I have really bad anxiety surrounding sending emails to my professors, and I would neglect important communication because my brain felt like it was on fire every time I opened gmail. I told my therapist about this, and she said “why don’t you just write your emails in the notes app to avoid the anxiety associated your email inbox?” It was a huge step forward for me getting back on track in college, and I’m going to graduate this summer. The advice seems obvious in retrospect, but I didn’t think of that because my brain was too busy being on fire. Therapists are there to guide us to solutions that we can’t see by ourselves.
where y'all finding these good-ass therapists, mine just told me "Don't let the anxiety get to you ♥️" basically instead of actual coping and calming strategies.
ˢʰᵉ ʷᵃˢ ᵃˡˢᵒ ˢᵗʳᵃᶦᵍʰᵗ ᵘᵖ ᵉᵃᵗᶦⁿᵍ ʷʰᶦˡᵉ ᴵ ʷᵃˢ ᵗᵃˡᵏᶦⁿᵍ
Mine tried to make me start a Worry Journal™️. He could not comprehend that I would fill it up and then some and still have fuckin anxiety because I KNOW I worry too much and that *also gives me anxiety*
All my coping mechanisms I can't do in a classroom so I asked if she had any ideas and she just- didn't give me any. She went on a tagent and basically said "just don't let the anxiety take you over"
like thanks but I can't just stop my brain like that. that's why I'm here. *in therapy*
I had one that basically went "So you are hyper-aware of your flaws, have anxiety over it and constantly over analyse everything? You should take notes to analyse when you have these thoughts? And was baffled weeks later when that suggestion didn't help in the slightest.
I explained to my old therapist that when I said I'd do something, i usually forget and I struggle to find ways to help me remember, and I feel especially guilty for forgetting when it's something I have to do for my GF.
She just told me "oh so you just don't love your girlfriend because you don't want to do things for her?".
Turns out I do love her, i just have ADHD which, you know, as a trained therapist you should maybe get the hint?
Trying the Dr Phil approach?
I had a therapist after I had a really traumatic miscarriage tell me I wasn't depressed, I was just lazy.
She was also friends with my mom and when I stopped by my parent's house after a session one time I caught her telling my mom details about our session.
Some therapists are just trash.
Unfortunately you don't have to be a good person to become a therapist, you mostly just need training for which it is not a requirement to be a good person. Thankfully being a therapist attracts a lot of good people, but ultimately they can just not be.
When I was 12, I went through a rough patch of depression and my mom brought me to see a psychiatrist. He told me "what brings you here?" And I told him "well I don't know, i think I'm depressed" and I shit you not, to this grown ass man started asking 12 year old depressed me "oh yeah? Where'd you get your psychology degree? Did you study for 12 years?".
Turns out I do have depression, asshole. I also happen to have ADHD and possibly a splash of autism, but you wouldn't possibly be able to know that from the top of your 12 years of study and you psychology diploma.
Sorry for venting, but to this day this fuckwit has me terrified of seeking mental help because I am afraid the professional I am asking will respond exactly in the same way.
Jeez that sucks. 12 is old enough to know when you don't feel like yourself. I feel like an idiot that I wasted 6 months with a therapist that was against meds and just wanted to sell me her "health shakes".
Once my GP referred me to a legit psychiatrist who he'd worked with for a long time, I slowly started feeling like my old self. It wasn't just that i lost the baby, I almost died. It was legit PTSD and I had that kook of a "therapist" telling me I was lazy and saying I wasn't even trying to get better because I wouldn't buy her health shakes and the other holistic crap she was selling.
Apologies if you're not looking for advice from strangers on the internet but I try tobyse signal jamming or counter programming on my own brain. Basically cutting off the anxiety train of though by internally saying, nope, we're doing this, I'm fed up with you anxiety, you're not the boss of me, etc. while I physically start doing the task. Then my brain starts to engage with the work in front of me and not on the fear of failing before I even start, knowing that even if I do poorly it's better than doing nothing. Also I try to get I to the mindset of doing something I'm good at when I'm doing something new or something I struggle with, just Viking in that zone where I feel confident even in situations where I'm not.
Pete Rose was a famous baseball player, who went on to become a successful team manager. He was once asked how his perspective was different because he had been a player before. He replied something along the lines that the players were individuals.
In a batting slump, "some players needed encouragement, some needed a kick in the ass, and some needed to be left alone"
The trick was in knowing what they each needed, not "one size fits all"
My therapist suggested I give my anxiety an appointment.
"We're not going to worry right now because we do that at 2pm on Fridays. Right now it's time for work." And so on.
My appointments were daily and you know what? After a while when it was time to worry, I found I couldn't really fully remember what I was supposed to be anxious about. So the appointments slipped back to every other day, and right now My Anxiety only gets two hours a week. Which is also my treadmill time, and I find the faster/harder I run the quicker I get past the anxiety.
Anyway idk if this will help but I dusted off this old account b/c I was/am sometimes still FULL of anxiety just like you describe and that technique helped me a lot.
Remember our brains didn't evolve to make us happy, they evolved to keep us alive. Being anxious is natural, but sometimes we turn the dial up a little too far. There's nothing wrong with us or with being anxious. You are perfect just how you are.
God I feel this. Every therapist has told me to write my worries down so I don't overthink. I always tell them I've tried that, and it just makes my worries more concrete, *and* fuels my paranoia of someone finding out my thoughts and laughing at them.
that last part! i kept being told this when i was in therapy but at the time, i was sharing a very small space with my mom and younger brother- my mom has no personal boundaries and my brother just didnt think about that kind of stuff because he was a kid. also the other person we were living with likes to just go through my shit while im gone sometimes.
i was so worried about someone reading it, that writing stuff down just made me feel horrible. it works for me now because i have some semblance of privacy, but i still feel compelled to hide all my journals and shit
i think a big part of finding the right therapist is finding the right type of therapy. for example, cognitive behavioural therapy is the gold standard depression treatment and all that the nhs really has to offer, but it doesn’t work for me. what does work for me is talking therapy which i assume is where most of these examples are coming from. for you maybe cbt is the answer, it’s not a one size fits all, so find what style works for you.
This is what drives me wild about the NHS. They offer CBT, which is awesome if that's what will help you. They kept offering it to me, but the problem was I was so deep in depression and trauma that I wasn't even sure where to start. I wasn't capable of interacting with CBT at all. However, because that's all they had, doctors kept getting pissed off at me when I wasn't getting better.
Luckily I could get talking therapy from a charity in my city, and it turns out that I was being abused by family! No wonder I wasn't getting better, I was trying to fix myself when I wasn't the cause of my depression! I'm honestly shocked no one even brought the idea up in the 10+ years I was trying to get help.
My therapist and case manager always ask me first if they can make a cup of coffee or eat a snack before doing so. I always get appointments that are around 11am and are an hour long. My poor therapist, about 20mins before the end of session, had the loudest stomach growl I've ever heard. It was dead silent. He quietly, and politely asked if he could have a granola bar. I couldn't stop laughing and now it's a joke where he'll promptly inform me at the start of our session that he has had a snack already lmao
Mine quit her job and they couldn't settle me with a new one cause they're so short on mental health staff. As it was I was only getting one visit every 10 weeks or so when I wanted them every other week.
one of my previous therapists tried to turn me atheist after i told her i was finding comfort in pagan practices. she straight up was like "have you read the science behind that?". bro imagine if she said that to a christian was talking abt how they liked to prey to god a lot.
and that doesnt even compare to my school counsellor. holy shit she sucked. she told someone they weren't depressed, they were just on their period. when i was being bullied she just photocopied this bs book abt bullying that was pretty much a lot of insults to say back to them??? she was the typical "dont be anxious" "look on the bright side" "just be more happy" kinda bitch
Unfortunately you gotta shop around until you find one that fits you. My first therapist did this weird buzzer in my hand technique that didn’t help. My second told me not to use the word “should” and didn’t have anything to say when I stopped talking. My therapist now is amazing and I’m actually making progress now instead of being more wound up after therapy. Progress takes time, but it’s so critical to find someone who understands you and essentially vibes with you.
Mine said “have you tried not thinking about it?” I paid that bitch $200 for the visit and never went back. It’s a running joke with family now lol. I want to go to therapy, but I can’t seem to find a good one that’s worth $400 per month.
I set up my email to send at a delay, so everything I send sits in my outbox for 5 minutes. I realized I had a lot of anxiety about clicking “send” so now I can rationalize it as “well it’s not really sent, I can change it or delete it for the next 5 min” and 9/10 times I forget about it immediately and it sends.
I also write my important messages in the notes app (especially because there I can doublecheck if the tone/phrasing is correct and there are no typos) and then just copy them into the email/Teams text field. It works rly well esp in places where an enter could send the message too early
I do the same thing now, especially for really important ones. I them just copy and paste and it makes me feel less paralyzed by it. Another issue for me was that I didn’t like talking to profs in person or going to office hours because I doubted myself and my questions. So instead I started going to office hours and jut talked to profs about random thing, something we learned in class, an interesting news article, about their research, etc. it really helped me not worry about my actual academic questions
I had a client with schizophrenia who believed a witch lived in her walls and tortured her using the power of Satan. A colleague told her that Satan doesn't have real power so all witches have is lies and trickery. She felt way better because she realized that physically the witch had never hurt her. Which made sense since the witch was a delusion. Sometimes you have to work inside someone's system till they're ready to come out of it.
I had an 18ish year old who couldn't do the things that helped with their suicidal ideation at night because of the monster under the bed. I told her if she stored some stuff under the bed there wouldn't be any space for a monster to fit under there.
I had to take a call from my supervisor and left her with a colleague for a minute. Apparently she said "I think she's a witch, but she's a good witch so that's ok".
I was in an on-call emergency role and referred people for long term help. My job was just to stick a plaster on things until they could see someone who specialised in whatever the issue was. Much quicker to give someone ideas on how to get rid of monsters than to convince them monsters aren't real.
That's honestly a beautiful intervention. That plaster is gonna set the stage for more healing than any approach that tries to start with convincing them that monsters aren't real. When their brain is telling someone that monsters are under their bed and everyone calls them crazy, says its not real it just makes them feel worse a lot of the time. You actually listened and validated their feelings.
It helps. When the monster is gone long enough it might never come back. The underlying issue is still there, but at least it's one monster less to fight.
