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Mental Health Is pessimism just realism?

nuttynutskin

nuttynutskin

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May 15, 2011
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I'll admit I'm a depressive moody bastard and for the most part a total pessimist, but a lot of the time I feel like maybe there's a very good reason for me to feel like this. I think things will get worse before they get better. All anyone really needs to do is turn on the news for 5 minutes or less. Besides that, I never got the people that walk around all happy or at least seemingly that way all the time. Don't get me wrong, if I'm chatting with a friend or something I'll laugh and joke around if I'm in the mood, but if I'm just around people I don't know I'm usually extremely straight faced and reserved unless someone approaches me. Either way, what are you guy's view on pessimism? Healthy? Not healthy? Only some of the time? Merely a symptom of depression? Discuss...
 
Pessimism is certainly unhealthy, being overly happy is good but not if you have a disregard for consequences or lack of planning ahead in life but thats not a mood issue.

If you were to see a psychologist they would say you are too judgemental and that the healthiest mindset is being content with the present moment and making wiser decisions.
You are overly focused on the negative and I am guessing this is related to your mood.
 
IDK. Pessimism is just deliberately being negative about life/everything.
You could APPEAR pessimistic if you truly have a shitty life but u would be really being realistic.
And if a person who has a good life and is not mentally or physically ill starts being all negative, maybe they could be called pessimistic.
The way i understand it, pessimism is seeking out negativity, negative realism is only finding negativity but being willing to acknowledge optimism if it shows its face
 
Pessimism is predicting a negative outcome. Depression is an emotional response. Apples and oranges.

An example from my life: I have been pessimistic about climate change for a long time. I read science (not politics) as much as possible; I read the predictions and the realities are often worse upon arrival than the predictions. My husband used to call me a pessimist about this twenty years ago. Now he doesn't. But I don't get depressed about it. There is a bigger picture in time and space that I cannot see. I keep working for the things I believe in, the change I want to see for my children and grandchildren, despite my pessimistic views on where the world is headed. You can have your eyes open and still be in love with life and the world. IMO that is the balance that will save the planet and pull our species back from our destructive path into our rightful place in this complex web of life on our little star.

If we could learn how to accept our full range of emotions we might be able to move beyond the limiting construct of pessimism/optimism and simply live comfortably in our human lives.
 
They found that depressed people generally have a more realistic outlook on life. I guess this is because they don't expect as much from life as people who are more on the up side so to speak. I remember reading about that in a psychology book fucking ages ago.

I tend to lok at it from a materialist outlook as opposed to a idealistic outlook. We don't have free will over our lives no matter how much we don't want to admit it. We are all shaped by our surroundings while at the same time shaping the world we live in. It is this that has the most effect on how we view the world.
 
a realist to me is someone who can see both positive and negative outcomes of a situation and will stay neutral till the outcome has revealed its self. a pessimist is someone who sees the negative more often and an optimist the positive, I think if you are a pessimistic type of person you are more likely to suffer bouts of depression and feel more introverted, which keeps the cycle going round on the negative level. personally I don't think it is healthy to always see the negative of a situation and never a positive side. try making a point of finding a positive in something you would not normally do it might help overall.
 
No, pessimism is not just realism. Yin and yang are perfectly balanced. For every negative emotion, there is a positive one and vice versa.
 
What if the world indeed is a fucked up place where there is more bad than good tho? Not saying whether that's true or not, but just as an example if it were, wouldn't that make a pessimist a realist? Yin and yang may be perfectly balanced but the world sure isn't, at least not in my pessimistic opinion. HA!
 
the world is in shades of grey.
anyone who tries to think of it in black/white or absolutes is just trying to simplify it too much. the world is complicated
 
Pessimism could be realistic to the point of reasonable error and pain avoidance. What's considered reasonable is open for interpretation. Having an outlook easily described as pessimistic and painting most things in a negative light is not realistic or healthy, in my opinion. I do not see it as any better than otherwise having emotionally biased opinions - ideas generally based on experience, all the same. Healthy levels of skepticism can be tough to direct, such as when personally desiring a definite stance on issues. It takes degrees of patience and vulnerability to test new things and see how they measure up to our preconceptions. Dismissal is much easier than taking on such new responsibilities.

Given that just about every movie and story told has to do with overcoming challenges, it would seem to take meaning away from life by not choosing to take chances and overcome negativity. So many choices, but how much meaning would there be without? Given powers of human adaptation, it can also take some shock and risk to come back and appreciate baseline: normal, average life.

Depending on how you see things or who you talk to, they world isn't black, white, or shades of grey, but instead full of color. No wasis.

Found this article to be sort of interesting. Optimism they call faith in the future... could also be mankind or what have you.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/2014...t-will-make-you-significantly-more-successful
 
nuttynutskin said:
What if the world indeed is a fucked up place where there is more bad than good tho? Not saying whether that's true or not, but just as an example if it were, wouldn't that make a pessimist a realist? Yin and yang may be perfectly balanced but the world sure isn't, at least not in my pessimistic opinion. HA!
Click to expand...

I don't think anyone is naive enough to think that the world is not a fucked up place. One would have to be in complete denial or be completely ignorant not to realize that. However that does not mean that one can't learn to deal with this fact and do ones best to have some resemblance of a happy life. I guess it depends on your outlook whether you think the world has more bad then good in it and my answer to that question would depend on what kind of day you asked me that. However simply wallowing in the fact that our world is fucked and not seeing any good in it at all would be totally pessimistic not to mention self defeating. The world is indeed a fucked up place but we need not relegate ourselves to being completely miserable all the time because of it.
 
Although I can only really speak for myself I think a lot of pessimists aren't miserable all the time, they just don't see the world as peaches and cream. Hell, it could be argued that pessimists are better at accepting bad things that happen more than optimists. All of that is obviously just speculation tho.
 
IMO both pessimism and optimism are viewing the world through bias.
Pessimists expect and sometimes seek negativity, optimists the opposite (positivity).
People who accept that the world and life itself is not all bad and not all good are the ones who tend to see it the most clearly.
i.e the world is in shades of grey.
 
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