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“You don’t have to be mad at yourself for that any more”
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“What good does worrying about that part of your past do your current self?”
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“Come on, now. You know that’s not true”
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"Don’t reply to messages from your ex’
“You don’t have to be mad at yourself for that any more”
“What good does worrying about that part of your past do your current self?”
For these ones I don’t really have control over that. My brain gets itself all worked up before I have any say in the matter.
These are some of the most common problems people seek therapy for, and there are several methods therapists teach to address these, such as meditation and mindfulness. It takes practice, but they have a lot of potential to help with intrusive, snowballing thoughts. You can practice anytime and mostly anywhere, but doing it is the hard part.
One common misconception about meditation is that meditation is and end goal, not a practice. That to meditate is to sit down and have your brain be quiet, and if you can’t do that, your session was a failure.
But that’s like saying weight lifting is about deadlifting your body weight, and any session you don’t manage do that was a failure. That is something you might be able to do after years of training. But you start with the smaller weights, learning form and technique, setting reasonable goals, and find a practice that you can make a habit out of. Because a five minute walk every day beats a day at the gym/retreat once a year.
I agree 100%. It’s a shame, because pretty much everyone would benefit from just trying to meditate once in a while.
Do you happen to have a good source for learning these? I’ve looked into it in the past but everything I find about meditation and mindfulness is riddled with nonsense that doesn’t make any sense to me.
Just a simple example I googled:
- Sit in a quiet, comfortable place.
- Set a short time limit if you’re a beginner (e.g., 5–10 minutes).
- Focus on your breath and notice bodily sensations.
- Gently return your focus to your breath when distractions occur.
With body sensations, you can focus on the taste in your mouth for a minute, then switch to sounds you hear, how your fingertips feel etc. I usually close my eyes to better focus on each sensation. Just relax and gently observe what you experience right now.
Thanks, I needed that.
I hear these and I’ve had some therapy but I don’t know how to believe the lines and not dwell.
Therapy isn’t a single sentence, and we talked over these things for weeks for me to get to this place. It also had to come from me, one thing I talked about is that dwelling on misery/mistakes is, for me anyway, a guilty pleasure and a little addictive, so I had to be truly sick of living that way and genuinely want the change in my heart of hearts.
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Go for a walk, be mindful of your surroundings
That’ll be $300
Girl I have a $120 bill that is going to bankrupt me at the moment, you ain’t getting shit from me.
That’s fine, we aren’t accepting new patients right now anyways
Last therapist I talked to asked me what my problems were. I said they’re personal and I have a hard time talking about them. He essentially said “alright not much we can do then” and ended the meeting. This was after about 2 weeks of waiting for the appointment too. I haven’t bothered looking for another therapist.
They don’t care about me. They care about the money I give them.
i mean, what did you want them to do? slice your head open and dig around manually until they find the Bad Thoughts?
It’d be nice if they didn’t give up in 2 minutes.
I had a friend in college who shopped around between all the available therapists and finally decided on the one she had the best rapport with. I know there are wait times and other difficulties, but it goes a long way to find somebody you click with.
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)
I won at therapy a few months ago. My doctor threw up his hands and went “I don’t know what to tell you. Your situation is so fucked up that I can’t even offer advice. Just keep on keeping on, I guess.” And that actually made me feel better.
Look at that ! It kinda makes me feel a little better, too !
you’re here and that’s a good thing
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.
Mine just said, “You’re right, but thinking about it isn’t helping.”
I countered with, “People not thinking about it is why we’re here.”
They replied with, “Yeah, probably.”
“So what do I do?”
“What can one man do?”
“That’s what I’m paying you for. What can I do?”
“🤷♂️ Maybe stop listening to Democrats.”
Fucking hate Kentucky.
Also, I filed a complaint and didn’t go back; their practice is now closed, but I don’t know if it’s just because they moved to a different location or if they genuinely had to stop practicing. Haven’t really thought about it much.
Haven’t really thought about it much
The system works
So does shitting in a hole in the ground.
I don’t know what I mean by this; I just let the universe guide my fingers when I’m on here.
