Yeah, that's exactly what it was for me. I was so massively stressed out that I was at a point of complete burnout or exhaustion, and I was in what's known as survival mode, where your anxiety system is always switched on. That was because of some really bad stuff going on in my life that was threatening my existence. So I'd sit down to watch a favorite movie thinking it was something I could enjoy. Nope! The threats and conflicts just made my anxieties way worse. Things that normally are fine, because normally your life isn't under severe threat. There are people who suffer from severe anxieties all the time. Something is wrong inside the parasympathetic nervous system or whatever, and it never shuts off and lets them relax. They're in survival mode all the time. I imagine ordinary movies and stories would be torture for them. I had been studying stoicism at the time, but that was when I was first able to really put it into daily practice. They say you don't really become stoic until you need it and turn it into a daily practice. That's how it worked for me. I emerged from that period a stoic.
Sorry to hear about the difficult times. I have found that writing a letter can be a good way to vent off that kind of emotional overload. The times I have done this, I would write to a dead relative, knowing it would never be read, which gave that extra bit of freedom to let things out.
I don't think that would have helped. This was existential dread, meaning my very existence was under threat on a daily basis. Actually a situation like that is the perfect training ground for stoicism. But I do know what you mean. Many times when I had something I really wanted to say to somebody but it would have destroyed a relationship or something, I wrote and never sent the letter (or the email, or the response on the message board). Like in the song Nights in White Satin—"Letters are written, never meaning to send." It helps you get it out of your system.
Glad to hear you made it through the trials. Sadly, we as a society have moved away from the ideals of the stoics.
Even in ancient Greece and Rome, stoics were very much the exception rather than the rule. Most people are very anti-stoic. In fact, Mister Spock was based on a common misunderstanding of the stoics, that they operate on pure logic and have no emotion. Not true! When you learn how to divert the overpowering emotions you can remain cheerful even in really tough situations. Stoics were often the life of the party. But I'm diverting the thread off topic.
Most people haven't read Marcus Arelius either. There are so many works that get left out of general education that should be there. The Prince for one, but then people would see the games politicians run.
I can't find the original discussion. I did some searching on my own. A few people pointed to some Japanese novel styles--I've heard that before, but what little I've read of them I would not go so far as to say there is no conflict. I also saw people mention Arthur Clarke's Songs of Distant Earth and Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast. I don't agree with those (I'm more familiar with Gormenghast and there is plenty of conflict there). I also saw Swann's Way mentioned, and while I can see what they're talking about, in a way, there is conflict in that novel as well. Some of the people talking about books with no conflict seem to be focusing exclusively on overt external conflict, but that's not all there is to it.
I like this definition: Conflict is thwarted, endangered or opposing desire. That builds tension, and "Tension is the mother of fiction." What is Conflict in Literature
I took the thread as discussing works like James Joyce Ulysses. Something to appeal to the High Literature crowd. Personally, if I am going to put that much work into something, I want something that is readable, and brings some enjoyment to the reader.
Different strokes. What kind of enjoyment? I like all kinds of books, high literature pretense or not, but there are times with the classics where one thinks: critical acclaim be damned, this could have been a few pages shorter, could have gotten to the point sooner and been none the worse. The last one I had the feeling with was Crime and Punishment, by Dostoevsky. It seemed to have lots of chaff, far too much dialogue.
