I still randomly gmail my dear beloved best friend who died of melanoma 18 years ago. It goes into the ether. I hope gmail doesn't reassign his account to someone else for inactivity, they will get my "thinking of you, miss you, this thing happened that you would have found hilarious" emails.

Grief is a very difficult emotion and I like the analogy of it being a deep ocean. When you experience profound grief you are dropped almost immediately into that ocean. If it is your rodeo with grief you don’t know how to swim. You don’t know where you are. You are in an endless night of depth. You may not even know you are in the ocean at first. Your brain is simply drowning. Some constant in the mind’s universe has changed. Abruptly.

I don’t believe, completely in the narrative of American men not taking stuff out, but it is a factor. The underlying issue for not talking stuff out is ensuring you feel understood. That you are not alone in this experience. That grief is okay, normal. That you have been taught a life philosophy that encompasses grief. That it can exist without consuming all. It helps anchor these powerful emotions. There are other ways to achieve this, everyone will have their own strategies. I do think you have to have a philosophy and process to handle grief however you do it.

I believe in acknowledging grief and practicing Stoic style thinking to stay present. It really helps me to acknowledge the moment is precious. Wrenching on a car with a buddy. Sitting at the dinner table with your family. Acknowledge how special that is. That it won’t last forever. Cannot. Tell them and yourself how special it is. Visualize life without that moment anymore. Bring a little grief to the every day and present as a part of our human condition. It is okay! It is not spoiling the moment if you are using that emotion to fully experience the present.

Grief as many people experience and process it is almost always the past. Even simply acknowledging it as the powerful force in our mind can help tame it. Observe the grief so to speak, see it as an observer. I am glad you found your way. Everyone should think about grief and talk about it. Just part of us.

I love to miss people. I think missing is a complete and beautiful expression of love, just as much as having.

When I first encountered this description of grief it really resonated, but it's felt less poignant as I've gotten older, partly because I find myself grieving people who still live, and are simply too different from how I remember them or how I thought I knew them to support the relationships I want to have with them.

I suppose the principle still holds: the "love" I have for those versions of those people cannot go anywhere, but that feels dissonant with not wanting to know these people as they are, or knowing the relationship I'm wishing for is otherwise ill-fated. In either case, the relationship cannot continue, and that drive the sense of grief anyway, so maybe I'm just splitting hairs.

Such is the complex nature of grief and of human relationships, I suppose.

Love is best shared. Grief can be a powerful tool to help build up healthy new relationships.

"what is grief if not love persevering"

I'm surprised by this take, simply because of my own experience, where the further I've gotten from religion over a very long time, the less significant I've found death.

Not having "answers" to what comes next has never been a weight for me - at least not since I was a child. Death being a completion, or a finality, is freeing; The end of what has been and what I hope continues to be a wonderful journey. The only weight I carry in regards to death are for those closest to me, and especially those for whom I'm responsible.

Atheism doesn't presuppose either hedonism or nihilism. This is a common theist libel which is surprisingly popular on this forum of ersatz rational thinkers and logicians. Atheists are perfectly capable of finding value and meaning in their own lives and the world around them, they just don't base that value on a belief in the supernatural. Listen to any astrophysicist, physicist or biologist talk about their field and you'll encounter a wonder and awe that no theologian reciting thousand year old tracts can match.

Which is probably why religion was developed in the first place, for its comforting effects, as a balm, a bravery-enhancer, a coping strategy for dealing with inevitable death.

I think the way we deal with death nowadays has more to do with arrogance or hubris, coupled with wishful thinking. We're used to thinking we control things, and can get anything we want. One thing useful from the religions was having a healthy sense of your own limitations, or you could say a sense of wonder or mystery or perspective. A reminder that you're not the most powerful thing in the universe. Which is true, and healthy to be aware of, whether any god exists or not.

Edit to add: There are few places where that hubris and certainty tend to be more pronounced than among doctors. Part of what this woman is grieving is probably the loss of certainty, of control or the illusion thereof.

All the atheistic/agnostic people I know believe they are insignificant in the grand scheme of nature, not just in the chain of generations of people.

If anything, I find religious people are the ones who believe humans are special.

This is not even slightly true and seems to be based on a profound misunderstanding of atheism. From my perspective as atheist since the age of 11, it's the reverse of the case.

> Someone always rocks up to say this in these threads, and then never actually offers any suggestions of what they think an alternative should look like.

It's a broad observation about culture - there's no "alternative" to a well-established culture, no single forum comment will change society.

> Seriously, what is the alternative meant to be? ... Constantly reminding people that everyone will die and you'll be forgotten completely in about 3 generations?

I think you're on to something here; there's an inherent conflict between ruthless individualism that tells people they can do anything they put their mind to, and the stark, limiting reality of mortality. That's a bummer, so don't think or talk about it, or it'll mess with your grindset.

