Dear norit:

You wrote this on July 31, 2020: “I’ve always been fascinated by psychology and with my own mental illness it would be interesting to study it”- we have this interest in common, and studying myself and other people is what I’ve been doing here daily, for five years and four months.

I am sitting facing the closed windows, watching the still trees (no wind, which is good) and heavy smoke in the air. I live on the West Coast, USA, and fires are raging. Combined with Covid-19 being worse in the US than anywhere else (number of cases and deaths are higher in the US than in any other country, and the US government mismanagement of the pandemic is the worst in the developed world, if not in the entire world), plus the civil unrest, plus having an unintelligent sociopath for a president, a dangerous man who may be re-elected in two months, and if re-elected, he will continue his daily efforts to destroy democracy in this country, and proceed to dictatorship. So, overall, norit, I have this end-of-the-world-feeling that is based on reality.

I am telling you all this because I want you to understand why I am studying your threads this morning: it is to help myself, to keep doing what I have been doing for years (and having gotten better and better at it because of time and experience). I feel as if I am in that scene of the movie Titanic, that I am one of the people in the orchestra on the ship who kept playing their music while the ship was sinking.

As I read today every word and every sentence you wrote in your various threads, it became clear to me how strong  anxiety and sense hopelessness, and I am clear that it is not your fault that you have become this anxious and this hopeless. It is also clear to me that my study today is not likely to make any difference in how you experience life and how you function in life. I really have no such expectations.

I am proceeding with this so to help myself through this smoky day, and because as I quoted above, you clearly expressed your interested in this kind of study.

The quote above is from July 31, 2020. It is interesting that your first post ever in tiny buddha was made on July 31, 2016- exactly four years earlier.

This study will take a few posts, so that none is too long. This is the first post, Study Post #1. Next to come.

anita