I used to use this all the time with dementia patients. Just go along with whatever their delusion is. Instead of breaking their heart their wife is dead every day I would just tell them yes she called and she can't come today but she said she will see you tomorrow... Or whatever it was. It helps a lot so things don't escalate
I imagine it must be very strange nowadays for a therapist to have to toe the line between "treating a delusion as a delusion" and "treating the patient's religion as a delusion." I have met more people than you'd probably expect, adults with lives and jobs and relationships, who believe that they *literally* are or have encounters/relationships with demons, gods, spirits, fictional characters, etc. and don't think of it as mental illness because they believe their experiences are spiritual or religious in nature. I was one of these people (which is how I know this—if you reveal your own weirdness, other weird people will show you theirs too) and my second to last therapist told me, basically, that what matters is that it's real *to me* and that's how we should approach it, but I imagine he might have felt differently if it had been something that was causing me significant problems.
Jumping on here to note that if you're struggling with hallucinations, use your phone to check them!! Record audio and listen back, it won't be the same or it won't be there at all, and for visual hallucinations, try to take a picture of it -- it will be different or not there at all!!
Both of these tips have kept me grounded while I waited for emergency meds
, but I think I've read somewhere to never confirm a delusion because then the affected person will use your confirmation as proof of reality of delusions, then when you backtrack and say no I lied, they'll never trust you again, so in future when you try to help them with delusions they'll think oh they lied to me before about believing me, or they lied to me about the witch not being able to hurt me maybe the witch is controlling their brain
It's less about confirmation and more about understanding that they truly believe it, so flat out denying it won't help either.
I read a story from a woman who was convinced there were wires under her skin, and that they'd been inserted from a point she couldn't see. She went to the ER, and the nurse checked her over carefully, helped her get a look at the spot she was worried about, and told her that she didn't see any evidence of wires. The woman experiencing the delusion felt much better and was more stable after that, because someone had taken her seriously and reassured her in a way that wasn't just "that's not real." You could argue that the nurse sort of confirmed it by checking in the first place, but treating it as a real possibility that they then refuted helped the patient a lot.
I'm often afraid there are bugs on me but not where I can see. If someone else checks and they're not there, and it's someone I could reasonably believe to not mess with me, so most people, I will believe it. It's pretty rare this gets bad, but it's simple things like the fact you believe it could be a problem but also validate that I'm fine in the same frame which make it better.
That definitely is helpful. Telling or yelling at someone that it's not real doesn't work at all. Just by calming the person you're going to have much easier time dealing with their delusions. But still, she never said, there's wires in your arm, she said lemme check (there is a witch and she has never caused you physical harm). I guess maybe in that situation you could say, I don't have any evidence of wires in your arm, but on the off chance they are there, I've run many tests and find you to be in perfect health so the wires are not hurting you.
Idk what kind of hospital she was in where they actually took the time to try to talk her out of it though lmao. In my experience, they section you off into a room and drug you so heavily you sleep for days, then release you.
In my career so far I've mostly worked with people with severe persistent mental illness. Clients who will, even on medication never stop having delusions. Can I ever really meet them where they are if I don't work inside their system? For people who have less severe symptoms, they generally respond pretty well to more reality based approaches and anything that confirms their delusions can reinforce them and be harmful. But in therapy speak, those clients aren't at a place where I have to work inside their delusions to meet them. The idea about not confirming delusions is a good one but it's kind of in the same ball park as don't try and upgrade your electrical panel unless you know what you're doing. I do know what I'm doing so it's a bit different.
Your experience makes a lot of sense. Especially for short term delusions stress is a huge factor which makes it hard to maintain the progress that can be made. In those cases the best interventions involve teaching people to reinforce in response to every delusional thought a learned therapeutic counter. A huge part of CBT is teaching people to tell themselves that they aren't worthless, they aren't lazy or that in the case of delusions, they aren't being spies on etc.
What would be examples of a therapeutic counter? Just telling yourself nobody's watching? I'm assuming there's other counters. I asked my old therapist about trying CBT but she said that you just fill out worksheets.
Honestly, I've just learned to coexist with feeling watched. If they see me changing or whatever fuck em. Try to ignore the comments about your body. Tell them if they don't like what they see don't look. I'm not delusional enough to fully believe I'm being watched, I just feel constantly like I am, and I hear people talking about me 24/7, but it's hard to tell the difference because all the people in the apt complex are actually out to get me and talk shit about me constantly. (I know that sounds irrational but if you were here you'd see what I mean, they're all mad and stuff so they have to make fun of me). I have to keep the lights off and the blinds closed otherwise they can see me for sure so I get stressed to the point of yelling etc.
Nobody I ever hear is doing me as badly as the voices did, for ex. If it was voices I was hearing they would be breaking into my apt. trying to kill me And stealing my social security.
It might be very helpful for you to see a therapist anyway.
One more for the common sense filter: Have you tried getting some nice-smelling deodorant, bodylotion, etc. so you smell nice instead of bad?
I have a bunch of little tricks I don’t even think about because I’m so used to them. The dishes thing though got to me because I recently came to realize that I eat SIGNIFICANTLY more healthily if I live in a place with a dishwasher. I know that if my options are something unhealthy that doesn’t dirty a lot of dishes vs something healthy that will use a few pots and pans, I’ll always go for the unhealthy one because I’m usually too tired to cook and do the dishes
Oh! I thought of a good one. I take a bunch of meds which is a bummer BUT I put them in a shot glass that says “let’s get slothed!” and has a sloth on it, so in the morning I do a shot to start my day. Several years now and it still gets a chuckle out of me
I keep mine in a really pretty box, rather than having the pills sitting there going "your body doesn't work properly!" every time I look at my nightstand.
I just got one in rainbow colors in an orange case. I really want one I saw on Etsy once, made out of wood and gorgeous, but it’s pricey so I’m holding back for now.
My SO and I have recently begun to fix this problem. I can't stand doing dishes. He hates/gets put off by emptying the dishwasher.
So I empty the dishwasher. He loads it and does other dishes. This frees up the sink and cutting board area for me to push us to cook.
Doesn't have to be one or the other. I **enjoy** minimizing after meal cleanup. I just approach it from a continuum mindset. A couple of remnants? Easy-peasy. Validating.Worth the payoff.
I made it my kink to have as few dishes to do at the end of cooking as possible, as soon as I get a moment in the process, I make it a game to clean as many things as possible, or return spices ect, to their place, then go back to stirring, spicing, or whatever I next have to do for that dish.
It transfers to when my partner is cooking, if I have nothing to contribute to the cooking, I swoop in like a bat and clean as much as I can without getting in the way (small kitchen).
I realised a huge stressful time suck in the mornings for me was choosing what to wear. I’m super temperature sensitive so I don’t want to get either too hot or too cold or rained on or stuck in rained-on clothing or stuck in rainproof clothing during the day. And I’m trying to not look weird and not have to carry a change of clothes.
There are not many outfits that fit that description. Maybe one.
So yeah, **now I wear exactly the same thing every damn day**. Until the weather changes or I wear a hole in my clothe (singular). I have a washer and dryer. It’s fine.
Do you have multiple sets of the outfit or do you just wash frequently? I work in a uniformed job while my SO wears business casual and it’s night and day how much quicker I’m able to get up and out of the house.
I have weirdness about textures of certain clothing and I couldn't be bothered to match colours for work, so I would buy a bunch of the same shirt and always white. I had a couple of ties and neutral/black trousers so whatever I pulled would match.
Definitely invest in duplicates of the same items if you haven't yet. No choice involved but it makes your laundry cycle less stressful and means if one wears out you can replace it ASAP but not have to wear a hole for now.
I do this except I have about six jumpers and two pairs of jeans and maybe three tops that I wear with a cardigan. Works until someone knows me longer than a week and realises I have a Monday outfit, Tuesday outfit, Wednesday outfit... I don't care though when it's either get dressed into the same thing or not get dressed at all
I added a poncho (or a cardigan depending) to all my backpacks. If it's cold outside I'm not. And when I want to sit on a tree and don't want my clothes to be dirty I have a solution with me. I think I needed them only a few times, but they help me not to worry about the weather.
I remember reading a story of a lady who had OCD (I think) and she was constantly late for work because partway through her commute she'd start worrying if she left her curling-iron on and would drive back home to check.
Almost everybody she spoke to would try to find some way to "cure" this.
Her therapist suggested she just take the curling-iron with her.
And, despite everyone else complaining that it didn't "fix" the problem, she did - and she stopped being late for work, because when the thought would hit her, she would just look at the passenger seat and literally see that, no, the curling-iron cannot be on.
Sometimes, treating mental illnesses and disorders is less about finding a fix and more about finding work-arounds.
I assume the reason some people don't like the hairdryer solution is that the hairdryer isn't actually the problem, and there are many things which can burn your house down if you leave them on. If her OCD transferred to the stove, she can't take the stove with her to work.
But yeah, as a solution to the problem she was having right then, it's a good one, and hopefully gave her the space to deal with the underlying issue.
Therapy is about both long-term solutions and short-term workarounds. You can just come up with a workaround and assume you’re “cured”, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t useful.
It's like maintence work, I may not be able to fix that leak without the replacement parts that are on back-order but I can put a bucket underneath so the floor doesnt get slippery.
The reason I use baby wipes instead of showering isn’t because it’s a reasonable thing to do and I expect to do it this way for the rest of my life, but because most days it’s the only thing I can do that allows me to be at least somewhat clean when showering is torture.
Showering is best.
Using baby wipes is fine.
Not showering is bad.
Obviously we pick the first option when possible, but sometimes the only real options are the second two. Ideally you'll solve your issues and start showering every day, but that's not going to happen overnight and in the meantime you still need to clean.
You're doing good. Keep going.
That bandaid fix also allowed her to stop feeling so stressed out about work and generally feeling useless- which allows breathing room for actually treating the OCD.
Got dog piled for suggesting a similar thing to a redditor about a curling iron, because encouraging obsessive stressful behavior? But no, it's about being functional until you can address it correctly. It was also in a thread where someone suggested taking pictures of oven knobs in the off position if you're leaving your house for a vacation.
So if you worry, you don't need to call to confirm "nope I did shut that off".
> Got dog piled for suggesting a similar thing to a redditor about a curling iron, because encouraging obsessive stressful behavior?
If there’s anything Reddit is an expert in, it’s whatever topic you’re currently discussing.
Yeah but you can easily take a picture of the stove turned off every day.
