arafalov

I am a decade+ older and in the winding down stage of the second marriage. I was where you were after the first marriage and am coming back to the same place because I jumped into the second one too fast. I also had a serious burnout/depression and spent 3 months medical digging myself out of it by reading the psychology literature and looking for help in many places, some unusual.

So, I am going to say a bunch of things that helped me. The challenge is that maybe they will not seem helpful from exactly where they are, because they may be two or three steps ahead of exactly what you need. But, if the stuff resonates, let me know and I will be happy to give more details over the email. The most important point is, there is a way out. And there is a lot of resources out there to help you to find the way out. But you need to take ownership over it. In the way that works for you. Which is catch-22 right now because you are overwhelmed. But maybe something below will help you to find a direction you can move in and then you add the rest.

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Psychiatrists do not make you better. They get you back to the societal mean. At best. Psychologists may or may not make you better. Actually, they do not make you better. They walk along with you as you make yourself better. They are "the tool" not "the leader". Which opens up a question of whether they are the right tool. I looked at maybe 30 different psychological approaches trying to figure out which one was for me. And, nearly accidentally, discovered John Rowan, who wrote a lot of books on therapy, personal growth, etc. And deep in one of the books, there was a table which split personal positions and therapies into four categories (columns). The table blew my mind. I think it was in the book Personification (ISBN: 9780415433464).

It says that people may be in one of four major places. In first column, they may identify and judge themselves against society and its norms. That's where psychiatrists and psychological approaches like CBT work.

In second column, they want to redefine themselves (I want to be the kind of person who does X - e.g. cooks fancy dishes). So, they have internal resourcing and internal guidance. Gestalt therapy works in there.

In third column, they believe not in society but in external entity. God, angels, tarot, etc. Jungian approach resonates for those people, but so does Tantra, etc.

And, in fourth column, there is non-dual people. Taoism, some Buddhism (Dharmakaya, not Nirmanakaya).

The point is. Do you know which of these are you? I am column 2. And when I understood that, it became easier to see when something was aligned to my solution path and when something was "trying to help" but was using a terminology that was very misaligned to my internal process.

I am guessing your definition of self was coming from your partner before. And now you are still aching for that definition, but it is not available. So, you have roughly four options: 1) Find another source of definition of you, given to you by external sources. New partner, workaholism, group that will gladly take all of your time. That's column 1 solution. 2) Decide to figure out who "you" are. Basically, The Ship of Theseus approach. Decide that "I am the kind of person who is .... (great home chef)" and then do whatever is needed to become that. That's a lot of soul searching. And a lot of scaffolding building. I am doing this right now. I found Existential Therapy approach helpful to think through that. I found Sara Kuburic's book (It's on me, ISBN: 9780593449264) surprisingly good overview for that, as I prefer to do deep work myself. Victor Frankl is existentialist, but I did not find his book that useful, I think the therapy modality that is built on top of philosophy is way more relevant. 3) Decide to lean on external non-societal authority (column 3). Go find a Pegan group, start looking at Astrology, wake up your kundalini snakes, etc. Maybe it will resonate, maybe it will not. 4) Go all Tao or Zen or "it is what it is".

There is a little bit of a cheat. A lot of healing work happens in column 3 spaces. But you need to either resonate with them or find a translation layer to be able to participate. I've been building the later for myself, but it is even more work. Worth it, though.

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You do not know yourself, yet. You need to build your interoception. You need to ask yourself a question of "is this interesting to me" and being able to feel the answer. This may feel strange but it is totally doable. You can start by trying to assign numbers to your anxiety strength on any particular day (I have 1-10 scale with breath stop at 11), but it can get way more nuanced. And the deeper you go into interoception, the more clarity you get. Meditation is one (long) way to go there. But, something like Gendlin's focusing is another. There are some groups online that practice Focusing, some even for free.

Also, Authentic Relating, Circling of various kinds, Ann Weiser Conrell free mini-courses, etc. You could be busy online "present" with people every day of the week.

