How even keel are you?

[Narz]

My mood flucates from very positive, hopeful, aspirational to extremely fatalistic.

I never hit deep depression, after eight years of severe depression (age 13-20) something in my brain won't let me go there anymore. I wish I could claim some deliberate technique but it's more unconscious & out of my control.

Re : mood ups & downs, used to be worse in my 20s and 20s, in the morning or late night I'd think I could conquer the world & some hours later I'd be throughly digusted w myself & would think my earlier aspirations a cruel joke and yet I'd then go thru the cycle again.

In recent years it's much less extreme & I have more self awareness, I guess I'm more in observer more rather than getting swept away in one mood or another but it's still something to behold, almost like a female's hotmonall cycle but in the course of 1 day.

Anyway else go thru this?

 

[AmazonQueen]

My mood fluctuates somewhat but even at my worst I've never suffered from severe depression. I'm one of those wrecks thats barely above the waterline but refuses to sink. Been that way for over 30 years now.

 

[Hygro]

Pretty even keel. My perspective, self talk, identity, takes on things, etc holds pretty steady.

My energy goes way up and down. When I was a kid my thoughts and feelings would go with it. Taking thyroid medication as a teenager was the biggest change. Leveled me out. Learning what feelings were just consequent hormones, and the thoughts that were consequent feelings, made it really clear the path forward to become an even keel person, which took time.

 

[Spidernova]

I'm consistently moderately negative. it's rare that I'm in a great place, but It's also really rare that I sink into full blown depression.

 

[Zardnaar]

Very even keel don't panic, get depressed or barely stress out.

When I do it's usually specific event eg a death or something one has to deal with.

 

[DaggerDigwillow]

Recently, in the last 10-15 years I tend to fluctuate between happy and very happy. Prior I was pretty stoic.

 

[sophie]

While externally I’ve always been pretty cheerful and I didn’t express hurt or upset very much, until relatively recently, internally I felt nothing. Like literally nothing. I was an inert blob. I was very good at masking and even better at convincing myself to let the world wash over me.

It’s a tired cliche at this point, but coming out really was like going from gray to color. I actually feel things now, actually care about, want, and like things. It’s really uncanny. While on the one hand it means I also feel sadness and loss and despair as well now, on the other, I never knew what joy felt like before 2 years ago. I didn’t know what it felt like to love, and the thought of being loved was wholly alien to me.

So I guess I’m less even keeled than I used to be, but that’s far from a bad thing. Stepping away from myself, I would say the obsession with stoicism is easily in the top-5 worst manifestations of toxic masculinity

 

[Narz]

I would say the obsession with stoicism is easily in the top-5 worst manifestations of toxic masculinity

Epicureanism is more direct. The whole point of identifying vices & virtues is well being anyway (ideally of both self & others but if one is a miserable sob its hard to be good for others so).

I think stoicism is a good gateway drug tho away from our culture of consumerism, instant gratification & distraction.

 

[Gori the Grey]

I'm pretty even-keeled. But I've lived a fortunate, privileged and blessed life, so I don't take much credit.

Years ago, when I was in college, they offered Tai Chi. I took it and enjoyed it. One part of it is something called "sticky hands" where you and your opponent touch hands at the fingers. Your opponent does Tai Chi moves "against" you, but kind of in slow motion, and you defend, again in slow motion. My Tai Chi instructor watched me doing this "sticky hands" exercise and out of the blue said, "you've had an easy life, haven't you?" How he could tell that from the way I did sticky hands, I'll never know, but he wasn't incorrect.

 

[Narz]

I'm pretty even-keeled. But I've lived a fortunate, privileged and blessed life, so I don't take much credit.

Years ago, when I was in college, they offered Tai Chi. I took it and enjoyed it. One part of it is something called "sticky hands" where you and your opponent touch hands at the fingers. Your opponent does Tai Chi moves "against" you, but kind of in slow motion, and you defend, again in slow motion. My Tai Chi instructor watched me doing this "sticky hands" exercise and out of the blue said, "you've had an easy life, haven't you?" How he could tell that from the way I did sticky hands, I'll never know, but he wasn't incorrect.

But how'd you do @ sticky hands?

 

[Gori the Grey]

I thought I was doing fine, in that I kept "escaping" from my opponent's moves. His comment wasn't on that directly, I don't think.

 

[emzie]

I'm a work in progress, but pleased with how it's turning out.

 

[Zardnaar]

I'm a work in progress, but pleased with how it's turning out.

That's good.

Everyone has problems mine have been fairly minor.

 

[Hygro]

I'm a work in progress, but pleased with how it's turning out.

Definitely way more even keel on CFC over the years

 

[IglooDame]

I'm so even keeled that sailboats are jealous.

I get angry enough to yell or physically do something (something safe but still expressing my anger) every decade or so. CFC OT has probably seen more of me being annoyed over the years than pretty much anyone/anyplace else. Good job, the lot of you, I suppose.

 

[Akka]

I get that "to be keel" must be about how one feels or is stable or whatever, but I'm afraid that my only knowledge of the word is about stability or boatmanship.
Care to enlighten an ignorant barbarian with the nuances of what it means in colloquial USAian ?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I get that "to be keel" must be about how one feels or is stable or whatever, but I'm afraid that my only knowledge of the word is about stability or boatmanship.
Care to enlighten an ignorant barbarian with the nuances of what it means in colloquial USAian ?

How even-tempered, how emotionally stable, how mentally balanced are you on average... how likely are you to panic, give way to temper, how in touch with your own emotions are you... it's a very open-ended question.

 

[Gori the Grey]

I get that "to be keel" must be about how one feels or is stable or whatever, but I'm afraid that my only knowledge of the word is about stability or boatmanship.
Care to enlighten an ignorant barbarian with the nuances of what it means in colloquial USAian ?

Valka's said it, but to what she said, I could add that the expression has as its basis the very meaning of the word "keel" that you reference here. A person who is "even-keeled" is emotionally stable, like a sailboat that is physically stablized by its keel.

 

[Narz]

Valka's said it, but to what she said, I could add that the expression has as its basis the very meaning of the word "keel" that you reference here. A person who is "even-keeled" is emotionally stable, like a sailboat that is physically stablized by its keel.

TIL