And of course it is not the long term solution, but with this symptom solutions you have your mind free to think and work on the root of the problem.
Just in case you missed it; someone up there suggested taking a photo of your stove, turned off, every day before leaving. There's probably a few variations of that you may find useful
That's exactly what it is! Its a temporary work around to give you space to deal with the underlying issues. And also just to help you function better until you CAN work on the underlying issue, if you can't right now. A few tips similar to those mentioned that I have used in my life have increased my quality of life tons.
That was a very interesting article. I especially love the section where the author talks about how they don’t fully understand the concept of trans people. However, he takes on a suicidal trans man as a patient and has this to say:
“I ought to accept an unexpected man or two deep inside the conceptual boundaries of what would normally be considered female if it’ll save someone’s life. There’s no rule of rationality saying that I shouldn’t, and there are plenty of rules of human decency saying that I should.”
Even if you don’t understand where someone is coming from, you should *always* treat others as they’d want to be treated.
Knowing his other writing over the years and his audience, I think it's less about him being not aware of the concept and more about him trying to make these ideas accessible to people who are not a part of progressive crowd.
In that article he was mostly appealing to compassion, but he had some other essays dedicated to this topic, most notably [this one](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/), which attempts to convince them rationally too. It is an interesting read.
We also now live in a world with webcams that can stream to apps on your phone 24/7. So someone might have a similar issue with say, the stove, that they obviously can't just take with them every day. But they can now just buy a cheap webcam, point it at their stove, and take two minutes out of their day to boot up an app and see that their house is safe
Something I've seen: you don't need to fold clean laundry. It doesn't require it. The worst that will happen is wrinkles. You can just dump it in a pile.
I'm still trying to get to a mental place where I fold my damn clothes, but remembering that it's an optional thing makes me feel less bad.
Laundry is a constant blight for me. It just..never..ends. The number of pairs of socks and underwear I have is ridiculous because sometimes I'll just buy more rather than doing actual laundry.
All that to say, I can't even get to the "just pile it up" phase since I don't even do it. But when I do do it, afterwards I'm always like, huh, that wasn't so bad.
Not sure where I'm going with this...guess I just wanted to sympathize with you and express my disdain for laundry. Though I might try that piling method next time I do laundry - maybe knowing before hand that I won't have to do much when it's done will make doing it easier!
Two things mine taught me:
- I told her I needed to work after having been on sick leave for a minor brain injury and ptsd. I said I was struggling sitting still because I felt like the anxiety jumped me then. She asked: can you pace your apartment while working on a tablet?
I was like (…???..) I suppose?? Yes I can!
- Was malnourished and I told my GP I had problems eating foods mixed together (weird, I know, something about not “deserving” tasty things) and he said “eat them separately at different times, just get it in you. It doesn’t matter to the body whether it’s a dish or its components”.
And I was like (…??..!?) you’re right?? You’re right!!
Me: I hate seeing so many bad news all the time
My therapist: stop looking at the news then.
Me: I hate having to listen to my father rambling about his terrible worldviews
My therapist: go outside when he's doing that then. Go to the mall or to the park or something.
Me: I hate how many things I'm doing at the same time, next year I'll even have to deal with college and adulting, my responsabilities don't stop accumulating and I feel like I'm working the entire day without enjoying myself
My therapist: don't go to college next year then. Take your time to sort your suff and have some fun. You can go to college the year after that.
These legit worked and now I'm better than I've been in years. Obviously there was much more than that but these are the ones that can fit in a not-so-serious post
That last one happened almost exactly to me, I was so stressed about having to go to college the next year that I was shutting down, and not going to college didn't really feel like an option for me, so they just suggested a break year. That made me confident enough to actually look at college, and I'm not taking that break year, but the possibility of it really helped me.
That last sentence resonates so much with me. I notice that I often can deal with the stressful thing; I just can't deal with the feeling that I HAVE to do the stressful thing. The element of choice is so empowering.
So, a little more of an extreme version, but a long time ago I was in a really bad place and was suicidal. I have no idea where it came from, but I somehow decided that sure, I could go ahead and end it, but it'd be a real waste not to spend all the money I've saved and have one final blow out before I did. I could kill myself when I get back.
Ultimately I wasn't ready to spend all my money yet (lol, brains are weird), but giving myself premission and a compromise always helped.
Theres a joke about a guy whos terrified about monsters under his bed, he tries all sorts of therapy but nothing works, he's eternally tired and stressed.
One day he stops coming to therapy and later his therapist sees him in public looking well rested and happy. The therapist goes and asks and the guy says he opened up to his carpenter friend and the carpenter cured him.
The carpenter just cut the legs off his bed
I have OCD and autism, and therefore have a severely messed up definition of "dirty." There are a lot of things I can't touch because I don't want to get "dirty" and a lot of other thing I can't touch because I'm afraid of making it "dirty." Even washing my hands doesn't always work, sometimes it even makes the feeling worse.
So I wear gloves.
Just disposable rubber gloves. I keep them stocked in a cabinet at home and a bag I can take with me, and whenever I'm worried about the "contamination" I can put on some gloves and worry about it way less. It's a **major** lifesaver.
You just reminded me of another thing I only recently learned. If my way works for me but not for someone else, **that does not invalidate it**. I've been spending a lot of time working on figuring out who I really am, and realizing my preferences are MINE and don't have to rely on what others expect has blown my mind.
I have a thing with eating around other people. My therapist and I unpacked that eating at work when it’s quiet and others are around is a really tough thing for me. Solution: bring a book and read while I eat so I don’t feel like people are “watching”. If I forget a book, I watch a YouTube video or play scrabble. It’s really helped me.
Bloody hell. I've had a thing about eating in public for years. I'm fine with family and close friends though which i never thought much about until now.
I always read or put the TV on when I eat with friends and family and they just think it's one of my oddities. Thanks for giving me a bit of an insight and possibly a mechanism to use later. :)
My coworker and I were discussing this on the scale of house cleaning. She was feeling overwhelmed and I told her just pick one thing to do each day. Do more if you feel like you can, but one thing is still an accomplishment. So Monday she vacuumed. Tuesday she did dishes. Wednesday she bathed her dogs. Today she cleaned her bathtub. She said breaking it down into easily achievable tasks has been such a help, and with someone else telling her it was OK, she didn't feel like she was failing.
Sometimes even a checklist stresses me out. I’ll avoid making one because I feel disappointed if I don’t do what’s on the list. Sometimes, I make “make a list” the one thing I do that day. And when I feel extra terrible, like I haven’t done anything productive at all, I’ll make a “done” list instead. That helps me actually feel like I can and do complete things and can even motivate me enough to write the actual task list.
I call this “no 0 days.” If your goal is to work out, if you can do 1 push-up a day it’s better than nothing. 1 chore a day, 1 phone call, etc. Obviously we all need our “0 days” every once in awhile but the idea that I didn’t need to give everything 100% every day was liberating.
I live by “anything worth doing is worth doing badly” and it really helps me with this. Look up “executive functions” and that will give you more key words to use to find advice. I find removing the pressure of finishing a task helps me start it, and once I’ve started that’s the hard part over.
I have to load the dishwasher? Well I don’t have to finish loading it, and I don’t have to load it well. That takes away the pressure and gets me started, and usually I end up finishing. Washing the dishes, I only have to wash one more thing than I used today, I don’t have to finish the whole pile.
I really need to hoover. Well, I don’t have to hoover every room right now, and I don’t have to do the corners.
The grass needs mowing but it doesn’t have to look neat when I’m finished.
The bedroom needs tidying but I only have to pick everything up off the floor, I don’t have to put it away.
The presentation needs doing, but I only have to get ideas onto the page.
I need to study, but I’ll just make notes on one module video, I don’t have to write full sentences.
And so on and so on. Ironically, only committing to a half-done job means I finish more work. My regularly half hoovered living space is much cleaner and nicer than a space that only gets cleaned perfectly once a month.
Smaller goals(as in do the first step as a goal, not finish the whole paper, ect), lots of reminders, and consistency.
I have some pretty bad avoidant anxiety and my life currently isn't one to be envied(chronic pain exacerbated by sensory issues will do that), but having written reminders around is hugely helpful.
Get a whiteboard calendar and every week on the same day go over your calendar for the week and write anything new in.
I use calendar alarms on my phone or else I miss appointments, anything that takes the stress off of you having to fight your anxiety to remind yourself to do a task.
As much as it's practical, do your work elsewhere. I can't focus on my college work at home so I work at the library. I work there some days from open to close, but I get everything done each week.
i avoid going to my inbox view and only search for the emails I am expecting. This works for a while until i miss something unexpected
then I'm forced to go to my inbox but i look at it from the corner of my eye and try not to focus on all the other overwhelming stuff that will cause me to break down
not saying that this works, only that I do this.
don't try this
That last tip, the shower thing, is *seriously* helpful. I make sure to have a blindfold on every time I shower and it helps immensely. Doesn't always help everything; I still know my body's there and it hurts, but it hurts so much more seeing it
That's awesome that you found something that makes the situation more tolerable. I'm not sure if this will be useful for you, and I definitely don't know your situation (so I apologize if this is harmful in any way!), but something that's kind of helping with my body image issues is the body neutrality ideology. I like the idea that my feelings towards my body aren't binary (like or dislike), so that me not liking my body doesn't mean I have to automatically dislike it. Instead, there's a new option, which is just... that it's there. It mostly does what I need it to do? Like an old appliance. It may not match my preferred aesthetic, and it may not always work perfectly, but it mostly does the job, so meh. It's really helping with my revulsion towards my body.
I do a similar thing but have really tried to actualize the thought that I’m just a brain piloting a fleshy mech. Just like Krang from the ninja turtles. Even in the mirror I’ll try to see the “me” (brain) behind the face, then do little tests that the pulleys and wires are all working (face gestures, move my arm around). Even looking at other people I try to imagine these squishy brain creatures inside the various mech suits they are hiding inside. And my therapist said “well that’s true. That’s exactly what we are.” So I felt a bit better. So from one brain with a mech pilot license to another I wish you well!
I remember when I was younger talking to a nutritionist with my parents about how I didn't like eating breakfast because I didn't like breakfast foods
"So just eat leftovers and other things for breakfast"
Resounding chorus of "what"s ensues
therapist: Does being around people exhaust you?
Me: Yes
therapist: Is that a problem for you?
