like, if i’m feeling bad but force myself to do something, i usually feel better. how to maintain the usefulness of this advice without presenting it as ‘fuck your feelings’, in that usual arrogant right wing sort of way
“Action over anxiety.”
My mom has told me this since I was a kid, and it is still something I am trying to put into practice effectively when met with challenging situations. It is the most forgiving way I can think of to get yourself in the mental headspace you are talking about without the “time to nut up” connotation.
I really like this, and your mom is wise. Hug her for us if you can! 🫂
I will do that, thank you. I’ll show her your response. I’m sure she will appreciate the kind words.
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Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must.
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
not an exact fit, but i think about that sentence often
I prefer to think of it as “the only way out is through” or “the only path is forward.”
For some problems it won’t matter how people feel or even who is at fault. What matters often is how you begin to work through it. Once you’re out of the hole you can reflect.
Rise to the occasion
Thread soundtrack: IDLES - Samaritans
+1 for IDLES
In Swedish we say “Har du tagit Fan i båten, får du ro honom i land”.
In English it would be “If you put Satan in your rowboat, you’d better row him ashore.”
The English equivalent is “When you’re going through hell, keep going.”
“I have to get over this some time, why not now?”
~ Louis Wu, from Ringworld, written by Larry Niven.
“Because I’m not ready” is also a valid answer, but it gets your brain moving towards the goal I find.
Technically what you’re describing is discipline. It takes a lot of will power to just make yourself do something. You can take pride in that. Call yourself disciplined, principled, stoic.
In fact, you might broaden your perspective on this particular subject by looking into stoicism. It’s like a “manly” mindset but without the gender or toxicity attached.
Your feelings are valid. Job still needs doing.
You don’t get to the Promised Land without going through the Wilderness. You don’t get there without crossing over hills and mountains, but if you keep on keeping on, you can’t help but reach it. We won’t all see it, but it’s coming…
Really, that thinking should be a last resort instead of the default.
It’s ok to be vulnerable. It’s ok to ask for help. It’s ok to do or say nothing while you assess a situation as sometimes that is the best course of action.
It’s only when you have no options left and you must act that you actually need to take action alone. One might actually need time to process a trauma, or experience grief. And I would argue that the ability to be vulnerable with others is it’s own type of strength.
For instance, if you are noticing that you are getting depressed and are finding it hard to perform basic maintenance tasks for yourself. Instead of first trying to be strong and convince yourself to do it every time. Maybe it might be better to seek help for your depression.
True. “Suck it up” works in some occasions and in others it makes everything worse. It’s a terrible default approach to teach your children because they can end up never learning how to deal with stress in a healthy fashion.
The result is usually someone who builds up stress where other people don’t (and then acts accordingly) and who has absolutely no ability to comfort other people when they need it. Few parents want their children to be lonely assholes.
Of course it’s harder to teach someone nuance. Identifying when it’s okay to be vulnerable and when you need to tough it out by yourself is difficult. But if you’re not capable of both you’re lacking essential tools.
Just keep swimming…
Put on your big girl panties
This was my go-to, but has since evolved to “big kid pants”
As High King Margo puts it:
“LIFE IS PAIN. OVARY UP.”
Gee, it doesn’t fit you, it leaves out your whole gender? Take another look at yours. If you want something more neutral, and with a little softer edge,
“Sometimes you just gotta suck it up”
implies you understand that what they are facing sucks, doesn’t suggest they’re not a man if they fail, and doesn’t imply that female=worthless.
High King Margo, the destroyer. Just finished a rewatch of this.
Not to bash her performance since I love the show, but did anybody else think she was kind of phoning in some of her scenes in the final season? I started wondering if something was happening behind the scenes.
The issue is the “man” up aspect. There are ABSOLUTELY times when you have to… Well, man up, nut up… Whatever. That’s a fact of life - some situations require you to stop being a child, and instead face it like an adult would.
We run into issues with it being ‘man’ or ‘nut’ - these are gender-loaded terms, which imply that females aren’t able to do the same thing. Do I think anyone actually means that when they say one of those things? No. Do I think a lot of reactions to them are overblown? Yes. We should still be cognizant of what the language we choose to use may say subtextually though.
There’s another parallel issue to the advice to man up. That’s that a lot of times, the people who get that advice HAVE BEEN manning up, and the advice giver is seeing them in a moment where they’ve been worn down and just need a quick whinge fest before going back to manning it up. Situations like that imply that having any emotions other than “git er dun” is a bad thing and you should just STFU and work.
As far as giving others advice goes, generally speaking unless they ask you for advice, don’t. If someone’s just coming to you with some venting about a thing and you tell them whatever version of “man up” you want, even if it’s applicable, it comes across as dismissive. The person may not want advice, they may just want to unload a bit. If you can’t do that without offering advice, then it’s best to state that.
“Your feelings matter, but your actions matter too, and you choose those.”
“The only way out is through.”
“What can I do to improve my situation.”
Don’t let douchebags scare you away from this, but this is basically stoicism. It’s not that your feelings don’t matter, it’s just that sometimes you actually can change your situation and it’s good to do that then
