Why are so many people struggling with life?

[Letsgetgoing888]

Not just due to covid, but it’s definitely been highlighted more recently....

But in recent years there seem so many more angry people, stressed people, depressed people, people that can’t control their temper, mental health issues, obese kids, obese adults, people who don’t look after themselves or their kids properly...

I know mental health services are woefully inadequate, but generally as a society we are talking more about mental health, provide benefits, charity support, free healthcare and so much more than in the past.

But more people seem to be really struggling in many different ways, health wise, financially, mentally, emotionally. Suicide rates are higher now than in the past (even pre-covid).

Did they have it right in the old days of stiff upper lip? And if not, why are things so much worse now when there is so much more awareness?

Late-stage capitalism? I think we had few decades worth of sunny reprieve since WWII but now expansion of consumer products is past its peak - in Europe and the US, anyway - we need to increase production by other means. Ie, longer hours, more double-job households, less state support, etc etc. Makes us tired.

The whole system is to paint success as getting a good job, earn loads of money, buy expensive houses and cars. People are greedy and want more, more, more.

Personally, success isn’t even relevant. Happiness and contentment is key. The whole world is geared towards growth and advancement.

This sums up my thoughts:

There was once a businessman who was sitting by the beach in a small Brazilian village.
As he sat, he saw a Brazilian fisherman rowing a small boat towards the shore having caught quite few big fish.
The businessman was impressed and asked the fisherman, “How long does it take you to catch so many fish?”
The fisherman replied, “Oh, just a short while.”
“Then why don’t you stay longer at sea and catch even more?” The businessman was astonished.
“This is enough to feed my whole family,” the fisherman said.
The businessman then asked, “So, what do you do for the rest of the day?”
The fisherman replied, “Well, I usually wake up early in the morning, go out to sea and catch a few fish, then go back and play with my kids. In the afternoon, I take a nap with my wife, and evening comes, I join my buddies in the village for a drink — we play guitar, sing and dance throughout the night.”
The businessman offered a suggestion to the fisherman.
“I am a PhD in business management. I could help you to become a more successful person. From now on, you should spend more time at sea and try to catch as many fish as possible. When you have saved enough money, you could buy a bigger boat and catch even more fish. Soon you will be able to afford to buy more boats, set up your own company, your own production plant for canned food and distribution network. By then, you will have moved out of this village and to Sao Paulo, where you can set up HQ to manage your other branches.”
The fisherman continues, “And after that?”
The businessman laughs heartily, “After that, you can live like a king in your own house, and when the time is right, you can go public and float your shares in the Stock Exchange, and you will be rich.”
The fisherman asks, “And after that?”
The businessman says, “After that, you can finally retire, you can move to a house by the fishing village, wake up early in the morning, catch a few fish, then return home to play with kids, have a nice afternoon nap with your wife, and when evening comes, you can join your buddies for a drink, play the guitar, sing and dance throughout the night!”
The fisherman was puzzled, “Isn’t that what I am doing now?”

Noise, overcrowding, people being inconsiderate to each other because there are so many of us stuffed in our cities.

So many reasons: poor/expensive housing, lack of job security, inequalities, dodgy government, less family support, people seeing relationships as disposable...

Technology/social media/internet has added constant pressure on people.

I think in this country everything is really expensive and it is hard for many people to have a good quality of life. People pretty much have to work around the clock in shitty jobs.

We also have had a series of woeful governments that only seem concerned with lining their own pocket. When the top is rotten everyone else below starts to feel the pinch...