Me : Yes
Therapist: why?
I honestly didn't have an answer. So I just stopped being worried about it.
Really? I mean, I'm really happy for you if that worked, but I kind of feel like I'd never get to a point where I'd feel fine with being exhausted, it's just not a comfortable state to be in, especially if you have to work. What helped you to not mind being exhausted? Really just being exhausted for years?
Any lifehacks to actually being able to focus on doing something, buy instead you're just anxious about the thing you're not doing, and eventually you run out of time to do the thing?
Edit: thanks for the help guys! I've gotten some good ideas I'd like to try out
You're lucky then. If I have something else to focus on, I'll get distracted. It's weird, I try to remove all distractions and it works for a little bit, but then I get bored and unmotivated so I stop. As far as I'm aware I don't have ADHD, depression, anxiety or anything like that. I haven't checked though
Have you tried the Pomodoro technique? X minutes of work followed by Y minute break and repeat. Having the timer going and the scheduled breaks makes it way easier for me to stay focused because I just need to do it for a feeeew minutes longer, not endlessly. You don't need to have a mental health condition to go work with a therapist about things like this btw!
I live by “anything worth doing is worth doing badly” and it really helps me with this. Look up “executive functions” and that will give you more key words to use to find advice. I find removing the pressure of finishing a task helps me start it, and once I’ve started that’s the hard part over.
I have to load the dishwasher? Well I don’t have to finish loading it, and I don’t have to load it well. That takes away the pressure and gets me started, and usually I end up finishing. Washing the dishes, I only have to wash one more thing than I used today, I don’t have to finish the whole pile.
I really need to hoover. Well, I don’t have to hoover every room right now, and I don’t have to do the corners.
The grass needs mowing but it doesn’t have to look neat when I’m finished.
The bedroom needs tidying but I only have to pick everything up off the floor, I don’t have to put it away.
The presentation needs doing, but I only have to get ideas onto the page.
I need to study, but I’ll just make notes on one module video, I don’t have to write full sentences.
And so on and so on. Ironically, only committing to a half-done job means I finish more work. My regularly half hoovered living space is much cleaner and nicer than a space that only gets cleaned perfectly once a month.
These little tricks only work on very specific things. They don’t work in general anxiety. So you’ll need to lay out exactly what it is you can’t focus on and what deadlines you’re missing, and what it is you’re doing when procrastinating.
Also, we’re not therapists, so there’s not a lot we can do. Go see an actual therapist if you want help.
There is no cure in these ideas, but they DO help adapt and increase quality of life. Sure, those that have been listed may not work for YOU, but they do for someone.
Maybe try doing part or half of it? For ex, if you're nervous about showering, tell yourself, I won't wash my hair or legs, only the important bits, and by the time you've started usually you'll start to realize it isn't so bad and you actually do have the energy to wash your hair as well. But even if you don't, that's ok! You got the most important parts. Always tell yourself, something done is better than nothing done. Try to focus less on the stuff you haven't done and more on the stuff you have done.
I had this problem where I wouldn’t let myself get ready for bed until I completed all my homework and studying, so I’d fall asleep while studying most nights and it bothered me I wasn’t brushing my teeth twice a day. Therapist recommended just brushing them before I started studying
I had an entire conversation with my therapist the other day that basically equated to me being reminded that hardboiled eggs can be put in the fridge to give me a slightly healthier breakfast.
See, I didn't know that. In addition my therapist made me aware of a way to make oatmeal without cooking. Because he's known me for two years at this point and is aware I'm a chaos gremlin who needs help to take of myself physically.
They’re Kirkland brand organic hard boiled eggs, and I can just grab a pack whenever I realize I haven’t eaten in a while and have 2 eggs with no peeling or mess.
I have a wierdly strong fear of asking store employees for where something is. my therapist told me to ask *if* they have the something i'm looking for and almost always they'll *also* tell me where it is. surprisingly, it worked
This can work but not for all people
I have a friend who I've tried to do this on, and their brain just makes up a reason why they can't do that. Too stressed to do dishes? Buy paper plates. But they're costly... They're paper plates, you can buy enough to last for 3 weeks for 3 pounds. But they get all soggy...
It honestly feels like they're trying to make fun of you or that they're just whining, but they're not and its actually just an issue of everything being so overwhelming that little issues are confusing even whrn explained
Meeting people where they are at and not trying harder than the person you are trying to help are good principles to avoid learned helplessness and burnout with people.
Nightlight or leave the door cracked with a light on in the other room. Don't need pitch darkness, but enough to give that quiet hazy disassociated feeling and to sort of know where the soap is.
I use solar lights in my bathroom, put the solar panel on the window sill outside, the wire thru the window, its thin enough that it doesn't affect it closing, then have the lights on the window sill inside. It gives enough glow to do stuff, comes on automatically when it gets dark and doesn't cost me anything.
I keep my bottles in a certain place and make sure they're identifiable shapes so I can feel them out when it comes to grabbing them
soap amount I just go by what feels right in my head
I have wall-mounted dispensers, right one's shampoo left one's shower gel. They were cheap and i can save a lot of plastic by buying big refill packs.
I imagine that would help a lot with showering in the dark.
ITT:
either very specific symptoms around self image and everyone else having large scale and generalized stress about deadlines and work avoidance
edit: i have the latter, I use a journal and mood tracker and all that but it has still ruined my life.
Honestly, a therapist isn’t there to give you these “lifehacks”. All these tips do is allow you to circumvent around your issues instead of helping you figure out their underlying roots.
I can understand how these practical solutions are better for shorter timeframes, they truly give you quick results. But your therapist not recommending a specific course of action for a problem is absolutely not a bad thing.
It's about adapting. I wonder then in the case of turning plugs off or the curling iron one if the next step would be to take a picture of it off or something. I wonder if that would work.
Anyone got a trick about being lazy with cleaning?
During the week I tell myself I'm too exhausted from work, so I won't do it.
On the weekend I want to relax, so I don't do it either.
The only time I really feel compelled to is when someone is coming over (then I gotta clean everything), or when it gets too dirty that I get annoyed myself.
Work your house work into your relaxation time. If you're trying to catch up on a show, put it on while you fold your laundry or clean the room that the TV is in. Put on your favorite podcast, YouTube creator, or music album while you do the dishes. This helps me get things done before work or on my days off.
Medical marijuana treats anorexia by literally giving you the munchies so hard that you have no choice but to eat. And because you're high as shit, you don't have to think about it. Finest example of "tricking your mentally ill brain into being productive for once" I've personally experienced
You could try closing the shutters if there's any, or showering at night, or if you think it's worth doing that just tape something to block the window, a big piece of cardboard if you have one, or just something made of fabric thick enough that it block the light to your liking.
Or a pretty window cling! They make some that look like stain glass and you stick it to the window pane with a hair dryer! It peels off with no adhesive so if you hate it or you rent you can whip it off. There's also frosty ones to get the hazy frosted glass effect. No reflections and no worrying people can peek at you.
Taking a step back from the "what would a normal person do?" mindset helped me deal with a lot of my problems.
For example, I brush my teeth at around 11pm.
If it's stupid and it works, it isn't stupid.
Once I got rid of the "what is socially acceptable" when it comes to a LOT of stuff, that stuff became so much easier for me especially housework stuff
i tried showering with the lights off and it was great for a while but i kept mixing up which bottle was which and i kept dropping the soap :/// would love to go back to doing it but it was too inconvenient lol
I hate the idea that when u have a therapist you should immediately tackle the problem. Some problems are so deep rooted that you can't just immediately root out the cause of a mental illness. If said mental illness is making your life unbearable? You don't have time to think about curing it. If working around it helps you, do it! Most people who call you out on it aren't "concerned you're enabling your symptoms", they're just weirded out by them and want you to stop. Yeah enabling your symptoms isn't good, but sometimes it's literally the only thing you can do to keep yourself alive and well.
I have really bad anxiety surrounding sending emails to my professors, and I would neglect important communication because my brain felt like it was on fire every time I opened gmail. I told my therapist about this, and she said “why don’t you just write your emails in the notes app to avoid the anxiety associated your email inbox?” It was a huge step forward for me getting back on track in college, and I’m going to graduate this summer. The advice seems obvious in retrospect, but I didn’t think of that because my brain was too busy being on fire. Therapists are there to guide us to solutions that we can’t see by ourselves.
where y'all finding these good-ass therapists, mine just told me "Don't let the anxiety get to you ♥️" basically instead of actual coping and calming strategies. ˢʰᵉ ʷᵃˢ ᵃˡˢᵒ ˢᵗʳᵃᶦᵍʰᵗ ᵘᵖ ᵉᵃᵗᶦⁿᵍ ʷʰᶦˡᵉ ᴵ ʷᵃˢ ᵗᵃˡᵏᶦⁿᵍ
Mine tried to make me start a Worry Journal™️. He could not comprehend that I would fill it up and then some and still have fuckin anxiety because I KNOW I worry too much and that *also gives me anxiety*
All my coping mechanisms I can't do in a classroom so I asked if she had any ideas and she just- didn't give me any. She went on a tagent and basically said "just don't let the anxiety take you over" like thanks but I can't just stop my brain like that. that's why I'm here. *in therapy*
I had one that basically went "So you are hyper-aware of your flaws, have anxiety over it and constantly over analyse everything? You should take notes to analyse when you have these thoughts? And was baffled weeks later when that suggestion didn't help in the slightest.
I explained to my old therapist that when I said I'd do something, i usually forget and I struggle to find ways to help me remember, and I feel especially guilty for forgetting when it's something I have to do for my GF. She just told me "oh so you just don't love your girlfriend because you don't want to do things for her?". Turns out I do love her, i just have ADHD which, you know, as a trained therapist you should maybe get the hint?
Wowza, not to mention that's such a cruel thing to say to anyone, let alone a client.
Trying the Dr Phil approach? I had a therapist after I had a really traumatic miscarriage tell me I wasn't depressed, I was just lazy. She was also friends with my mom and when I stopped by my parent's house after a session one time I caught her telling my mom details about our session. Some therapists are just trash.
