The plate dispenser theory of issues, trauma and heartache.

I don't think you realise to what aspect I was refering to but it's been a long day already and extra spoons are a privilege so I'll just stand by what I said and leave it at that.

Outreach was vital, during the past four years, in my life. I copied better, than most, during Lockdown as I was able to call a few select friends. Plus, my Artist friend was my de facto Support Bubble.

Selling the family home, and land, also provided an incentive to be proactive. Dealing with the bureaucratic quagmire kept me ticking. I soon had to get up to speed.

I'm sorry but I tend to agree with him. And it's not a uniquely Buddhist philosophy. You can see the same thing in stoicism, to some extent Confucianism. the philosophy of acceptance. And to be blunt you can see aspects of the alternative in non christian religions too. Islam has the concept of jihad which translates as something close to struggle. The struggle to make the world a better place is something very central to christian theology as well. "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."

Modern mental health tends to encourage people to internalise and accept their helplessness. Learn to be happy as things are they say. But one of the hardest things in mental health is fighting alone. Knowing that your situation is intolerable and being told to bare it alone because no one will join you in your struggle. It's a way society excuses itself from providing emotional and practical support to those suffering. By believing the lie that the way to help others is to teach them to accept and tolerate their situation instead of joining them in their struggle to find a way out of their situation.

Desmond79 said:

The whole approach to Mental Health is a process of false optimism; as if they're mandating Zen Buddhism. Men died so that our country shall remain Christian. The Lord is our Soruce.

That's a weird way to package religious intolerance Desmond.

Life is a Warzone; which began in the Schools.

Promising minds have self-loathing installed into them; up to the point they couldn't, or wouldn't, take anymore.

We're like Swans. Gracious on the outside, but paddling frantically underneath.

The whole approach to Mental Health is a process of false optimism; as if they're mandating Zen Buddhism. Men died so that our country shall remain Christian. The Lord is our Soruce.

A good metaphor... particularly if one of the plate at the bottom wasnt clean and is now all green and fluffy and causes more and more stink as you go down the srack!

The issue is a therapist is usually just there to listen. Or to listen and come up with convoluted ways to say 'let it go,' like some glib Disney princess. What you often want is help. Like if someone is forced to give up their studies because of health issues and years later still is wondering about the career they were originally on track for. Maybe it's 10 20 years later and they never really gave up looking for a way to go back but life buried it under so many other crisis's. First the health crisis then the money crisis that often follows etc. <- this is a hypothetical example.

Makes loads of sense to me.

For me though, the problem is that people are normally not interested in all the stuff underneath the issue of the moment - they have enough on the go in their own lives that the various painful situations of others are just not that interesting to them.

If you have someone who is willing to listen to it all then you are fortunate indeed.

My experience is that a therapist (ie someone paid to listen and question me) is the only effective way to unpack the years of assorted mess ups, traumas, abuse and general lack-of-clueness in my life.

Maybe I'm just getting cynical in my old age, but I never count on others to help in the really important stuff like this.

I hope the world is actually a better place than I give it credit for

Its not even that you want to keep it secret. Its just that the mental energy you need to address it is used for other things. So you can't let it out otherwise you couldn't deal with 'todays' crisis.

Part of the problem is the issues on the top tend to be the sort of issues people assume will fix themselves with time. Like finding a job. Struggling with a course. etc The plates stacked underneath tend to be existential crisis's we couldn't resolve but can't move on from. We just had to shelve them to deal with matters of immediate survival. But there in the background we are still in existential crisis and in a sense have been for years.

I feel ya. People see what's on the top but not what's buried deep inside not unless you choose to share it. I'm like that let people see what I want them to see and keep everything else buried out of sight so they won't worry. Bit like that trolley thing most people don't realise there's stuff underneath. Good post by the way it's a good way of explaining things.

Visiting cafés and restaurants is an infrequent activity for me, and if I have ever seen one of those things then it clearly didn't leave a lasting impression on me. However, I recognise that the purpose of your post wasn't to discuss the thing featured in the image.

What you have written in your post makes sense, and I think I can relate to it.

When there are deep-rooted issues, I think that unless we make a point of talking about them, there can sometimes be an assumption by others to think those issues have since been resolved. 

I think most people carry around baggage that other people may not be aware of, especially the older we get. As you rightly say, even if they did know, there is no guarantee that they would know how to help. For example, some of my baggage is stuff that will most likely never be resolved. Sure, people can offer a listening ear and a shoulder to cry on, and whilst I am always appreciative of that, I feel it's up to me to somehow learn to live with some of that stuff.

Yes, I often get the feeling people only see the "main" thing that I'm currently dealing with in any given moment and they don't see all the other things pushing it up to the surface. Generally speaking too.

But with trauma yh also that because it takes a lot to "unpack" is the other metaphor I heard of I find true as well because you can't just neatly take stuff from the bottom of the box without turning everything else on top of it up on it's head in a messy way. You have to work down the layers in trauma recovery.
Actually I'm here because 2 years before I joined this forum I was in a much worse headspace. There was one particular huge hatecrime that pushed everything to a head with my abuser of over 30 years and I didn't realise what had been piled on until after I cut contact with my main source of trauma. I had to radically work through internalised gaslighting and learned helplessness that made me agoraphobic in order to reclaim my life. Sometimes stuff still hurts if I get reminded of it but the load is a lot lighter now there is less in the box I'm carrying around in my head. I joined NAS after I had unpacked the ableism my abuser instilled in me and realised that being a "difficult child" because I am autistic wasn't an excuse for said parents behaviour.
And this is not a nice thing having to admit to it but I knew this forum existed 10 years ago, I just didn't want to join because I was so desperate to be "normal" to seek my abusers approval (that's how much of a head f*** they did on me) that I didn't want to hang out with other people who had "something wrong with them". So it was only after dealing with the ableist side of the abuse that I could accept myself and others with autism. And it pains me now to know that I had been tainted with that poison to the point of self hatred and shame. But it wasn't the first or even the 8th plate I took off of the trauma plate dispenser, unpacking and getting past that came quite near the bottom, that was about November 2022, and I don't know if I'm even at the last plate yet but I can tell by the way the spring has gotten more slack I'm near it if not on it at this point.
And yeah it does feel like it gets worse before it gets better, but it does get better, the hard part is learning how to rest rather than quit when pulling yourself up out of that hole.