Shitholes are illegal where I live
I’ve always wanted to visit California
good guy therapist: gives you some good to do in the world by being shitty so you can report them
A different perspective. I like it.
Compartmentalize all the horrors of life and it’s great!
Sounds super healthy! :-D
Can I give you money now?
Circle of influence vs circle of concern. The answer still lies within you to be able to calibrate your mind to be able to live through a shit situation, and do what you feel able to improve it.
Wow, ok, I don’t know what I did to make you attack me with logical philosophies like this but I’m sorry, Christ.
make you attack me
Oof. Totally not an attack.
Isn’t this the point of therapy? That we can change out own world by working on how our brain perceives and processes it.
I’m not 100% certain but this looks like one of those cases where a commenter jokingly says that they feel personally attacked but mean that they agree with what was said. Playing at oversensitivity for comedic effect.
If I were a nail, my head would be sore.
If a frog had wings it wouldn’t bump its ass when it hops.
If my grandmother had wheels, she’d be a bicycle
But also I think that singling out “our world” from “the world” is problematic and a major cause of many of the societal problems that we all face
What the other guy said
👍
Getting more involved with community movements has helped me in this respect 100x more than my therapist did.
It’s not their fault, there’s not that much they could’ve done for me anyway and they were very much on the same “were fucked this is all hopeless” boat as me.
Exactly the same conversation somehow except the democrats part
It’s almost like the entire thing is some sort of scam to trick us into thinking that feelings of injustice is a sickness or something. Like someone somewhere would rather us just be okay with bad things happening around us to the point where they’d spend a significant amount of effort pushing pharmaceuticals and illicit substances to replace the chemicals we produce naturally when things are going well.
I know that sounds crazy, but that’s just how it seems sometimes. It’s really weird.
I mean, it’s not like they’re keeping track of people who have these disorders or anything.
LOOKS AT U.S. GOVERNMENT
I mean, why would they do that?
LOOKS AT ALCATRAZ
I’m sure it’s fine, haha
Clean your room
Already did. There was a shit-ton of cat hair under my bed.
damn
Yea
What issues are you dealing with (if you feel like sharing)? I can speak from my experience being in therapy for AuADHD, anxiety, depression, childhood traumas, and a few other things.
ETA: Some generic things from my therapist that will help most people:
- Drink enough water. This alone can have a significant impact.
- Try to do regular physical activity that you enjoy, if possible. Even if you don’t feel like it.
- Check your posture. If you find yourself hunching, try fixing that.
- Do things that you know that you enjoy when you are not depressed, when you are depressed. Our brains are weird and “fake it 'til you make it” kinda works - by doing non-depressive things, you can trick your brain into being happier.
- Try to engage socially, if you find yourself to be a hermit. Our brains are evolved to be social animals and isolation can be damaging.
- If you are having trouble with the state of the world and things that you do not have control over, try engaging in things that you do have control over. This can be as simple as deep cleaning your sink or fixing a squeeky hinge. The amount of frustration caused by inability to impact important global happening is problematic for maintaining good mental health - our brains evolved in environments where life-threatening problems had immediate solutions but humans have built societies that don’t work that way.
Important items
- Be patient and kind to yourself. Especially your past self. We all did cringy things when young with brains not fully-developed and/or without the information that one has currently. If you have trouble doing so, try mentally taking a step back and pretending that you are dealing with a close friend who you care about deeply. Would you judge them and make them feel bad about their past mistakes? I hope not.
- Concern and depression about the world at large is a very valid way to feel. It’s important, especially for those of us with mental health challenges, to take the airplane safety spiel “put your own mask on first before helping others” approach to rendering aid to others. If you are in or near crisis, you are not in a place to help others and need to focus on getting to stable ground yourself first. Needing to do this isn’t slacking off or “not doing your part”. Not everyone is equipped to be out marching all the time (some are not equipped for this at all). If someone offers unhelpful criticism of inability to engage physically due to mental or physical health, they are best ignored rather than responded to.
So many of these are so good, too many people don’t realize you can use your body to essentially “hack” your brain
Little known fact the brain is in fact part of the body.
Source?