Just in the top of my head

• poverty levels increasing. The U.K. has the lowest level of social protection in the EU. The standard sickness pay is even lower than the US!!
• low job stability. When you are on a zero hour contract etc... it’s hard to feel safe and happy. The U.K. has ON PAPER a low level of unemployement (well had) but the reality is that many people are basically not recorded because 1- zero hour contract and 2- the hoops you have to jump through puts people off.
• high stressed life. Think long commute, little time at home etc...
• very little community support. Just read threads on here where it’s considered normal for a MIL to prioritise going to the pub vs coming to look afetr her grand dcs whilst the OP goes ot hospital corpsman a broken bone. Apparently the husband and her should have taken the children with them/waited for an ambulance/whatever you can do wo daring ask anything at all from said MIL.
• general isolation. Again read posts on here form people who have moved to a new area and struggle to make friends. It’s very common and all down the inevitable ‘I already have friends so I don’t need you and won’t make an effort at all’
• obesity is usually linked with poverty (see also the cost of foods - junk is usually cheaper)
• very hard to access the right support. MH services are non existent (a friend of mine with very serious MH issues is supposed to see a CPN 4 times a year. Even that isn’t happening, let alone review of meds etc...). Seeing a GP is hard too. I know many people who give up going to see the GP because they know they will have to wait 3 weeks to have a tel consultation (that was pre Covid too). Any visit to see a consultant takes MONTHS (I had more than a year to wait for counselling or to see a neurologist)

As for not looking after yourself... seriously as someone with a chronic illness that always grates. Because yes on paper I’m supposed to exercise, do this and that. But when you are unwell, it’s very hard to do any of those (and this perpetuates the cycle).

I’m sure people will be able to add to the list.

But the one thing that is NOT happening is for people to be lazy or not caring.

I think that it’s become less socially acceptable to express anger in violent or aggressive ways, and thus it appears to be more of a problem.

@ComtesseDeSpair What a bizarre notion. When was it ever acceptable to express anger in violent and aggressive ways? Maybe in caveman times.

Are we talking about previous generations where "mother's little helpers" were an open secret and people were more readily institutionalized when they didn't cope? Generations where in many communities, as still exists now, the advice to abuse and suffering was to shut up and pray? Where part of cigarettes' popularity is how they eases stress?

I come from a community with widespread generational addiction - sometimes categorized as liking a little drink or just having something to take the edge off. Some of them like to say how weak the millennials and Gen Z and kids are, but a lot more of us are just dealing with the suffering of life with different coping mechanisms. Just because someone doesn't talk about it doesn't mean they're coping with it better, and just because someone talks about it doesn't mean that either.

Some recent trends in coping skills may not be the greatest, I do the push to move from blaming individuals for not sucking it up to attaching a mental health label as an excuse for everything rather than a way to find appropriate tools and community can be harmful. I do think this idea that if we don't talk about it we're hiding something is pushing the pendulum too far the other way and there is a balance. I do think we have a long way to go in figuring out and spread information on best practice mental health first aid and how to take care of ourselves in a quickly changing world when we're all facing very different health needs.

However, the idea that on average people in the past coped with the pain of life better than we do now is speculative and I think largely nonsense. Yes, some of our grandparents did great, but some of them didn't. Suicide rates have fluctuated all over the place since the 1950s, but have been on a general downward trend across the UK and in many places in the world. Things are getting better in many areas, many spaces just are designed to focus on that.

Yes, some parents now overcoddle, but that was true in generations past too. They might not have had the same capacity to do so, but there were plenty of spoiled brats back then. My grandparents were getting my parents' asses out of jail well into my parents' thirties. I've seen the court records. I literally had to live with mine on multiple occasions because my parents weren't coping and even then, my mother chose actions that got her arrested again - actions that put my life at risk - and my grandfather made a joke about how she was grounded and they got her a lawyer to minimize the consequences, and I was just expected to accept that nothing was going to change because family is important, we just have to love them and pray for them. I don't have to do that anymore, but the damage from family violence has at times been shifted for the risks of isolation and loneliness and not having the resources that my peers with familial support get if only having an understanding ear.

Life has suffering. We're all trying to find ways to cope with that. Some ways are better than others in long-term, many others have listed them, but I don't think on a whole previous generations handled it better. Quieter, maybe, in some areas, but not better. For every example of those who did well (or at least kept the appearance of it), there will be examples of those who did not. Community and individual mental health has always been a difficult issue.

