Was it bad DECISIONS that led to suffering, or things that were/are completely out of your control?

[Praying 4 a Miracle]

For me personally it was decisions. I was born into a good family and home environment. I was in fact healthy and happy for 57 years. Then I made a few bad (but not horrible) decisions and wham, now I'm suffering intensely. I basically allowed myself to get too stressed out over something silly, and then had a mini-stroke.

What makes me the most angry about my own situation, is that I always lived a squeaky clean life, and never got into drugs (street or prescription) or alcohol, or any of that kind of stuff. And yet, I still ended up suffering in the end, because of a minor and fluky mistake.

What was/is your cause of suffering; decision(s), accident(s), or completely out of your control?

 

[Leiot]

Mine have been pretty much bad decisions. I don't think I'm a bad person, I've just done bad things. My bad decisions fall into two categories: where I was clueless and where I was weak. The clueless decisions were just where I didn't do research or plan for contingencies. But the ones where I was weak are the worse. I took the easy way out of a few situations and will pay for it the rest of my life.

 

[Hvergelmir]

For me personally it was decisions. [...] I basically allowed myself to get too stressed out over something silly, and then had a mini-stroke.

It doesn't sound very reasonable to consider that a decision. To an extent you can be held responsible for your stress, but the stroke must have been a purely unintended consequence. Most people would have been overly stressed out over something silly, at some point, over a 57 year period.

As for me, I consider the cause of my misfortune an unlucky string of coincidences, mostly stemming from childhood.

 

[BoulderSoWhat]

Both. Being alive at all was the primary out of control event that kickstarted my conscious experience of being a human that suffers. All decisions I've made in my life that have caused further suffering to myself have just been maladaptive responses to the predicament of being alive.

A gross oversimplification and perhaps too reductive, but both nonetheless

 

[Reflection]

Both.

 

[-nobodyknows-]

I don't know. Probably a bit of both, but regarding "decisions", it is hard to say whether the decision itself was bad or if things just did not play out well

 

[FadingSentinel]

Probably both, for the longest time I thought everything was just me. But I think a lot has come from how I grew up as well over the years I have been able to lay some connections.

 

[Melly]

Circumstances entirely outside of my control. Awful things happened or were done to me. Cannot help it

 

[badK9wolf]

series of bad decisions and incredibly careless and easily avoidable mistakes

 

[dreamfyre]

It's usually always both for most people; personally most of my stressors were not exactly caused by me but I suppose the way I've reacted to them are my decisions

Circumstances entirely outside of my control. Awful things happened or were done to me. Cannot help it

what happened? x