Learn to identify what you’re feeling.
This, big time.
One thing that helped me: I went out and found a list online of emotional descriptor words and, while journaling, I’d start my entries listing the emotions I felt in the moment and elaborate on them individually.
I struggle hard to verbalize my thoughts in general, but emotions (especially strong & conflicted ones) can be overwhelming to verbalize!
That sounds very helpful. I’ve found charts like
helpful for drilling down from a general feeling to something more specific.I especially like
because it associates them with how the body feels.Oh wow this is amazing! I especially like that you can work both ways, starting with something broad and narrowing down or vice versa. Thanks for these!!
Allow yourself to feel something first.
a therapist I had helped me rethink problems in terms of pragmatically adjusting my environment or conditions to nudge my behaviors rather than relying on willpower or behavioral changes that were slow or simply not happening
a small example was moving my computer out of my bedroom and developing a night-time routine that included reading a book before bed to help reduce compulsive computer use
realizing I am somewhat deterministic in my behavior, and my behavior is caused by conditions I have some influence over, was a helpful insight and got me past just constantly failing to live up to my expectations for myself and never moving past that - I can treat my psychological problems like puzzles to solve
+1 learning to parent yourself
realizing I am somewhat deterministic in my behavior
So you are like this:
Sorry, I know that the joke is terrible, but I had to bring it.
Legit is this loss?
How in hell do you think this could be loss?
Super sleep deprived 😔
What do you mean?
I had to self-teach myself that once I hit adulthood. Things like “if left to pay a bill at some specified time (not immediately), I will fail. So all bills go on autopay.” It’s burned me a few times, but not nearly as often as constantly being burned with late fees and such.
Also, when my wife met me, she met someone who led a Spartan existence, with all my no-furniture belongings fitting in a piece of luggage. She thought it was preference, and completely blew off me constantly complaining about clutter and mess in the house. Once I explained (ten years in) that I can’t have many things without it becoming a huge unmitigated mess (like having “pathways” through the clutter), so having a whole lot of stuff is shitting on my coping mechanisms and stressing me out, making me constantly uncomfortable in my own home. She understood, and stopped giving me shit for it… not that it changed the clutter, but at least when i complain I don’t get hand-waved, I get an apology. Which is something, I guess (until I snap and the dumpster and donation center get a ton of bags).
Can confirm - switching my approach to changing my conditioning rather than directly trying to change my behaviors through sheer will, I’ve actually managed to make some progress for the first time in what feels like years. Take it slow, step by step - you don’t have to change everything about your environemnt all at once - it might even be counterproductive. And in a few months you start to notice an accumulation of changes in your behavior.
I also kinda feel this corraborates my suspicion that conciousness is not as conciouss as we like to give it (ourselves, really) credit.
If you can’t stop thinking about the worst possible outcome, try imagining the opposite. A nice and comfortable situation that makes you happy. To take up space in your thoughts and orient you towards more pleasant emotions
Eh? How it will change the outcome?
Outcomes are rarely determined by your own thoughts about the situation.
It’s like being anxious about driving because you’re worried someone is going to hit you. As long as you’re being safe and careful, being an anxious mess isn’t going to make you any safer and it can even make things worse.
Of course I’m not trying to say “just stop being anxious!” but you have to understand that only ever thinking about the worst case scenario will hinder far more progress than it will help.
Yeah, it’s a matter of possibilities, and yeah anxiety doesn’t help. As a cybersec specialist worst case scenario always have to be taken into consideration under the premise of realistic outputs. You have always be ready for the worse, do damage control and after the possible disgrace you have new lessons learned. “Control what you can, prepare for the worst, and move forward despite the risk.”
LaW oF aTtRaCtIoN
It’s not about changing the outcome, it’s about stopping anxiety. This advice was given to me for use when feeling anxiety that is debilitating about a potential worst-case scenario which is usually unrealistic
Doing something could stop it, not doing anything will not stop anything…
Shitty low-quality advice tbh
That thing you like doing that makes you feel better? Stop it.
Instead do this thing that is tedious/boring that you never look forward to.
Eventually you will fool yourself into enjoying this boring/tedious task and trick your brain into releasing dopamine when you perform it.
I was still a kid. At my first session I opened up hard. I spoke nonstop for the whole hour.
When I was walking out I asked them “now what?” And they replied “Now it’s a long battle”.
That stuck with me.
Did it help you?
Oof. Hard to say. I did it for so long and so early in life that I’m not even sure what would have happened had I not done it.
I don’t like mental meds though. And I don’t think any of them ever helped me. They have always either made me extremely risky behavior prone or just numb where the days blend together and months go by in the blink of an eye.
It’s ok to look back at a painful event and have empathy for that younger person, then you can either stay there or accept any wisdom to be learned and write the next chapter but you can’t live in both places at once.
Please remember to bring exact change next time.
“No one else can do the work for you.”
Elon Musk enters the chat room
This is the best response.
A really big part of therapy is learning how to communicate what happened, what is happening, and what you are feeling.
It takes a lot of time to organize it all into words that another person would understand, and doing so helps you.
The therapist might aslo reccomend what to do going forward but 9/10 times you already know that.
It’s minimal how you can change other people. But you can change your own environment, actions and worldview. Even though it might take a long time for your body, nervous system and brain to change and adapt.
Even if your parents want to change themselves for the benefit of your health, it might not be possible for them. But you might be able to help them by changing yourself, and then indirectly change their environment.
If you think you picked a bad partner because there’s something wrong with you because of how you were parented, actually a bad partner sought you out because they saw those vulnerabilities in you.
Be the leaf
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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.
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
👍
Compartmentalize all the horrors of life and it’s great!
Sounds super healthy! :-D
Can I give you money now?
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
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.
