 years old. I never even read one page of the Bible till I came to forums about 12 years ago, I had no interest in any other religion.

Spice said:

Does my faith make me happy? YES, because my faith is only mine, and fully mine, and free to bend to my needs of any moment without worry of breaking. It's not based on anyone else's understanding. My faith is not a part of me -- it is me. It's who I am and how I live because it's what's right for me.

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Ditto on that. I don't care what other Baha'is think I 'should' be doing.

Spice said:

My faith is about as simple as it can get. In a nutshell, thanks to Ralph Waldo Emerson, it can be summed up with:
"The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well."
Living this way brings me happiness. Do I still have any depression? Sure. But giving someone else a reason to smile always gives me one back.

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Ditto on that. I could not have said that any better than Emerson. There is so much truth in the world, and it is not contained in only one religion.

Trailblazer said:

I am lucky if I can even dive my car out of town.

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Try to stay aware of opportunities. Ten years ago I rarely left my house. I'd have anxiety attacks in the grocery store and be tempted to just lie down in the floor, right there. I never did, nor did I ever leave my cart just to get out of there. I did however often go check out after only picking up a few items on my long list.

I began a turn around by a dear neighbor that heard I might be Quaker and stopped by one day while I was reading on the porch to ask if I knew about the meeting only one town over. After discovering more about me, she ended up asking me if I'd be interested in joining her and a few others from her Baptist church to sing hymns with the residents of a rest home once a month. She's never pushed me about her church and has let others know there's no need, though they try anyway. But that once a month semi-commitment got me back into the world.

I eventually joined the same neighbor in a creative writing group that meets once a week. From there, I was introduced to the need for volunteers for an adult ESL class. And other opportunities are always popping up, but I'm as busy away from home as I want to be. Each brings me joy, sometimes big, sometimes small.

Jainarayan said:

Oh I do believe it's hereditary. My mother suffered from depression and I think my father was bipolar.

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I also think it is hereditary. Both my parents and my sister and brother had depression and anxiety.

JustGeorge said:

No.

Sorry for the wordy response. (Spirit borrowed from @SalixIncendium and @ChristineM )

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Why?

Trailblazer said:

Do you mean that you would like to come back to this earth and live another life?

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Absolutely

Trailblazer said:

I cannot even imagine anything worse that that.

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Heaven or Hell (if those are your beliefs) is a state of mind. So you're not wrong technically.

Secret Chief said:

Why?

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Right now I seem unable to live out the challenges life is throwing at me and maintain happiness.

If this is a personal failing, I accept it.

How could "beliefs" make me happy?

For me, happiness is what comes from satisfying my needs and desires, and my desires include, where I can, and satisfying the needs and desires of others, especially those close to me, but for others as well. To me, happiness is the experience of joy, contentment, or positive well-being, combined with a sense that my life is good, meaningful, and worthwhile.

Now, I admit, I'm no great philanthropist, I'm not the world's most talented musician, and I can't help everybody I want to -- which sometimes makes me feel sad. But overall, I think my life has some meaning (as I defined in my post "Meaning and Purpose for the Secular Humanist") and while it is only locally worthwhile, I have made contributions. And that's something.

Pogo said:

Have you been spying on me or reading my mind? I've been through just about every antidepressant out there

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I tried every antidepressant out there back when I discovered I was depressed, in the early 1980s, but in 1988 I started seeing a homeopathic doctor and got off all the drugs that never worked, and I never took another antidepressant drug again. That is a long story I can tell you if you want to hear about it. Suffice to say any depression I have now is situational, and if you knew my situation you'd know why.

Pogo said:

you are describing my life to the point that I have spent much of today chatting on this forum instead of doing things I "ought" to be doing like finding a new car so I am not stuck in my hovel. Heck I researched procrastination this morning instead of doing those eah things like making breakfast and the laundry can wait till tomorrow, not like anyone will notice.
Anyhow, I have stopped worrying about it and accepted it as that's just me and has been most of my life. Do try to get out, it does help and stop believing that if only???

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Forget laundry. I rarely do any laundry in a machine even though I have a washer and dryer, because the laundry room is downstairs and I cannot go down there without getting depressed. So I wash my clothes upstairs and dry them in front of a fan. If I do go downstairs it has to be at night when it is dark and I cannot see anything.

I am not going to do that to myself anymore, think about what I SHOULD be doing. I did what I had to do all week and it was hell, so now I am not going to do anything I don't have to do. I am going to go make lunch, since Sat and Sun are the only days I have a good lunch, and then I will be back.

I don't think my beliefs make me happy directly. I'm happy because my life is how I want it to be, which is dependent on those beliefs and a lot of luck. There's nothing more I want but more of the same for as long as I can have it.

Trailblazer said:

Would I be happier if I had a boyfriend or a husband? I don’t know, but that is a moot point, since men do not date women like me who won’t have sex out of wedlock.

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Is it moot? Here's an example of a belief of yours that may be limiting your happiness. I'm not suggesting that you change in that regard. I understand that that is probably not a good idea for you. But if you had never had such an objection and it were not an issue one way or the other, you might find a compatible significant other. Or, you might find sorrow.

Trailblazer said:

A good day is a day I am content with the way things are, regardless of all the things I have to be worried about, legitimate worries.

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There's another example of how belief can affect happiness.

Trailblazer said:

With the money I have I could have anything I want, go anywhere I want, and never have to work one more day in my life. That might be fun but I don't think that would bring me true happiness and that is one reason I do not desire material things or activities. The other reason is because I know these things are fleeting.

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And again. I'm also free all day and have no money concerns. But because I have a happy marriage, a home and garden I enjoy being in, dogs that bring me joy, good weather, things to keep my mind stimulated, and as much of a social life as I would like while being essentially desire-free and worry-free, I enjoy every day. You seem to think that such a life only brings fleeting happiness, but it's been a formula for sustained satisfaction for fifteen years now.

Trailblazer said:

All I have are two old cars, a 1999 that I drive and a 1986 that is presently inoperable.

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You have one more car than we do, and ours is also about 25 years old. Since we live in a village and most destinations are walking distance or at most a short drive, we don't drive much, so it has less than 80,000 miles on it.

Trailblazer said:

My fear of accidents is one reason I don't drive very far anymore

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Our reason is that just about everything we want is right here or can be sent here. We'd need to travel about an hour to find a mall or fast food or see an opera, but none of that appeals any more.

It's in this sense that my beliefs bring me happiness. They leave free from desire, contention, and worry.

You seem to have the same life more or less except that you live alone and are secluded. Maybe you prefer it that way, but if you lived in our village, you could live the same life but have as active a social life as you like, and I'm sure that you could meet men that didn't require a sexual relationship if male companionship were important to you. They needn't be roommates, and if they didn't like your cats, socialize outside the home - movies, plays, restaurants, garden clubs, ukelele groups, volunteering at animal rescue shelters, sketching groups, live music, etc..

Whatever you choose, you deserve happiness. You're a good person with a good heart. But you might need to make some changes. Seriously. If you have no family attachments or other reasons to stay put, how about coming to my part of Mexico and seeing what it has to offer you? We'd be glad to help you find a place to stay while you visit and to show you around. I'd love to meet you.