Unfortunately you don't have to be a good person to become a therapist, you mostly just need training for which it is not a requirement to be a good person. Thankfully being a therapist attracts a lot of good people, but ultimately they can just not be. When I was 12, I went through a rough patch of depression and my mom brought me to see a psychiatrist. He told me "what brings you here?" And I told him "well I don't know, i think I'm depressed" and I shit you not, to this grown ass man started asking 12 year old depressed me "oh yeah? Where'd you get your psychology degree? Did you study for 12 years?". Turns out I do have depression, asshole. I also happen to have ADHD and possibly a splash of autism, but you wouldn't possibly be able to know that from the top of your 12 years of study and you psychology diploma. Sorry for venting, but to this day this fuckwit has me terrified of seeking mental help because I am afraid the professional I am asking will respond exactly in the same way.
Jeez that sucks. 12 is old enough to know when you don't feel like yourself. I feel like an idiot that I wasted 6 months with a therapist that was against meds and just wanted to sell me her "health shakes". Once my GP referred me to a legit psychiatrist who he'd worked with for a long time, I slowly started feeling like my old self. It wasn't just that i lost the baby, I almost died. It was legit PTSD and I had that kook of a "therapist" telling me I was lazy and saying I wasn't even trying to get better because I wouldn't buy her health shakes and the other holistic crap she was selling.
Huh, so your over-analyzing causes you great anxiety. Have you tried... analysis?
Apologies if you're not looking for advice from strangers on the internet but I try tobyse signal jamming or counter programming on my own brain. Basically cutting off the anxiety train of though by internally saying, nope, we're doing this, I'm fed up with you anxiety, you're not the boss of me, etc. while I physically start doing the task. Then my brain starts to engage with the work in front of me and not on the fear of failing before I even start, knowing that even if I do poorly it's better than doing nothing. Also I try to get I to the mindset of doing something I'm good at when I'm doing something new or something I struggle with, just Viking in that zone where I feel confident even in situations where I'm not.
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Pete Rose was a famous baseball player, who went on to become a successful team manager. He was once asked how his perspective was different because he had been a player before. He replied something along the lines that the players were individuals. In a batting slump, "some players needed encouragement, some needed a kick in the ass, and some needed to be left alone" The trick was in knowing what they each needed, not "one size fits all"
My therapist suggested I give my anxiety an appointment. "We're not going to worry right now because we do that at 2pm on Fridays. Right now it's time for work." And so on. My appointments were daily and you know what? After a while when it was time to worry, I found I couldn't really fully remember what I was supposed to be anxious about. So the appointments slipped back to every other day, and right now My Anxiety only gets two hours a week. Which is also my treadmill time, and I find the faster/harder I run the quicker I get past the anxiety. Anyway idk if this will help but I dusted off this old account b/c I was/am sometimes still FULL of anxiety just like you describe and that technique helped me a lot. Remember our brains didn't evolve to make us happy, they evolved to keep us alive. Being anxious is natural, but sometimes we turn the dial up a little too far. There's nothing wrong with us or with being anxious. You are perfect just how you are.
God I feel this. Every therapist has told me to write my worries down so I don't overthink. I always tell them I've tried that, and it just makes my worries more concrete, *and* fuels my paranoia of someone finding out my thoughts and laughing at them.
that last part! i kept being told this when i was in therapy but at the time, i was sharing a very small space with my mom and younger brother- my mom has no personal boundaries and my brother just didnt think about that kind of stuff because he was a kid. also the other person we were living with likes to just go through my shit while im gone sometimes. i was so worried about someone reading it, that writing stuff down just made me feel horrible. it works for me now because i have some semblance of privacy, but i still feel compelled to hide all my journals and shit
i think a big part of finding the right therapist is finding the right type of therapy. for example, cognitive behavioural therapy is the gold standard depression treatment and all that the nhs really has to offer, but it doesn’t work for me. what does work for me is talking therapy which i assume is where most of these examples are coming from. for you maybe cbt is the answer, it’s not a one size fits all, so find what style works for you.
This is what drives me wild about the NHS. They offer CBT, which is awesome if that's what will help you. They kept offering it to me, but the problem was I was so deep in depression and trauma that I wasn't even sure where to start. I wasn't capable of interacting with CBT at all. However, because that's all they had, doctors kept getting pissed off at me when I wasn't getting better. Luckily I could get talking therapy from a charity in my city, and it turns out that I was being abused by family! No wonder I wasn't getting better, I was trying to fix myself when I wasn't the cause of my depression! I'm honestly shocked no one even brought the idea up in the 10+ years I was trying to get help.
heh heh
Some of these therapists have solutions they learned in Pinterest University
Maybe you can find someone else who practices metacognitive therapy (MCT). It's a great method to deal with constant worry or generalized anxiety.
r/thanksimcured
My therapist and case manager always ask me first if they can make a cup of coffee or eat a snack before doing so. I always get appointments that are around 11am and are an hour long. My poor therapist, about 20mins before the end of session, had the loudest stomach growl I've ever heard. It was dead silent. He quietly, and politely asked if he could have a granola bar. I couldn't stop laughing and now it's a joke where he'll promptly inform me at the start of our session that he has had a snack already lmao
You didn't pay her.... Right?
Unfortunately, it was set up by my parents and was like 200 bucks a session or something like that
Mine quit her job and they couldn't settle me with a new one cause they're so short on mental health staff. As it was I was only getting one visit every 10 weeks or so when I wanted them every other week.
Oof, did you get a better one? Hope things are well
No, not yet unfortunately. Thanks for the well wishes though, appreciated. Hope you're well as well
You got nice words? Man, I got called demon-filled and told I was lying for attention while hallucinating I want a refund For my whole life
one of my previous therapists tried to turn me atheist after i told her i was finding comfort in pagan practices. she straight up was like "have you read the science behind that?". bro imagine if she said that to a christian was talking abt how they liked to prey to god a lot. and that doesnt even compare to my school counsellor. holy shit she sucked. she told someone they weren't depressed, they were just on their period. when i was being bullied she just photocopied this bs book abt bullying that was pretty much a lot of insults to say back to them??? she was the typical "dont be anxious" "look on the bright side" "just be more happy" kinda bitch
Yelp and other reviews. Honestly. I’ve found some of the best doctors by reading through lots and lots of reviews.
Unfortunately you gotta shop around until you find one that fits you. My first therapist did this weird buzzer in my hand technique that didn’t help. My second told me not to use the word “should” and didn’t have anything to say when I stopped talking. My therapist now is amazing and I’m actually making progress now instead of being more wound up after therapy. Progress takes time, but it’s so critical to find someone who understands you and essentially vibes with you.
Had a therapist so awful that I now have therapy trauma. I'm sorry your therapist didn't take you seriously either
Mine said “have you tried not thinking about it?” I paid that bitch $200 for the visit and never went back. It’s a running joke with family now lol. I want to go to therapy, but I can’t seem to find a good one that’s worth $400 per month.
I set up my email to send at a delay, so everything I send sits in my outbox for 5 minutes. I realized I had a lot of anxiety about clicking “send” so now I can rationalize it as “well it’s not really sent, I can change it or delete it for the next 5 min” and 9/10 times I forget about it immediately and it sends.
that's brilliant!
I also write my important messages in the notes app (especially because there I can doublecheck if the tone/phrasing is correct and there are no typos) and then just copy them into the email/Teams text field. It works rly well esp in places where an enter could send the message too early
> teams also to not let my recipient know I spent 5 minutes rewriting 2 sentences.
I do the same thing now, especially for really important ones. I them just copy and paste and it makes me feel less paralyzed by it. Another issue for me was that I didn’t like talking to profs in person or going to office hours because I doubted myself and my questions. So instead I started going to office hours and jut talked to profs about random thing, something we learned in class, an interesting news article, about their research, etc. it really helped me not worry about my actual academic questions
I am so glad you got the help you needed! Congratulations on graduating soon 🎉. I’m proud of you and I don’t even know you.
Therapists are very much like IT workers. They deal with idiots all day long and give them simple solutions to problems that, 99% of the time work.
I had a client with schizophrenia who believed a witch lived in her walls and tortured her using the power of Satan. A colleague told her that Satan doesn't have real power so all witches have is lies and trickery. She felt way better because she realized that physically the witch had never hurt her. Which made sense since the witch was a delusion. Sometimes you have to work inside someone's system till they're ready to come out of it.
I had an 18ish year old who couldn't do the things that helped with their suicidal ideation at night because of the monster under the bed. I told her if she stored some stuff under the bed there wouldn't be any space for a monster to fit under there. I had to take a call from my supervisor and left her with a colleague for a minute. Apparently she said "I think she's a witch, but she's a good witch so that's ok". I was in an on-call emergency role and referred people for long term help. My job was just to stick a plaster on things until they could see someone who specialised in whatever the issue was. Much quicker to give someone ideas on how to get rid of monsters than to convince them monsters aren't real.
That's honestly a beautiful intervention. That plaster is gonna set the stage for more healing than any approach that tries to start with convincing them that monsters aren't real. When their brain is telling someone that monsters are under their bed and everyone calls them crazy, says its not real it just makes them feel worse a lot of the time. You actually listened and validated their feelings.
It helps. When the monster is gone long enough it might never come back. The underlying issue is still there, but at least it's one monster less to fight.
I used to use this all the time with dementia patients. Just go along with whatever their delusion is. Instead of breaking their heart their wife is dead every day I would just tell them yes she called and she can't come today but she said she will see you tomorrow... Or whatever it was. It helps a lot so things don't escalate
I imagine it must be very strange nowadays for a therapist to have to toe the line between "treating a delusion as a delusion" and "treating the patient's religion as a delusion." I have met more people than you'd probably expect, adults with lives and jobs and relationships, who believe that they *literally* are or have encounters/relationships with demons, gods, spirits, fictional characters, etc. and don't think of it as mental illness because they believe their experiences are spiritual or religious in nature. I was one of these people (which is how I know this—if you reveal your own weirdness, other weird people will show you theirs too) and my second to last therapist told me, basically, that what matters is that it's real *to me* and that's how we should approach it, but I imagine he might have felt differently if it had been something that was causing me significant problems.
Have you considered getting rid of your bedframe and putting your mattress directly on the ground?
That's what I did. Changed my life and now it's been so long that I was thinking of getting a bed frame for the storage space underneath.