Collectivist cultures already embraces the idea that one's life is more than just about the individual, so grief and talking about death are far less radioactive. Religions that embrace ancestral spirits being presence offer comfort in continuity; her husband isn't really gone, and he may even watch ober their daughter, and even help her in math exams. In that light, dying is less of a big deal - more of a transition really - compared to oblivion, which is super heavy. I'm not saying these are better

An alternative would be:

+ Yes, allowing people to have a celebration goodbye party before they go

+ Allowing for medically assisted dying on a person's own terms

+ More open conversations about: directives, how people would like to be treated when they near death, wills, inheritances, funerals. These are all taboo topics

+ A natural part of life

I think there's something of a pendulum here, and I agree it's swayed too far to over-diagnosing ourselves. But I also think of my father who passed a couple years ago.

We didn't have much of a relationship. He had friends, but never close ones. He was weirdly mean or weirdly seclusive or weirdly awkward at times - and also incredibly intelligent and occasionally gracious and hilarious.

After he passed, I wondered if he might have been somewhere on the spectrum - but his peculiarities were simply ignored. A poor boy, in a poor urban neighborhood, with a dead father, being raised by an immigrant mother and immigrant siblings doesn't get diagnosed with much of anything - if they see doctors at all. And hey, he had a near photographic memory, and did great in school, so what's there to worry about?

It's always been "how he was", and that's probably ok, but I do wonder if he would have had a better or somehow different life if he knew more about _why_ he was the way he was.

In my understanding ADHD is one of the few conditions that is extremely well studied and consistently appears to be a certain % of the population regardless of nationality with very strongly correlated negative outcomes with their suite of symptoms. I'm talking addition, obesity, and a shortened lifespan directly related to their ADHD. This seems like a disorder to me. If someone has attention difficulties and can function fine they obviously don't have a disorder vs someone who has attention difficulties and as a result becomes addicted to cocaine.

> In those cases, why is it a "disorder"? Why can't it just be "how some people are"?

It often is:

> It can be helpful to think of ADHD not just as a deficit or disorder but as a ‘difference’.

Especially as it seems to come with positive traits! It goes on to list focus, responding well in a crisis and creativity as common ADHD traits.

https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/mental-health/mental-illnesses-and...

I'm autistic which is also a disorder. Like ADHD it's a neurodevelopmental disorder because from a scientific and medical POV the brain developed abnormally compared to a neurotypical person's brain.

I guess your point is why does it require a label at all but science abhors a taxonomic vacuum, everything must be classified and if so I'd rather it be a disorder than a disease or illness.

Of course this opinion is just mine, I have no idea how other autistic or adhd people see this as I don't keep up with the neurodiverse community and what words are considered good or bad.

>> For some people this is problematic, but others can function fine and happily with this.

In that case I would say it’s not ADHD, which as its name suggests is disordered. If the ADH part isn’t negatively impacting your life why would it require a diagnosis?

The DSM-5 defines ADHD as "A persistent pattern of inattention and/or hyperactivity-impulsivity that interferes with functioning or development". If you're functioning fine, then by definition you don't have ADHD.

Don't take this the wrong way, but what point are you trying to make? What was your goal here?

> We also stigmatize mental health care in the west, telling people to “suck it up” or “get over it”.

I think this idea is ~10 years out of date. If anything, we now seem pathologize every behavior and personality quirk into a mental health issue. At least on social media, it's also trendy to have a mental health issue to the point that people will claim to have ADHD because they're easily distracted by their phones. I've also lost count of the number of big "content creators" who casually mention their therapist or going to therapy. If there is a stigma, it's not found among the younger generations.

It used to be in the west. The Catholic Church discourages the scattering of ashes for just that reason - so that there is somewhere physical where people can be remembered. There was a tradition of memorial services. People still look after the graves of their loved ones.

I also think its not a simple east-west divide. Different cultures have many different ways of dealing with death. The contemporary west does have a problem, although i doubt it is the only culture for which that is true.

My family follows a mix of Christian tradition (e.g. memorial masses) and Sri Lankan (e.g. donations of food in memory of the dead).

> I often wonder how dealing with death compares to the east where ancestors are commonly remembered, contemplated, and revered.

In what way is this not western as well? Implying that western culture does not remember, contemplate, and revere those that have gone before us is a bad take.

I wonder how traditions around death help us to deal with it. I feel completely incapable of handling death.. I do not know how to comport myself.