Any advice on how to do work like other people? I am quick to grab my phone everytime I get even slightly stressed or don’t immediately know the answer to a problem.
And it takes a lot of time for me to do something, it takes other very little (at least compared to me). Any advice on that?
The issue here is that you’re doing everything you can to avoid negative emotions, like picking up your phone to distract yourself at the first sign of anxiety.
Often some of the biggest things which hold us back in life come from avoiding discomfort. The most ‘motivated’ people you know aren’t doing all these things because it’s easy, they do them despite the difficulty and discomfort.
The best thing you can do for yourself is learn how to sit with discomfort and act on what you want to do despite it. It’s not easy, but it’ll change a lot for you.
I have that problem and it’s still a problem for me but what I’ve found that sort of works is to keep a to do list of all the shit I need to do. Kind of like a bulet journal but less complicated. If someone asks me to do something then instead of immediately jumping on it (unless it’s an emergency) I put it on the list. Then when I am working on something and it stresses me out to the point I am reaching for my phone I move to a different item on the list instead (sometimes). When I finish something or review the list and see a bunch of things crossed off it also gives me a little mood bump. Also keeping my phone in my bag instead of within reach and just listening to podcasts or whatever on my wireless buds helps.
None of this is a perfect solution but it did help a bit. Usually if I can get myself in a groove I can power through several items and make up the time I lost dicking around so having a list ready is handy for that as well.
How do you manage between difficult and simple tasks? And Do you do the simple items first or the tough ones?
I’ve found myself of two minds about this.
Completing smaller simpler tasks feels fulfilling in that moment and helps boost productivity but doesn’t feel so good from a broader look back at them.
Whereas finishing difficult tasks feels really good but they can sometimes keep going on and on and on and feel never ending. They might take up a whole day and in that I might miss the small tasks.
Thanks for your reply.
I manage them mostly by timeline. At any given time I have 15-20 things going I need to get done so whatever is due next gets priority. Unless it’s something difficult and I’m having trouble getting my brain to go into gear I will switch tracks and do the next item down that I’m able to knock out quickly. I also try to break larger things into small tasks. So instead of “xxxx deployment”. It’s schedule XXXX planning meeting with customer, get quote, get PO, document site, and so on. With things getting added as they come up.
I can’t really speak to the rest of your comment because nothing I do ever really gives me any kind of lasting good feeling, other than having it off by back if it had been stressing me out. Sometimes that is impetus enough to focus and get something done though.
Ahh I see. Thanks.
Any advice on how to do work like other people? I am quick to grab my phone everytime I get even slightly stressed or don’t immediately know the answer to a problem.
Assuming that you have ADHD based on your other comment, I do, actually, from my own struggles with AuADHD. First thing, is a bit of radical acceptance. If you are not neurotypical, especially if ADHD and/or ASD are involved, you’re not and never will be “like other people”. No pill known by medical science, no strategy, and no therapy is going to change that because it has to do with the brain developing differently in physical structural ways than a neurotypical brain and it’s likely genetic or epigenetic.
That doesn’t mean that there’s no hope for functionality. Just that one must approach things differently and “calibrate” strategies to work with, rather than against their brain. Importantly, it also means that most “productivity hacks” and the like are utterly useless because they were developed with a neurotypical brain as the starting point.
When it comes to doom scrolling and the like, when stressed, you’re actually at a good starting point in that you are aware of what is happening and at least somewhat aware of the cause. It might not seem apparent but, emotion is a significant component of ADHD. The biggest thing to know is that if you are fighting against a heightened emotional state that is causing you to be unable to start or continue something, it can be like quicksand. Constantly running into that emotional brick wall isn’t going to help.
So, what do you do? Well, the same thing isn’t necessarily going to work for everyone. Something that I’ve been working on with my therapist is a strategy from Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) that is called the “STOP” skill (here’s a link). Essentially, it involves analyzing your state in the moment and mindfully deciding on a path forward.
