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I'd also recommend reading psychologist Martin Seligman's book "What You Can Change and What You Can't", which covers a variety of mental health issues from sex

I'd also recommend reading psychologist Martin Seligman's book "What You Can Change and What You Can't", which covers a variety of mental health issues from sexual fetishes to fear of spiders to schizophrenia, and the treatment options available for each. Cognitive behavioral therapy teaches people to recognize negative thoughts ("I failed the test because I'm stupid"), dispute the thought ("If I'm stupid, how did I get an A in math last week"), and propose alternative explanations that are transitory or shift the blame to an external source ("The teacher was in a bad mood when he graded the test/I didn't study hard enough"). It's been shown in studies to be as effective as drugs, and more lasting (if you stop taking the drugs, the sadness might come back). It's an alternative - it might not work for everyone, the OP mentions he had trouble with therapy and I'm glad he is finally doing better.

bad_user 14y ago
Does it really work? My guess is that's just how slim people tell fat people that laziness got them fat and so they should do more exercise, i.e. people that never suffered from a certain condition giving advice to people suffering from that condition. "I failed the test because I'm stupid" - that's just how I felt when I got rejected after an onsite interview with a certain company that's renowned for its hiring standards that yield many false negatives. Thoughts going through my head, like "I was unlucky" or that "I came unprepared", had no effect. You know how one partner tells the other on the verge of a breakup "it's not you, it's me"? Did that line ever work in the history of man-kind? The mind is like an onion, having many layers. You can only control the first layer and hope that your actions will cause a reverberation in the layers below. And if you strongly feel a certain way, sometimes there's no stopping it, unless enough time passes to forget about it or make it seem less important (I guess that's why we forget things). The teacher was in a bad mood when he graded the test I'm seeing people throw blame all the time, precisely because it's easier to cope with failure. But it's not healthy to pass the blame, unless you have concrete proof that the teacher's mood was in bad shape and that her mood indeed had an effect on the grade. I'm not seeing this as being good advice. Sooner or later you'll start thinking the whole world is against you, when it's a lot better to recognize your own mistakes and not blow the failure out of proportions. It's also healthy to recognize that maybe you're not as smart as everybody kept telling you since you were in kindergarten, and that in the real world wit is not a substitute for experience and hard work.
- kevinburke 14y ago
  Studies have shown the two to have the same effectiveness rate at treating depression, around 50%. It turns out it is actually healthy to pass the blame. I'd suggest reading one of Seligman's other books, Learned Optimism, for more, but in studies of people in high-pressure situations (freshman year at Army, cold call insurance salesman at MetLife, etc), the most successful people are the ones who externalize (blame others for) negative events and internalize (credit themselves for) positive events. It may not be an accurate view of the world, but then again, depressed people score higher on assessing the world accurately than non-depressed people, so it's not clear seeing the world accurately is that helpful. When bad things happen to me I make a concerted effort to blame other people or one-off events ("the company I was interviewing at went through a reorganization or promoted an internal person/it was just bad luck they asked about the same origin policy/whatever"), and when good things happen to me I credit myself ("I got the job because I'm smart, I work hard, and people like being around me.") When I say it like that it sounds a little silly, but so is not making moves in your career or your personal life that clearly make sense, because you don't think you're good enough. Like anything, CBT takes practice. Eventually you want to get to the point where you do the recognition and disputation automatically, like tying your shoes or typing the letter 'e'. I wrote more about it here: http://kev.inburke.com/kevin/lectures-for-basketball-coaches-how-do-you-respond-to-failure/ http://kev.inburke.com/kevin/lectures-for-basketball-coaches...
  - nostrademons 14y ago
    I'm skeptical, the way you phrase it. Rather, I've always heard that it's best to think in terms of circumstances and not blame, for both yourself and others. There's a subtle difference between them. You've phrased it as "blame others, not yourself", but both of those alternatives are equally unhealthy. Rather, you should figure out a variety of possible explanations for your low performance, and then ascribe meaning to the ones you can change and forget about the ones you can't. "I failed the test because I'm stupid" is a completely useless conclusion. So is "the teacher was in a bad mood". "I didn't study", however, is a very useful conclusion, because it suggests what you should do next time: study harder. So is "I don't actually like physics", because it also suggests a course of action: switch your major. The overall point is to get out of the habit of learned helplessness and take responsibility for your own life. Blaming others doesn't accomplish that, because you've still attributed outcomes to things you can't control.

