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By do you ruminate negative thoughts? That’s my excuse for keeping my phone playing at night: I’m single, and despite being a successful professional and trying

By do you ruminate negative thoughts? That’s my excuse for keeping my phone playing at night: I’m single, and despite being a successful professional and trying hard at dating when I was younger, my private life is full of bad experiences. I think about it and get angry. Youtube masks it. Yes I’ve seen psychologists but no, really, they try to où the blame on me but every time it’s the others who bullied me. Anyway — without a smartphone keeping your mind busy, how do you mask negative thoughts?

exe34 2y ago
embrace them, just refuse to act on them. let the thoughts come in, let them stay, and eventually they go back out. you're left with boredom, which can then be filled with whatever productive things that you enjoy.
- eastbound 2y ago
  That’s the thing with mental health, sometimes you forget one of the methods to get rid of unhealthy habits, and they might be so simple. Let’s give it a try.
ArnoVW 2y ago
Sometimes have the same issue (rumination). I listen to podcasts and youtube science, tech ans history videos (with non exiting voices and without music or other sounds) to block out thoughts. It works. I guess audiobooks should work too. Mind you I keep thinking that I should try meditation to build up my capacity at directing my thoughts, but with everything going on I can't seem to find the time. Using my phone for anything else though (reading, watching videos) have the inverse effect and keep me awake.
andai 2y ago
Meditation helped me a lot. You can train yourself to notice when your mind is doing something unpleasant or unproductive. When you notice that, it typically just stops, and you wonder why you were even doing it in the first place. I'd recommend (ironically) an app for that, but the important part is that you practice every day, even if only for a few minutes. Alternatively, being too busy and/or social to spend any time thinking — I joked the other day that I had "backdoored" my way into enlightenment by simply having no time/energy to think. I didnt create that situation on purpose, both aspects are due to poverty (working two jobs and living in shared accomodations) but they've both had powerful unexpected benefits, to the point where I'm not much looking forward to getting my own place and going back to being alone all the time again.
jonathanlydall 2y ago
I’m sorry to hear that your past life experiences haunt you, but I’m also glad to hear that you’ve done well professionally for yourself despite that. I can’t pretend to truly know your situation and realize you may have received similar advice already, but in case you haven’t or someone else reads this who feels similarly, here is some anyway. Firstly, keep in mind this advice also applies inside the work place, for example think of having lost a client as someone who was largely responsible for preventing that from happening. When something bad happens, we can have one of two mindsets about it, a victim mindset or alternatively a mindset of “how can I improve myself from this experience?”. The key thing to understand is that the victim mindset is disempowering, that you’re resigning yourself to be helpless to stop it happening again, while the other mindset allows you to potentially be stronger and more capable for the future. So when something bad happens, it’s necessary to reflect on what happened, and it’s okay to acknowledge that the circumstances were largely beyond your control, but you must be sure to focus on what _you_ can change or control to try be in a better position for the future. And because the past can’t be changed (although not easily forgotten either), what you can change is what you choose to do about it going forward. This change in mindset is often something that takes time to acquire, so don’t expect it to just happen, but the important thing is to constantly reflect with the goal of continuously moving towards achieving it and one day you may find you have. I wish you the best of luck for the future.
- eastbound 2y ago
  I have correct answers to all of your questions. How do I know they are correct? Well first of all science: They’re repeatable and produce reliably the same result. Second: Attitude: People go all ways when I spell them out, deny them, be bad-faithed, attack me, or nag me on superficial properties; but one thing they don’t do is provide an argument against it. It’s maybe usual to see people victimizing themselves in that society and that they’re so systematically wrong that “Take responsibility” is good advice. However, I’m a white male who dwelled into work and got good results, and literal hate does exist against me. Of course, some people who were talented early enough did succeed to build a balanced life. I didn’t learned to date early enough, and when 25 years old came, girls went systematically batshit crazy when they saw that I didn’t know how to handle sex, so that I reached 40 without a single positive experience. It’s possible to recover with women when you get accepted in groups, but I’m a white male and I refuse to apologize for being white, because it’s been harassment all my life, and yes people are cunts, so no I won’t recover.
BoingBoomTschak 2y ago
Eh, I'm a handholdless wizard who's been down in the dumps for years now, so trust me when I say I know what you're feeling (kind of). The trick is that yes, we need distraction from our shitty lives and it's very comfortable sinking into a zoomer routine to numb yourself BUT you can get the same level of distraction from saner occupations, as long as you still have some fire inside you (often in the form of spite and bitterness, which are much healthier than simple decay). Lift heavy objects and acquire mass, lose yourself in classic nerd crap (old school fantasy/SF novels, obscure music, do the Advent of Code in Lisp/ML/Forth/Prolog), solo hiking, drive fast, etc... embrace the loneliness and become someone better than the rabble, choose the path of the "Wanderer above the Sea of Fog", not that of the brainrotten goblin! I'm not saying that existential pain will cease, especially when being around people with a normal life full of joy that seems so unattainable, but it certainly makes you feel better in the long term.
- eastbound 2y ago
  Thank you, it’s true that hate and the idea of revenge kept me from committing suicide and were the path out from my darkest times. Maybe I’ve recovered more than I admit, because your vocabulary is what I used 3 years ago and I’m far from that now, just the addiction to Youtube remains, to covers the negative thoughts. There is still advice that I’ll use from your comment, and once again I love the vocabulary “Lift heavy objects and acquire mass”, which is typical from the meme world. You basically remind me of Jordan Peterson’s advice to stand up and do something, as soon as a lighter period of depression strucks.
shadowerm 2y ago
What worked for me is getting in really good physical shape and good physical conditioning. I can remember constantly thinking how much life sucked, no matter how good it actually was. Slowly, the negative thoughts just went away as my physical conditioning improved.
safety1st 2y ago
It's possible that the discipline of psychology has something to offer you and you've simply seen a few bad psychologists. (There are plenty of them.) If you ruminate a lot I would look into cognitive behavioral therapy and its variants and think about how their principles can be incorporated into your ruminations. The TLDR of CBT is it involves analyzing your negative thoughts critically, rationally and systematically in writing. Often when we do that the thoughts lose their emotional hold on us, even if some of them are true. Avoiding may be better than ruminating, but processing is better than both. I spent way too much of my life thinking that ruminating was worthwhile on its own and eventually realized it is not unless you structure it narrowly and productively.