If, like many with ADHD including myself (this was a fun thing to become aware of well into adulthood), you are not super comfortable with your emotions and/or have alexithymia (trouble identifying, describing, and expressing ones own emotions), it could be useful to find an emotion wheel or feelings wheel. There are many versions out there. The important thing is to find one that makes sense to you - I like the ones that start more general in the center and get more specific in the edges. To use that type to figure out how you are feeling (or evaluate how you were feeling from memory), just start with your finger in the center and work your way outwards to the emotion that most fits. Practicing this when not in a moment of stress can help to make it easier when you need it.
Other things that you can try are: practicing meditation so that it is easier to use when you need it and, if necessary, making your phone inaccessible, if you don’t need it. Overall, the goal is to improve coping strategies available to you in order to make it easier to use ones that serve you and your well-being.
And it takes a lot of time for me to do something, it takes other very little (at least compared to me). Any advice on that?
Again, assuming that you have ADHD here. The first thing that you’ll need to do is identify the causes. I, for example, often have a lot of trouble reading (even though I love it and was at a college level vocabulary in primary school). For me, this is caused entirely by ADHD, resulting in re-reading paragraphs and sometimes individual sentences multiple times before they “stick”. This caused a lot of problems for me when I was a child didn’t receive any treatment for it.
Another common thing for ADHD is getting too granular and getting into analysis paralysis or stuck planning rather than doing. I find that setting limits on myself helps to reduce this. For example, if I need to write a program, I might get stuck evaluating what language to use, what libraries to use, which perform better under a given workload, etc. I need to set limits on how long I can take to research and try to make the scope of the work as small as possible to avoid either getting sick in perpetual planning or perpetual research.
Ultimately, you need to evaluate why you are taking longer to do the tasks, which is likely not just one thing, and start chipping away at the things that are causing the time sink in manageable bites. Don’t try to fix everything at once!
If you are not neurotypical, especially if ADHD and/or ASD are involved, you’re not and never will be “like other people”.
I try and remind myself about this. But It fucking sucks that some people diagnose themselves with ADHD, but have no problems doing stuff. Then I have to fight my mind and not compare myself to other people. Irl, I guess you just have to suck up, I remember my boss telling me I was a disappointment compared to my colleagues. People suck.
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT)
Oh okay, I didn’t know about this. I will check this out in detail.
If, like many with ADHD including myself (this was a fun thing to become aware of well into adulthood), you are not super comfortable with your emotions and/or have alexithymia (trouble identifying, describing, and expressing ones own emotions), it could be useful to find an emotion wheel or feelings wheel.
I think I understand my feelings most of the time, but I do have difficulty controlling them.
I have had trouble explaining why I can’t sometimes work for more than 15-20 minutes, but I’ve always attributed that to stress anxiety. Like my body and brain just stop and refuse to work all together untill I shake that feeling off.
Thanks for the very comprehensive answer internet stranger, I appreciate it. The feeling wheel and DBT are something I’ll check out.
Have you been tested for ADHD?
Yup 👍, none of the meds available in my country worked.
I’ve been rawdogging ever since.
Maybe this is an event of what happens if I don’t know? I understand that this wouldn’t be something you could cold turkey, but what I’m saying is what if I’m that scenario you start questioning “do I need to know?”. When you’re in a comfortable mind space, think about what you would have done ~15 years ago when there was no access to an unlimited amount of data?
I’m definitely not a therapist so maybe this isn’t helpful at all but worth a shot.
Thank you for these
Thoughts are habits. You can’t always change your circumstances, but you can change the way you think about them. The more you practice healthy thought patterns, the better you develop good habits.
The Dichotomy of Control
The Serenity Prayer: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time; Enjoying one moment at a time;
I need to work on this one
Based stoicism
“When you’re fighting with someone, think of it as tug-of-war. You choose how long you hold that rope, but you can put it down, or not even pick it up. Either way, neither of you are really going anywhere until one of you chooses to walk away.”
There’s a member of my family I strongly dislike, so I had to work on not taking the bait.
Pain is relative. Yes other people may have it worse than you. The worst pain you’ve felt in your life is still the worst, for you. So don’t write it off so easily.
I love this! Thank you ❤️
More generally, feelings do not care about facts. We must accept how we feel, even if those feelings don’t “make sense”. Trying to reason with feelings is a fools errand.
That doesn’t mean we can’t change how we feel. It just doesn’t happen by denying reality.
