Religion and emotional willpower

Fruiteloop

Fruiteloop

Takes the Internet Very Seriously
MBTI
INFP
Enneagram
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When thinking about myself being introverted this strange sensation always comes up in me where I do not have or rather I have this way of holding myself back.

Most people I think do not hold back. They have beliefs, feelings, urges they give into completely.

Right now I have this lump in my uvula making it feel like I have to swallow.

I have heard people say as a common phrase "just swallow the pain".

That seems like good advise accept I am introverted, extraverts might be able to do such and such motions as to get it all down, or they act out to release it.

With me I guess I've been telling myself a simpler phase. "I have no emotions".

This means I do not have to attach them to anything and they can just exist as they are because if they did not I'd have to hit something or yell at someone or believe in something (which is hard to do because most times I do not "feel" anything is there to believe in)

I think attachments are the root of many reasons we hold onto pain.
Something exterior to us we latch onto makes us push it into what's is outside us.

So for example if you believe in God then that gives you willpower to do certain things that otherwise would be forced into other external things. Because God usually is for you and not against you this drives you the same way it would if you had other positive relationships in your life. Without this then many people put there willpower into other things that they want other attachments other than relationships.

I find it difficult to put my willpower into relationship though - brings up emotional pain.
So I am looking into how attachments work.
Fighting is a quicker way to deal with painful attachments.
Yet this can also lead to empty feelings.

By telling myself "I have not emotions" what I am really doing is saying to myself that my attachments do not need to control me. Because when I feel controlled by the outside world emotionally it drains my willpower. I understand in an intellectual way that no one is to blame for how I feel it is only that I have often felt the need to correct others and by holding back it drains me so much I never have time to rest. I have always felt bad that other people have wrong ideas because of my experience of judgments from them. So now I have come to some reconciliation with that notion and feel less judged. This has made possible in me to handle what seems to me to be the source of drain. That I can now gain willpower I lost in all those attachments I had external to myself.

Now I do not mean to dismiss anyone who has any form of religion because that gives people something to hold onto.
I only wish to convey that most times we gain more from the external than the internal and that's most of how people experience religion.
Usually we own something emotionally and this drive which is associated with willpower helps us feel in control and stable.

I always feel negative things but keep in control because of my deep ethical nature that keeps me from most externalization.
I happen to now understand that it was in keeping with this way to stop myself from getting into worse relationship situations.
It is within my power to stop feeling bad about things so long as I keep practicing patience with myself, that most things are painful but not my fault.
There is nothing external to me that I need force myself onto nor is there anything I need to do to feel better other than knowing myself as I am.

It is prevalent in society to want external control.
There is a balance whether you seek it in a religion or not.
The best I can do is to try and get around the internal obstacles that prevent me from doing so.
 
The big one for me is dealing with ideology in society being the new religion where before it was belief in invisible deities to now being something else entirely with all the same zeal. As for my own position I rather reincarnate to some other world or universe entirely than have to deal with any of this again as this world is a pressure cooker waiting to blow.
 
Roses In The Vineyard said:
dealing with ideology in society being the new religion
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Thanks for the blood pressure spike.

I’m not trying to do a “both sides” thing, but no matter conservative or progressive, they are neck-deep in ideology, performative political theater, purity test gatekeeping, identity erasure, and zero-sum utopianism.

My body my choice, yet she mutilates the genitals of her child.

Welcoming men to a power fantasy as they are radicalized to be drones.

The tent where everyone is welcome, so long as there is no questioning or dissent.

Vibes and feelings, not facts, with inculcated victim status fueling them-and-us war.

Fuck all of it. Every last bit.

No critical thinking. Only polemics.

Ideology. Masturbatory isms. Identity.

No ideas.

👺
Ian
 
aeon said:
Thanks for the blood pressure spike.

I’m not trying to do a “both sides” thing, but no matter conservative or progressive, they are neck-deep in ideology, performative political theater, purity test gatekeeping, identity erasure, and zero-sum utopianism.

My body my choice, yet she mutilates the genitals of her child.

Welcoming men to a power fantasy as they are radicalized to be drones.

The tent where everyone is welcome, so long as there is no questioning or dissent.

