Creed's Corner: A Collection of the Morbid, Mysterious, and Mrandom

[John V]

Fuck every last bit of what alpha male said. If you try to attract women by being something you're not, happiness will not ensue.

This is a major difference between me and many others here. You seem to think that what a person is is something carved in stone. I see people as able to learn and change. You do to, actually: "This isn't a knowledge you cannot grasp, it's a skill you haven't practiced." If you really believed the "being something you're not" bit, you wouldn't make such a suggestion. But really you know that a person lacking empathy can practice and learn empathy, and become a person with empathy. They're not trying to attract others by being something they're not. They're changing who they are, and for the better. Same with the suggestions I'm making. Getting into an exercise routine isn't being something that you're not, it's changing who you are.

---

It's a good thing for you alpha that being a gargantuan sexist asshole isn't against the rules on this forum.

Good thing for you that being a giant whining vagina isn't against the rules.

[Norman Humann]

This is a major difference between me and many others here. You seem to think that what a person is is something carved in stone. I see people as able to learn and change. You do to, actually: "This isn't a knowledge you cannot grasp, it's a skill you haven't practiced." If you really believed the "being something you're not" bit, you wouldn't make such a suggestion. But really you know that a person lacking empathy can practice and learn empathy, and become a person with empathy. They're not trying to attract others by being something they're not. They're changing who they are, and for the better. Same with the suggestions I'm making. Getting into an exercise routine isn't being something that you're not, it's changing who you are.

Bold mine. Do you realise how contradicting these two sentences are?

You can't compare going to the gym, which is done for the individual's health to completely changing your looks, which are a way of expressing yourself. Going to the gym mainly benefits the person exercising and their physical and mental condition, while changing one's looks to fit the 'standard' is done purely to attract others. Do you not see the difference?

[John V]

This is a major difference between me and many others here. You seem to think that what a person is is something carved in stone. I see people as able to learn and change. You do to, actually: "This isn't a knowledge you cannot grasp, it's a skill you haven't practiced." If you really believed the "being something you're not" bit, you wouldn't make such a suggestion. But really you know that a person lacking empathy can practice and learn empathy, and become a person with empathy. They're not trying to attract others by being something they're not. They're changing who they are, and for the better. Same with the suggestions I'm making. Getting into an exercise routine isn't being something that you're not, it's changing who you are.

Bold mine. Do you realise how contradicting these two sentences are?

I realize that they're contradictory if you think the who someone is is immutable. As noted, I don't hold that view. I'm not the same person I was 10, 20, or 30 years ago. People change. you all realize this, you just use the "who I am" bit as an excuse not to put in the effort required to change. So, no, to me they're not contradictory.

You can't compare going to the gym, which is done for the individual's health to completely changing your looks, which are a way of expressing yourself. Going to the gym mainly benefits the person exercising and their physical and mental condition, while changing one's looks to fit the 'standard' is done purely to attract others. Do you not see the difference?

As noted, it's not just to attract women, it's a behavioral approach - change who you are by changing your behavior.

[SteelCurtain]

Fuck every last bit of what alpha male said. If you try to attract women by being something you're not, happiness will not ensue.

This is a major difference between me and many others here. You seem to think that what a person is is something carved in stone. I see people as able to learn and change. You do to, actually: "This isn't a knowledge you cannot grasp, it's a skill you haven't practiced." If you really believed the "being something you're not" bit, you wouldn't make such a suggestion. But really you know that a person lacking empathy can practice and learn empathy, and become a person with empathy. They're not trying to attract others by being something they're not. They're changing who they are, and for the better. Same with the suggestions I'm making. Getting into an exercise routine isn't being something that you're not, it's changing who you are.

---

It's a good thing for you alpha that being a gargantuan sexist asshole isn't against the rules on this forum.

Good thing for you that being a giant whining vagina isn't against the rules.

No, I don't. I don't think that what a person is (by that I mean what their interests are, who they like, how they see themselves, how they dress/wear their hair) can't be changed. I just don't think it should be changed for the sole purpose of being more attractive to a certain type of people if those people aren't going to align to his interests and desires. If there are other reasons, then fine. If by learning new skills a person's interests change as well, good.

Creed has a wonderful personality and a unique character. From what he's posted, he's having trouble connecting with the people in his life. Cutting his hair and dressing differently so that you approve isn't going to help that.