Someone, not a therapist, told me pain isn’t a competition. I don’t have to wait for my pain to be worse than the pain of the people around me before I go get help for myself.
In this case, I had physical pain I put off getting checked because it wasn’t worse than what why partner deals with daily. Turned out I needed antibiotics for a bad infection.
“If someone met your expectations would you be mad?”
“No”
“Then maybe your expectations are too high?”
I went in saying that work feels boring and repetitive. Feel stuck in the same job for the rest of my life, even though i hate it.
She said we all feel that way.
That’ll be 200 bucks please
This has been what I do with mine. Most of it is pretty fucking “well duh” type stuff, however working with people to hold you, and you hold yourself, accountable for making progress in these ways. The part of having someone to hold you to account, this is often where a therapist is the most useful. However, in this situation, this isn’t an option, so you need to reach out to others.
Take your meds. If you need meds, but can not currently access them due to finance issues, there are sources out there that may be able to help. This is not often easy to navigate, but it may be something that saves you.
Try any method you can find, that is from a reputable source, to keep your sleep on a schedule, and get at least 6 hours per night. This is way more important than many wish, but generally everyone knows it is vital to health, including mental health.
Make yourself accountable to someone for daily improvement progress - eg find a friend, family member, online gaming buddy, whatever, that you report to, on a routine basis, to report the regularity of maintaining these routines. This means whatever you need to do to keep your living space clean, and in order, routine exercise, adherence to a healthy diet, maintaining the framework to keep yourself on track, like keeping your phone calendar up date, keeping lists of chores/errands you need to do, working on maintaining a hierarchy of needs (most immediate things to do, and most important), etc. This is the big one though, this person is allowed to criticize you in your failings on this, and you need to take that criticism, and use it as a call to focus on these areas. You may need more than one person willing to help. If you are isolated, there are online groups for these things. No this isn’t a great alternative, but it is better than nothing, and living in despair.
You need to audit your behavior. You need to make a record of the things you do that are mentally taxing, and thus can harm your mental health. Do you spend all day, every day, at work, or stressing about work? You need to find a place you can vent this stress, and look for advice on how to disengage with work enough stop burn out, but still do what is expected. If what is expected is just too much, you need to recognize it, and work on finding a lower stress income. Do you doom scroll? Well look into apps that help you regulate the time you spend online. Also, audit your experience with the platforms you engage with. If you find one is mostly something that adds to your stress, depression, despair, etc. work on just cutting that out completely. Look at your personal relationships, and really try to assess whether or not your relationships are healthy, if not, how can they become healthy? If there is not foreseeable way to make it healthy, go low-contact, pilot no contact. If your daily life has any improvement because you no longer maintain contact, then it is time to drop them.
Social activity. This will depend greatly on how much socializing, and what kinds, you can handle, etc. This one is much more tricky, especially since anxiety, anhedonia, and other negative aspects of your mental health really affect how hard this is. However, you need to work on getting some sort of in person social contact. It needs to be regular, and I don’t mean like all the time, but that there is a routine set-up for it. Local hobby groups, activities at the local library, publicly held events you may attend, try to work out a specific time period where you, and at least one friend/family member, can spend that time together doing an agreed upon activity.
Do things that allow you to put your thoughts into more of an order than they may currently be. This could be a journal, personal blog, etc. Just something where you can dump your brain, look at what came out, and apply some structure to it.
Spend time outside. Be it with people, or alone, just force yourself to spend time outside, especially in places you can see nature, see green, etc. If you just sit there observing it, it will help to maintain wellness. This is subtle, and takes a while, however it does have a real impact.
There is more, and I can ask my therapist, when I see her this week, for resources for all this, and I can update with what she says, if she is willing, which I do not see why she wouldn’t be.
He said ‘I’ll see you next week’
Ok. See you next week then.
Not gonna lie, that really helps. The fact that you think I’ll be around next week is a huge help. 🤷🏻♂️
My therapist’s words, not mine. I don’t have a horse in that fight
I put together a website a while back:
I’d make more of an effort to distribute it if I was happier with it. in particular I think it needs simpler language.