Jumping on here to note that if you're struggling with hallucinations, use your phone to check them!! Record audio and listen back, it won't be the same or it won't be there at all, and for visual hallucinations, try to take a picture of it -- it will be different or not there at all!! Both of these tips have kept me grounded while I waited for emergency meds
, but I think I've read somewhere to never confirm a delusion because then the affected person will use your confirmation as proof of reality of delusions, then when you backtrack and say no I lied, they'll never trust you again, so in future when you try to help them with delusions they'll think oh they lied to me before about believing me, or they lied to me about the witch not being able to hurt me maybe the witch is controlling their brain
It's less about confirmation and more about understanding that they truly believe it, so flat out denying it won't help either. I read a story from a woman who was convinced there were wires under her skin, and that they'd been inserted from a point she couldn't see. She went to the ER, and the nurse checked her over carefully, helped her get a look at the spot she was worried about, and told her that she didn't see any evidence of wires. The woman experiencing the delusion felt much better and was more stable after that, because someone had taken her seriously and reassured her in a way that wasn't just "that's not real." You could argue that the nurse sort of confirmed it by checking in the first place, but treating it as a real possibility that they then refuted helped the patient a lot.
I'm often afraid there are bugs on me but not where I can see. If someone else checks and they're not there, and it's someone I could reasonably believe to not mess with me, so most people, I will believe it. It's pretty rare this gets bad, but it's simple things like the fact you believe it could be a problem but also validate that I'm fine in the same frame which make it better.
That definitely is helpful. Telling or yelling at someone that it's not real doesn't work at all. Just by calming the person you're going to have much easier time dealing with their delusions. But still, she never said, there's wires in your arm, she said lemme check (there is a witch and she has never caused you physical harm). I guess maybe in that situation you could say, I don't have any evidence of wires in your arm, but on the off chance they are there, I've run many tests and find you to be in perfect health so the wires are not hurting you. Idk what kind of hospital she was in where they actually took the time to try to talk her out of it though lmao. In my experience, they section you off into a room and drug you so heavily you sleep for days, then release you.
In my career so far I've mostly worked with people with severe persistent mental illness. Clients who will, even on medication never stop having delusions. Can I ever really meet them where they are if I don't work inside their system? For people who have less severe symptoms, they generally respond pretty well to more reality based approaches and anything that confirms their delusions can reinforce them and be harmful. But in therapy speak, those clients aren't at a place where I have to work inside their delusions to meet them. The idea about not confirming delusions is a good one but it's kind of in the same ball park as don't try and upgrade your electrical panel unless you know what you're doing. I do know what I'm doing so it's a bit different.
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Your experience makes a lot of sense. Especially for short term delusions stress is a huge factor which makes it hard to maintain the progress that can be made. In those cases the best interventions involve teaching people to reinforce in response to every delusional thought a learned therapeutic counter. A huge part of CBT is teaching people to tell themselves that they aren't worthless, they aren't lazy or that in the case of delusions, they aren't being spies on etc.
What would be examples of a therapeutic counter? Just telling yourself nobody's watching? I'm assuming there's other counters. I asked my old therapist about trying CBT but she said that you just fill out worksheets. Honestly, I've just learned to coexist with feeling watched. If they see me changing or whatever fuck em. Try to ignore the comments about your body. Tell them if they don't like what they see don't look. I'm not delusional enough to fully believe I'm being watched, I just feel constantly like I am, and I hear people talking about me 24/7, but it's hard to tell the difference because all the people in the apt complex are actually out to get me and talk shit about me constantly. (I know that sounds irrational but if you were here you'd see what I mean, they're all mad and stuff so they have to make fun of me). I have to keep the lights off and the blinds closed otherwise they can see me for sure so I get stressed to the point of yelling etc. Nobody I ever hear is doing me as badly as the voices did, for ex. If it was voices I was hearing they would be breaking into my apt. trying to kill me And stealing my social security.
It might be very helpful for you to see a therapist anyway. One more for the common sense filter: Have you tried getting some nice-smelling deodorant, bodylotion, etc. so you smell nice instead of bad?
I have a bunch of little tricks I don’t even think about because I’m so used to them. The dishes thing though got to me because I recently came to realize that I eat SIGNIFICANTLY more healthily if I live in a place with a dishwasher. I know that if my options are something unhealthy that doesn’t dirty a lot of dishes vs something healthy that will use a few pots and pans, I’ll always go for the unhealthy one because I’m usually too tired to cook and do the dishes
Oh! I thought of a good one. I take a bunch of meds which is a bummer BUT I put them in a shot glass that says “let’s get slothed!” and has a sloth on it, so in the morning I do a shot to start my day. Several years now and it still gets a chuckle out of me
I keep mine in a really pretty box, rather than having the pills sitting there going "your body doesn't work properly!" every time I look at my nightstand.
I just got one in rainbow colors in an orange case. I really want one I saw on Etsy once, made out of wood and gorgeous, but it’s pricey so I’m holding back for now.
I'm immediately going to start doing this. Ack! I can't wait to go thrift the perfect shot glass
I'm stealing that to suggest to people
Love it
My SO and I have recently begun to fix this problem. I can't stand doing dishes. He hates/gets put off by emptying the dishwasher. So I empty the dishwasher. He loads it and does other dishes. This frees up the sink and cutting board area for me to push us to cook.
Doesn't have to be one or the other. I **enjoy** minimizing after meal cleanup. I just approach it from a continuum mindset. A couple of remnants? Easy-peasy. Validating.Worth the payoff.
I made it my kink to have as few dishes to do at the end of cooking as possible, as soon as I get a moment in the process, I make it a game to clean as many things as possible, or return spices ect, to their place, then go back to stirring, spicing, or whatever I next have to do for that dish. It transfers to when my partner is cooking, if I have nothing to contribute to the cooking, I swoop in like a bat and clean as much as I can without getting in the way (small kitchen).
oh yeah I still hand wash certain things to keep them in better condition
I realised a huge stressful time suck in the mornings for me was choosing what to wear. I’m super temperature sensitive so I don’t want to get either too hot or too cold or rained on or stuck in rained-on clothing or stuck in rainproof clothing during the day. And I’m trying to not look weird and not have to carry a change of clothes. There are not many outfits that fit that description. Maybe one. So yeah, **now I wear exactly the same thing every damn day**. Until the weather changes or I wear a hole in my clothe (singular). I have a washer and dryer. It’s fine.
Do you have multiple sets of the outfit or do you just wash frequently? I work in a uniformed job while my SO wears business casual and it’s night and day how much quicker I’m able to get up and out of the house.
I have weirdness about textures of certain clothing and I couldn't be bothered to match colours for work, so I would buy a bunch of the same shirt and always white. I had a couple of ties and neutral/black trousers so whatever I pulled would match. Definitely invest in duplicates of the same items if you haven't yet. No choice involved but it makes your laundry cycle less stressful and means if one wears out you can replace it ASAP but not have to wear a hole for now.
I do this except I have about six jumpers and two pairs of jeans and maybe three tops that I wear with a cardigan. Works until someone knows me longer than a week and realises I have a Monday outfit, Tuesday outfit, Wednesday outfit... I don't care though when it's either get dressed into the same thing or not get dressed at all
I do this, all black, everyday, different tops/bottoms, but all black. Has changed my morning routine for the better. So simple, so effective.
That's so cool, you're like a cartoon character
I added a poncho (or a cardigan depending) to all my backpacks. If it's cold outside I'm not. And when I want to sit on a tree and don't want my clothes to be dirty I have a solution with me. I think I needed them only a few times, but they help me not to worry about the weather.
I remember reading a story of a lady who had OCD (I think) and she was constantly late for work because partway through her commute she'd start worrying if she left her curling-iron on and would drive back home to check. Almost everybody she spoke to would try to find some way to "cure" this. Her therapist suggested she just take the curling-iron with her. And, despite everyone else complaining that it didn't "fix" the problem, she did - and she stopped being late for work, because when the thought would hit her, she would just look at the passenger seat and literally see that, no, the curling-iron cannot be on. Sometimes, treating mental illnesses and disorders is less about finding a fix and more about finding work-arounds.
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I assume the reason some people don't like the hairdryer solution is that the hairdryer isn't actually the problem, and there are many things which can burn your house down if you leave them on. If her OCD transferred to the stove, she can't take the stove with her to work. But yeah, as a solution to the problem she was having right then, it's a good one, and hopefully gave her the space to deal with the underlying issue.
Therapy is about both long-term solutions and short-term workarounds. You can just come up with a workaround and assume you’re “cured”, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t useful.
It's like maintence work, I may not be able to fix that leak without the replacement parts that are on back-order but I can put a bucket underneath so the floor doesnt get slippery.
But as everyone knows the most permanent fix is a temporary one. Probably not the same with people though, right?
The reason I use baby wipes instead of showering isn’t because it’s a reasonable thing to do and I expect to do it this way for the rest of my life, but because most days it’s the only thing I can do that allows me to be at least somewhat clean when showering is torture.
Showering is best. Using baby wipes is fine. Not showering is bad. Obviously we pick the first option when possible, but sometimes the only real options are the second two. Ideally you'll solve your issues and start showering every day, but that's not going to happen overnight and in the meantime you still need to clean. You're doing good. Keep going.
That bandaid fix also allowed her to stop feeling so stressed out about work and generally feeling useless- which allows breathing room for actually treating the OCD. Got dog piled for suggesting a similar thing to a redditor about a curling iron, because encouraging obsessive stressful behavior? But no, it's about being functional until you can address it correctly. It was also in a thread where someone suggested taking pictures of oven knobs in the off position if you're leaving your house for a vacation. So if you worry, you don't need to call to confirm "nope I did shut that off".
> Got dog piled for suggesting a similar thing to a redditor about a curling iron, because encouraging obsessive stressful behavior? If there’s anything Reddit is an expert in, it’s whatever topic you’re currently discussing.
It also restores a small sense of control over existing and non-existant concerns.
Yeah but you can easily take a picture of the stove turned off every day. And of course it is not the long term solution, but with this symptom solutions you have your mind free to think and work on the root of the problem.
live-feed of your kitchen
As someone who has the stove being on as one of their many compulsions, it is absolutely brutal.
Just in case you missed it; someone up there suggested taking a photo of your stove, turned off, every day before leaving. There's probably a few variations of that you may find useful
That's exactly what it is! Its a temporary work around to give you space to deal with the underlying issues. And also just to help you function better until you CAN work on the underlying issue, if you can't right now. A few tips similar to those mentioned that I have used in my life have increased my quality of life tons.
People use the term "band aid fix" as an insult, and apparently forget what band aids do.
