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This is free advice from a medium expensive counselor who mostly works on insurance reimbursement:
Most modern pop psychology is finding a way to repackage “try not to think about it” into more palatable terms because a great deal of “mental illness” is directly attributable to systemic issues that have no end in sight
systemic issues that have no end in sight
Some would disagree, just ask scientists how long the current trajectory can remain.
It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.
It’s more that capitalism is causing “the end of the world”. Between now and the total deaths of all life on earth, I remain hopeful that there will be some positive systematic change before it gets too far.
My moneys on us getting revenge during the death rattle.
The US is normal is now as old as ((the average lifespan of a civilization))
We can hope, and make our moves for something better
That was probably true about the divine right of kings, hundreds of years ago. Things change
It changed because private citizens were able to join together and accumulate enough wealth to match the private treasuries of a local monarch and fund private armies to act as revolutionary elements that threatened their local monarch with overwhelmingly disproportionate strength and forced them to capitulate.
Yes, because science can be used to show measurable ways the world is actively ending right now.
I’m not a therapist but I’ve certainly visted more than my share.
“try not to think about it” is pretty much the antithesis of modern therapy.
directly attributable to systemic issues that have no end in sight
this part is true.
Broadly there are several potential solutions:
Firstly, changing the way that we think about events. If my company is insolvent would that mean I’m a bad business person or would it mean the economy is a mess. This is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy - changing the behavior of our thought processes.
Secondly, accepting that things might go wrong and not being paralysed by that fear. My company might become insolvent, it wouldn’t be the end of the world if it did, I’m going to take action to mitigate that problem. This is Acceptance Commitment Therapy - accepting the risk of bad things and committing to some kind of action.
Thirdly, living in the moment, observing thoughts both positive and negative coming and going. This is mindfulness.
In summary, anxiety or worry is a healthy and normal part of human existence. We’re hard wired to avoid threats and we do that by foreseeing risks and planning around them. Trying not to worry is how the healthy and normal experience becomes debilitating.
I’m sure a real therapist will be along any moment to tell me all about how wrong my summary is. I’m ok with that.
“Doc, I feel like I’m always being watched and the world is hurdling towards ruin”
1976: you’re paranoid and crazy
2026: sometimes being well-informed can be mentally taxing and you need to take a break
I think the advice is true for things you can not realistically change. But finding out if you can’t change it or why something is bothering you is key here.
For me existential dread was a sign of my body to take the next step and start a family.
I think the post is great advice not communicated clearly.
Don’t try making yourself believe important things are unimportant, practice.
Apply for a job you don’t want or need. Get documents when you’re already qualified for a fast track and could skip at any time. Do the long procedure just to see if it was possible had the other ways not worked out.
Have something changed that really doesn’t matter.This is calling for bureaucracy training.
Yeah, so much of that fringe pseudosciency pop psychology self-help stuff says shit like “don’t be a victim” and that just has “erasure of systemic violence” written all over it.
It’s so concerning how many people seem to be eating that shit up though. I think it has a lot to do with the large-scale drop-off of empathy we’re seeing. “Toxic positivity” does that.
This shit is being pushed by the marketing industry working for profit, not clinical researchers trying to improve patient outcomes. It drives me insane to see it catching on…
I’m sure the end of most of these issues is in sight through the right scope!
because a great deal of “mental illness” is directly attributable to systemic issues that have no end in sight
But absolutely nothing in the screenshot is attributable to systemic issues that have no end in sight 🤔 Anxiety around the things he listed can literally be cured through just doing them, aka exposure
A job interview that determines if you will have food this week is a systemic issue
If you’re anxious. just relax.
If you’re depressed, just cheer up.
You’re so generous giving out advice like that for free.
Wait until you hear their advice to poor people it’ll blow your mind
Just get Guillotines?
You just have to eat them all, easy.
Do you have advice for porcelain dolls and spoiled princes too?
It will
blowchop off your mind.(For the sake of consistency)
When I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead.
True story.
Someone literally said this to me once about depression. “That’s what I did and it worked for me, so if you’re still depressed it’s because you’re choosing to be.”
I almost chose to Jazz-yeet him out of the house.
Anyway, it turned out the main reason for my depression was that I had been surrounded by toxic assholes for too long. Things vastly improved when I chose to change that so I guess it did work in a roundabout way.
