Insomnia and weltschmerz

**Posts:** 1 · by **Josipa.K** » Sun Jun 14, 2020 12:50 pm

How can I fall asleep knowing the amount of suffering happening in the world? All the people with terminal illnesses, chronic painful illnesses, poverty, people dying of hunger, wars, racism, oppression ...etc. the world is a terrible place, I haven't slept for days because my brain is constantly thinking about different stories I've read and heard about where people suffer till death, I want to help these people but there's nothing I can do because I can't even help myself,I can't sleep well, I don't even have a job..
These thoughts also led me to other topics such as religion and god, existence, death, afterlife (if there's any).
My brain is constantly thinking about these things and it's preventing me from getting good sleep, I wish I was a delusioned optimist who only cares about her material growth.
I don't want to go to a psychiatrist because it's very expensive here, is there anything that I could do? Books to read? Documentaries to watch? Supplements to take? I took ashwagandha and it didn't help much

**Posts:** 9885 · by **Candid** » Sun Jun 14, 2020 4:55 pm

Josipa.K wrote:terminal illnesses, chronic painful illnesses, poverty,hunger, wars, racism, oppression ...etc.

Pick one and volunteer to do something about it, https://www.helpguide.org/articles/heal ... nefits.htm Reading books, watching documentaries and taking supplements help nobody. Being active instead of introspective during the day will help you sleep better at night.

**Posts:** 12131 · by **Richard@DecisionSkills** » Mon Jun 15, 2020 12:43 am

Josipa.K wrote: I want to help these people but there's nothing I can do because I can't even help myself...

Start here. And you can start helping yourself by disconnecting from the media. Focus on you and your local community. Once you stop wasting time on the Internet and begin helping others at a local level, you will quickly recover from delusional pessimism.

**Posts:** 9885 · by **Candid** » Mon Jun 15, 2020 8:06 am

Richard@DecisionSkills wrote:delusional pessimism.

There's a lot of it about.

**Posts:** 35 · by **WhatIs_87** » Wed Jul 01, 2020 5:26 pm

I have grown better at dealing with this since leaving organized religion, simply because I abandoned any sort of a template that states the universe owed me or anybody else anything. there was less paradox, no dangling carrot to pursue that resolved pain with my prior model of the universe.

the world is a place that includes terrible things, but to only characterize the world based on one thing is a fallacy. the world js also a place of beauty, and generally as a society there is dramatic improvement from the past.

there will always be atrocity and suffering with sentient creatures sharing space. that suffering is so intense that I have been compelled to want to end my life and despair; however if I did so, I would only be increasing the negative. so I choose to tolerate the terrible, and make my life worth it by aspiring to increase the beautiful. if I ended my life, the intense suffering would continue anyways, so why not try to make it better while im here

**Posts:** 9885 · by **Candid** » Thu Jul 02, 2020 6:28 am

WhatIs_87 wrote:there will always be atrocity and suffering with sentient creatures sharing space.

It's the driver of evolution: the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain.

Insomnia and weltschmerz

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