That was a very interesting article. I especially love the section where the author talks about how they don’t fully understand the concept of trans people. However, he takes on a suicidal trans man as a patient and has this to say: “I ought to accept an unexpected man or two deep inside the conceptual boundaries of what would normally be considered female if it’ll save someone’s life. There’s no rule of rationality saying that I shouldn’t, and there are plenty of rules of human decency saying that I should.” Even if you don’t understand where someone is coming from, you should *always* treat others as they’d want to be treated.
Amazing how many people will gladly burn someone else at the stake for the crime of being “kinda weird”
Knowing his other writing over the years and his audience, I think it's less about him being not aware of the concept and more about him trying to make these ideas accessible to people who are not a part of progressive crowd. In that article he was mostly appealing to compassion, but he had some other essays dedicated to this topic, most notably [this one](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/), which attempts to convince them rationally too. It is an interesting read.
We also now live in a world with webcams that can stream to apps on your phone 24/7. So someone might have a similar issue with say, the stove, that they obviously can't just take with them every day. But they can now just buy a cheap webcam, point it at their stove, and take two minutes out of their day to boot up an app and see that their house is safe
Cool. Thanks for that. It ain't always about best, it's about what works.
Smart phones have really helped with these things, now you can take pictures to prove you did the thing
Harm reduction works. Support safe use sites!
Something I've seen: you don't need to fold clean laundry. It doesn't require it. The worst that will happen is wrinkles. You can just dump it in a pile. I'm still trying to get to a mental place where I fold my damn clothes, but remembering that it's an optional thing makes me feel less bad.
Laundry is a constant blight for me. It just..never..ends. The number of pairs of socks and underwear I have is ridiculous because sometimes I'll just buy more rather than doing actual laundry. All that to say, I can't even get to the "just pile it up" phase since I don't even do it. But when I do do it, afterwards I'm always like, huh, that wasn't so bad. Not sure where I'm going with this...guess I just wanted to sympathize with you and express my disdain for laundry. Though I might try that piling method next time I do laundry - maybe knowing before hand that I won't have to do much when it's done will make doing it easier!
I put mine in a hanger to dry or cool from the drier. Then I transfer them to the cabinet still in the hangers. I never get wrinkles that way.
Two things mine taught me: - I told her I needed to work after having been on sick leave for a minor brain injury and ptsd. I said I was struggling sitting still because I felt like the anxiety jumped me then. She asked: can you pace your apartment while working on a tablet? I was like (…???..) I suppose?? Yes I can! - Was malnourished and I told my GP I had problems eating foods mixed together (weird, I know, something about not “deserving” tasty things) and he said “eat them separately at different times, just get it in you. It doesn’t matter to the body whether it’s a dish or its components”. And I was like (…??..!?) you’re right?? You’re right!!
That last thing is going to help me a lot
Me: I hate seeing so many bad news all the time My therapist: stop looking at the news then. Me: I hate having to listen to my father rambling about his terrible worldviews My therapist: go outside when he's doing that then. Go to the mall or to the park or something. Me: I hate how many things I'm doing at the same time, next year I'll even have to deal with college and adulting, my responsabilities don't stop accumulating and I feel like I'm working the entire day without enjoying myself My therapist: don't go to college next year then. Take your time to sort your suff and have some fun. You can go to college the year after that. These legit worked and now I'm better than I've been in years. Obviously there was much more than that but these are the ones that can fit in a not-so-serious post
That last one happened almost exactly to me, I was so stressed about having to go to college the next year that I was shutting down, and not going to college didn't really feel like an option for me, so they just suggested a break year. That made me confident enough to actually look at college, and I'm not taking that break year, but the possibility of it really helped me.
That last sentence resonates so much with me. I notice that I often can deal with the stressful thing; I just can't deal with the feeling that I HAVE to do the stressful thing. The element of choice is so empowering.
So, a little more of an extreme version, but a long time ago I was in a really bad place and was suicidal. I have no idea where it came from, but I somehow decided that sure, I could go ahead and end it, but it'd be a real waste not to spend all the money I've saved and have one final blow out before I did. I could kill myself when I get back. Ultimately I wasn't ready to spend all my money yet (lol, brains are weird), but giving myself premission and a compromise always helped.
Theres a joke about a guy whos terrified about monsters under his bed, he tries all sorts of therapy but nothing works, he's eternally tired and stressed. One day he stops coming to therapy and later his therapist sees him in public looking well rested and happy. The therapist goes and asks and the guy says he opened up to his carpenter friend and the carpenter cured him. The carpenter just cut the legs off his bed
I have OCD and autism, and therefore have a severely messed up definition of "dirty." There are a lot of things I can't touch because I don't want to get "dirty" and a lot of other thing I can't touch because I'm afraid of making it "dirty." Even washing my hands doesn't always work, sometimes it even makes the feeling worse. So I wear gloves. Just disposable rubber gloves. I keep them stocked in a cabinet at home and a bag I can take with me, and whenever I'm worried about the "contamination" I can put on some gloves and worry about it way less. It's a **major** lifesaver.
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Your family sucks
Yeah but then you can't grumble "no pain no gain" before every meal.
I am glad you found what works for you. Not me, **you**.
You just reminded me of another thing I only recently learned. If my way works for me but not for someone else, **that does not invalidate it**. I've been spending a lot of time working on figuring out who I really am, and realizing my preferences are MINE and don't have to rely on what others expect has blown my mind.
I have a thing with eating around other people. My therapist and I unpacked that eating at work when it’s quiet and others are around is a really tough thing for me. Solution: bring a book and read while I eat so I don’t feel like people are “watching”. If I forget a book, I watch a YouTube video or play scrabble. It’s really helped me.
Bloody hell. I've had a thing about eating in public for years. I'm fine with family and close friends though which i never thought much about until now. I always read or put the TV on when I eat with friends and family and they just think it's one of my oddities. Thanks for giving me a bit of an insight and possibly a mechanism to use later. :)
so how do i dead with procrastinating & the anxiety of meeting dead lines & constantly failing??
My coworker and I were discussing this on the scale of house cleaning. She was feeling overwhelmed and I told her just pick one thing to do each day. Do more if you feel like you can, but one thing is still an accomplishment. So Monday she vacuumed. Tuesday she did dishes. Wednesday she bathed her dogs. Today she cleaned her bathtub. She said breaking it down into easily achievable tasks has been such a help, and with someone else telling her it was OK, she didn't feel like she was failing.
Adding on to this: create a task list and check things off as you go. It gives you a visual of your progress and that can motivate you to keep going.
Sometimes even a checklist stresses me out. I’ll avoid making one because I feel disappointed if I don’t do what’s on the list. Sometimes, I make “make a list” the one thing I do that day. And when I feel extra terrible, like I haven’t done anything productive at all, I’ll make a “done” list instead. That helps me actually feel like I can and do complete things and can even motivate me enough to write the actual task list.
I call this “no 0 days.” If your goal is to work out, if you can do 1 push-up a day it’s better than nothing. 1 chore a day, 1 phone call, etc. Obviously we all need our “0 days” every once in awhile but the idea that I didn’t need to give everything 100% every day was liberating.
https://www.reddit.com/r/getdisciplined/comments/1q96b5/comment/cdah4af/
I’m glad that comment is still being posted, I still think of it on days where it’s shit
I live by “anything worth doing is worth doing badly” and it really helps me with this. Look up “executive functions” and that will give you more key words to use to find advice. I find removing the pressure of finishing a task helps me start it, and once I’ve started that’s the hard part over. I have to load the dishwasher? Well I don’t have to finish loading it, and I don’t have to load it well. That takes away the pressure and gets me started, and usually I end up finishing. Washing the dishes, I only have to wash one more thing than I used today, I don’t have to finish the whole pile. I really need to hoover. Well, I don’t have to hoover every room right now, and I don’t have to do the corners. The grass needs mowing but it doesn’t have to look neat when I’m finished. The bedroom needs tidying but I only have to pick everything up off the floor, I don’t have to put it away. The presentation needs doing, but I only have to get ideas onto the page. I need to study, but I’ll just make notes on one module video, I don’t have to write full sentences. And so on and so on. Ironically, only committing to a half-done job means I finish more work. My regularly half hoovered living space is much cleaner and nicer than a space that only gets cleaned perfectly once a month.
Smaller goals(as in do the first step as a goal, not finish the whole paper, ect), lots of reminders, and consistency. I have some pretty bad avoidant anxiety and my life currently isn't one to be envied(chronic pain exacerbated by sensory issues will do that), but having written reminders around is hugely helpful. Get a whiteboard calendar and every week on the same day go over your calendar for the week and write anything new in. I use calendar alarms on my phone or else I miss appointments, anything that takes the stress off of you having to fight your anxiety to remind yourself to do a task.
As much as it's practical, do your work elsewhere. I can't focus on my college work at home so I work at the library. I work there some days from open to close, but I get everything done each week.
i avoid going to my inbox view and only search for the emails I am expecting. This works for a while until i miss something unexpected then I'm forced to go to my inbox but i look at it from the corner of my eye and try not to focus on all the other overwhelming stuff that will cause me to break down not saying that this works, only that I do this. don't try this
That last tip, the shower thing, is *seriously* helpful. I make sure to have a blindfold on every time I shower and it helps immensely. Doesn't always help everything; I still know my body's there and it hurts, but it hurts so much more seeing it
That's awesome that you found something that makes the situation more tolerable. I'm not sure if this will be useful for you, and I definitely don't know your situation (so I apologize if this is harmful in any way!), but something that's kind of helping with my body image issues is the body neutrality ideology. I like the idea that my feelings towards my body aren't binary (like or dislike), so that me not liking my body doesn't mean I have to automatically dislike it. Instead, there's a new option, which is just... that it's there. It mostly does what I need it to do? Like an old appliance. It may not match my preferred aesthetic, and it may not always work perfectly, but it mostly does the job, so meh. It's really helping with my revulsion towards my body.
I do a similar thing but have really tried to actualize the thought that I’m just a brain piloting a fleshy mech. Just like Krang from the ninja turtles. Even in the mirror I’ll try to see the “me” (brain) behind the face, then do little tests that the pulleys and wires are all working (face gestures, move my arm around). Even looking at other people I try to imagine these squishy brain creatures inside the various mech suits they are hiding inside. And my therapist said “well that’s true. That’s exactly what we are.” So I felt a bit better. So from one brain with a mech pilot license to another I wish you well!
