Whether it’s some rare invention or a thing that happened to you, some things, no matter how real, might appear as if they’re straight out of fiction.
There are times when it can be very exhausting to try to convince someone else to believe in something that you’re sure is true. So, when someone online asked what those things are, people flooded the comment section with the answers, and you can read them all below!
More info: Reddit
This post may include affiliate links.
How depression can make it impossible to do things. I once made a custom knife for a friend, wrapped and boxed it, then let it sit there for well over a month before I was finally able to mail it. Intellectually I know that it’s a very simple task to tape on an address label and drive it five minutes to the post office, but I absolutely COULD NOT DO IT. I would get irrationally mad at myself for being unable to complete such a mundane and simple task, and yet I still couldn’t do it. That kind of mental roadblock was impossible for me to understand myself, let alone anyone who hasn’t experienced it.
Why were you downvoted? Have an upvote, it's not wrong!
Load More Replies...
It's horrible to be trapped in this kind of paralysis. It makes zero sense. I thought I was the only one that runs into this kind of block. I know it's part of my depression but didn't realize others are affected this way too.
It’s so helpful to not feel alone in this :) hope you’re doing better ❤️
Load More Replies...
Yes. Struggle with it every other day. And it gets worse.
Load More Replies...
There is depression so devastating that just breathing feels like an accomplishment. I've had many serious illnesses and surgeries, but none can compare to the pain of my untreated clinical depression. I have finally found medication that works...it's a miracle. For the suffering people out there, do not give up hope.
This is my daily reality. I miss deadlines and appointments and sometimes a phone call is impossible to make, no matter how important it is. My family has no idea.
I understand you. A simple phone call to my cousin I had to do in the begining september and still I have to do it. Each day I think about it, but it's too much for me to have a phone conversation. I wish you well.
Load More Replies...
"Well, just cheer up, then!" Yeah, thanks, that's real helpful.
Load More Replies...
This, especially when you get hit with anxiety at the same time. Takes all my willpower to barely function. I tend to get snappy at this point. Got fired from a job because of it.
When it got to the point where one corner of the little hammock in the rat cage became detached and the simple task of fixing it was suddenly as impossible as climbing Mt Everest in an old timey diving suit stuffed full of angry ferrets, that was when I realised it was time I got some help.
"Climbing Mt. Everest in an old timet diving suit stuffed full of angry ferrets" is simultaneously the most absurd and accurate description of this kind of paralysis I've ever seen. Bravo!
Load More Replies...
i want to work but i can't because i know this will happen and it's not fair to employer. check out all the PTSD symptoms, i was amazed at how many disconnected issues all have a treatable path. Agoraphobia also is a scale that can take different shapes. i have done and will do the very thing as poster (sans knife). Awareness is key.
I was lazy and stupid my entire life. But now I finally learned that I have AHDH, PTSD and chronic depression (at the age of FIFTY! ) So now I am trying to learn that I am actually smart ad
Load More Replies...
I pay so much more cause I also get paralyzed just thinking about a task.
Oh wow, I had NO idea so many others experience this!!!! I HATE this about myself, it feels soooo stupid, lazy, but I can't help it. At the same time, it helps knowing there are others with this issue. Thank you ALL!
One of my favorite ways to describe depression to someone who hasn’t experienced it is that depression steals any and all joy from life, that you can be sitting on a beautiful beach, with the person you love the most, everything could be idyllic and you’ll still be miserable. Your brain on depression can take any scenario/situation and turn it into a day in hell. I lost my spouse last year and I sunk into the deepest pit of despair and depression I’ve ever experienced. I would sit and stare at the wall for hours at a time, in complete silence. And every day one of the hardest tasks I had to do was standing up out of that chair and walking the 6 feet to my kitchen to take my antidepressants. I am so glad I forced myself to do it everyday, when I started to climb out of the depression a few weeks after starting the medication and I was able to feel something besides extreme sadness.
