My father once said don’t stick your dick in crazy.
It’s one of the more true and less offensive things he told me.
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
May be kinda specific (and poorly worded), but basically she said that negative feelings come from places where my mental image of the world conflicts with objective reality. This was mostly related to my relationship with my father, as i was looking up to him and seeking his approval, while ignoring the fact that neither he should be a role model or i can be a person whom he would accept. I found this advice applicable to many other situations, but unfortunately i mostly use it after the fact — i get disappointed or angry about something and then i ask myself “Ok, but what i imagined things would be? What else am i wrong about?”
This sounds a lot like the Second Noble Truth in Buddhism. “Suffering is caused by desire”, meaning that there is a disconnect between what you wish were so, and what is actually so.
“never challenge worse”
Right, kick ass. Well, don’t want to sound like a dick or nothin’, but, ah… it says on your chart that you’re fucked up.
I shouldn’t be paranoid about him double billing me/my insurance.
Not all therapists are good ones.
that negative feelings come from places where my mental image of the world conflicts with objective reality.
Used to work in the backend of insurance.
It’s ‘possible’ to double bill for a good reason, but it’s an outlier of a situation.
If you have a shitty insurance company, they’ll stretch money in bad times by only paying places out after multiple requests. They also get trained that if an insurance company drags their feet, the second time they’re billed, they get paid, so they always do it.
Any insurance company worth its salt will catch double billing.
Now, all that said, a LOT of providers double bill and get paid multiple times.
It’s usually assholes all-the-way down.
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
I can’t heal you. You have to learn how to manage your situation. That I would be glad to help you with.
I know she said it differently but that’s how I remember it. I’ve never been so terrified in my life but she helped me (so far) to get really excited for change.
“Some people can’t be fixed. Just try not to be yourself when your decisions affect other people so you minimize the harm you cause them. When you have an instinct to do or say something, the correct action is probably the exact opposite.”
Apparently they hate trying to treat people with BPD (Edit: Borderline personality disorder, not bi-polar) because it’s damned near impossible and the options available are questionably effective at best.
BPD is becoming increasingly more treatable and less therapists have the opinion that you stated here. It’s just that CBT, the traditionally used approach, is not the most effective solution. It’s DBT that is effective for BPD. As the commenter below you said, mindfulness has been great for them, and that’s a core part of BPD. I don’t have BPD but my diagnosis includes “traits of BPD” on my chart and I thought therapy didn’t work for me until I went to a specifically DBT-focused skills group.
its true. as a person with cptsd (bpd) ive mainly had to resort to giving myself the therapy i need through reading, being mindful every moment of the day (i legit have conversations with myself in real time to decide-what i want to say- vs the impact it will have), and psychiatric medication. The real difficult thing is getting the said person with BPD to WANT to change, and i mean with a desperate fervor, otherwise therapy is basically a silly talk session for me where i jab at the therapist to make them say what i want them to say.
too add an analogy to this, its like building a car with Kinex building sticks, painting it over and making it look like a normal vehicle but driving it is a whole different issue. you cant change the structure under the paint, but you can slowly reinforce every bit of it until its ready to drive on the freeway.
I never made the “jab at the therapist” connection before but you’re right. A lot of the time it was like one of those dolls that talk when you pull the string and I was just pulling the string as many different ways as possible to see how many phrases it had.
Anyway, I appreciate the insight. It’s rare to even realize there’s a…problem/difference for us so hearing someone else’s voice is very valuable.
Bro just do it you wont. (I got a therapist from betterhelp)
If you’ve chosen to take in the weight of the world, no amount of therapy can solve your problems.
Actually I want every living and potentially living thing in the universe to expire, including spores, viruses, text and LLMs
Your misery cannot possibly be the result a structurally oppressive society, look at how well I’m doing. Now go kick your mom in the vagina and suck dick for therapy fares, and come back next week.
Fiouu!!
“Be on time for your appointment next week”
Here, I hope it will help
“You’re several weeks past due. I’ve called the collections agency.”
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.
I need to work on this one
The advice is usually pretty common sense and likely nothing you haven’t heard before. The main benefit is having a safe space you can discuss your anxieties with a professional and having someone who will listen with minimal judgement. Also sometimes you need to be reminded of common sense when you lose sight of it.
Basically it’s a paid friendship without all the other benefits of friendship.
Honestly I wouldn’t be going if it weren’t fully covered by my husband’s insurance.
Yes, but Cognitive Behavioral Therapy specifically also a lot about working together to implement some small-scale changes. These are based on what you call common sense, but beyond it just being unable to retain your common sense sometimes, it’s really easy to accidentally not act according to common sense sometimes despite possessing it.
Yea
