Well, a pretty frequent alternative is complaining a lot and looking for sympathy. Another is blaming someone else.

I think if you would ask those people they would also say yes, that they are thinking about ways of solving their problems.

I do all three! Except I'm falling behind on the "look for ways to solve problems" part, for reasons that usually turn into horrible emotastic essays on livejournal that are statistically indistinguishable from normal whining. So I expect the same reaction that normal whining gets--which is to say, nothing useful.

I think I should make "get out of this situation and get into such a state that you aren't statistically likely to die from oversleeping/depression/lack of exercise/lack of social activity in the next ten years" a very immediate goal, but to the best I can figure, all I can really do is wait and hope my family will actually cooperate and get me into my own place this fall (they've been insisting this would happen pretty much every three months since spring 2012). The trouble is that most of my options feel very reactive rather than proactive, which is no way to improve anything.