It's called executive dysfunction. I have depression and AuDHD. I sat in pain for 2 hours before being able to get up and grab a drink to take a vicodin.
I get "impossible task" paralysis too. what helps get moving is breaking it down into MINISCULE steps. not, out a label on it, remember where labels are...stand up... get label.... remember where pen is... like that small. you also give yourself permission to stop at any point. the tiny steps make lots of stopping points.
Does it have to be depression to experience something like this? I have this all of the time and i dont think I'm depressed
Me too. I have letters started, phone calls I literally should have made 3 years ago, the pile of papers that are important and I’ll get to… sigh. Argh!! At least I’m not the only deprestination panda here.
My therapist called this impossible tasks. Where such a simple task feels like a mountain at the time
Been there done that. Once it was so bad I literally didn't leave my bed for a week.
The same thing happens a lot with ADHD! I’m pretty sure it has a name but I can’t remember what it’s called…choice paralysis? ADHD paralysis?
People who have never struggled with clinical depression or anxiety have no idea just how paralyzing the fear can be.
This, the energy it requires to do simple tasks and then I get frustrated - I have been wanting to install a harddrive for for 3 months now and it's just looking at me
This is me with my sister's Xmas gift. It's been sitting on my dining room table for nearly 2 years. It pains me every time I see it.
I have adhd but the same thing happens to me. Like the guilt for not doing it piles and piles until I physically can't
I break my depression with my sense of humour. On the rare occasions, my depression influences my sense of humour and it can get pretty dark but its very rare. I love to make people smile and laugh. It makes me happy which is why this works for me
Anxiety can work the same way. I dread making phone calls. I will be totally unable to make the phone call unless I have worked out every possible scenario the way the conversation can go.
It's also why other disorders can be mistaken for depression. I was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder late in life 5 years ago. And I would have great difficulty getting certain tasks done, especially if it was an unfamiliar task. This was due to the executive functioning impairment. Having tasks pile up would eventually cause some depression, but that was an effect, not a cause. I was misdiagnosed with depression as a primary disorder for decades. Anti-depressants don't fix or help executive functioning disorder. They always came with terrible side-effects and never worked on me. My sympathy goes out to anyone plagued with this "impossible task" issue, whatever the underlying cause.
i have done this my whole life....but it's not depression...i just hate going to the post office/shopping/any errand...how do i know this?...whenever i've worked at a university/company where you can mail stuff (at your own personal expense)...everything got mailed on time...i mean, i already had to go into work...so, it wasn't anything extra...sometimes a person can be busy and unmotivated but not depressed...give yourself a break either way
How crippling the pain from menstrual cramps can be. I have endometriosis and it's absolute hell. My sister does too. I'm child free but she told me that when she was in labor the first time, she didn't even realize because it wasn't as painful as her period cramps on endo. She asked the nurse when it would start and the nurse looked at her with raised eyebrows and was like "ummm like an hour ago." And yet I've had an actual doctor laugh in my face at the idea of getting medicine to help with the pain for my cramps.
Nobody takes it seriously. It really, really sucks. I f*****g dread my periods bc I can pretty much count on there being one or two days out of every ~29 or 30 when I can barely even stand up. I have to save any sick time or time off for those days if they fall during the work week. But everyone is so dismissive about it.
Edit: wow so many supportive comments and information about treatment strategies! I feel more validated than I ever have for this suffering. Thank you everyone and anyone else reading this who suffers like this, there are so many really helpful and validating comments below.
Turn signals. They work on my car; surely they MUST work on other cars.
Mental health issues. It's amazing to me how many people think the brain, the most complicated structure in the known universe, is the only organ that's *not* capable of malfunctioning.
Incurable diseases. I have multiple sclerosis and I hear a lot of things day to day like "You're just too dedicated to your diagnosis", or "have you tried the Wahls diet" or "have you taken magnesium supplements" or "you need to be more positive" or my favorite "It's OK, god has a plan".