Vibes and feelings, not facts, with inculcated victim status fueling them-and-us war.

Fuck all of it. Every last bit.

No critical thinking. Only polemics.

Ideology. Masturbatory isms. Identity.

No ideas.

👺
Ian
Click to expand...
A lot of this is the result of social engineering by billion dollar think tanks and the corporates that want humanity to end up like orcs as fodder for war and industry.
 
Fruiteloop said:
When thinking about myself being introverted this strange sensation always comes up in me where I do not have or rather I have this way of holding myself back.

Most people I think do not hold back. They have beliefs, feelings, urges they give into completely.

Right now I have this lump in my uvula making it feel like I have to swallow.

I have heard people say as a common phrase "just swallow the pain".

That seems like good advise accept I am introverted, extraverts might be able to do such and such motions as to get it all down, or they act out to release it.

With me I guess I've been telling myself a simpler phase. "I have no emotions".

This means I do not have to attach them to anything and they can just exist as they are because if they did not I'd have to hit something or yell at someone or believe in something (which is hard to do because most times I do not "feel" anything is there to believe in)

I think attachments are the root of many reasons we hold onto pain.
Something exterior to us we latch onto makes us push it into what's is outside us.

So for example if you believe in God then that gives you willpower to do certain things that otherwise would be forced into other external things. Because God usually is for you and not against you this drives you the same way it would if you had other positive relationships in your life. Without this then many people put there willpower into other things that they want other attachments other than relationships.

I find it difficult to put my willpower into relationship though - brings up emotional pain.
So I am looking into how attachments work.
Fighting is a quicker way to deal with painful attachments.
Yet this can also lead to empty feelings.

By telling myself "I have not emotions" what I am really doing is saying to myself that my attachments do not need to control me. Because when I feel controlled by the outside world emotionally it drains my willpower. I understand in an intellectual way that no one is to blame for how I feel it is only that I have often felt the need to correct others and by holding back it drains me so much I never have time to rest. I have always felt bad that other people have wrong ideas because of my experience of judgments from them. So now I have come to some reconciliation with that notion and feel less judged. This has made possible in me to handle what seems to me to be the source of drain. That I can now gain willpower I lost in all those attachments I had external to myself.

Now I do not mean to dismiss anyone who has any form of religion because that gives people something to hold onto.
I only wish to convey that most times we gain more from the external than the internal and that's most of how people experience religion.
Usually we own something emotionally and this drive which is associated with willpower helps us feel in control and stable.

I always feel negative things but keep in control because of my deep ethical nature that keeps me from most externalization.
I happen to now understand that it was in keeping with this way to stop myself from getting into worse relationship situations.
It is within my power to stop feeling bad about things so long as I keep practicing patience with myself, that most things are painful but not my fault.
There is nothing external to me that I need force myself onto nor is there anything I need to do to feel better other than knowing myself as I am.

It is prevalent in society to want external control.
There is a balance whether you seek it in a religion or not.
The best I can do is to try and get around the internal obstacles that prevent me from doing so.
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I don't really know where you're going with this or what advice you seek. I think there was a similar thread here in the past dicussing if introversion is "sickness' (I forgot the exact word that was used). As an introvert myself, I can only tell from my experience that this "holding back" never works, it's just a strategy to protect oneself. I learned that you have to appear before others and reveal parts of yourself. Even if you think that you have no feelings or nothing to say. That may be just because you never tried - feelings need motion and interactions with others to grow and reveal themselves! So I'd say don't give in to this nihilistic notion that you can only exist within yourself and be happy if only you find perfect conditions to continue your survival.

I think we live in a very private world. People may object, saying that we share every detail of our lives online (those who use social media etc.), but the privacy I am talking about is deeper, thinking that you can do it all by yourself and don't need others.
 
@philostam

It might just be through I am going through some tough times and I just recently been feeling things in ways I am not accustomed to.