exe34 2y ago

embrace them, just refuse to act on them. let the thoughts come in, let them stay, and eventually they go back out. you're left with boredom, which can then be filled with whatever productive things that you enjoy.

eastbound 2y ago
That’s the thing with mental health, sometimes you forget one of the methods to get rid of unhealthy habits, and they might be so simple. Let’s give it a try.

ArnoVW 2y ago

Sometimes have the same issue (rumination). I listen to podcasts and youtube science, tech ans history videos (with non exiting voices and without music or other sounds) to block out thoughts. It works. I guess audiobooks should work too. Mind you I keep thinking that I should try meditation to build up my capacity at directing my thoughts, but with everything going on I can't seem to find the time. Using my phone for anything else though (reading, watching videos) have the inverse effect and keep me awake.

andai 2y ago

Meditation helped me a lot. You can train yourself to notice when your mind is doing something unpleasant or unproductive. When you notice that, it typically just stops, and you wonder why you were even doing it in the first place. I'd recommend (ironically) an app for that, but the important part is that you practice every day, even if only for a few minutes. Alternatively, being too busy and/or social to spend any time thinking — I joked the other day that I had "backdoored" my way into enlightenment by simply having no time/energy to think. I didnt create that situation on purpose, both aspects are due to poverty (working two jobs and living in shared accomodations) but they've both had powerful unexpected benefits, to the point where I'm not much looking forward to getting my own place and going back to being alone all the time again.