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You may need to grieve. Or some sort of cathartic release anyway. Again, a bunch of ways to do that, you just need to search for them. Sometimes in weird places. Ecstatic Dances are one way people do that (5Rhythms, etc). Holotropic Breathwork is another. Some online breathing groups, too. Look for groups that are present somehow "as they are", often with music.

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You may need to rebuild social skills and/or play test different personas. Improv is amazing for that. I know a bunch of people with depression or anxiety growing and chilling-out through Improv. That also gives you community. And quite valuable skills (hearing what people actually say; or, on advanced levels, what they don't say). It is a lot more than what it promises on the tin.

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Journaling, especially writing things by hand is very useful. Could be morning pages, could be Progoff's Intensive Journal, could be deep chat with LLM. The reason it works is because when you just think those thoughts, your mind compresses a lot of little steps or even skips them. It runs right past the open doors. When you write them out line by line, your brain both reads what is written and - importantly - stops holding on those thoughts too much, because it trusts the external capture. Even if you then burn that peace of paper.

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I did not touch sexuality and sensuality. Not for this site. But, let's just say, there is a lot out there as well, of all kinds. Not just Tantra.

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There is more. Lots more. A bunch of that is in old books from 1970s on archive.org for free. Bunch of it is kind of 303 or 404 level, you need to get 101 sorted first before you understand the concepts. Rituals, liminal spaces, positive effects of placebo, proximate zone of development, the rabbit hole can go very deep. And, it all can be healing when you have sufficient scaffolding for it. The scaffolding is the key, you need to build it for yourself.

The overall point is, there are many paths forward. You are on a threshold of starting to walk one or more of them (Asking HN is a sign that you are getting ready). Don't see "right now" as a terrible time. See it as an opportunity to figure out who YOU really are, and get that solidified before the next relationship. It is hard work, but it is worthwhile work. I did not do that around your age, and I am back at the ground work point again. I can't stress this point hard enough.

Try Improv (comedy) classes. They sell them as something to do on stage, but the real advantage is pattern building around social interactions.

First, you will stop being afraid to say the wrong thing. Then, you will start to hear the important part in what they said. Then, you will start to hear the part they did NOT say or super-interesting bit they skimmed over because it is not interesting to them FINALLY (at least so far for me and with other training), you will start feeling the tension in the conversation, the good time to interrupt and the time to pivot the topic.

Think Dreyfus model of skill acquisition, but in a free-to-fail environment. This, incidentally, may be the reason why I LIKE when there is low audience for the shows I do. Because, then it is really just my personal/group practice.

The one I tried, had a lot of issues. It was a music theory book and it did not know how to pronounce C# (it kept saying C 'hash'). It also referred to, but did not read out the diagrams, or tables.

So, it was not just the voice, but the quality control pipeline that was missing as well.

Maybe it mostly works for old plain text books, but if nobody is checking.....

Here is the rest of that story.

When the foreign movies started to filter into the Soviet Union's illegal movie theatres, you would get 3 or 4 movies playing at once in one room. There would be a TV in each corner of the room and 4 or 5 rows of plastic chairs in front of it in an arch.

ALL of the movies were being revoiced by the same person. So, if you were sitting in the back of the 5th row, you were potentially getting the sound from an action movie, a comedy, a horror movie and a romance at the same time. In the same voice.

You learned to filter really well. So, if that's what they were trained on, watching a single movie must have been very relaxing.

I want very similar to this but for shopping without a car.

Like, if I want to buy something big from Walmart or Costco (to keep to generic shop names) and it does not matter if I am on a train/metro/subway for 10 minutes or 20 minutes, but it totally does matter number of transport switches of bus->subway) and walking is really bad.

So, it would make sense to go to a very distant shop, but that is right opposite the direct train.

Does anything like this exist (for any city really)? The algorithm must be quite similar, but with different graph steps weighted differently depending on method of movement.