Life used to be very very different.
I spent a lot of time at my grandparents cottage in a village in Bedfordshire in the 1960's as a child.
Ordinary people were not concerned with buying a new sofa, new curtains, decorating homes or buying appliances in those days, post war people were more interested in saving any money they had. They would keep everything clean and tidy, my grandma had a thing for polishing. Everything would be cleaned or mended. These were people who had been through two wars and the great depression.
They knew better than to spend all their money on rubbish like we do now. Grandfather had an ancient car that he kept maintained in excellent condition himself.
There was no daytime tv and no screens, our phone number had three digits in it.
During the day we were always busy, grandma ran her own business and my grandfather who had been in both wars maintained the house, chopped wood and grew all their fruit and vegetables.
There were no supermarkets just a local shop so there was a meat van and a fish van that came round once a week and everyone kept chickens, my grandfather kept bees for honey.
The village hall was opposite and there was real community in those days, there was a mix of everyone in the village from poor to rich and social circumstances were very mixed.
The poor would work for the rich and on the farms and everyone would get together at church and on festivals and high days.
There was no tv in the day so we would always be doing things as kids, we'd be out helping grandma with her business, helping out on the farms and visiting and receiving people so everyone knew everyone and everyone helped each other out.
The local church was a real social hub and everyone went.
I miss those days so much, there was always someone to talk to or something to do.
Now I hardly ever see my neighbours and there is no social hub in the village I live in now.
I went back to the village recently to see what time had done to it. It is a village only for the rich now, half a million pound houses and cottages all totally renovated, the outside loo gone, nobody growing vegetables. The poor can't afford to live there anymore, they have all been forced out into the nearest biggest town and the village is totally dead. No community.
I honestly wish we could go back in time.

Read the thread about the mum who left her 7.5 y old child in the house for just 15 minutes to go and collect the other children from school. So many people responding saying they'd never leave their dc until at least 12 and that their NT dc would panic if left alone etc etc. I think this demonstrates a change in attitudes where we're babying our children too much and bit actually preparing them for life as a fully functioning adult in a world where shit happens that you just have to deal with.

Interesting thread. It's definitely getting worse, not better.

That should say many areas just aren't designed to focus on things that have gotten better - which is why most fail the Factfulness quiz as we're problem solving animals, so we focus on the problems.

Mental health is always made far worse by inequality and poverty and overwork. It's always been an issue - anyone with relatives who went through WW1 or 2 or even worse both must have known at least someone who couldn't talk about it, or who drank heavily, who lived a very quiet life afterwards, or who even had "shellshock".

Nowadays, I think it's less social media, more the issue in this country with house prices and wages. More than anything, rent and mortgages have gone off the scale, along with childcare expenses, so everyone has to work full-time, even grandparents, and so there's no room for "normal life". When working full-time hours still isn't enough to have a decent standard of living, or even put food on the table, especially when it used to be, it can feel like personal failure. But it's not. It's a badly-managed economy.

The government have removed any prospect of progress for anyone. I fucking despise them.

Up until a global pandemic we had virtually full employment, in contrast to many parts of Europe. Large infrastructure programmes were in place to cope with the growth in the economy, certainly in rail passenger numbers. The number of new start businesses and self employed were at record levels. I could go on but the accusation that the government are responsible for suppressing progress for everybody is , how shall I put this ... complete and utter bollocks !

Poor upbringing/parenting leading to ill-mannered people as they grow up.

A lack of respect between the generations, exacerbated by the Brexit and election demographics between young and old.

An over populated island which has seen a huge population boon while public services have been cut and infrastructure not improved, which increases everyday frustrations and clogs up roads etc.

A lack of patience to wait or tolerance for inconvenience which is a consequence of instant gratification of social media etc.

A distrust of authority and establishment and therefore a lack of deference.

I think that it’s become less socially acceptable to express anger in violent or aggressive ways, and thus it appears to be more of a problem.

I agree with that. It seems acceptable to display anger and aggression and post it on social Medea for all to admire and like.

media even.

