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/lit/ - Literature

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18243358 No.18243358 [Reply] [Original]

>Peter Pan syndrome describes one's inability to believe that they are of an older age or to engage in behaviour usually associated with adulthood. This syndrome affects people who do not want or feel unable to grow up, people with the body of an adult but the mind of a child. They do not know how to or do not want to stop being children. The term comes from the fictional children's character Peter Pan, who never ages. [...] Some characteristics of the disorder are the inability of individuals to take on responsibilities, to commit themselves or to keep promises, excessive care about the way they look and personal well-being and their lack of self-confidence, even though they do not seem to show it and actually come across as exactly the opposite.

I'm pretty certain that Peter Pan syndrome applies to me, and it scares me (a lot). People at my workplace for example assume I am ten years younger than I am, and I am so inexperienced that I essentially have the life experience and skillset of an adolescent. It's deeply shameful to recognise myself in this syndrome.

That said, what books would you recommend to someone like me?

I genuinely don't know how to become more of a mature adult man, and the idea of being more confident, assertive, money / career orientated, sexually active, sociable and so on don't appeal to me on an instinctive level.

>> No.18243406

> anything syndrome
Yeah, no thanks. I’m just an apathetic, depressed, loser with a broken personality. I don’t need a bunch of boomer psychologists to tell me I’ve got some syndrome or something. You mean I’m not excited to “grow up” and work an entry level job in the cube for 30 years? Thanks, retards. I already knew this.

>> No.18243427

>>18243406
Why are you depressed, apathetic and broken?

>> No.18243434

>>18243358
The biggest black pill I ever ingested was reading that graph of your actual age and your equivalent mental age(in terms of executive control) when you have ADHD. I don’t have it saved, but it said when you are 22 for instance your brain is only as developed in executive control as a 13 year old.

I could always tell something was off, but reading about that aligned so well with many of my issues. It is a disgusting state to be in. I feel like I am genuinely a retard in many contexts, but also have slightly higher intelligence than most people I interact with technically. It is kind of fixable, but it is along the same lines as autists learning to act like they aren’t autistic.

>> No.18243435

>>18243358
Maybe if being an adult didn't suck so much people would be more into the idea
Ah yes can't wait to sit in an office for 40 years so the kids I'll never have can go to college! Based!

>> No.18243442

>>18243358
Wind, Sand and Stars

>> No.18243487

>>18243435
This is a huge issue for me. For example, I read about many writers (I am not a writer) who were either NEET or predominantly so during their twenties and even thirties, and somehow they still seem (perhaps given the context of their later success) more mature than I am. I fear there is something fundamental to my character, or something so ingrained in me at this point, that feeling like a man is something I can't hope to achieve. It's torture because anything I consider doing at this point (other than working longer hours and pursuing some career) results in my instantly thinking "Oh you just want to do that because you're an immature manchild...".

>> No.18243491

>>18243427
Why aren’t you?

>> No.18243492

>>18243491
I actually am, just wondering why that Anon ended up this way.

>> No.18243493

>>18243487
Have you considered that they felt the same way?

I was not a NEET through my 20s but personally, I just wish I had been. Or I wish I had at least done something else rather than this utter waste of a carrot they call professional career. They demand that I grow up and then proceed to throw away 10 years of my adult life. Fuck them.

>> No.18243496

>>18243492
Well if you are too then maybe you already have an idea of why I am.

>> No.18243513

>>18243493
>Have you considered that they felt the same way?

Perhaps some of them did, however they still pursued their writing in a confident manner, usually had a girlfriend or even a wife, and just seemed more mature. Maybe I am just allowing my inferiority complex to run wild in assuming all that, however. Feeling mature and like a genuine man is difficult for me, so much so that calling myself a "man" seems cringeworthy and presumptuous.

Sorry to hear about your career though, I hope at least that you saved some money and gained employable skills.

>> No.18243547
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18243547

>>18243358
I know this feel. Even if I had enough money to never have to work I think I'd still feel like shit. Life is so boring and miserable. Sometimes I wonder why I even bother.

>> No.18243716

>>18243513
You are American?

>> No.18243732

Imagining OP in his office job crying and playing with blocks and pooping his diaper.

>> No.18243962

>>18243406
Unironically realize that depression is a faggot meme. Lurk fit and start lifting. don't make faggot cope excuses and just do it, trust me

>> No.18243977

>>18243491
Because I'm not a bitch

>> No.18243987
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18243987

>>18243977

>> No.18244006

>>18243434
everybody’s retarded, don’t stress it

>> No.18244035

>>18243962
I lifted for years. This is garbage advice and your nonsense about faggot cope excuses is beyond worthless.

>> No.18244043

>>18243434
fuck

>> No.18244057

>>18244035
for real. I still lift because i really would neck if I didn't the endorphines but it absolutely does not fix anything

>> No.18244092

that feel when 28 and everyone assumes I'm over 30

>> No.18244125

>>18243434
>I feel like I am genuinely a retard in many contexts, but also have slightly higher intelligence than most people I interact with technically.
So you're like every normal person. Don't know how you haven't realized this is how the vast majority of people see themselves.