[John V]

No, I don't. I don't think that what a person is (by that I mean what their interests are, who they like, how they see themselves, how they dress/wear their hair) can't be changed. I just don't think it should be changed for the sole purpose of being more attractive to a certain type of people if those people aren't going to align to his interests and desires.

What if he never bathed, and that limited the women who were attracted to him? Would you make the same argument, or tell him to take a f---ing shower in order to expand the pool of potential mates?

When you're young and from a troubled background, dressing in black and going to cemeteries might seem cool to some people, and at least understandable to others. When you're 27 and haven't had a relationship last more than three months in the past ten years, it's time for an overhaul.

Creed has a wonderful personality and a unique character.

That have left him unhappy. It may have served him for awhile, but it's time for a change. That's how it always is on this forum. Someone says their life sucks. One or two people tell them to change. Others jump in saying that you can't/shouldn't change who you are. It's ridiculous.

[Creed of Heresy]

1:  Why?

Because you look like a girl.

2:  If I never shaved, my facial hair would be a loooot longer, don'tcha think? (no you don't, that's the problem)

Shave regularly. Didn't think I had to spell that out for you, but there ya go.

3:  I wear loose-fitting pants and t-shirts.  Pretty sure most men dress like that.  Sorry to inform you that your own style of dressing in frilly skirts and bras is actually not the average masculine standard.

No, most men don't wear the shit you had on in those pictures.

4:  Sorry, but with all my other financial obligations right now [extensive medical bills, car payments and insurance, rent, electricity, cable, cab rentals, and food] and my time obligations [cabbing for ~12 hours a day five days a week on average to pay for those things], shelling out $55 a month and 2-3 hours a day at a gym with a bunch of "Alpha Male"s is both untenable and undesirable.

$55/month is about $2.50 per working day. Do one more fare and you can pay for it. I'm currently working ~66 hours/week and I still find about 45 minutes/day for exercise, and more on Sunday. But if you really can't do the gym, look up bodyweight exercising. You can do it at home. "Convict Conditioning" is a good book on it but it costs $40. You can learn what you need online for free.

5:  "Eat food."  What a novel concept.  Last night I made season-rubbed pork loin and mashed red potatoes with thyme, garlic, salt, and pepper, with the reductions from the pork as gravy.  The night before, I made baked salmon with butter, garlic, and dill weed.  I both know how to cook and what to eat.

Actually eating food is a novel concept for many Americans. Glad you're doing well on this point.

6:  You're absolutely right.  I should continue to internalize all my problems and negative emotions and keep the mask on not just in person but also online, because that is a healthy mindset to have.

No, you should set positive achievable goals (like going to the gym) so that you can build positive emotions.

Your understanding of psychological health is an absolute vacuous nothingness.

No, I have a good understanding of mental health, and as noted, the things I suggest are frequently suggested by mental health professionals. It's incredibly easy to find this information. The first hit I got from Googling "exercise mental health" was:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1424736/
Excerpt:
The strongest evidence suggests that physical activity and exercise probably alleviate some symptoms associated with mild to moderate depression. The evidence also suggests that physical activity and exercise might ... improve self-image, social skills,

Huh, that's exactly what you're looking for.

I may be miserable, unhappy, and lacking any kind of identity but that's because I've spent my entire life and all my time fighting tooth and nail just to survive.  Most people in my position become sociopaths, rapists, killers, all the worst elements of humanity and it's taken me all my strength and willpower to direct myself from being that.  I have no identity or self-direction towards a successful life as you know and define it because for my entire life, success was defined by ensuring my survival and perseverance.  When you were learning your ABCs I was learning to successfully hide from pedarast foster parents and, failing evasion, how to maximize my chances of fighting hard enough and enduring enough so that either that attempted incidence was not worth the time, effort, or difficulty for them to have their way, or that I could at least not let it weaken me for whatever would come later.

If you've determined that your past completely controls your future, then yes, the game's over for you. Alternatively, you could consider that other people have come from such backgrounds and overcome them, and realize that you could do the same too.

Weed is not an addictive substance.

http://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/re...-addictive
Is marijuana addictive?

Yes. Over time, overstimulation of the endocannabinoid system by marijuana use can cause changes in the brain that lead to addiction, a condition in which a person cannot stop using a drug even though it interferes with many aspects of his or her life. It is estimated that 9 percent of people who use marijuana will become dependent on it. The number goes up to about 17 percent in those who start using young (in their teens) and to 25 to 50 percent among daily users. According to the 2013 NSDUH, marijuana accounted for 4.2 million of the estimated 6.9 million Americans dependent on or abusing illicit drugs.

