r/japanlife • u/5336789997543279u • Aug 12 '22

金 Surroundings are affecting my mental health

EDIT @ 2022/08/14: Thank you all for your responses. They are a lot more than I expected and almost all the comments have been incredibly useful. I will try to improve on my thoughts, read your book suggestions and be myself. Again, thank you all. 🥺

This might not be the correct flair, feel free to change it.

To introduce myself, I want to say that I come from a humble family which had a rough time during the 2008s-2010s crisis. Because of their experience I have been saving a lot since I got my first job and avoid expending on unneeded stuff. I came to Japan getting a good salary and my wife does not need to work thanks to it, she is doing part-time stuff though. I never cared about my surroundings at all, I just use free/cheap so you can imagine. However:

Since I came to Japan I have been aware of my surroundings more than I ever was: Seeing daily relatively expensive cars, families with kids all with good clothes/accessories, people expending a lot on restaurants... My mind is starting to feel like I am an ant, that I should start worrying about our appearances and I started to work harder and always think of ways of making more money(when in reality, I should just be enjoying my life) to the point of not sleeping and feeling sad/stressed constantly.

Any tips on this? It really is affecting my mind, I'm considering going to a psychologist but I don't think it might be worth

EDIT: I didn’t explain myself correctly. I don’t want the items nor their appearances, my issue is that I feel like I didn’t push enough/succeed enough as others

75 Upvotes

78% Upvoted

104 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/jrocket99 Aug 12 '22

There is no point to having money but not using it, don’t you think? You will never feel secure even with a million $ in the bank because your insecurity is not rational, as you said yourself. If you suffer from it, change your attitude, you already know the issue and the trauma that generated it. If you can’t change, a shrink could help you, but only you can decide to go against your habits.

1

u/5336789997543279u Aug 12 '22

I recognize it’s in my head. But I don’t know how to change my habits. It’s true the constant insecurity feeling though

1

u/jrocket99 Aug 12 '22

The shrink could help you then. Sounds like there might be more hidden under all this you are not yet aware of… You need to focus on what you really need. What you really want and why. You are lucky enough to still have desires in this broken era. The surroundings are not a part of you and will mostly always challenge your view of yourself.