Having experienced the actual thing degrading my brain for eight years, done high dose chemo and a bone marrow transplant, and poisoned my immune system over 200 separate times... I can definitively say that some processes (death, degenerative neurological diseases, autoimmunity, etc) are unavoidable and something people don't always actually have the power to beat regardless of the amount of positive thinking, dieting, or exercise one does.
EDIT: I just want to point out how multiple people have replied back to try to convince me that my condition is curable, or recommending treatments that I have already done and failed. Quite literally proving my point. 😆
EDIT: One person has interpreted my comments in this thread as me saying that any attempt to treat a chronic illness is hopeless or meaningless. This is not what I was intending to say (hopefully that is obvious). I am merely stating that many people have health conditions they can't fix or control despite best efforts, and that this experience is real and they deserve to have that experience respected.
Autoimmune sufferer, I completely feel this. OP is absolutely right - there are days you simply. Can. Not. Function. and "mood" and "attitude" have NOTHING to do with what is physically happening, and yet people... and that's all I'm going to say. People.
That people living in the late stages of dementia are still people with valid feelings and deserve to be treated with respect and dignity .
Restless Leg Syndrome.
People think it's just being a little uncomfortable and not finding a good position to sleep in. It's actually an uncontrollable urge to move your legs that feels almost like muscle spasms and it is absolutely maddening.
Weirdly, if my cat is sleeping on my bed, I can pat him and it makes it stop. I have no idea why.
Because cats are magical creatures worthy of worship. But seriously their purr is at s vibration believed to have calming properties, this is why a cat in pain or under stress will sometimes purr.
You can't get autism, it's a neurodevelopment disorder, you are either born with it or you don't have it. Vaccines can't give you autism, medicaments won't give you or your baby autism, however genetics will, bang an autistic person and you will likely have autistic babies. When the baby has it, likely someone else in the family has it as well.
Corporate greed. People saying costs are up because they are forced to pay better than slave wages, but still making record profits
❌ The wages are stagnant even though corporations report record profits. ✅ The wages are stagnant BECAUSE corporations report record profits.
Being unable to force myself to do something with adhd. It is like I'm physically restrained when I try to force myself to do something at times.
Human contribution to climate change. I worked in a lab for a couple years for my undergrad in geophysics. Most of the data was brought back by a team of professors and grad students who took yearly trips to Antarctica. Climate change turning into a political issue is a sin I can never forgive humanity for.
Ignored by successive governments worldwide, actions substituted by lipservice, sorry kids you inherit a burnt out husk
That when you chase the validation of others, the only thing you get is tired.
Facts. Sometimes you don't know what they are, then you do. There are facts you know and others don't. And facts others know and you don't. That's ok. Be willing to learn and teach.
There are facts right now that NO human knows. Someday we'll learn what some of them are.
And even if you don't like them, that doesn't make them not-facts, or opinions.
Reality is what it is, whether or not you're willing to admit it.
I like this :) it’s like - if we wanted to prove the sky was blue, how would we go about doing that? We’d run an experiment (say, a bunch of people looking at the sky and recording what colour they see). Then we’d share the details (guess what, everyone saw blue!) and come to a conclusion (the sky is probably blue). And there would still be people fighting it and saying “why would you blindly trust science like that you idiots” and all sorts of cringy stuff. Maybe someday we’ll find out the sky is actually Blorange and we just don’t have the eye receptors to see Blorange. Stay open-minded and always be willing to learn and change your mind! Blorange is still Blorange whether you believe in it or not.
The utter meaninglessness of humans in the overall fabric of the universe.
Why is it depressing that there's no "meaning" to life? We create our own meaning.
The amount of people that don't know narwhals are actual animals
Increasing taxes on a higher tax bracket doesn’t mean 100% of your income is taxed at that rate the second you enter it.
Yes, one can always tell people who've never been in the higher tax bracket - they worry about being worse off if they get a raise.
