Dear Murtaza:

Murtaza believes that the Problem he is facing is that the real world/ reality is a bad place. It feels bad to live in the real world, lots of suffering is the reward of living in the real world.

Murtaza’s Solution: to not live in the real world/ in reality, to quit living in reality. Live instead in fantasy-  good feelings is the reward of living in fantasy.

Murtaza’s implementation of the solution: he withdrew from his studies, he doesn’t look for employment, he stays at home doing nothing, or as much of nothing as is possible, not setting any goals for the future, minimizing interactions  with people, and fantasizing.

In your own words (minimally edited grammatically, for ease of reading, and not always in order): “Life isnt worth living, it’s not worth fighting for. There is no reward at the end of the fight..I’m detached in the real world, I feel more in the fantasy than I could ever in the real world… What’s so good about reality?.. I feel good when fantasizing way more than I do in reality. Isn’t that the point?..

“I have no job, and I was student and dropped out. I actually dropped out living as a whole. Why? Cause I simply don’t like life. I  lived it and saw nothing worth living or fighting for… The older I became, the more miserable, and life got harder.. I saw life only getting worse and worse every year.. the best thing I did was to just quit life.

“I got my father’s retirement, so I don’t need money… I’m suffering less, this is the point, to suffer less till the end. I’m not doing anything.. anything else than this lifestyle is suffering more.. suffering is useless.. I just have to minimize it.. I just want nothing to do with this society and its people.. I don’t want no woman, no money, no accomplishments.

“I can’t create something out of nowhere, I simply don’t have the cards. I don’t have the desire to change.. how can I create a desire to change? How can I create a desire to live? Unless I relearn life, and I can’t do that since I don’t have the desire to begin with”.

I asked you if your living situation is suitable for you, and you answered: “It is more suitable than the other options”, and you detailed the other options: “learning life from the start with no help, forcing myself everyday to live such life, dealing with a lot of stress for no reason just hoping there is a reward, there is no guaranteed reward from all this, having no freedom because I have to work, being miserable in that work”. Regarding my suggestion that you leave Iraq for better opportunities elsewhere, you wrote:  “by the time I have enough money to leave Iraq , I would lose the desire to leave, even if I leave, there is no place to go. Going to a first world country is like being a slave, having to work to eat.

Regarding my suggestion that you see psychotherapist, you wrote: “I would actually try.. if there were good one in Iraq.. I would fight my strong desire to give up, if there was a guarantee, not hope but a guarantee of something that’s worth all that fighting”.

My input today: there is a term called Learned helplessness.

https: // positivepsychology. com/ learned helplessness Seligman theory depression cure: “Learned helplessness is a phenomenon observed in both humans and other animals when they have been conditioned to expect pain, suffering, or discomfort without a way to escape it. Eventually, after enough conditioning, the animal will stop trying to avoid the pain at all- even if there is an opportunity to truly escape it.

“When humans or other animals start to understand (or believe) that they have no control over what happens to them, they begin to think, feel, and act as if they are helpless. This phenomenon is called learned helplessness because it is not an innate trait. No one is born believing that they have no control over what happens to them and that it is fruitless even to try gaining control. It is a learned behavior, conditioned through experiences in which the subject either truly has no control over his circumstances or simply perceives that he has no control…

“This phenomenon can also be seen in elephants. When an elephant trainer starts working with a baby elephant, he or she will use a rope to tie one of the elephant’s legs to a post. The elephant will struggle for hours, even days, trying to escape the rope, but eventually, it will quiet down and accept its range of motion. When the elephant grows up, it will be more than strong enough to break the rope, but it won’t even try- it’s been taught that any kind of struggle is useless.

“Such extreme experiments have not been performed on humans (nor should they), the experiments that have been conducted on humans have produced similar outcomes. Although the human response to such situations may be more complex and dependent on several different factors, it still resembles the response of dogs, rats, and other animals…

“Seligman and colleagues proposed that subjecting participants to situations in which they have no control results in three deficits: motivational, cognitive, and emotional. The cognitive deficit refers to the subject’s idea that his circumstances are uncontrollable. The motivational deficit refers to the subject’s lack of response to potential methods of escaping a negative situation. Finally, the emotional deficit refers to the depressed state arises when the subject is in a negative situation that he feels is not under his control. Based  on his research, Seligman found an important connection: the link between learned helplessness and depression”.

What you described in your most recent post, July 23 is the depression that is associated with learned helplessness: “wanting to cry the whole day and not wanting to do anything really. It’s so hard to force myself to do things or to focus on something else, and I just feel so helpless, and want someone to hold me when I cry”.

In the website I listed above, there are YouTube videos and suggestions.

anita