Long hair = looking like a girl, huh?

Oh hi, Brad Pitt...

Pretty sure that dude has gotten laid more than all of the entire forum's population across all genders combined five times over.
Not saying I'm Brad Pitt, of course, nor that I look like him.  But trust me when I say, when my hair is short, I don't look much better.  I've gotten more female attention since growing my hair out than I did when it was short.  My facial structure isn't very conducive to having short hair.  Actually I was being mistaken for being much younger than I am, and not in a way that was beneficial.

I do shave regularly, but only when the depression lifts.  Bipolar depression is a different beast than clinical depression, which is one of the reasons why people who are bipolar do not tend to respond to the types of antidepressants used to treat clinical depression...in fact, it can [and often does] exacerbate the problem.

And most men nowadays, you mean.  Popular fashion is a thing that changes on a yearly basis, and back when I used to wear the "normal" kinds of fashion, I was even worse off.  Fashion is an expression of self, and if you don't feel comfortable wearing something, how do you expect to feel and/or express confidence or comfort in it?  If a style of clothing you wear makes you feel comfortable, however, and you feel confidence in your appearance in such outfits, stands to reason you will find expressing confidence easier, no?  And more than appearances, women find confidence attractive.  My confidence issues stem from different sources.  At any rate, I do tend to wear more 'normal' clothing from time to time; I have a taste for camo pants as well, and given I see other guys wearing that plenty...

Getting fares is a thing that varies.  There are some days I actually end up losing money.  Don't get me wrong, this job actually pays fairly well, but even if I go through a month where I pull four grand in profit, that merely means paying off more of my debts.  I am recovering from a particularly severe financial crisis that is going to take the better part of this year and possibly some of next year to undo the damage of.  I don't really have the luxury to spend on luxuries; the longer I take to deal with my debts, the more the long-term damage is going to be [credit ratings and credit scores are things that all but dictate the success of our lives].

At any rate [again], I am not shirking my physical fitness.  I do pushups and situps at home, and practice free-running with the goal of entering into and practicing advanced parkour techniques, except for the last year or so where just getting out of bed consumes almost all the energy and motivation I have.  This isn't a matter of motivation; the depression I suffer from, when it takes me, can last months on end, sometimes as long as a year or even more in particularly bad bouts, and is not a matter of mood.  It's something that affects more than my mood, it affects my cognitive functions; driving during the darker days of it can actually be a safety hazard, as my cognitive responses slow down, my awareness suffers, and my reflexes dull.  It is not something I can think my way through.  If it was, I wouldn't find it encroaching on my livelihood, a livelihood that I genuinely enjoy.  Driving is relaxing, calming for me.  I can spend half of an entire day on the road and by the end of my shift, I find myself wondering where the time has gone.  Times flies when you're having fun...

Few others have come from my background.  Most of the ones who share or relate to my experiences are people who typically are far, far worse off than I am.  Prison, psych wards, absolute destitution, and vindictively visiting the same experiences that they endured against others are all too common from people coming from such backgrounds.  The psychologists and psychiatrists I have seen over the course of my life have unanimously expressed surprise that I'm as well-adjusted as I am.

Given I've gone on months-long periods in which I go through three grams of weed in two or three days on average and come off of them without seeing any degradation in my mood, working performance, or daily regimens [until the depression surges up again; the weed is usually what I use to counter-act the worst of the effects], I have a hard time buying into that whole thing.  I know the government published that study but given they classify it as being as dangerous as heroin and cocaine and other opioid narcotics, and given its century-long history in regards to its stance on marijuana and given its extremely limited study into it and its effects on both the individual and the group-whole, I have a very hard time taking it at face value, exacerbated by the fact that since it is a federally-restricted product, the studies on it have been limited to the extent that by most scientific standards they would be considered to be pretty much absolutely inconclusive.

Also note that the study you mentioned about self-image states it in regards to "mild to moderate" depression.  It's something of a non-sequitur, given that I have borderline personality disorder with comorbid type 2 bipolar disorder, social anxiety disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder, the latter of which is so far the only thing I've thus been able to see any extensive improvement on a year and a half into being treated for all of those.