I've always been averse to this sort of Jungian schema (it's a Freudian baggage I have -- Mourning and Melancholia has much value on the present topic!), but more and more I'm seeing how much wisdom was lost in the historic disavowal of myth and archetypal thought. Since having a child, my wife and I have been repeatedly stunned at how incapable our own parents are. I don't mean a mere absence of help with babysitting (although they suck at this, too), I mean they just have no idea how to deal with us or our kid as living beings. They shrink at the first sign of difficulty. They want absolutely no relationship with death. We've had to find new elders elsewhere; they really aren't easy to find but they do exists.

> She is doing as well as one can be for how much she loved Jake and how much she misses him.

Again, my point is that that statement is absolutely true and also does not preclude the notion that additional professional help may be warranted.

I went on Prozac earlier this year after a conversation with my doctor that went, roughly: “I think you’ve got anxiety” “well yeah, look at the fucking world!” “…right.” Just because there’s a good reason for what you’re going through doesn’t mean you’re not going through it.

Put another way, if the author had been shot a year ago and was saying things like “most days I’m fine, but some days I literally cannot walk or feel my left arm,” the notion that they should be talking to professionals would not be controversial, even though their symptoms are absolutely utterly explicable given what they’ve been through.

That's an interesting example. On the one hand, we really don't want actively suicidal pilots. On the other, are the current guidelines too stringent? I can't imagine you're saying that actively suicidal pilots should be allowed to fly hundreds of people, so the argument seems to be more that private corporations have too much information and too much power and are willing to blacklist qualified candidates just to reduce examination costs.

That seems more like an argument against corporate overreach than anything else.

I'm sure the numbers of people wrongly using those terms has risen at least a bit, but I think the anecdotal evidence you have is likely to be a mixture of that and also not that.

Similar to how some people look at raw stats of autism diagnoses and think hugely more people are becoming autistic when in reality it's that we've got better at diagnosing autism; I think we (society, in at least some countries) have got better at being honest about mental health conditions. Meaning that more people, especially younger people who've grown up around less mental health stigma, will talk about having an actual genuine problem even without more diagnoses or more exaggeration. I think studies would be needed (that I'm not aware of) to figure out how many more people are using labels that don't really fit, vs how many more people are being honest about actual serious conditions.

When I was in my 20s, if I needed a day off work because of depression I would always use a bullshit excuse to avoid mentioning the actual reason. I don't any more, most of my colleagues know what issues I do or don't have. And the younger generations are starting from that place, rather than having to grow into it.

This is a very american trend in my experience. Americans are quite happy to tell you their long list of diagnoses, how that some how gives them some kind of exception to the rule, and how this is some how part of their identity. This kind of oversharing is common across topics from Americans but in particular oversharing of and obsession with psychological conditions seem to be a common modern stereotype of americans amongst my friends who interact with americans regularly.

I've seen this too among some younger folks and I wonder how much of this is simply standard, run-of-the-mill teenage attention-seeking and exaggeration that's not fully outgrown yet.

I guess we'll know when they turn 40 and are still saying things like "I had a panic attack" and "I'm literally shaking rn".

> Many will have no formal diagnosis at all or even proudly claim that they don’t trust the medical system, they’re just diagnosing themselves.

The thing is, many people have valid reasons not to trust the medical system. Not so long ago:

1. Homosexuality was considered a mental disease

2. Forced sterilization of minorities was good medical practice

3. FDA ignored warnings about pesticides being potentially harmful because that would be bad for business

4. FDA ignored warnings about pesticides being potentially harmful because that would be bad for international politics

5. Entire field of psychiatry was just basically random shit, it's not until very recently that we have any actual scientific knowledge

6. Pregnant women were presribed medicine that fucked up their fetuses

Not to mention that most likely when you go to a doctor you're not getting state-of-the-art diasgnosis, most likely the doctor is just a random guy doing his job, sometimes better sometimes worse. Personally I don't trust medical system with my mental health because medical system is a product of a society that made me have mental problems in the first place.

The dilution by people with no formal diagnosis become more common is scary because of how it normalizes not seeking help, which is the hardest part of actually having these issues. It creates this illusion that one should be able to treat themselves and that things like sitting at your desk all day thinking it wouldn't be that bad if you died in a car accident, or having your heartrate spike and sweating profusely while you thoughts are paralyzed are normal things that happens regularly to everyone so your inability to deal with them is a personal failing. They are not and if you do feel this way try and seek assistance from a experienced professional.

What you're describing is a big problem [edit: for the people who get sucked into it] and, to me, is kind of the "other side" of the overmedicalization issue that this blog is complaining about. One way medicalization harms is is when people are forced into conditions they don't agree with (as the author feels they have been). The other way is when people who aren't medical professionals (and wouldn't be in a position to diagnose even if they were) adopt medical language to describe experiences.