Though Medea might approve.

@TwoZeroTwoZero

Read the thread about the mum who left her 7.5 y old child in the house for just 15 minutes to go and collect the other children from school. So many people responding saying they'd never leave their dc until at least 12 and that their NT dc would panic if left alone etc etc. I think this demonstrates a change in attitudes where we're babying our children too much and bit actually preparing them for life as a fully functioning adult in a world where shit happens that you just have to deal with.

Totally agree.

My workload has gone up by about 70% I'm exhausted all the time, I don't get any time off because I have young DC and the minute they go to bed I have to start working again so it never ever stops. It's a first world problem, I'm not having to walk 20 miles for water every day but it still feels gruelling and complaining online is a way to get some outlet before I stuff down the stress and get on with another night/day

@duffeldaisy

Mental health is always made far worse by inequality and poverty and overwork. It's always been an issue - anyone with relatives who went through WW1 or 2 or even worse both must have known at least someone who couldn't talk about it, or who drank heavily, who lived a very quiet life afterwards, or who even had "shellshock".

Nowadays, I think it's less social media, more the issue in this country with house prices and wages. More than anything, rent and mortgages have gone off the scale, along with childcare expenses, so everyone has to work full-time, even grandparents, and so there's no room for "normal life". When working full-time hours still isn't enough to have a decent standard of living, or even put food on the table, especially when it used to be, it can feel like personal failure. But it's not. It's a badly-managed economy.

This is exactly what I wanted to say. I genuinely think a large part of it is the disparity between the cost of living and wages. The job my dad used to do in the early 90s paid £35k and it pays £35k now.

I live in a market town in the SW (not a posh one) and paid an amount for a 3 bed townhouse that now buys you a flat. 7 years ago. It's ridiculous.

the changed work environment plays a part. When I started my career, the office was a hive of activity, with lots of people carrying out diverse roles. We had admin staff, security staff, maintenance staff, technical staff etc. all working together for the same good. We had autonomy over how we carried out our roles.

Now the admin staff is gone - we write our own emails. Maintenance staff is contracted out, and there's a procession of different people. The office now feels like warehousing for people - we've lost all cameraderie.

Technology also hasn't been a benefit to people. It's resulted in over-monitoring of staff, expectations of instant responses and more 'firing from the hip'. Decisions are now centralised.

It's not just my industry. My local bank branch used to know me and make decisions/provide advice on my banking requirements. Now (assuming i go in at all), they're reduced to typing details into a computer and letting that take the decision. They have no autonomy, and that must be soul-destroying. And for those people who derive identity from work, leave them wondering who they are.

Similar for people who work on the road - it used to be a role where you planned your own day, made the necessary business decisions and rang in occasionally from a call box. Now you're monitored, constantly contactable, and a pawn to be moved around at the behest of your management. Great for business, but incredibly disempowering for the employee.

Roll on retirement, but in the meantime, it's coming up for 9am, and I need to make sure my Skype dot stays green or red all day. I hate it.

I think society is very polarised too. Relationships have changed. The person I would have said was my best friend has a different opinion on Brexit and it has sadly affected our personal relationship negatively. I think the pandemic is deepening the rift between people who work in the private sector and those that work in the private sector.

I think people are very judgmental and are losing their sense of compassion and empathy. There was the most horrendous fight on my local facebook group where people went after people whose medical conditions meant they were exempt from wearing masks in the most vicious, unempathetic way I have ever seen.

Too many people, too fast paced a life, because no one is perfect, because there is this expectation of happy ever after that is just bollocks. Life is a series of ups and downs, we are emotional beings, it takes it's toll.

Would you want your granny's life? I wouldn't.

Whatever you do, don't ask an conservative American, they would say they need God back in their life.....

Well, I'd seriously struggle without Him. And I'm a liberal Brit

social media, reality tv crap et al. mulches the brain, so many people have a zombie look about them esp. when they are gawping at a phone, and as for giving very young kids a phone to pay with... what happened to a toy phone ?