>> No.18244137

>>18243358
>reads half the gree text, and first sentence of the first paragraph
yeah dude, seems legit. imma go smoke a cig and find a cute girl to hit on

>> No.18244152

>>18243358
What until you read this

>Puer aeternus (Latin for 'eternal boy'; female: puella aeterna; sometimes shortened to puer and puella) in mythology is a child-god who is forever young. In psychology, it is an older person whose emotional life has remained at an adolescent level, not to be confused with Peter Pan syndrome. The puer typically leads a provisional life due to the fear of being caught in a situation from which it might not be possible to escape. He or she covets independence and freedom, opposes boundaries and limits, and tends to find any restriction intolerable.

>> No.18245224

>>18243358
sounds based
Who good does adulthood do me

>> No.18245620

>>18243962
Lifting did absolutely nothing for my mood. Shitty cope.

>> No.18245633

>>18243358
Pic completely unrelated I guess. You're not a doomer. You're a practically a bloomer with an undeveloped mind.

>> No.18245637

>>18243406
This. Psychology and "syndroms" are methods of societal control.

>> No.18245683

I find it very convenient that by "growing up" or "becoming an adult" people, nowadays, mean to develop the same set of behaviors and values, the same mindset that benefits the current system and makes more confirming people. What is "an adult"? One that conforms the most. Freedom is a "childish thing". You have to "take responsibility" for things even if nobody actually does this, they just engage themselves in meaningless bullshit activities so they can tell themselves they are "busy", they are "doing things", they are "taking responsibility". Yet more often than not these people are in some way or the other dependent on someone else: their boss, the government etc. Yet they call themselves independent because they earn a wage and rent an apartment and being "independent" is "what adults do".
How many people actually start families because that is what they actually want and they have a good understanding of what having a family means and what raising children implies? How many people think deeply about this before they get married? And how many get married out of some sense of desperation, because of the biological urge to reproduce, because "they need to have someone to take care of them in their old age", because of social pressure, because it's "the course of life", because it's "what everyone else is doing"?
It seems very strange that being an adult means being a conforming dependent citizien who at the same time can tell themselves this story of "being a responsible adult and acting mature".

>> No.18245716

>>18243962
>fit
lol. its fully of neets, fats and homos. exercise is good for mental health but its hygiene not any kind of solution

>> No.18245734

>>18245683
There wouldn't be anything wrong with that if we lived in an actually functioning society that led people down some kind of constructive, healthy path. People are going to be people, they're not going to think hard about what they're doing, they're going to conform to some kind of social structure and attempt to fulfill some ideal of what it means to be a man or a woman (or whatever sick corruption of that we have in our society). That's not necessarily a bad thing in itself and criticizing people for their nature is an exercise in futility.
>"they need to have someone to take care of them in their old age"
Well, what's wrong with that? Better than being locked up in some horrifying institution. Family developed as a survival strategy and that's still true to this day. You should be thankful that not everyone is some overanalytical sperg constantly second-guessing every last move he makes to the point of inaction like me and probably you. I dunno, it's just very easy to make these criticism without thinking about life would be like if people weren't this way.

>> No.18245775

>>18245734
Maybe you are right, anon, but when I wrote that I didn't write it thinking about how people should all turn into overanalitical spergs like me or to deny all instincts. I just meant that thinking about things a little more than we do might be good, but in no case I want people to turn into a indecisive mess like I am. The point I was making about having children to take care of you in old is not that is a bad reason, but if your only reason to have children is that, if you don't love or care about them other for the sole purpose of having someone to take care of you when you're old, I don't think that can be good. It's very selfish. I agree that nobody should end up in some nursing home or something like that. I think there was a reason multigenerational households used to be the way things worked.
But you're right about it. Nobody should worry and think about every single decision and get stuck in analyzing every way that could go. Humans need to be decisive. All I'm saying is that maybe a little bit of thinking about the way things are could actually help. Problems can't be solved overthinking them, but they can't be solved ignoring them.

>> No.18245838

>>18245775
>All I'm saying is that maybe a little bit of thinking about the way things are could actually help.
Well, that's always true regardless of the issue. It all starts at the top. The incentive structure of post-industrial is just so messed up and ill-conceived. On one hand it gives me hope, because there's a way for things to become better. One the other, that seems so out of reach. Yet again things come to that most guttural and devious realm and politics. It's all so tiresome bro.

>> No.18245842

>>18245838
realm of politics*
tfw 5am posting

>> No.18245981

>>18243358
The Iliad and The Odyssey. Don't think about reading them, don't wonder why, don't hesitate. Just start reading them right now.

>> No.18246003

>>18243406
based

>> No.18246054

>>18243358
Stop treating contemporary psychology as if it was a real thing.

There's just simply no real incentive to grow up for most. Why would you do such a thing? To slave away for Shekelstein? To marry some 4/10 bitch "looking to settle down"? To work three times as hard for half as much as your grandparents? Fuck that.