bad_user 14y ago

Does it really work? My guess is that's just how slim people tell fat people that laziness got them fat and so they should do more exercise, i.e. people that never suffered from a certain condition giving advice to people suffering from that condition. "I failed the test because I'm stupid" - that's just how I felt when I got rejected after an onsite interview with a certain company that's renowned for its hiring standards that yield many false negatives. Thoughts going through my head, like "I was unlucky" or that "I came unprepared", had no effect. You know how one partner tells the other on the verge of a breakup "it's not you, it's me"? Did that line ever work in the history of man-kind? The mind is like an onion, having many layers. You can only control the first layer and hope that your actions will cause a reverberation in the layers below. And if you strongly feel a certain way, sometimes there's no stopping it, unless enough time passes to forget about it or make it seem less important (I guess that's why we forget things). The teacher was in a bad mood when he graded the test I'm seeing people throw blame all the time, precisely because it's easier to cope with failure. But it's not healthy to pass the blame, unless you have concrete proof that the teacher's mood was in bad shape and that her mood indeed had an effect on the grade. I'm not seeing this as being good advice. Sooner or later you'll start thinking the whole world is against you, when it's a lot better to recognize your own mistakes and not blow the failure out of proportions. It's also healthy to recognize that maybe you're not as smart as everybody kept telling you since you were in kindergarten, and that in the real world wit is not a substitute for experience and hard work.

kevinburke 14y ago
Studies have shown the two to have the same effectiveness rate at treating depression, around 50%. It turns out it is actually healthy to pass the blame. I'd suggest reading one of Seligman's other books, Learned Optimism, for more, but in studies of people in high-pressure situations (freshman year at Army, cold call insurance salesman at MetLife, etc), the most successful people are the ones who externalize (blame others for) negative events and internalize (credit themselves for) positive events. It may not be an accurate view of the world, but then again, depressed people score higher on assessing the world accurately than non-depressed people, so it's not clear seeing the world accurately is that helpful. When bad things happen to me I make a concerted effort to blame other people or one-off events ("the company I was interviewing at went through a reorganization or promoted an internal person/it was just bad luck they asked about the same origin policy/whatever"), and when good things happen to me I credit myself ("I got the job because I'm smart, I work hard, and people like being around me.") When I say it like that it sounds a little silly, but so is not making moves in your career or your personal life that clearly make sense, because you don't think you're good enough. Like anything, CBT takes practice. Eventually you want to get to the point where you do the recognition and disputation automatically, like tying your shoes or typing the letter 'e'. I wrote more about it here: http://kev.inburke.com/kevin/lectures-for-basketball-coaches-how-do-you-respond-to-failure/ http://kev.inburke.com/kevin/lectures-for-basketball-coaches...
- nostrademons 14y ago
  I'm skeptical, the way you phrase it. Rather, I've always heard that it's best to think in terms of circumstances and not blame, for both yourself and others. There's a subtle difference between them. You've phrased it as "blame others, not yourself", but both of those alternatives are equally unhealthy. Rather, you should figure out a variety of possible explanations for your low performance, and then ascribe meaning to the ones you can change and forget about the ones you can't. "I failed the test because I'm stupid" is a completely useless conclusion. So is "the teacher was in a bad mood". "I didn't study", however, is a very useful conclusion, because it suggests what you should do next time: study harder. So is "I don't actually like physics", because it also suggests a course of action: switch your major. The overall point is to get out of the habit of learned helplessness and take responsibility for your own life. Blaming others doesn't accomplish that, because you've still attributed outcomes to things you can't control.