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See, you did it again. There is nothing "beautiful" about mental health issues. Do you think there is something beautiful when someone breaks their arm? The way

See, you did it again. There is nothing "beautiful" about mental health issues. Do you think there is something beautiful when someone breaks their arm? The way people treat those with broken limbs is the best form of compassion that achieves real results to end someone's mental health problems. No one faults anyone who broke their arm and they're in pain, having trouble with day to day functioning. However its then, "Hey, you need to see a doc to put your arm in place and get you a caste. Let me take you to the hospital." You get faulted when your dumbass lives with a broken arm for no reason, constantly complaining when there is a fix possible. Go through the process. Take the time for the bone to heal. People show their compassion, which helps you out even more, when they do little things to help you out while it heals, instead of just saying, "I'm sorry about your broken arm. Youre so strong. It's okay for it to be broken forever. It's your identity now. You should always be known as the one with the broken arm. It's so beautiful that you broke your arm." Then you go through physical therapy to get back to fighting strength, along with making sure it doesn't happen again. You also now know how to avoid or deal with a similar event to avoid a break. This is how mental health should be approached. Dont fucking treat it as a fashionable badge of courage, allowing it to fester and rot someone's head. That depression rot makes it far fucking harder to heal. Look, it took me far too long to overcome my own depression because most "help" out there focuses on it being "okay to be depressed" instead of actually fixing it. This includes some really shitty therapists who believe depression should be an accepted identity, one of which I dumped too much money on. That's why these type of articles and rhetoric anger me to no end. You have zero clue how dangerous this is in the long run for people. Most vets that I personally know which adapted to a stable life well do a few things. A hobby they personally devote to. They exercise outside fairly regularly. Some type of difficult long term task they give themselves. More importantly I think, they have friends that were combat vets as well and they all talk regularly. Like 90s teenage girls everyday or every other day on the phone and in person. Not texting, actually talking. Not everyone can take their awesome crass, dark humor well, which is a good vent for when things get rough for them. I think everyone I know had therapy to some level and for some amount of time. I cant speak much to that because that's something I dont poke into. I just know that two new vets into the group went from not doing a lot of what I mentioned and... yea, not adapting well to society... to then doing pretty good in like 6-12 months. That VR stuff is really designed for hyper specific PTSD triggers to my knowledge. Not general societal stuff. I ended up doing gov contracting which ended up leading me to making too many vet friends overtime. If it wasn't for them, I'd still be in a mental pit at best.

exo-pla-net 5y ago
I think we're on exactly the same page. The fact that the writer is hurting wasn't beautiful. Many of his ideas, however, were. If they're not your cup of tea, so be it. I think that you think that "It's okay to be depressed" is a platitude celebrating complacency. It's actually about shame. Many people, especially men, would sooner suffer than admit to needing help. Behind the platitude is the desire to say, "You don't need to be ashamed about being depressed. It's a thing that strikes the best of us, and you can hold your head high as we help you back to your feet." But yeah, a lot of therapists are terrible. It's indeed important to find one that wants to get you back on your feet as soon as possible; sympathy isn't a substitute for recovery. I like your veterans' tips for climbing out of depression: * Develop a hobby * Regularly exercise outside * Take on a big project, and put something into it every day * Spend in-person time with people who get it I sometimes do mental health volunteer work, and I'll incorporate your tips. Nothing beats a strategy that has met empirical success.

exo-pla-net 5y ago

I think we're on exactly the same page. The fact that the writer is hurting wasn't beautiful. Many of his ideas, however, were. If they're not your cup of tea, so be it. I think that you think that "It's okay to be depressed" is a platitude celebrating complacency. It's actually about shame. Many people, especially men, would sooner suffer than admit to needing help. Behind the platitude is the desire to say, "You don't need to be ashamed about being depressed. It's a thing that strikes the best of us, and you can hold your head high as we help you back to your feet." But yeah, a lot of therapists are terrible. It's indeed important to find one that wants to get you back on your feet as soon as possible; sympathy isn't a substitute for recovery. I like your veterans' tips for climbing out of depression: * Develop a hobby * Regularly exercise outside * Take on a big project, and put something into it every day * Spend in-person time with people who get it I sometimes do mental health volunteer work, and I'll incorporate your tips. Nothing beats a strategy that has met empirical success.