My thoughts on religion as to why it exists and what drives it are about from my view point that I have no strong feelings about any particular belief. I do not pray to God because I think for this reason emotions play a big part in the awareness we have of God and those just are not there in me. I seen people say they walk outside and feel God everywhere. Or that when they say stuff in there heads they feel God listening. So then I suppose what makes that possible is not exactly a God part of the brain but something to do with emotional composition of themselves they can connect to God some way. I always had this blockage of those experiences. I think its because I never felt much emotion from my mother with blank stares just exist from her and this made that emotional side necessary for a connection with God not form as it should. Or it could be genetic. My sister has no problems praying to God and she has an intense emotional sense of being.

That is where I am coming from in this. That I am not normal because though I do not reject the possibility awareness of supernatural or otherworldly entities they just do not register in me at the level of strong feelings. I've experienced strange things in life that make it seem they could be real but as it were I cannot connect to it the way others do.

To belief in something I always thought you needed to feel it deeply or its not real to you.
In the background something is there I can feel but its not explicitly there I can make contact with.
 
aeon said:
Thanks for the blood pressure spike.

I’m not trying to do a “both sides” thing, but no matter conservative or progressive, they are neck-deep in ideology, performative political theater, purity test gatekeeping, identity erasure, and zero-sum utopianism.

My body my choice, yet she mutilates the genitals of her child.

Welcoming men to a power fantasy as they are radicalized to be drones.

The tent where everyone is welcome, so long as there is no questioning or dissent.

Vibes and feelings, not facts, with inculcated victim status fueling them-and-us war.

Fuck all of it. Every last bit.

No critical thinking. Only polemics.

Ideology. Masturbatory isms. Identity.

No ideas.

👺
Ian
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This.

And I'm perplexed that some of the most intelligent people I know are the most ideological, wearing their fanaticism like a badge of honour.

Ideology substitutes for thinking and choosing, so why are the brightest also sucked in?
 
Intelligence/IQ as a singular metric does not mean a whole lot
We all build frameworks for survival and comfort
And it's no less cognitively disastrous for anyone when a framework is shattered
Sometimes intelligent people are just better at being more stubborn, not more flexible
Though the overall trend tends to say otherwise
Some areas can still be less flexible than others
 
Fruiteloop said:
So for example if you believe in God then that gives you willpower to do certain things that otherwise would be forced into other external things. Because God usually is for you and not against you this drives you the same way it would if you had other positive relationships in your life. Without this then many people put there willpower into other things that they want other attachments other than relationships.
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Being a dyed-in-the-wool atheist, I can assure you that willpower and the desire to achieve have been around long before any religion.

The unfortunate part of our society, across the world, it is permitted in every society to indoctrinate the most vulnerable - our children - into the various religious structures, without their permission, without their consent, prior to the reasonable age of consent, around the age of 25, into their twisted notions of spirituality and their gods.

The vast majority of indoctrinated children hold onto these fears and mangled religious beliefs, well into adulthood, and many even onto their deaths. They remain prisoners of these maniacal belief structures for all of their lives, unable to escape.

I can assure you that it takes great courage and conviction to break away from these manacles.
 
"If you will not do this to make us rich and powerful, then do it for God!"

So say the rich and the powerful. The evil oligarchs of the world use religion to make believers go to war and to die for them. Religion is their tool. It is a tool of control over the young and the restless, over the innocent and the indoctrinated.

Sometimes I wish there really was a Hell, a place for all of those manipulators, to reside forever. Unfortunately, I see the world the same way the lion and the warthog see it: shit happens and then you die.

But that doesn't make religion the problem. If they didn't have religion, they'd find something else. The early Romans didn't have religion. Ghengus Khan didn't have religion. The early Germanic tribes didn't have religion. The viking raiders didn't have religion. The present-day Russians don't have religion.
 
Fruiteloop said:
My thoughts on religion as to why it exists and what drives it are about from my view point that I have no strong feelings about any particular belief. I do not pray to God because I think for this reason emotions play a big part in the awareness we have of God and those just are not there in me. I seen people say they walk outside and feel God everywhere. Or that when they say stuff in there heads they feel God listening. So then I suppose what makes that possible is not exactly a God part of the brain but something to do with emotional composition of themselves they can connect to God some way. I always had this blockage of those experiences. I think its because I never felt much emotion from my mother with blank stares just exist from her and this made that emotional side necessary for a connection with God not form as it should. Or it could be genetic. My sister has no problems praying to God and she has an intense emotional sense of being.
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Well that's the issue right there! You're genetically deformed and therefore not worthy of going to Heaven with the rest of us. Even us atheists.
 
