[LilyMop]

What do you think is the difference between being a pessimistic person and being a realistic person?

[MsLady]

Being realistic is being objective, neither positive or negative. Being pessimistic is subjective and often an emotional response to something that may not have accuracy. IMO

[Breaking Dawn]

Hi, LilyMop! Well, I consider myself a realist, even though I'm very spiritual. I'm hardly ever a pessimist. I almost always believe in tomorrow. But I keep my expectations at a reasonable level, so I don't feel the continuos disappointment people feel when they are overly optimistic. On the outside, I think being realistic & being pessimistic look very similar, if not the same. But to me, a pessimist is seldom happy & they don't try to improve things, whereas the realist continues striving, patiently, accepting various obstacles along the way as being normal. That's how I feel most of the time.

[LilyMop]

You guys had some good insight on this. Thank you so much.

I believe I’ve become a bit of a pessimist lately. I want to work on this.

Somehow I went from a naive Pollyanna type to a bit of a pessimistic type.

I feel that I am a pessimistic person. When things are going well, I tend to anticipate that the goodness is going to end. And then, during a bad time, it would be hard to imagine that it's going to be over. I'm a "the glass is half empty" kind of person.

[bpcyclist]

I find that pessimism tends to creep into my brain when my PTSD has been triggered or when I am becoming irritable/agitated with mania or some hypos stuff. Emotion heavily influences how we sort data in our brians.

[LilyMop]

I have continued to think about this issue and I think I’m becoming bitter. There are some issues in my life that have gone on for years and I think that as I finally realize they aren’t going to resolve... I’m kinda getting bitter. That’s not the person I want to be. I wake up every morning with the intention that I will practice gratitude and acceptance... and slowly I roll right back into the bitter thoughts and then I hear myself talk and it’s just pessimistic.