please help.........?

Question

ive struggled with anxiety issues for a while and i can easily work myself up into a panic attack if i think that nothing is real and i dont exist.

but my question is: we do live in a in a reality where physical things exist independent from our perceptions right??this is all real right? its just how we see? the idea of me or my loved ones and everything ive ever known not existing and never has is a very scary thought and would render life as meaningless.

when people say: "eality is what you perceive it to be"or " you create your universe" that just means that the only thing that what matters is what you think right? or do i take things to literaly and think that this all doesnt exist and you are all figments of my imagination? this feeling makes me feel like im losing it. please tell me what is real!!!

Answer 1

I honestly think you're going too far into it. Just be happy, that's the wisest thing you could do in itself for what's the sense in speculating when it just works you into a panic. Does it matter? What will it change? Do you see my point? Be happy then. What else is there other than that. You decide what is real to your thoughts and no one will stand in judgement of that now or ever. Just live life to it's fullest meanings because in the end, we're only what we say we are to ourselves. Others will have their opinions, and the universe will be as it always is, silent and indifferent. Live well.

Answer 2

Are you in any way related to Soccer Mom?

Your loosing it because you think reality exists "independently" from our perception. While there is a real world whether we perceive it or not, we actually do perceive it. Its existence is not detached from us!

There was somebody who said that if there is something that exists that we do not perceive (can't see, feel, smell... cannot even see clues of it like black holes and dark matter) then it does not exist. Or at the very least, they do not matter to us because they do not affect us in whatever way. (Was it Hannah Arendt?)

Truth lies in the interaction between the object and the subject, the observed and the observer. Being's very nature is to BE. And the subjectivity's nature is to perceive it while it is "being".

This is not relativism, or subjectivism, because truth is not determined by the observer. The observer can only affirm what he is observing. One analogy goes that it is like playing a game. In order to master a game, you must first be mastered by its rules. And then there is an element of forgetfulness about it too, as I'm sure Michael Jordan isn't thinking of whether or not he is taking of on the right foot when he dunks. As Nike said, "just do it!"

Curiously one objectivist said something very much like this (in fact I'd say exactly like this), that in order to command reality we must first obey it.

You have no power to doubt reality. Try it. Reality is not what you perceive it to be. You do not create your universe. If you believe very much that children in africa have something to eat, you do not magically feed them.

Answer 3

The problem of reality and existence is a thorny epistemological problem. How can we KNOW that our experiences or the world around us is "real" or has "existence."

Descartes tried to deal with this fundamental skepticism when he stated his famous idea "I think, therefore I am." Basically, he is saying, if you are thinking and feeling, then there is something there thinking and feeling so you must exist. But what about everything else.

Hume attacked the very basis of our understanding of rational knowledge (and thus our ability to trust our perceptions of reality). He basically said that there is no rational basis for believing that what we know as water today won't have the properties of acid tomorrow or that what we perceive as reality with our eyes is a true representation of what exists.

But, as my philosophy instructor would say (I don't know if it was his statement or someone else's he quoted), "When Hume finished his lectures on skepticism he left through door and not the window." Basically, this is to say that, what skepticism did was not undermine our faith in reality, but rather showed the limits of pure reason in understanding reality.

It was the existentialists who continued in Hume's path who developed the ideas you mention regarding "one creating one's own universe." This may be true if our only way to know is by reason alone. By reason alone we have no ability to know anything beyond our own thoughts, so any "known" universe can only exist within our heads (this is not necessarily literally true, existentialists are not solipsists, rather they speak more of our ability know the outside universe). However, the way we live shows us that we do know things without reason. By reason, I cannot say that I know I ate breakfast this morning, or that I am loved or anything else that "exists" in an intangible form. Yet living life means to treat our memory, our feelings, and the feelings of those around us as real.

All of this is to say that your feelings of "losing it" is really just you coming to the conclusion that the 17th and 18th century ideals of knowledge through pure rationality and logic are philosophically flawed. To believe them means that rationality itself is not knowable nor does it exist.. Thus, the idea that all knowledge must come through pure reason is itself an irrational ideal. The fact is that certain things we know and we trust because we do and we must, regardless of reason or logic. And, as contradictory as it may seem, this is the most rational form of knowledge.

We know what is real when we experience it as reality, and experience is the ultimate form of knowledge.

Answer 4

we do live in a reality where physical things exist independent from our perceptions right??

negative. everything that seems to exist is your perception. you cannot prove the existence of ANYTHING other than your mind (perception) because its your mind which is perceiving it!

to find or experience what is real... you have to transcend the experience of your mind. as long as you are with the experience... you are experiencing the experience and not what is beyond the experience! and the only way of doing that is through meditation... when your mind reaches a point beyond any experience... but then there is no way of percieving that reality... because it's not an experience! its just a state of being in awareness... an awareness of transcended consciousness...
the pure state of spiritual existence beyond the physical manifestation

Answer 5

I understand what you're asking....My take on the idea that the only reality is what we perceive is just that there is some form on concreteness because everyone experiences certain things. As a simple example, weather. When it rains, it doesn't just rain for one person because they think it's raining, it rains for everyone. And even if everything was in some sort of imagination, that doesn't make it any less important.

Answer 6

STOP stressing your question can be answered with you are proving to yourself you are real according the phrase by the philosopher Descartes "I think, therefore I am" is the answer to your question. if you think then you are.
He also worte the phrase "I am, I exist"
Descartes also wrote "I doubt, I am". He recognizes that to doubt, you must exist within the doubting, there is existence, and vice versa. And doubting is a form of thinking so your doubting is showing you that you exist.

You would not be able to question the reality of your existance if you did not exist.

Answer 7

Oh Woe there !! you are really anxious about this issue..
Don't know if I can help, but I say trust your basic 5 senses,,. if you can
Touch, taste, sight, hearing, smell, then that makes it real to me..

Answer 8

you are thinking you are real

pray pray pray ask god for mercy