I guess my thoughts on the trend you're critiquing is that it happens almost entirely outside of the medical community. As you describe the people who are most impacted by this often find actual medical treatment unhelpful and un-validating and turn to self-medication or other "medically inspired" coping techniques. I think the people who actually don't have these conditions and are applying medicalized treatments and explanations are opportunistically drawing on medical language because people often respect it socially. But also there are lots of people who engage in self-deception (or just normal deception) for social advantage and I don't know that people who use medical language are better or worse? A word is just a word and unless that word is actually on a medical record somewhere it only has the power you give it.

The flip side of this is of course that the medical establishment has many well-studied and documented biases. They offer poor treatment to overweight people, black people, people with mental health diagnoses, basically every vulnerable population that's been studied gets worse service from medical professionals. That very reasonably leads to people distrusting "the system" and searching for coping mechanism outside of it. I think that is generally pretty harmless and helpful - as long as it doesn't get into the realm of serious self-medication like you describe. Basically if you like using a medical term to describe your experience ("I'm being really OCD today") I don't think there's much harm in it and you may find coping mechanisms for people with ODC helpful as a bonus.

I'm not sure if this is "human nature" or if it's a specific cultural problem in the modern west. It's certainly true here in Canada too -- everyone uses terms that are really quite heavy duty to describe quite minor things.

I'm deaf. When I tell people this, one of the most common response is "Oh, don't worry. I'm a little bit deaf too." Now not to go policing people on their identities but -- no you're not.

Like what do I need to say? Clinically deaf. Severe-profoundly deaf. Cannot hear a fire alarm without hearing aids?

It's one thing when it's an elderly person. Yes maybe they are in fact a bit deaf too. But for all the people in their 30s or 40s who have said it to me -- the odds they all have moderate or worse hearing loss is nil! Most of the people who are saying it presumably have normal hearing. I understand that they're trying to identify with and not alienate me. But it's such a strange dynamic.

> I’ve been offered helpful links to TikTok ADHD influencers to help me understand them

To be fair, giving you an example of someone else who performatively pretends to have a mental illness is a great way to understand them.

> When they’re procrastinating a task that is fun “my ADHD is flaring up today”.

I mean, our industry is filled with people of all ages with ADHD (arguably because it’s one of the few industries where you can succeed while having severe ADHD), GenZ folks are just more likely to admit it in public where older millennials are more likely to either be quiet about it or ignore the fact that they are subject to it.

You’re right and it’s actually wild how many people lack the ability to just deal with it. I think they do it because having a medicalized identity gives you a kind of framework or structure to lean on in social situations. You don’t need to learn the complex social rules to get grace from other people, instead you can do this easy thing and demand it. I think it is downstream of social media displacing face-to-face social interactions.

another therapy-speak term that has spilled over is "masking".

apparently, any time that you need to politely smile when you dont feel like it is "masking"

I know people like to blame social media and just "the kids these days" in general - but I think there's another reasonable, far more charitable explanation: it's a sort of overcorrection after those illnesses being very heavily stigmatized for practically ever. It's perhaps not ideal, but if a symptom of more people who truly have those illnesses being able to get help is a small portion of people using it as a fashion statement, that's a price I think we can pay. And I'm confident it will correct itself over time.

> This is scarily obvious when I’ve worked with college students and early 20s juniors lately: A subset of them speak of everything human nature in medical and therapy speak. Common human experiences like being sad about something or having a tough day are immediately amplified into full-blown medical terms like “I’m having a depressive episode today” (which is gone by tomorrow). Being a little nervous about something is “I’m having a panic attack”. Remembering an unpleasant disagreement at work “gives me PTSD”. When they’re procrastinating a task that is fun “my ADHD is flaring up today”.

Somewhat unrelated, but I complain about the same thing in software parlance. Our work gets divided up into "sprints". A SPRINT is traditionally something you do a handful of times in your life, like when you're fleeing for your life, pursued by a bear. And then when you're a safe distance away and the adrenaline wears off, you collapse from exhaustion and rest. The idea that your employer would use that term to describe how they envision their employees structuring every day of the rest of their lives is either painfully tone-deaf, or even worse, is a brutally honest view of how they regard employee burnout.

Those folks are the ones who refuse to acknowledge and accept the fact that they were abused by family members while growing up, where those personality 'symptoms' are common. It is very well known that ADD and ADHD comes from abusive households. Nobody except psychologists and anyone in the mental health field would ever admit such failures in life. They will not accept the fact, and exaggeration and deflection of character faults into false medical diagnosis is what happens. Not very many doctors want to get screamed at by their patients (which would prove the doctor right) for telling them the truth of their own past, and besides, they're not even paid to tell them.

"Truth hurts, don't it" is a very true phrase. It's a very sick trend affecting Millennials and Gen Z alike, and contributes to other worse mental health and criminal outcomes.

It's not even new.