The government is not spying on you, but you are giving away way more information than the government cares about to advertisers and loyalty programs so you can save $.50 on Doritos...cool ranch of course
Most of us are don't have an interesting enough life to be spied on all the time. What will they see, honestly?
OCD can be a lot more debilitating than people realize.
And OCD isn't just organizing your room ten times a day. I have frequent problems like when I twitch one foot I must twitch the other, and I also try to avoid certain words like "just". Also I don't ever want to clean my room because I know where everything is, even though it's messy.
Most Americans already pay for other people’s medical care through their health insurance policy, yet a lot seem to think that being taxed is what will cause them to pay for other people.
The sensation of deja vu, whether real or not.
I get these sometimes, particularly from dreams. One I remember was when I was around 10, I had a dream where I walk into my backyard. There was a table full of items. I reach into an open shoebox, and pull out a business card for a shoe store. I remember as a kid I found the dream to be weird, and that dream stuck with me for awhile. I would occasionally remember it. A few years later, there was a major earthquake. There was an inspector going through our house check for damages, so we had to move stuff out of the house. I was bored, so I was walking the house, and I went into the backyard. Déjà vu. Really freaked me out. Apparently that shoebox was originally stored in my dad's closet for years, from his old job he hadn't worked for a decade.
I have celiac disease. This one really gets me because I have every medical test under the sun to prove it. Yet I still deal with constant comments, "Why is everyone allergic to gluten all of a sudden?" "Oh it's so trendy to not eat gluten."
There are always (unnecessary) trends, and not all of them need to keep away from gluten? And when they cheat/change the diet people start to wonder? Or just the ordinary story of haters, "I'm not celiac, so neigher are you!" or "No one was celiac when I was little, so there can't be no advancement in healtcare/understanding of the human body after 1960!", or, "everybode have problem with gluten, man up"... 🤷♂️
That a bird once flew through the open windows of my car, straight through and out the other side, while I was driving at highway speeds. I was alone in the car and I swear it happened.
My reaction, "Did that just happen?"
With a bit of luck, you may be accompanied by ducks and geese on the country roads where I live, taking advantage of the slipstream of the cars...imagine, looking out of your side windows, gently startled by 'em...you don't need to panic because they won't hit your car or something ...👍🏼...it must be like swimming with dolphins, I suppose...
That much of what we “remember” isn’t real. The brain is a sieve, losing memories. It fills in holes of knowledge with assumptions, interpolations, & justifications.
This might off the vein a little but my answer is:
Bad things can happen to your child as a direct result of your negligence. People truly don't believe that their child could be internally decapitated, mangled, or die of internal injuries because you didn't enforce the right kind of car seat or even a seat belt. Children 3-8 are the largest demographic I've seen that are injured in car accidents as a direct result of being improperly restrained. And people don't believe it. They don't believe that not doing any child restraint research, and lacking in their own due diligence can lead to their child's death.
Source: paramedic.
In Canada, the rules are now that no matter what your child's age is they must be in a booster seat if they are min. 4'9" or at least 9 years old. All kids under 6 years old, and under 40lbs have to be in a car seat. The biggest struggle is convincing older family members who refuse to update their knowledge of child safety because "back in the good ol' days we rode in the box of the truck and we survived."
That nuclear energy is actually the cleanest most powerful way to power a community. People hear the word “nuclear” and freak out. They think that somehow they have a bomb sitting in their community. They think Chernobyl is the norm. In reality, there were a lot of things that led up to the Chernobyl disaster that would not happen in any of the modern nuclear reactors that provide power to much of the world. With good regulation, safety, standards and upgrades, nuclear power is clean, plentiful, cheap, and efficient. But people get so freaked out by the word “nuclear” they assume it’s bad and they’ll put oil in the furnace instead😑
Concrete Boats. Rare, but they do exist.