Having a belief requires something in the person who has it.

No one just believes in anything or everything at the same time.

Likely they feel that it exists and the stronger the feeling the more it exists.

"willpower" might be an addition to that feeling

Its doesn't have to be physical, the will is just something you have that can be used to do stuff.

So likely you can use your will to belief harder or do the opposite believe less in something. Which is just a way of feeling it doesn't exist harder which is will power because you are taking lots of energy to disbelieve in it.

So I think it could be I am balanced out. I do not spend energy disbelieving God exists. But I do not spend energy as to feelings that I can detect Him around me because He just is invisible to me. I do not then make it personally about anything I have no control over.

In all when I lack willpower that is when I need help and ask for it sometimes from that which is outside myself.
But its not like God is giving me power like he does to some people all the time. They just get it, it goes into them.
It be nice to feel that feeling, that God exists and watch's me.

I only know that if he does watch me he's not sending me those feelings that he is. Maybe that is good?
People act differently when watched and that can be conflictive. I think about it sometimes walking down the street.
Since emotions are my primary way of being I get this not to well distinct judgment from being watched.

That could come from my upbringing.
Its not up to me to decide though.
God needs reasons for interacting I guess.
 
Some romans believed mars was giving them mars energy to fight.

Whether that came from the actual planet mars or not that might just be the personal way some looked at it.

That if mars was real then this energy to fight or to love (Venus) was an outside source of power.

In that sense they did have a religion just not a documented canonized one. Mostly you just learned it from unofficial fables, tales and stories.
 
Going back to beliefs existing because of emotional strengths.

I woke up this morning and I realized that I have depression that blocks me from dealing with anything.

So like if you listen to music and you feel the music, you feel engaged with it. That is a form of belief. You believe in what the music is doing.

Sometimes when not totally disrupted I can believe in the music I listen to, but in doing so I feel this pain inside.

That would be the depression because people when they are depressed are actually trying to get rid of pain by numbing it.

I have had mystical experiences where I wonder why things exist and I have gotten strong feelings that things exist for a reason.

But those experiences are not something I can replicate or conjure up on demand.

Religious people wonder why not everyone believes in God so I just think is has to do with emotions.

People are not deluded for believing or not believing they just have different constitution of emotions.

And depending on a person's epistemology of what exists those emotions can lead to different understandings of what God is.

The hard facts of reality do not exist exactly because people have false beliefs they think are true but are not.

These false beliefs are in the context of a person's willingness or not to retain a sense of uncertainty.

The reason people are so dogmatic is that they think they know the truth because of a strong emotion they have.

In reality it is just a strong emotion and anything against it makes them feel threatened so they fight to keep that certainty.

Now as long as the certainty is not absolute and people can keep some kind of flexibility things are not so bad.

Only when people get too much certainty do things tend to go down hill so to say.

When a person is deluded because they believe apples can only be red and not green and will die for it then it becomes delusional.

With me I believe that uncertainty has helped me allot in trying to be realistic, depressed people are often more realistic.

So I think that when you blame someone for not believing what you yourself believe this comes from emotions.

The reality is that people have different understandings of reality, this is not bad and not something you need to fight against all the time.

It is not other people's fault for having different emotions than you and some people think others have the same convictional strengths.

Not everyone believes in what they believe in as a complete absolute certainty and you don't need to treat them as that way.

I have been trying to fix my depression but it takes a longer time because of the pain deep inside.

I would like to see everything as meaningful like in my mystical experiences, that everything exists for a reason.

I had one of those experiences a few weeks ago. Felt awesome, I would like to get those on demand.

So I guess I need to listen to music more and believe what it tells me, that could help with my depression and numbness.

Bonnie Tyler - Holding Out For A Hero (Lyrics)​


 
When a little kid is sad the best thing for them to do is to express it physically and verbally.

This is why exercise is best for depression in adults and talk therapy.

But as adults we have a limitation.

Kids have parents they can come to and ask for help.

