I’ll tell you my PERSONAL experience. I was on therapy and I learned to 1st Identify your triggers (what makes you feel sad? Is it the news? Is it specific news?! Like politics or violence? What ruins your day/week?). Once you know what makes you angry or sad you can actively avoid reading or looking for it. Block people that keep pushing it on you, remove communities that post about it, maybe even social media as a whole (Lemmy is the only social media I still have and it has been amazing for my menral.health). If you feel stable enough and in control you cam work towards changing it. You can be a volunteer or do some work for it.
Finally, since in my case this wasn’t enough, I went to a psychiatrist and now take an amazing medication. 1 pill a day changed my life radically. I recomend
I got a lot of professional advice and guidance in the moment to kick the door to mindfulness wide open. I wish I could share any one thing specific to help anyone replicate the experience. I honestly think this kind of Gnostic awakening has to be tailored to the individual. Also, I was told I was a quick study at this - so sadly, it may take a long time to get there (months to years even).
One exercise we did that helped a lot was to have a discussion with your younger self, and explore what you would say knowing what you know now. Like with a lot of this stuff, the key is to verbalize - it’s fundamentally different than talking to yourself with your inner monologue. So you’re gonna need a close friend that you can share a LOT of deeply traumatic experiences. Pulling punches and censoring your own speech is just going to get in the way. Fundamentally, this is what we pay counselors for: privacy, not judging, and helping to take out the trash. Group therapy may help here too - I have yet to try this, so YMMV.
On a more specific note, I used to be obsessed with root-cause-analysis for my own psychological problems. I almost got into an argument with my counselor over it, until he was able to help me see the light. You can absolutely figure out why and even how you got this way, but that information will absolutely not help you if you’re already in a safe space. It can help you break free of someone or a bad situation, but stuff that happened 30 years ago? Not so much. When you get down to it, there’s no “undo” button for trauma, no matter how much you know. Instead, one must look to the present, exercise mindfulness in the moment of anxiety and triggers, and practice walking your headspace back to a more rational place.
Edit: this was all during the pandemic, BTW. I can’t say that compares to what we have going on today, but I can confidently say that it’s possible to focus on self-help despite all that. It’s really possible to separate “things that are going on in the world” and “things that are just me” in your own head, and work on the latter.
Headspace app, omega 3 supplements, amphetamine, CPAP machine
Try and take time to soothe your inner child. Eat a bowl of Mac and cheese, try to go surfing, do dumb shit kids do. You know. Try it. Also learn to love yourself. Fucking good luck though, man that one… like how the fuck could that ever happen.
I think everyone’s psychology is so different that people out there wonder “how could you not like yourself, it’s you” and meanwhile me I can never see that happening, ever.
Start with one part. Work your way to two eventually.
I like my belly button, it’s satisfyingly deep.
I get your angle but it’s not a priority for me and it doesn’t affect my mental health despite what you’d logically think from reading my original post.
I just don’t like me. Period.
Look man. I know, I know. I also hate myself a bunch and don’t care or think it’s going to stop. I know. I’m not trying to be some kind of dick cheese fart potato, or whatever kids say these days, but like really. It’s exhausting. And it fucks up your life and relationships. There’s a reality. And that reality does occasionally come with positive feedback about yourself and your choices and actions. Now imagine the real reality is a block of metals in some kind of shapes and decorations, when you see this reality what your doing is pulling out positive reality about yourself, melting it down, crafting it into something negative and trying to fit it into the space you took it out of. It’ll never fit, it’s a waste of time, it’s inherently deeply selfish, and it makes you at least partially delusional. Every relationship you have, someone is sending you messages. You are taking them, removing their words or actions, changing their meaning, and pasting it over their actual message. You don’t even know what is happening around you, what people are saying to you, and you’re missing A LOT of positive feedback. And again.
It’s literally the worst kind of selfish, where you don’t insist your entitled to everything, you instead insist everything means you suck out loud. Why, homie. Why.
I’ve been doing this shit for 40 years. Let me tell you. It’s a bad end. You need to love yourself to just get to baseline normal and have average times in life. Stop being so selfish you need to sabotage every part of your life making yourself delusional in the process. Fuck!
Anyway. I can’t do it. I don’t know if it’s possible. But try. Try.
Your life is the way it is because you’ve decided that it’s more comfortable to leave it that way than to change it.
Srsly years and years of therapy this was the only thing that did anything for me
Amen. I said screw it, saved money and moved to Korea. Happiest 3 years of my life.
(It was uncomfortable as crap and I missed a lot of things back home - funerals, weddings, friends growing older and moving away… But no regret. Gotta live life)
You clearly find it easy to stop doing things that are bad for you (drinking, drugs, eating meat), but you struggle to start doing things that are good for you (exercise, cooking, eating enough/well).
She was right. I still don’t do the bad stuff and started doing the good stuff and now my life is so much better. Ironically it was quitting the last bad thing (weed) which allowed me to start taking care of myself. It’s not enough to not hurt yourself, you have to be good to yourself too.
Hot take, but I’ve done therapy with like 4-5 different therapists over like 20 years and found it to be of little to no use. What’s been a lot more helpful is just living life with the intent of letting go of past wrongs and making sure that I don’t inflict them on others.
I think the point of therapy is to help you effect changes in your behavior (mental and physical). Sounds like you were able to make some changes that help.
If feeling overwhelmed, do the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding method.
Find and make note of:
- 5 things you see
- 4 things you touch
- 3 things you hear
- 2 things you can smell
- 1 thing you can taste/recall tasting
And the idea with this is to stop dwelling on your negative spiral, and to focus on immediate surroundings.
Therapist also said to feel free to mix and match the sense with the number. For example, I don’t have a good sense of smell, so I do 2 things I can taste/remember tasting, and 1 thing I can smell.
I was taught this for panic attacks, except it’s hard to remember what to do when in the midst of a panic attack. Then I’d just get a bit distracted trying to remember which sense came next, mission failed successfully?
It is, and that’s okay! My therapist said that even if I could only remember two of the five senses to just switch between the two for all of 5-4-3-2-1 until I calm down! It is the act of this thing, and not necessarily the perfection of executing it!
Mine explained my emotional dysregulation patterns and helped me identify the triggers and how to address them.
By far, the most useful technique they shared with me was the TIPP skills technique, which helps me come down when I am having strong emotional reactions as a trauma response or from anxiety. Essentially:
- temperature - use cold temp to lower heart rate, warm to raise it
- intense exercise - helps manage overwhelming energy levels
- paced breathing - I’m not big on breathing but it works for some
- paired muscle relaxation - my favourite as it also interrupts thought patterns
Hope you’re able to access help though, obviously it is much better when personalized and you also get the safe space to release your fears and anxieties
you also get the safe space to release your fears and anxieties
I literally feel anxious reading this sentence. Gah.
Whatever assumptions you have about the universe and other people are wrong. They all want to connect and love/be loved.
Bro just do it you wont. (I got a therapist from betterhelp)
Go live your life. Make some mistakes worth talking about then come back.
Still working on it. Turns out all the stuff I was so scared to do with my life wasn’t so dangerous after all.
“I think you should come here twice a week to work that out”
I’m not sure how that helps you though.
Try something other than amex cards.
For everything else, there’s MasterCard
(…) just take your meds
