Atheism/Depression/Meaning of Life/Nihilism
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She says she deosn't want anyone to suffer because of her, yet, she's causing you pain through her actions, no matter how unintentional though it was. If it's lack of a purpose in life that she believes has caused this massive bout of introspection then She needs to find one.
She says that ignoring the problem is wrong, yet that is exactly what she is doing. If she wants a purpose, then hiding away from the world is just as bad as as turning a blind eye to it. She needs to experience life not shut it out. Maybe she's just scared? Maybe she's scared because her future is one big giant question mark?
You know the old saying, 'Actions speak louder than words.'? Since words have gotten her into this, words might not be the answer. Maybe she needs to be shown how important she is to you, how much she means in your world.
The world is only what you make of it, If you can only see the bad things then maybe she needs to see it from a different perspective
The purpose to life is all in the name. Living. Living how she sees fit. There is a difference between a life spent and a life wasted. And it's all in the eye of the beholder.
I hope you and you girlfriend can work through this thing, and I wish you the best of Luck.
She says that ignoring the problem is wrong, yet that is exactly what she is doing. If she wants a purpose, then hiding away from the world is just as bad as as turning a blind eye to it. She needs to experience life not shut it out. Maybe she's just scared? Maybe she's scared because her future is one big giant question mark?
You know the old saying, 'Actions speak louder than words.'? Since words have gotten her into this, words might not be the answer. Maybe she needs to be shown how important she is to you, how much she means in your world.
The world is only what you make of it, If you can only see the bad things then maybe she needs to see it from a different perspective
The purpose to life is all in the name. Living. Living how she sees fit. There is a difference between a life spent and a life wasted. And it's all in the eye of the beholder.
I hope you and you girlfriend can work through this thing, and I wish you the best of Luck.
She sounds clever. She should find a hobby or job that makes other people happy. Also it is good that she is avoiding drugs, and good that she wants to think and not just stop thinking to protect her own will to live. She should just find a way to make other people happy so she feels like she has meaning.
Happiness is a false goal just as much as "winning". The pursuit of happiness has given the world The American Nightmare - a meritocracy afflicted by Status Anxiety, decadent levels of consumption asserted over doing-it-for-yourself-because-you're-interested creation. It has implanted the toxic idea in culture that to pursue one's own non-professional idiosyncratic interests is to be "a waste of space" and a "drain on society". Sure... far better to be part of "The Game" and ruthlessly compete to ensure you remain an exploiter and/or avoid becoming the exploited.singularapathy said:
Even without the influence of Capitalism and Advertising commodifying Happiness, it is too fleeting an emotion to base your life around.
By all means enjoy Joy when it happens, but don't try to hang on to it, recapture it, engineer it (say with drugs), or over-analyze it (as you will simply curtail the levity and respite from serious-minded introspection that it brings). By all means pause to appreciate the stuff in life that should be an ephemeral pleasure. By all means accept that the fact that there is no "Ultimate Meaning of Life, the Universe and Everything" (due to the awkward problem of the impossibility of being able to pose a question that can be definitively answered as that implies that you must be objective - and therefore external - to the Universe of discourse, which includes language and consciousness, the entire physical universe and its history from start to finish), provided that you regard this as a liberation from all debts to society, familial expectation and if you so choose: rule of law.
I personally recommend what has worked for me: seeking Contentment rather than Happiness, avoiding Status Anxiety (i.e. comparing myself to my peers/neighbors and chastising myself for my comparative 'failure', or fermenting jealousy - as it is just a pathway into financial debt), preventing unhealthy narcissistic, masochistic, over-introspection and the "labyrinthine thought-processes" that characterize depression by recognizing the dangers of boredom (and an over-active, undirected mind) and working as hard as I can to focus on an engaging intellectually challenging project which involves plenty of research that takes me "out of myself" and stops me from going insane with boredom. It doesn't matter what comes of this project. I am not seeking commercial success or kudos from my peers. It isn't even all that important that I finish provided that it continues to give me something to do.
So the advice your girlfriend is getting from her Psychologist seems fine. I don't expect to control all aspects of my life. Acceptance is a key life-skill: you need to tolerate entropy and imperfection in the Universe, you need to avoid manipulative people in society. I have found it helps to feign a veneer of good manners (even over-politeness) to smooth-over the irregularity created by people's conflicting "wants and desires", I have found it helpful to have few "wants and desires" myself and to ensure that the ones that I do need are 'my business' and a secret from strangers who would exploit and manipulate me on the basis of what they had found out about me. Pathetically unassertive? Maybe, but I can guarantee that this works - all it means is that you have to disguise your personality (your inner drives) from people who you have just met and don't trust; sensible really. I'm not advocating lying to everyone you know...
Finally, when I re-read your OP after reading the rest of this thread, it struck me that the sentence I have quoted from it may hold the key. At first I scanned it and gleaned that "she was confused', then that maybe she had become out of touch with her true self due to receiving far too much conflicting advice (no matter how well-intentioned this may have been, after all, I became unsure what to say after reading the whole of this thread, so I expect by now it seems easier to be apathetic as it resolves the problem of "The Dilemma of Choice" - i.e. whose advice to adopt and whose compassionate advice to reject - by choosing not to choose; for fear of making the wrong choice as well as maybe upsetting some relation's feelings, or appearing recalcitrant in the eyes of their health professional. Whilst this only yields stagnation and atrophy of will with time, laying the foundations for anxiety and depression which she may continue to think she hasn't got for as long as she lets her mind walk around a labyrinth that is so large and ever-expanding it gives her the illusion that her mind is free, yet were she able to take a break from this unhealthy introspection - after all, it is still going to be there when and if she returns her thoughts to it - she may very likely discover that she can reflect on the mental holiday she has taken and with the labyrinthine-thinking no longer dominating her short-term memory she can view it objectively for the pattern it is: a trap), finally I realized that I had missed the subtle implication that she did know what made her happy in the past.
Realizing that this was significant my final advice is for you to tell her to make this a topic of discussion with her Psychologist (if it hasn't been already covered) and let that professional identify the onset of her depressive phase, what caused the change and why. It may well be that by endlessly talking about her problems with her you are not helping her as much as if you just forcibly distracted her and dragged her out for a walk where she could see the sun glint through the trees, feel a nice breeze, hear a running stream and eat an ice-cream.
Ultimately, the strongest case I can give against a (non-terminally ill) person avoiding suicide is that you only get one life, it is fairly short and you might as well wait.