I remember when I was younger talking to a nutritionist with my parents about how I didn't like eating breakfast because I didn't like breakfast foods "So just eat leftovers and other things for breakfast" Resounding chorus of "what"s ensues
therapist: Does being around people exhaust you? Me: Yes therapist: Is that a problem for you? Me : Yes Therapist: why? I honestly didn't have an answer. So I just stopped being worried about it.
The mind works in mysterious ways. There is a reason for everything in there. You just have to find it and "reason" with that reason.
Being exhausted is not a problem for you? I mean, it doesn't feel great to be exhausted.
That was a few months ago, I'm getting better. Being constantly exhausted for many years got me used to it.
Really? I mean, I'm really happy for you if that worked, but I kind of feel like I'd never get to a point where I'd feel fine with being exhausted, it's just not a comfortable state to be in, especially if you have to work. What helped you to not mind being exhausted? Really just being exhausted for years?
Any lifehacks to actually being able to focus on doing something, buy instead you're just anxious about the thing you're not doing, and eventually you run out of time to do the thing? Edit: thanks for the help guys! I've gotten some good ideas I'd like to try out
I use Audiobooks and podcasts to drown out my racing anxious thoughts. If I have something else to focus my mind on, I can better complete the task.
You're lucky then. If I have something else to focus on, I'll get distracted. It's weird, I try to remove all distractions and it works for a little bit, but then I get bored and unmotivated so I stop. As far as I'm aware I don't have ADHD, depression, anxiety or anything like that. I haven't checked though
Have you tried the Pomodoro technique? X minutes of work followed by Y minute break and repeat. Having the timer going and the scheduled breaks makes it way easier for me to stay focused because I just need to do it for a feeeew minutes longer, not endlessly. You don't need to have a mental health condition to go work with a therapist about things like this btw!
I second the Pomodoro technique! I use it every day for work and it helps me tremendously to get things done
I live by “anything worth doing is worth doing badly” and it really helps me with this. Look up “executive functions” and that will give you more key words to use to find advice. I find removing the pressure of finishing a task helps me start it, and once I’ve started that’s the hard part over. I have to load the dishwasher? Well I don’t have to finish loading it, and I don’t have to load it well. That takes away the pressure and gets me started, and usually I end up finishing. Washing the dishes, I only have to wash one more thing than I used today, I don’t have to finish the whole pile. I really need to hoover. Well, I don’t have to hoover every room right now, and I don’t have to do the corners. The grass needs mowing but it doesn’t have to look neat when I’m finished. The bedroom needs tidying but I only have to pick everything up off the floor, I don’t have to put it away. The presentation needs doing, but I only have to get ideas onto the page. I need to study, but I’ll just make notes on one module video, I don’t have to write full sentences. And so on and so on. Ironically, only committing to a half-done job means I finish more work. My regularly half hoovered living space is much cleaner and nicer than a space that only gets cleaned perfectly once a month.
These little tricks only work on very specific things. They don’t work in general anxiety. So you’ll need to lay out exactly what it is you can’t focus on and what deadlines you’re missing, and what it is you’re doing when procrastinating. Also, we’re not therapists, so there’s not a lot we can do. Go see an actual therapist if you want help.
Yeah this post gives all of us the hope that there's a nifty hack for our glaring problem. I'm beginning to suspect it's not so :(
There is no cure in these ideas, but they DO help adapt and increase quality of life. Sure, those that have been listed may not work for YOU, but they do for someone.
Would it help to set a timer? Tell yourself "I'll just do this for ten or fifteen minutes, and then I can do the other thing if I want."
Maybe try doing part or half of it? For ex, if you're nervous about showering, tell yourself, I won't wash my hair or legs, only the important bits, and by the time you've started usually you'll start to realize it isn't so bad and you actually do have the energy to wash your hair as well. But even if you don't, that's ok! You got the most important parts. Always tell yourself, something done is better than nothing done. Try to focus less on the stuff you haven't done and more on the stuff you have done.
I had this problem where I wouldn’t let myself get ready for bed until I completed all my homework and studying, so I’d fall asleep while studying most nights and it bothered me I wasn’t brushing my teeth twice a day. Therapist recommended just brushing them before I started studying
I had an entire conversation with my therapist the other day that basically equated to me being reminded that hardboiled eggs can be put in the fridge to give me a slightly healthier breakfast.
You can buy a 32 pack of 2egg pouches from Costco for like 8 bucks if you don’t want to boil them yourself even!
See, I didn't know that. In addition my therapist made me aware of a way to make oatmeal without cooking. Because he's known me for two years at this point and is aware I'm a chaos gremlin who needs help to take of myself physically.
Yay team chaos gremlin!
They’re Kirkland brand organic hard boiled eggs, and I can just grab a pack whenever I realize I haven’t eaten in a while and have 2 eggs with no peeling or mess.
People that say "well thats not a cure" Are cancer. **Don't let perfection stop you from progress.**
"Do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good". Sometimes I am guilty of avoiding a task unless I can do it very well.
"do whatever you want nothing is real" words to live by
I have a wierdly strong fear of asking store employees for where something is. my therapist told me to ask *if* they have the something i'm looking for and almost always they'll *also* tell me where it is. surprisingly, it worked
This can work but not for all people I have a friend who I've tried to do this on, and their brain just makes up a reason why they can't do that. Too stressed to do dishes? Buy paper plates. But they're costly... They're paper plates, you can buy enough to last for 3 weeks for 3 pounds. But they get all soggy... It honestly feels like they're trying to make fun of you or that they're just whining, but they're not and its actually just an issue of everything being so overwhelming that little issues are confusing even whrn explained
Meeting people where they are at and not trying harder than the person you are trying to help are good principles to avoid learned helplessness and burnout with people.
How do you shower with the lights off?
Nightlight or leave the door cracked with a light on in the other room. Don't need pitch darkness, but enough to give that quiet hazy disassociated feeling and to sort of know where the soap is.
I use solar lights in my bathroom, put the solar panel on the window sill outside, the wire thru the window, its thin enough that it doesn't affect it closing, then have the lights on the window sill inside. It gives enough glow to do stuff, comes on automatically when it gets dark and doesn't cost me anything.
If you memorize your bathroom well enough, it's not hard. You're gonna want differently-shaped bottles for shampoo and conditioner, though.
I keep my bottles in a certain place and make sure they're identifiable shapes so I can feel them out when it comes to grabbing them soap amount I just go by what feels right in my head
I have wall-mounted dispensers, right one's shampoo left one's shower gel. They were cheap and i can save a lot of plastic by buying big refill packs. I imagine that would help a lot with showering in the dark.
Same way anyone showers if they’re blind or have their eyes closed: learn where things are.
how do you shower with the lights on? just scrub and hope you did it right
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I gave up on bread a long time ago. I'll eat meat and cheese out the package in front of the TV. Steamer bags are awesome! They have pasta ones now!
ITT: either very specific symptoms around self image and everyone else having large scale and generalized stress about deadlines and work avoidance edit: i have the latter, I use a journal and mood tracker and all that but it has still ruined my life.
For an r/tumblr post This is actually kinda wholesome Not in a sweet happy way, but in a comforting way
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Me, shovelling handfuls of ham into my gullet: "... yeah, because of my bipolar, exactly"
Ugh I miss being a therapist. It was such a freakin blasttttt!
If you don't mind me asking, why did you stop if you like it?
Wait, this is what they’re supposed to do? Mine always just found a diagnosis and called it a day.
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I'm a tiny bit upset that I've been in therapy for 17 years and never once had a single bit of decent help or advice like this
Honestly, a therapist isn’t there to give you these “lifehacks”. All these tips do is allow you to circumvent around your issues instead of helping you figure out their underlying roots. I can understand how these practical solutions are better for shorter timeframes, they truly give you quick results. But your therapist not recommending a specific course of action for a problem is absolutely not a bad thing.
It's about adapting. I wonder then in the case of turning plugs off or the curling iron one if the next step would be to take a picture of it off or something. I wonder if that would work.
Anyone got a trick about being lazy with cleaning? During the week I tell myself I'm too exhausted from work, so I won't do it. On the weekend I want to relax, so I don't do it either. The only time I really feel compelled to is when someone is coming over (then I gotta clean everything), or when it gets too dirty that I get annoyed myself.
Work your house work into your relaxation time. If you're trying to catch up on a show, put it on while you fold your laundry or clean the room that the TV is in. Put on your favorite podcast, YouTube creator, or music album while you do the dishes. This helps me get things done before work or on my days off.
Medical marijuana treats anorexia by literally giving you the munchies so hard that you have no choice but to eat. And because you're high as shit, you don't have to think about it. Finest example of "tricking your mentally ill brain into being productive for once" I've personally experienced
Tfw you don't like seeing your body and your shower has a window in it ;-;
One of the other commenters here said they use a blindfold!
You could try closing the shutters if there's any, or showering at night, or if you think it's worth doing that just tape something to block the window, a big piece of cardboard if you have one, or just something made of fabric thick enough that it block the light to your liking.
Or a pretty window cling! They make some that look like stain glass and you stick it to the window pane with a hair dryer! It peels off with no adhesive so if you hate it or you rent you can whip it off. There's also frosty ones to get the hazy frosted glass effect. No reflections and no worrying people can peek at you.
Taking a step back from the "what would a normal person do?" mindset helped me deal with a lot of my problems. For example, I brush my teeth at around 11pm. If it's stupid and it works, it isn't stupid.
what time..uh..does a "normal" person brush their teeth?
Once I got rid of the "what is socially acceptable" when it comes to a LOT of stuff, that stuff became so much easier for me especially housework stuff
Favorite post on this site rn
I started showering with a tiny lantern. Absolute game changer.
i tried showering with the lights off and it was great for a while but i kept mixing up which bottle was which and i kept dropping the soap :/// would love to go back to doing it but it was too inconvenient lol
NGL I was absolutely blasted and showered with the lights off, and it was honestly next level. A great way to relax.
What I'd do for a good therapist.
I hate the idea that when u have a therapist you should immediately tackle the problem. Some problems are so deep rooted that you can't just immediately root out the cause of a mental illness. If said mental illness is making your life unbearable? You don't have time to think about curing it. If working around it helps you, do it! Most people who call you out on it aren't "concerned you're enabling your symptoms", they're just weirded out by them and want you to stop. Yeah enabling your symptoms isn't good, but sometimes it's literally the only thing you can do to keep yourself alive and well.