Everyone I tell thinks I'm winding them up
Me when I tell people I have Aphantasia (I cant picture things in my head) and vice versa when people tell me they can picture things in their heads
One of my kids has this. I don't know if there is duch thing as hyperphantasia but if there is I lean that way. I find is so asy to picture things to the smell, taste etc that I feel like I am there or am holding something.
lucid dreams
I finally had one where I became aware I was dreaming. I knew I could wake up easily so I had to be careful to stay in the dream state, Everything around me was psychedelically colorful and I could feel the ground beneath my feet. Then I was like, "I can do anything! What should I do?" So I tried flying because it was the first thing that came to my mind, but struggled with going forward. Then I lost it and I guess went back into normal sleep. I haven't managed to repeat the experience. Wish I had thought of something better than flying
Extraterrestrial Life exists.
We haven’t met them yet, but they are out there.
If you were looking at this planet from a distance, you'd give a big swerve if you were in the neighborhood.
I believe most people aren't actually working in offices and we're all sitting here trying to fake eachother out with the goal of seeming necessary.
The tangible and intangible benefits of exercise.
Why is she doing her yoga on the floor next to the spare yoga mat?
Energy. When someone is looking at you, you somehow sense it and look back no matter how far they are from you.
How absolutely weird this universe is.
Like I'm not religious but the universe actually just doesn't make any sense.
What the hell are quantum physics? Why is there so much mass? What is Dark energy? Why do things just seem to work completely different when you go to atomic levels?
Like every single aspect of physics is a deep rabbit hole of weirdness and contrivances. We have to keep coming up with isoteric rules and equations to come close to describing the weird phenomena we see. Yet... without these weird quantum mechanics interactions, without gravity just oddly being weaker then the other three forces, without all the constants being finely tuned the way they are, without the rules of physics just coming up out of nowhere after the big bang.... there wouldn't be life.
That's before even getting into the really weird s**t like the fact our meat computers are conscious. Like that didn't have to happen. It is reasonable to expect that even if life came about, humans could just be philisophical zombies and nothing would change. But we aren't. And that's before all the other really weird stuff like dreams and near death experiences etc.
And weirdest of all:
Why does it exist at all?
This all leads me to believe that there is something more to all of this. All arguments against this don't hold any water imo. I think the anthropic principle is bogus as well. But nobody seems to care to talk about any of this or just pretend like nothing is weird about existence.
This is why I believe in God. Many of these reasons and many more past these. The science part can be deviated forever ( which I will happily do with anyone for any amount of time because I love talking bout this and all the strange hinge of universe). However, one cannot assume meaning ( individual or collective) without also assuming a God. Just like how money needs precious metal to back it up, meaning needs some authority behind it to be worth something. Otherwise meaning is simply an implied feature that has no effect on anything outside our perceived reality. So if you believe in meaning and purpose then you believe in some type of intelligent design. This doesn’t have to be a certain religion but it does mean you believe in some time of intelligent starts and sentient plan to the universe.
My husband and I saw Richard Clark forcibly kissing a young ingenue on his New Year's Eve show. We both saw it, even though they cut quickly away. Nobody believes us.
Basic Economics.
This should be much higher. I believe they ended compulsory economics studies from public schools in the US so people would no longer be able to understand what those in power are doing...and it's lead to conspiracy theories to fill holes where knowledge should be.
The power of a large amount of people to get together to make a positive change.
Most people think you can’t change things, or even gather people together for one purpose for that matter.
But I think you could, if you **really** wanted to. Only issue is nobody is SOO motivated that they motivate others nowadays.
Even motivational speakers need motivational speakers nowadays. And it shows when we watch them. Nobody can just simply take pride in who or what they are anymore, it has all become a unending competition of “who is best”.
The Conservatives have tried their level best to ban the right of protest in the UK.
A lot of these were either wrong or fallacies, or are a more nuanced situation then just yes or no.
Most of these are spot on correct. In contrast to other similar lists where a 50% correct rate is common.
Load More Replies...
A lot of these were either wrong or fallacies, or are a more nuanced situation then just yes or no.
Most of these are spot on correct. In contrast to other similar lists where a 50% correct rate is common.
Load More Replies... 