This tool (Ethereal at the time) was absolutely invaluable to my job as Senior Tech Support of Weblogic family of products. I even got clients to run it and was able to provide solutions like "your large JDBC connection pool had all its connection silently dropped by a network firewall (that client was not aware of) and that's why you having 1 hour transaction delay on first one in a morning. Every pooled connection had to timeout and reset". And "Internet Explorer would abort a TCP connection for already-cached resource and that generates non-standard network level errors on your IBM server' Weblogic installation"

I lost half of my hair on that job. Without Ethereal, I am sure I would have lost all of it and a lot more of my sanity too.

GTD has support for that with its "Project Support" documents, higher-level reviews, multiple Next Actions for same project, etc. I feel it does cover the situation, and you can still do it just when you run out of obvious things to do or stop for the day.

The "Next Action" is really just to ensure you know what actually can be done and when and not just have the project (e.g. "Buy car") as the action.

The article was oddly unsatisfying.

For me, GTD's biggest contribution was the focus on "Next Action". Which was mentioned exactly once in the article. I struggle with the perfect lists and I just can't get the Weekly Review figured out. But looking at some project and figuring out the exact Next Action (and sometimes associated Critical Path) is ridiculously valuable.

I've read a bunch of other productivity books. They have different ideas and approaches, but all of the practical ones seem to have this moment "and figure out the smallest, actionable thing you can actually do on that". But often, that bit is not front and center of the methodology. I suspect in the "3-day master course" for those techniques, they would actually practice such focus. David Allen just really put that front and center, explicitly.

Similarly, the Cognitive Behavior Therapy also uses this "Next Action" idea to get the person to move forward.

In that sense, I felt the article failed to truly look behind the curtain and just focused on a rise and fall of individual movement influencer. I did not see any mention of Lotus Notes (David Allen's own preferred solution), active GTD LinkedIn group, etc.

Remember: "if you are not the buyer, you are the product". Here, it looks like you are the product.

Specifically, "Robert Smith" needs to say to his superiors that the "quarterly review" was discussed (socialized!) in various stakeholder groups. They already had a previous meeting with a different group and whatever was said there (useful or not) translated into "We've received a lot of positive feedback". After this meeting, they will say "We've received a lot of positive feedback from round-table meetings with 2/3/4/15 groups within the company".

The "same people" group is just playing this game to be visible. If you stay in the company long enough, you can play bingo with what they say, regardless of the specific discussion topic. Don't play this game, if you don't want to. And if you don't know who you are sucking up to (or nobody), you probably don't want to, at least in this particular way.

The real questions, in my opinion, are: 1) Why were you in the meeting at all? If it is "All Staff", then maybe you can skip it (especially if it is recorded for "those not able to be present"). If it is a specific group, then which group (your IT team, group one-above your IT team, etc). Are you a member or a representative of the group? The further away, the less it matters. 2) Are they asking for written feedback, actively? By a specific date? If not, the meeting is not relevant. 3) What is the related timeline (on feedback and on document itself) and where the document goes? That's a question you can totally ask. "Hi, I admit I am not super familiar with the subject. Where does this document goes next? Is there a specific deadline for it?" 4) If you are not there once, does anybody notice? E.g. a direct follow-up for "comments from you or your team?" Have a medical/whatever appointment once and pay attention.

One book you may find interesting is "Political Savvy: Systematic Approaches to Leadership Behind the Scenes Hardcover" by Joel R. DeLuca. It is not a perfect match to the situation, but it certainly helps to think about it in the way that's more aligned with developers' mindset. Unfortunately, it may be hard to get new.

And, the Blender's install ships with a bunch of Python modules as well, not just pure runtime. So, you have access to - for example - SQLite as well.

Libby is - also - awesome. I use it with Kobo (choose on phone, then sync to reader). And they have both books and audiobooks too, so I stopped my Audible subscription for now.