The parent can give them activities and hold them and in a subtle way give them the ability to self regulate by knowing what they need at the right time.

The adult had no means of self regulations because there are no parents.

What happens when an adult is depressed or angry or afraid is that they have to hide it from other adults.

If other adults see a person as acting out their emotions they will reject you. Avoid you. Not let you into the store / restaurant.

So people being adults hide them from other adults to keep things appropriate. This requires suppression of them in many situations.

What happens with suppressed emotions can vary person to person.

Most people need outlets.

This happens in private or in ways of getting the emotions to become exaggerated in "adult activities".

People find hobbies or causes they can work on, whatever keeps them off the negative feelings the had elsewhere, to expend the energy.

This works mostly and depends on the adaptation they had growing up. Yet still is highly dependant on what is and is not allowed in society.

-

When it comes to higher powers.

Blame can come into focus of what people want.

People can compartmentalize.

It can be ok to hate some people and not other people just because people do not think about it.

In instances where the energy must go somewhere, most people see their belief in higher powers as secondary to life in general.

So in people many contradictions exist, God is supposed to be on your side but as long as you do the right things.

The parent analogy become appropriate again, people do and believe what they want because it seems God allows it.

People believe in a higher power but because of how they were raised they think God is the same way subconsciously so they do what they do in the broad sense.

People generally do what they believe their parents would allow them to do and project that onto a higher power or God.

So if they do wrong things and they fight about it with their parents they usually do this with God as well.

Depression is a little bit different.

Society is the main way people can come to lack any ability to deal with the emotion of sadness.

It might be people do pray about it to the higher power but in society that exacerbates what they can and cannot do it gets complicated.

People can pray away sadness sometimes but they cannot pray away people rejecting them.

This means they turn toward thinking that God must be making people reject them on purpose so God hates them.

It is so complicated because it actually depend on how the parents were to them as a kid.

Once a person get it that everyone rejects them unless they behave certain ways then either they start performing that way or they start degrading emotionally. Secretly people can start to think things about others as a release valve but in depression everything comes to no effect.

As adults when life has no way of becoming in some way emotionally ok then the reason would be that we do not get to do with our emotions what we need to do with them. A normal person can blame others to feel better. This can involve God or not God. This can mean they become confident in beliefs they have about others but it depend on getting what they wanted from such things emotionally.

The main takeaway is that to the normal person God believes what they believe. This is easy for people to regulate emotions.

And people usually believe what other believe because this allows them not to be rejected and feel safe from rejection.

It makes sense then that if someone believes in a different way this is emotionally threatening.

This creates the us vs them mentality. And it creates the need to enforce rules onto others.

I am not saying God approves of all this.

It is a social dynamic.

People have emotions that parents have influenced. To keep them in line.

God may or may not like what people do.

But people in the end try to self regulate.

It is not always about the individual coming to God.

The group is involved.

That is somewhat positive and somewhat negative.

Because we treat people the way we are treated by others and especially how our parents treated us.
 
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Fruiteloop said:
Going back to beliefs existing because of emotional strengths.

I woke up this morning and I realized that I have depression that blocks me from dealing with anything.

So like if you listen to music and you feel the music, you feel engaged with it. That is a form of belief. You believe in what the music is doing.

Sometimes when not totally disrupted I can believe in the music I listen to, but in doing so I feel this pain inside.
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Most people respond emotionally to music. It is common for people will move to the beat. But our response exists on a spectrum. Last week I spoke with a guy who didn't care to sing. You have to understand, singing is part of Jewish liturgy, and he is a religious man, but he simply stands there and doesn't sing. He is at the impoverished end of the spectrum, just above being tone deaf.

You are towards the top. I know exactly the pain you feel. It's a deep ache, like a longing but you don't know what you are longing for, or grieving the wonderful memories of someone you loved but you don't know who you are grieving. And the weird thing is, that ache, that pain, is more pleasurable than other pleasures. Sometimes music can even make a person cry.

Me? I'm at the extreme top. There was an occasion where I even became inebriated by the music. I couldn't walk a straight line and even walked right into a pillar. It's because music absolutely floods my body with dopamine and oxytocin.