It's not something I can think away.  As I said in my post, borderline, especially at the severity I suffer from, requires treatment via dialectic behavioral therapy, and even then the effectiveness of which is far from being guaranteed in its success, exacerbated again by the severity I am at.  It's not a personal opinion of personal negativity and emotional distress; this is something told to me by two different psychologists, both of whom are some of the most highly-rated in the entire state [and whom I can nowadays afford to see only because of the PPACA].  From the personality disorder itself stems all of these problems.  I find it difficult to explain or describe my perception of things in regards to all that I express; it's like trying to explain color to a creature without eyes.  The concepts many find so natural and easy, I find baffling and utterly perplexing at best, and outright foreign and antithetical at worst.

You are flippant in regards to 'changing who I am.'  To an outsider, it clearly seems to be an almost stupidly simple affair to rectify.  From within, it's anything but.

Most the others here are much more understanding, because most of them have witnessed or even personally experience the same thing.  They insult you because you demonstrate you are incapable of understanding and are clearly unwilling to attempt to.  You are convinced entirely that you know the answers and that they are the genuine solution to the problem.  I am not inactive, nor am I stagnant in trying to change by any definition of the words.  I try at my best to be fluid, adaptive, and understanding.  If such 'answers' to the problem truly worked, I would not be in the state that I am, because I have tried all of those things and then some.  They have not succeeded.

The sole thing that keeps me sane is the support of others.  Without my friends, few and far between as they are [most of the general population demonstrates the same hostility-based views towards me as you do, the few who do are the only people I can find any empathy from and towards], and without the people here who demonstrate empathy for me, I would probably not be here.  Half of the success of my being as well-adjusted as I am is because I am fortunate enough and have reached out enough to have found the people in my life who've been willing to deal with me and work with me when I am at my very worst.

Which is why I call into question your knowledge and understanding of psychology, why I express contempt for you, your 'solutions,' and your opinions opinions, and why the others here are doing the same.  I see where you are coming from.  I see why you think the way that you do.  At least in this instance.  I have dealt with it, seen it, and endured it more times than I can count.  And that more than anything else is where we differ here.

[John V]

tl;dr

I want my life to magically change without making any changes myself.

[dyresand]

tl;dr

I want my life to magically change without making any changes myself.

Creed is actually happy no changes are needed. Because he has friends and people he can count on.
Because the manly power of friendship.

[John V]

Creed is actually happy no changes are needed. Because he has friends and people he can count on.
Because the manly power of friendship.

Huh, I never would have interpreted this as being happy:

Maybe this sounds like I'm moping and feeling sorry for myself. Maybe I am. I feel helpless, hopeless, and defeated. Nothing's working, nothing's going right. It's getting harder and harder just to get out of bed. Every day drifts by in a hazy, colorless blur, with no passage of time noted or remarked upon. I go to sleep lonely and afraid. And all the words of encouragement others give me comes through as if spoken underwater. I feel everything closing in on me, I feel myself shutting down slowly and I don't know how to stop it. I'm at the point where now I feel like if I got into a relationship, it would be out of pity from the other rather than out of any genuine affection for me.
...
I don't know. I just don't know. About anything. About myself, about my life. About who I am, what I'm doing, where I'm going, what I want... I don't know. I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't fucking know. I'm losing my mind, I feel myself slipping away and I can't connect with anything or anyone anymore. I don't know what to do. I'm scared and resigned, in pain and numb all at once. I don't know what I'm feeling. I want to express myself. I can't do it adequately. I want to put my thoughts to words but it's all coming out insufficient, lackluster, half-correct but with so much missing. I feel like I have no mouth, but I want to scream. I need to scream. I have to scream. But I can't. I don't know how. Like I'm trying to describe color to a creature with no eyes. Or I'm blind and trying to understand color as explained to me by the croaking of a bullfrog.

So that's what happy looks like to you folks. Go figure...

[Creed of Heresy]

tl;dr

I want my life to magically change without making any changes myself.

Translation:  "I don't actually care, I'm right you're wrong I have no intention of actually considering the point of view of another human being."

Fucking hell you're a loathsome little shit, aren't you? I may not be happy but at least I can find comfort in the fact I have friends and people who care about me.

Given how much of a prick you are and given the shit you say, something tells me that maybe you're jealous of the support people give me and we give each other. I wonder why you would be so jealous... Well, the same reason anyone is jealous of something or someone.

Because we have something you totally lack, perhaps?