#emotion hacking

im personally not interested in aspiring to a literally impossible ideal. id rather acknowledge that shit sucks and im not going to be able to transcend it no matter what, so its ok that i experience pain and im not going to punish myself for feeling pain, thereby adding even more pain and shame. no thanks.

its literally inhumane. would jt be nice if i could just decide out of nowhere to feel good no matter what? i guess. would it be nice to just ~let go~ of my lifetime's worth of trauma and ptsd and not "live in fear" anymore? maybe so, but thats fucking stupid and not the point. but its so incredibly unrealistic to the point of parody. why is it my job to transcend being miserable because i live in a hell world. why is it so bad and so evil for me to be sad or afraid because bad and scary things keep happening to me. its just another fucked up pseudo-spiritual thing that implies the real problem is my reaction to hell, not the hell itself. im not a robot who needs to be reprogrammed. im not a failure for being affected by the things around me. i am a human being and i shouldnt have to become something else more holy. that transcendental expectation is fucking brutal. id rather be authentically miserable than rigidly emotionally controlled into fake happiness.

"Dont forget to be ashamed!"

but yeah man if life hacking my way into rigid emotional control actually worked, it would be fucking nice! if i could thought and emotion control myself into only feeling and thinking things that are acceptable and pleasant, that would be nice. but human beings just cant do that. transcending pain is impossible. and i think anyone who tries to tell me they have the answer whether its Science or religion or self help or thought magics or magic or behavior modifiers or emotion hacks or skills or rituals, they are lying. and not only lying but probably will end up hurting me harder in the long run. i am not falling short by experiencing pain due to painful situations. it means i am a real person living in the world. the societal expectation for me to be indifferent is a cruel and impossible one. and therapy acting like they have the secrets of the universe about pain is also lie.

it reminds me of the biohacking thing, specifically the kind where if you just eat and exercise and take supplements on a rigid schedule, you will reach this incredible level of health that you’re almost not human anymore. it hinges on supernatural/spiritual transcendence,. and that’s what therapy is doing. you can’t therapy hack or mental health hack or emotion hack a life under oppression and capitalism and all the other horrors into one that is excellent out of controlling your thoughts and emotions with therapy skills and rituals. feeling bad in a shitty world is normal and you deserve to feel better, but in order to improve how you feel, we need to change the world into one that’s worth living in instead of using thought and emotion stopping techniques to silence the pain. 

i can understand these things are supposed to be steps. but like. when you're in the kind of fear that the pandemic caused, you can't just choose to slide towards growth somehow. it's an incomplete chronological order of events. and being handed this only really resounded "here's what you are doing Wrong" not "How to learn to do better." it gives me the goals only, not how to get there.

and the ending message was that "the most crucial time to continue to work on your goals is specifically when you have lost motivation." which is like. ok sure but people dont often work like that. if u have Discipline to make yourself work towards goals even when you're not feeling it, then cool and great. but a lot of people just dont. so how exactly are us regular people supposed to persist through low motivation? Just Do It! its a life hack emotion hack that is just unrealistic: Just Do It! somehow. how exactly? Do it. its another one of those logical leaps that just does not reflect reality. i need to know the steps between having low motivation and doing stuff im not motivated to do anyway. like what are the steps. how am i supposed to get there?