The Conservative Cave
Current Events => The DUmpster => Topic started by: SSG Snuggle Bunny on November 18, 2013, 03:18:31 AM
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YoungDemCA (1,560 posts)
The 14 Habits of Highly Miserable People
Most of us claim we want to be happy—to have meaningful lives, enjoy ourselves, experience fulfillment, and share love and friendship with other people and maybe other species, like dogs, cats, birds, and whatnot. Strangely enough, however, some people act as if they just want to be miserable, and they succeed remarkably at inviting misery into their lives, even though they get little apparent benefit from it, since being miserable doesn’t help them find lovers and friends, get better jobs, make more money, or go on more interesting vacations. Why do they do this? After perusing the output of some of the finest brains in the therapy profession, I’ve come to the conclusion that misery is an art form, and the satisfaction people seem to find in it reflects the creative effort required to cultivate it. In other words, when your living conditions are stable, peaceful, and prosperous—no civil wars raging in your streets, no mass hunger, no epidemic disease, no vexation from poverty—making yourself miserable is a craft all its own, requiring imagination, vision, and ingenuity. It can even give life a distinctive meaning.
snip:
Here, I cover most areas of life, such as family, work, friends, and romantic partners. These areas will overlap nicely, since you can’t ruin your life without ruining your marriage and maybe your relationships with your children and friends. It’s inevitable that as you make yourself miserable, you’ll be making those around you miserable also, at least until they leave you—which will give you another reason to feel miserable. So it’s important to keep in mind the benefits you’re accruing in your misery.
-When you’re miserable, people feel sorry for you. Not only that, they often feel obscurely guilty, as if your misery might somehow be their fault. This is good! There’s power in making other people feel guilty. The people who love you and those who depend on you will walk on eggshells to make sure that they don’t say or do anything that will increase your misery.
-When you’re miserable, since you have no hopes and expect nothing good to happen, you can’t be disappointed or disillusioned.
-Being miserable can give the impression that you’re a wise and worldly person, especially if you’re miserable not just about your life, but about society in general. You can project an aura of someone burdened by a form of profound, tragic, existential knowledge that happy, shallow people can’t possibly appreciate.
I'll list the 14 habits right here.
1. Be afraid, be very afraid, of economic loss.
2. Practice sustained boredom.
3. Give yourself a negative identity.
4. Pick fights.
5. Attribute bad intentions.
6. Whatever you do, do it only for personal gain.
7. Avoid gratitude.
8. Always be alert and in a state of anxiety.
9. Blame your parents
10. Don’t enjoy life’s pleasures.
11. Ruminate.
12. Glorify or vilify the past.
13. Find a romantic partner to reform.
14. Be critical.
http://www.alternet.org/personal-health/14-habits-highly-miserable-people?akid=11151.317422.aYHXxT&rd=1&src=newsletter924817&t=7&paging=off¤t_page=1#bookmark
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I would add "Be extra-hard on yourself", "Talk yourself out of any opportunity to have fun", and "Always make excuses for your own (poor) behavior"...
NOTE: I have struggled, at different times in my life, with many if not most of the things that this author (sarcastically) points to; in other words, I understand how powerful anxiety and depression can be. Yet that doesn't mean that there's nothing anyone can do about his or her negative/destructive beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors..
Manifestor_of_Light (17,002 posts)
3. There are more.
15. Listen to whiny negative country western music. Or rap about bitches 'n' hoes.
16. Blame everything on Obama, or a minority group.
17. Go to church and let the preacher tell you what a worthless filthy sinner you are.
18. Cry in your beer and wonder why you're still depressed, since alcohol is a depressant.
19. Desire to be feared rather than liked.
Number23 (14,672 posts)
6. That article is so true it is absolutely terrifying
So if you aspire to make yourself miserable, what are the best, most proven techniques for doing it? Let’s exclude some obvious ways, like doing drugs, committing crimes, gambling, and beating up your spouse or neighbor. Subtler strategies, ones that won’t lead anyone to suspect that you’re acting deliberately, can be highly effective. But you need to pretend that you want to be happy, like everybody else, or people won’t take your misery seriously. The real art is to behave in ways that’ll bring on misery while allowing you to claim that you’re an innocent victim, ideally of the very people from whom you’re forcibly extracting compassion and pity.
Being miserable can give the impression that you’re a wise and worldly person, especially if you’re miserable not just about your life, but about society in general. You can project an aura of someone burdened by a form of profound, tragic, existential knowledge that happy, shallow people can’t possibly appreciate.
!!!!!!! Holy Shit this sounds familiar.
Every word of it sounds familiar. As Hell. The bits about glorifying the past particularly. Sounds SO familiar especially lately.
JNelson6563 (25,295 posts)
9. I've noticed them here.
Some bring story after story of horrible things. Either some horror that is happening, has happened or is speculated will happen. Misery, misery, misery. I almost feel sorry for them. Sadly I find it annoying that they work so very hard to spread their misery.
Julie--who has little use for self-absorbed people and their pity parties
Wait.
You mean the people who tell us every personal problem is so massive only a fascist government is strong enough to cure it might be the kind of people who fabricate their own misery?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024049796
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I saw that article yesterday, and I immediately thought of the DUmmies. I think that it is funny that they are trying to make it reflect republicans when it describes most of their posters to a tee.