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Number 3, "Give yourself a negative identity," just sounds like "I don't like when people have mental health problems. Get over it already."

• pagnol 8y ago
  Are you practicing number 5? If so, great job!
  • placebo 8y ago
    not necessarily - he could just be invoking the "do not attribute to malice what can easily be explained by stupidity" rule It's not always so easy to tell apart the things you have control over vs. the things you don't, but I think that all these rules can be summarized in one line, which is basically: If you're feeling sorry for yourself, you'd better find something more productive to do.
    • AstralStorm 8y ago
      The counterpart to the rule is that stupidity is widespread and almost unfixable in general. Did I invoke one of the stupid rules from the article just right now? :)
    • eric-hu 8y ago
      > It's not always so easy to tell apart the things you have control over vs. the things you don't, but I think that all these rules can be summarized in one line, which is basically: If you're feeling sorry for yourself, you'd better find something more productive to do. I wholly agree with this. There's something deeply insightful, subtle and difficult about recognizing one's own control in a situation. I've thought about this a lot in the last year. The way I phrase it right now is: people don't have a choice until they realize they have one.
• solarkraft 8y ago
  Not fully. The point (I think) is not letting oneself be consumed by a problem & constantly identifying to be about it. There are way more things to define you.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • RIMR 8y ago
    Precisely. There's a huge difference between saying "I have severe depression, and it takes great effort for me to get through a day without buckling" and saying "I have severe depression, so my daily mental breakdowns aren't my fault".
    • lists 8y ago
      Those aren't mutually exclusive
      • ehnto 8y ago
        True, but I think they were alluding to the difference in outlook that suggests who takes responsibility for the downsides. One way is using it as an excuse to dismiss others concerns and the other way is having empathy toward how your situatiom affects others and acknowledging their side of the same challenge.
  • u09v0uy09 8y ago
    That's a handy LPT that is lost on people "consumed by a problem" already. To borrow from Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” I take writings like this as rather tongue-in-cheek. I feel they dismiss reality: we easily define others as X because we lack information. We'll label a person miserable or outcast, rather than be interested in their take, regardless. Because the way they approach discourse doesn't abide the popular meme.
• vertexFarm 8y ago
  If you're telling yourself that you might be falling for a bit of a sneaky misconception about your problems. Take it from me, there's a big difference between realistically accepting a mental health problem and making it into your whole identity and wallowing in it. There's also a big difference between mental health denial / "get over it already" and making steps to finally stop it from totally dominating your life in the future. Depression is like a separate animal inside you with its own drives for survival and reproduction. You don't turn your back on it, but you don't let it devour you and steal your name and face either. If it can manage to, it would love to take control of you and make you believe that there is literally nothing that can help and you're utterly powerless to change anything, and that anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is just one of those people who doesn't understand and thinks you can just cheer yourself up out of depression by smiling and going outside or whatever. That's a false dichotomy.
• Bjartr 8y ago
  It's the distinction between "I suffer from X" vs "X defines who I am as a person".
  • kazinator 8y ago
    Once you let any X define you as a person, and for a sufficiently long time, it becomes very ingrained. It's a dangerous thing.
• kazinator 8y ago
  The author doesn't say that she doesn't like people who give themselves a negative identity, but rather that it's a habit which makes them miserable, which is plausible. She also doesn't say that any of the habits can be casually broken, if only they are recognized.
• pokemongoaway 8y ago
  It's more like "I don't like when people with mental health problems start identifying themselves with that problem." I don't like it either :)