If you’ve broken your leg, just walk it off.
For more psychology you have to pay me 1000 bucks
“Stop being depressed.”
I got so tired of this “advice” back when I still thought talking to others about my problems could be fruitful…
It’s sound advice and if someone can’t incorporate it into their lives, they need to see a psychiatrist for medication. The psychologist will send you to one if they think you can’t get there with out meds.
Psychotherapy shouldn’t be about “getting advice”. It’s about finding the “knots” deep down in your psycho-emotional structure which are causing your problems. But maybe I am just too much of a psychoanalysis fanboy.
Have anxiety? Try having fun instead!
Cool.
I have a very hard time reframing things - it always feels like i am lying to myself, and therefor it doesn’t work. Anyone else here having that issue too?
Have you tried reframing things for fun?
It’s fun all the way down.
Yeah, we’re having fun for fun.
Instructions unclear; now reframing my house.
Lie to yourself for a bit, I suspect it’s like muscle, the more you do it the better you get at it. That’s kind of what positive affirmations are, you keep telling yourself certain things (within reason…) and it is supposed to steer your subconscious.
I have quite some issues with lying if it doesn’t involve little white lies to smoothen over social situations. Anything “bigger” is a no-go for me.
Make talking to yourself a social interaction. It’s a little white lie to smoothen out making an appointment. It’s just to be considerate to the other you. You wouldn’t want to be rude, would you?
Push back on that. Ask yourself if you’re really lying.
I kinda get where you’re coming from. I had a similar problem. I found it difficult to “Fake it 'til you make it”, but I did find it easier to abstract it one layer. It just made sense in my head to fake faking it until I could fake making it because that’s just pretending to lie. It still just makes sense to me.
I have a very hard time reframing things
Because you are not supposed to. Emotions exist one layer of abstraction lower than consciousness, hence frontal lobe can’t override them manually. It’s evolutionary safety measure
Then why can the first time you go skydiving be pants shittingly terrifying but the 50th time can be pleasurable or even mundane? Your rational mind is deliberately choosing to make the first jump despite the fear and thereby taking control over the emotion.
The reaction that you conscious mind interprets as emotion occurs at a lower level than consciousness, but you absolutely can override that interpretation, so scary can become exciting, fear can become motivation, or you can decide to just override it completely. It’s not necessarily easy, but it is possible.
But then what to do?
I struggle with this too. My therapist is trying to help me with some aspects of it, usually trying to use a past accomplishment and applying it to what I currently have massive anxiety about. Doesn’t always work cause my brain treats that past accomplishment as a mistake or something I shouldn’t have gotten.
Could you create similar circunstances without the pressure? Say apply for jobs you dont care about so you are familiar with theprocess and experience of interviews.
Those things are not usually fun, but the gist is not taking them seriously.
I somewhat agree… but struggling with WHO updates and submits their resume for “fun”?? Like, just getting the “setup” for those job applications is ACTUAL work, in and of itself… For half those applications, you need to deal with creating an “application portal” account which stops me before I get anywhere… 😅 Why even submit the resume, at that point? What am I missing here…? People like the entire PROCESS and/or think it’s “fun”??? Is it “really” possibl
ye to find any aspect of the process… “fun”? I suppose I’d agree if misunderstanding it?Yeah I agree. Maybe they mean to kind of act like the whole process is silly? Like pretend you’re a gnome who is doing a vacation in a human life just to see what it’s like and make fun of it?
“Oh hahah hehee I need to create an account. Human society is so whimsical!”
It’s borderline offensive. People go to therapists because these problems are intractable. If there was some quick brainhack like that which worked, then nobody would have anxiety.
I don’t think it’s that bad personally.
I have fairly intense anxiety and recently started seeing a therapist (for it and other issues), but I honestly think the OP gives good advice.
I am not saying it’s a cure, nor am I trying to trivialise the impact anxiety can have on a person, but it’s one I would keep in my ‘toolbox’ so to speak, and remind myself of every so often.
Many of my earlier fears in life really did not warrant as much stress as they took on my body, and I kind of still let that happen.