jonathanlydall 2y ago

I’m sorry to hear that your past life experiences haunt you, but I’m also glad to hear that you’ve done well professionally for yourself despite that. I can’t pretend to truly know your situation and realize you may have received similar advice already, but in case you haven’t or someone else reads this who feels similarly, here is some anyway. Firstly, keep in mind this advice also applies inside the work place, for example think of having lost a client as someone who was largely responsible for preventing that from happening. When something bad happens, we can have one of two mindsets about it, a victim mindset or alternatively a mindset of “how can I improve myself from this experience?”. The key thing to understand is that the victim mindset is disempowering, that you’re resigning yourself to be helpless to stop it happening again, while the other mindset allows you to potentially be stronger and more capable for the future. So when something bad happens, it’s necessary to reflect on what happened, and it’s okay to acknowledge that the circumstances were largely beyond your control, but you must be sure to focus on what _you_ can change or control to try be in a better position for the future. And because the past can’t be changed (although not easily forgotten either), what you can change is what you choose to do about it going forward. This change in mindset is often something that takes time to acquire, so don’t expect it to just happen, but the important thing is to constantly reflect with the goal of continuously moving towards achieving it and one day you may find you have. I wish you the best of luck for the future.

eastbound 2y ago
I have correct answers to all of your questions. How do I know they are correct? Well first of all science: They’re repeatable and produce reliably the same result. Second: Attitude: People go all ways when I spell them out, deny them, be bad-faithed, attack me, or nag me on superficial properties; but one thing they don’t do is provide an argument against it. It’s maybe usual to see people victimizing themselves in that society and that they’re so systematically wrong that “Take responsibility” is good advice. However, I’m a white male who dwelled into work and got good results, and literal hate does exist against me. Of course, some people who were talented early enough did succeed to build a balanced life. I didn’t learned to date early enough, and when 25 years old came, girls went systematically batshit crazy when they saw that I didn’t know how to handle sex, so that I reached 40 without a single positive experience. It’s possible to recover with women when you get accepted in groups, but I’m a white male and I refuse to apologize for being white, because it’s been harassment all my life, and yes people are cunts, so no I won’t recover.

BoingBoomTschak 2y ago

Eh, I'm a handholdless wizard who's been down in the dumps for years now, so trust me when I say I know what you're feeling (kind of). The trick is that yes, we need distraction from our shitty lives and it's very comfortable sinking into a zoomer routine to numb yourself BUT you can get the same level of distraction from saner occupations, as long as you still have some fire inside you (often in the form of spite and bitterness, which are much healthier than simple decay). Lift heavy objects and acquire mass, lose yourself in classic nerd crap (old school fantasy/SF novels, obscure music, do the Advent of Code in Lisp/ML/Forth/Prolog), solo hiking, drive fast, etc... embrace the loneliness and become someone better than the rabble, choose the path of the "Wanderer above the Sea of Fog", not that of the brainrotten goblin! I'm not saying that existential pain will cease, especially when being around people with a normal life full of joy that seems so unattainable, but it certainly makes you feel better in the long term.

eastbound 2y ago
Thank you, it’s true that hate and the idea of revenge kept me from committing suicide and were the path out from my darkest times. Maybe I’ve recovered more than I admit, because your vocabulary is what I used 3 years ago and I’m far from that now, just the addiction to Youtube remains, to covers the negative thoughts. There is still advice that I’ll use from your comment, and once again I love the vocabulary “Lift heavy objects and acquire mass”, which is typical from the meme world. You basically remind me of Jordan Peterson’s advice to stand up and do something, as soon as a lighter period of depression strucks.

shadowerm 2y ago

What worked for me is getting in really good physical shape and good physical conditioning. I can remember constantly thinking how much life sucked, no matter how good it actually was. Slowly, the negative thoughts just went away as my physical conditioning improved.

safety1st 2y ago

It's possible that the discipline of psychology has something to offer you and you've simply seen a few bad psychologists. (There are plenty of them.) If you ruminate a lot I would look into cognitive behavioral therapy and its variants and think about how their principles can be incorporated into your ruminations. The TLDR of CBT is it involves analyzing your negative thoughts critically, rationally and systematically in writing. Often when we do that the thoughts lose their emotional hold on us, even if some of them are true. Avoiding may be better than ruminating, but processing is better than both. I spent way too much of my life thinking that ruminating was worthwhile on its own and eventually realized it is not unless you structure it narrowly and productively.