Mental hygiene, the economic crisis, and me

[nancylebov]

Some of you guys seem to have read my previous post as being about my own fears. It is and it isn't.

On the practical side, I'm getting some help from my family and business has been surprisingly non-awful lately.

On the mental side, for a while there I kept thinking that society would fall apart and I'd die because I don't have any resources to deal with that sort of situation.

One of my friends said that we'd all pull through together, and while I appreciate the attitude and implied offer of help, my reaction to "Everything is going to be ok" is "How do you know?".

What got me out of it was three things I feel very sure of. One is remembering that, while I'm a smart person with some ability to predict things, I'm very far from right all the time. Just because I'm thinking that everything will fall apart doesn't mean it's going to. The second thing as that a lot of people are going to be trying very hard to keep everything from falling apart.

The third thing is that maybe there's something I should be learning or doing (first aid? home repair? other?) in case things fall apart, but that thought was completely paralyzing me, and was therefore not at all helpful.

While I'm still worried, I'm not panicking.

Comments

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, I don't think society is going to fall apart. Society seems remarkably resilient. It will change, and we won't like all the changes, but I think the most probable near- to mid-future is something like the ones Fred Pohl predicted in his memorable novels of the mid- to late-'70s: we don't achieve Utopia, there's no world-changing Singularity, but we kind of muddle through. Some things get better, some get worse.

I'm a mesomist.

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

It never hurts to know how to handle the basics of home repair and maintenance and similar tasks--being able to fix the root cause of a running toilet, and so on--and luckily for both me and thee, there are books in the library on things like this. A lot of it isn't all that hard, once you know what steps to take.

Having friends and acquaintances who know these things and are amenable to barter is good, too, as is knowing who among them has things like plumber's snakes that can be borrowed.

Fear is always the mind-killer, though.