So I looked at my religious friend and said, "I don't get it. I just don't get it. How can you stand before God and NOT sing? How does that even happen???" Even with my INFJ empathy, I just couldn't imagine it. "Does not compute. Does not compute."

Did you know that among the Dineh (Navajo) they use music for healing? They will have Sings that last for days. Maybe music can't cure cancer, but even so, it does have an effect even if only small.

I was nineteen when I asked my therapist if he thought music would help me with my depression. He said yes. Today I have a pretty full mental health plan for my bipolar disorder. It includes things like Lamictal, sitting on my balconey in the early morning sun for at least five minutes, taking walks at the Nature Park, and more. But of all those things, the most important thing on the list is that I MUST sing. Sing every day. AND sing in our choir. It took a long time to figure out the strength of the connection, but we know now for sure--when I stop singing, I ALWAYS fall into a deep depression. Singing is my emotional insulin.
Fruiteloop said:
That would be the depression because people when they are depressed are actually trying to get rid of pain by numbing it.

I have had mystical experiences where I wonder why things exist and I have gotten strong feelings that things exist for a reason.

But those experiences are not something I can replicate or conjure up on demand....


I have been trying to fix my depression but it takes a longer time because of the pain deep inside.

I would like to see everything as meaningful like in my mystical experiences, that everything exists for a reason.

I had one of those experiences a few weeks ago. Felt awesome, I would like to get those on demand.

So I guess I need to listen to music more and believe what it tells me, that could help with my depression and numbness.
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I am so sorry to hear that you are dealing with depression. I see you. I hear you. I know exactly how soul killing depression is, how crippling, how deadly it can be.

This too shall pass. "Those who sow in tears will reap with song." Psalm 126:5

Let's talk about those mystical experiences a little. Are you familiar with William James. He is perhaps the best known expert in mystical experiences. They are always:
Noetic: you feel like you have learned a great truth
Ineffible: you are unable to express what just happened in words.
Transient: they are always temporary, you can't make them last.
Passive: once they start, you get carried away by them--they are not something you control.

I just loved your choice of song! I need a hero... Don't we all?

I'd like to share a song as well.. You are not obligated to listen--even people who believe in God are sometimes not religious. But I think it will help bring together all the things we've just shared with each other. It is the Kedusha, which means "Holiness." The lyrics are built on Isaiah 6:3 "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory" Don't worry, the video does have English subtitles. :)

When you listen (if you do) it begins so softly. But it grows, and it grows, until finally the choir just swells. The choir becomes the voice of God. Ani Adonai Eloheikhem--"I am the Lord you God." And the Cantor responds to the voice of God, overwhelmed by awe, Kadosh, kadosh, kadosh--"Holy, holy, holy." I get goosebumps Every. Single. Time. It's like the hand of God reaches down and touches me. You know how they say a person can be so overwhelmed by the sacred that they fall flat on their face? This is that kind of moment for me.

 
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Fruiteloop said:
So likely you can use your will to belief harder or do the opposite believe less in something. Which is just a way of feeling it doesn't exist harder which is will power because you are taking lots of energy to disbelieve in it.
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People spend far more energy believing than not. Atheism is freedom from the tightrope the faithful must walk, falling off, on one side they find the eternal flames of Hell, on the other the cloudy kingdom of beautiful Heaven, all the time, dreading for their entire lives, what might happen if they slip and fall the wrong way.

Unfortunately, you must convince yourself of the futility of religion in all its hideous forms, and its failure to bring peace of mind to humanity.

I'm fortunate to have, not only the intelligence, but the information and analytical capacity to see the illogical structures formed by these religions, and the "will" to shake myself free of the virtually insurmountable fear that is instilled in us since birth. One day, everything becomes clear and you realize to yourself, 'This is all bullshit.'

Yesterday at the gym (where I do most of my socializing these days), one lady I know, the wife of a good friend, also at the gym, both very deeply religious, keeps pressing me to come to her church, and though I continually and politely decline her invitations, saying, "You don't want the Devil sitting in your church pews," to which she often chuckles. Her husband also presses me, and sometime gives a bit of mild rebuke for not do the "responsible thing" and going to church.