True. I suppose some people without access to therapy might be able to at least somewhat improve their lives with helpful tidbits. But I’ve also felt offended by well-meant little advice tidbits I’ve received for my ADHD so yeah
Updating a resume is kindof fun if it’s a massive pile of Typst and Nix code, although not in a way that’s helpful for getting a j*b
“Why so serious?” The best free advice from the Joker.
So I’ve tried to this and it doesn’t work.
I tried going to work for fun, but it wasn’t and I suspect that if I leave early that won’t be fun either.
I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow to find out why my legs have been weak and unsteady. For fun.
Am I… am I doing this right? Did I cure anxiety yet?
You’re doing it! You’re doing it!
Be enthusiastic about not starving to death.
How are you not starving in this economy?
With enthusiasm.
This doesn’t work for an introvert with social anxiety. I have no problem with job interviews, but an invitation to join people for an outing, where the point is to “have fun”? I’d still have to put in the mental and emotional effort to participate in such a group activity. I find it draining.
If I didn’t spend that energy every day to work, I’d have more of it for fun things in my time off. But the way things are, I only get two days of the week to not have to put that effort in, to recharge my social battery. I cherish those days. No worrying about how others might misinterpret a comment, no monitoring my tone of voice, no masking to pretend I’m having fun when I’m not. I can do what I want without anybody else caring. It’s freeing. It’s hard for social engagements to compete with that.
Is this supposed to be a joke about shitty overpriced psychologists? It’s hard for me to tell. It’s kinda the anxiety equivalent of telling someone with depression to just not be sad, which I guess is funny, a little.
I’m 50/50 on whether this person is being an ignorant ass or trying to make a joke.
The first half gives me that impression, but then explaining why a that obvious thing is relevant to state makes me believe it’s just the latter and the person doesn’t realize it doesn’t come off as actual advice.
I know a lot of people in the comments don’t like this. And they’re perfectly valid. One solution doesn’t work for everyone and it misses a lot of nuance.
That being said, I actually did something like this for my social anxiety, which was damn near debilitating. I had to constantly remind myself that none of what I’m doing is risky or dangerous. Im just gonna roll with the punches. And if I do something that I might cringe about later, fuck it. Do i really care about what strangers think? And if the people I do know are of any value, they won’t chastize me for being a bit odd. So just own it.
This took years to get through. I basically brute forced myself through the social interactions until the anxiety was nowhere near as strong. I still have it, but my job forces me to talk to new people all the time. It got manageable. Maybe something like that could work for someone else.
This is not medical advice, and I strongly suggest you talk with a therapist if you have these issues. I was just too poor to do anything else about it.
What you’re describing sounds like CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) which is one of the best-known evidence-based methods for dealing with mental health problems.
And yeah as someone else who it worked for, it is really easy to treat it as “well thanks I’m cured” until you put in the long effort
CBT always seemed to me like the opposite of easy. It looks like a lot of hard work, and it is.
I will second this. After college I realized I needed to expand my social circle. I agonized for weeks about even asking to join a few local Meetup groups. Eventually I did, and I convinced myself to go to a few events. I started framing social outings as exercise. It wasn’t always fun, but I usually felt good about making myself go.
I still get anxious about social stuff. I still loath job interviews. I don’t like packed bars or events with thousands of people, but I can handle them better now. I can now give myself permission to fuck up a bit.
"Was that social encounter my best work? No.
Was I actually a jerk and everyone hates me now? Also no.
Cool then. A ‘C+’ is still passing!"
“What’s the worse that can happen (socially)?” is now a helpful question. “What if strangers think I’m weird?” IDK, then they do. That’s their problem. And if they remain strangers then I probably won’t need to deal with them again. If they think I’m weird and they still invite me back then at least my weirdness was within acceptable limits. And that’s how I met my wife :)
People get really upset when suggestions on mental health aren’t immediate solutions.
People also get upset when things are presented as obvious or universal solutions
This is presented as an immediate solution.
Are we having fun yet?
One must imagine Sisyphus having fun
The myth of Sisyphus isn’t really about causing anxiety…
but anxiety is totally about sisyphus
It can be.
There is a John Finnemore sketch precisely about this:
If you have arachnophobia, just think of it as the spider-man, this will surely do the trick /s
But see yourself as spiderman’s friendly friend, not as spiderman’s arch Nemesis.
thanks, i’m cured.
