Dealing with people who choose to suffer
There are people who fall under minority and underprivileged groups. However there are those who let it control them and those who use it as a means to push them to go further. Now there is clear disadvantages that one needs help out of. Such as a mother/father preventing thier child from getting a liscense or job. While there is other situations such as a female working harder in male dominated field becuase they dont take women seriously. Now there are some people who insist on being helpless and seem to want to suffer. How does one help a disadvantaged person Who enjoys suffering about it but then crys and refuses to fix it? Ive have dealt with a lot of people who respond when given support but some are insist on not changing the situation?
Comments (21)
However, could it be that impulse to suffer is a psychological trait and there are simply some individuals who are drawn to self-denial? If this is the case, then there is no reason why the distribution of these individuals is limited to socioeconomic groups. In the same way that the middle classes have vegans, the disadvantaged have those who wallow in their condition since they appear to have chosen not to extricate themselves from their suffering despite having the opportunity to do so.
If someone appears to prefer being helpless and prefers suffering, it is likely that the appearances are misleading. Quite possibly there are some advantages for the individual that their helpless suffering stance obtains. A person might prefer to be judged disabled and receive an insufficient income benefit than work for a living and still not have a lot more than an insufficient income.
Sometimes people are just too stupid to understand and resolve their own problems. Too stupid or too addled by drugs and alcohol to figure it out. Or, sometimes too sick to do anything about it.
Could you be more specific about the type of people who insist on being helpless and seem to enjoy suffering? Yes, there are parasites who depend on ruses such as helplessness to get by. It isn't clear what exactly you are referencing.
I think 'depression' is an overworked concept. Does it exist? Absolutely. Is the claimed depression real? Sometimes it is something else: anger, resentment, alcohol and drug abuse, poverty, bad mental habits, unpleasant transient circumstances in life, etc. These problems are also real, they are just not depression and taking anti-depressants isn't going to help. Angry, resentful, bitter people need to deal with those feelings and the underlying causation (maybe delusions). Same for the rest of it.
As for the race card... It's like depression. It's real some of the time, and some of the time it could be something else. One should deal with the something else that is within one's capacity to deal with. Sometimes blacks display distinct styles of clothing, speech, and general demeanor that are simply not acceptable in a business environment. Racism is real, but so is acting like you don't and won't belong in the kind of environment in which you want to work.
I've talked to quite a few people who have opted to beg. Some of these guys seem to have their lives somewhat together. Not too together, though, because standing by a freeway entrance all day has to be a fairly hard way to make a living. Similarly, begging on the street in Minneapolis in January is not taking the easy way. I can see how it happens: They are disabled, and/or social idiots, anti-social, or... whatever; chronically drunk, on drugs, disorderly, and so forth and they get kicked out of the programs and housing they are in.
Once you get kicked out, there are often no options. So... you beg. Begging is a tough disciplinarian: you have to stay at it, be nice to people who want to talk to you (and might give you four or five dollars rather than 35ยข, look penitent and harmless, and so on. If you don't stay out there, heat, cold, rain, sleet or snow -- you won't get enough for a meal and a bed for the night.
The advantage to begging is that you don't have a boss, you don't have to deal with co-workers, and you can take a passive attitude: it isn't MY fault that I AM where I AM. I AM an unfortunate victim of ... whatever. And sometimes they are.
When a just man does something, he leaves a great deal to be done.
When a disciplinarian does something and no one responds,
He rolls up his sleeves in an attempt to enforce order.
[/quote]
There are exceptions - some people function quite happily pursuing self-generated goals related solely to self-betterment - but on the whole most people seem to live more happily when they're dedicated to some goal external to them - raising a family, doing charitable work, working for the betterment of one's people or one's nation, working ad majorem Dei gloriam, etc.
If someone won't help themselves, then maybe getting them to help someone else will help them help themselves too.
Generally speaking, yes, apart from the outliers I mentioned. It does seem that most human beings are built to see their life in the perspective of some transcendental over-arching contextual view or other, whether that be traditionally religious, or patriotic, or the quasi-religious perspective of the modern Left. We just seem to hum along better with a sense of transcendence like that.
To preserve privacy of individuals, I'll quote a recent conversation anonymously, which I think may encapsulate the dynamic of the OP:
Me: You should never have regrets. If you have not performed to your potential then you have just overrated your potential - probably failing to take into account factors that limited your potentials.
Him: That's wrong. There are definitely times when I should have done better but I took the easy way out.
Me: That just means there were factors in your personality that prevented you from putting in your best effort.
Him: No no no ...
He is determined to suffer. He believes he deserves to suffer - cause and effect. Karma. It would be great to find a way to crack the code but decades of ingrained negative thinking - of anything - creates a deeply ingrained habit of thinking.
We are all broken in some ways, but some more so than others.
This assume your position in the conversation is all around correct and he is the wrong. Yet where the topic of whether or not he is wrong is considered the context provided seems to be a broad view without considering the individual variables as is often the case when your goal is merely to cheer someone up. Unfortunately many people who are the target of this cheering up are actually thinking in the micro of the issues where are you the cheer-er up-er :/ are thinking in broad strokes.
Yes, I do think he believed I was just giving him cheery talk rather than logic, and thus dismissed it.
Being bright and articulate with a couple of minor savant gifts does not mean that one is emotionally stable enough to utilise the positive qualities. It is easy to gloss over one's shortcomings (which are often more clearly noticed by others), and then overrate our capacities and subsequently unfairly blame ourselves for not achieving.
I wonder if it's sometimes easier to blame our failings on lack of effort than to admit that one is actually more middling and less exceptional than one imagined?
PS. Sorry for not quoting but I don't know the protocols for quoting with this forum's software, which seems different to the kind of BB code I'm familiar with.
Select the text, and click the quote button that appears. Shimples.
Thanks :) I didn't expect a context sensitive button.