I'm generally very polite and very resistant to such pressures, but they're ever-present around some people. So yesterday, in a very polite way, took apart her religion, and dissected it for her in a few rational, clear and concise statements. Her demeanor turned from simple happiness to a look of mild dread over the course of a few minutes, and I realized that I was okay with people being happy and grounded in their religion, and even told her that I would never want to take that away. I don't know why I did that, because I know it can break a person's faith in a matter of minutes. Faith is pretty fragile that way.

Perhaps I did that because she kept up the pressure and would not let it go. I did, after all, warn her about the Devil. I'm certain that she will discuss this with her husband later, and that he will discuss it with me. He probably won't be happy about it.

Fruiteloop said:
If other adults see a person as acting out their emotions they will reject you. Avoid you. Not let you into the store / restaurant.
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I act out my emotions all the time. I just do it in a way that makes people crack up. I don't know why, but whenever I get lively and animated about something that bothers me, they just start laughing, and then that bothers me, and they can see that and it makes them laugh even harder.

Fruiteloop said:
This is why exercise is best for depression in adults and talk therapy.
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Not just exercise. My workouts include resistance training, cardio and stretching. Some of my friends are deep into yoga, and this is one of those things they keep inviting me to - yoga class.

Many years ago, I used to do deep yoga meditation. But yoga physical workouts help to stretch your muscles too. I can't do it because I can't breathe upside down.

I don't do talk therapy. If you want to talk, just find friends and talk. Just make sure to talk to someone who doesn't try to solve your issues or try to fix you.
 
I have no intentions of invalidating a single word you are saying. My responses are not contradictions. Rather, I absolutely embrace what you are saying, but put your words in a different light, like turning the embroidery from the messy, chaotic side, to the side of beauty.
Fruiteloop said:
So in people many contradictions exist, God is supposed to be on your side but as long as you do the right things.
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He is Avinu, Our Father, who loves us, wishing for us to become the very best version of our unique selves that we can be. And part of that means teaching us, "Don't play in the street," "Don't touch the hot stove," "Share." At times, the rules certainly feel like conditions on his love, but in truth even when we screw up badly he never gives up on us--great is his faithfulness. The rules are an expression of that unwavering love.

Deuteronomy 31:6
"He will not fail you, nor forsake you."

Lamentations 3:22-23
"The kindnesses of the Lord have not ended, nor have His mercies ceased. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness."

Fruiteloop said:
This means they turn toward thinking that God must be making people reject them on purpose so God hates them.
Click to expand...
Last month I learned a new proverb: "I asked God for flowers, and he sent me rain."

Do you remember the story of Joseph?
Genesis 50:20
"You intended evil against me, but God intended it for good."
 
Quarkmaster said:
People spend far more energy believing than not. Atheism is freedom from the tightrope the faithful must walk, falling off, on one side they find the eternal flames of Hell, on the other the cloudy kingdom of beautiful Heaven, all the time, dreading for their entire lives, what might happen if they slip and fall the wrong way.
Click to expand...
I realize that too many people get sucked into toxic religion. But it doesn't have to be that way. Religion has the potential to help us flourish. Grace can enable to us to do all we need to do, and to become all that we can be. I often experience an overwhelming awe, but I have never, ever felt afraid of God. There is no eternal hell in Judaism.

That is not an attempt to turn you into a believer. You are a wonderful, beautiful person just the way you are.
Quarkmaster said:
Yesterday at the gym (where I do most of my socializing these days), one lady I know, the wife of a good friend, also at the gym, both very deeply religious, keeps pressing me to come to her church, and though I continually and politely decline her invitations, saying, "You don't want the Devil sitting in your church pews," to which she often chuckles. Her husband also presses me, and sometime gives a bit of mild rebuke for not do the "responsible thing" and going to church.
Click to expand...
Oy vey. SMH
Quarkmaster said:
I act out my emotions all the time. I just do it in a way that makes people crack up.
Click to expand...
[Cantankerous smile] The Talmud says a comedian is guaranteed a place in the world to come. :)

Yes, I know, I know. You weren't trying to make them laugh, and I hear you that it feels so wrong when they laugh. If I were there, I imagine I might impulsively let out an F-bomb, "What the F is wrong with you?"
 
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