7 ms·

10/10 exactly what people with these issues want to hear. Great thing to post OP!

geoduck14 1y ago
Can't people with these type of issues control what they think about? Can't they have a go-to list of positive things to think about when they notice they are thinking negative thoughts?
- IAmBroom 1y ago
  Short answer: no, you can't just "think positive" your way out of mental illness. Also: Correlation is not causation; we don't know that avoiding these RNTs changes anything in the brain chemistry.
  - throwaway77385 1y ago
    The only thing I'd add to this (as someone with stupidly depressive and negative thought patterns), is that there are techniques that can help. The parent comment comes off as flippant, but I am going to assume it's not intended that way. Learning to think more positively takes an incredible amount of effort. An effort which seemingly never goes away. It just never gets easier. It's like my brain is simply wired to assume the worst, worry and of course just constantly make suicide seem like some kind of great way out. So much so, that when I was younger, I had assumed everyone just walked around constantly wondering whether it'd be easier to just die. To this day, that's where my brain goes first. Decades of nearly daily thoughts of ending it. BUT and this is the crucial part, to me that was just always part of the noise. It's there, but it's not forcing my hand. I can both live and also constantly think that I don't particularly enjoy just existing for existence's sake and therefore death sort of seems like a viable alternative. I don't act upon it, because I'm too curious to see what's next, for the time being. Anyway, the techniques that people are often taught in therapy sound simple and obvious, but they are harder to do than one might assume. Especially for people deep in depression. Gratitude journaling is one of those things. It is quite boring and tedious to write down what one is grateful for in life. To write down every single good thing that happened in a day, no matter how small. BUT, it sort of forces you onto a track of positive thought. It literally blocks / occupies thought, because it takes effort to do and focuses the mind on the positive, even if for a short period of time. Similarly, as stupid as it sounds, sometimes it can help to simply sit up straight and smile. There is some feedback loop between pretending to be happy and then sort of feeling a bit happier all of a sudden. Doesn't always work, won't work for everyone and deep clinical depressions are a whole different ballgame. Exercise is a pretty big one for me as well. As much as I hate it, I always feel better afterwards. Again, the sum of various small techniques can eventually make a bit of a difference. I've come to terms with the fact that depression is hard-wired into my brain structure and it's not going anywhere. But, I have also made a ton of new pathways that allow me to more quickly switch into more positive and grateful modes of thinking. And this, in some ways, is like a list of positive things to think, like the parent comment alluded to. Though without all of the above, I'd also take offense at the implication that depressed people can somehow choose to be depressed and need to just stop being depressed. That notion is ridiculous and has prevailed for (what feels like) centuries of ignorance of mental conditions.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - jfengel 1y ago
      I have a really hard time doing gratitude. Most days are pretty much like any other day, especially with work. If I journal the same thing over and over ("lunch was fine" "the podcast I listened to was slightly interesting") it feels grim. I feel like I'm already aware of the good things in my life. I'm actually quite fortunate. But even that forms a baseline: "I was healthy today in a world where not everyone is" grows repetitive. Saying it every day means little even if I write it down, and the writing itself feels more like a burden than a help. Do you have any thoughts on how I might reframe that more beneficially?
      - avtar 1y ago
        I'm not the person you replied to but their list of strategies (gratitude practice, evoking joy, exercise) pretty much mirrors what I've been trying to employ. > Saying it every day means little even if I write it down, and the writing itself feels more like a burden than a help. Perhaps an obvious statement but our experience with any type of practice varies in infinite ways from moment to moment. At times things just click or maybe we've built up enough momentum that it could feel effortless, but on just as many occasions it can feel like wading through sludge. When it's the latter I have to ask myself just how am I showing up for the activity. How mindful am I? What's my intention? Perhaps most importantly, is the sense of gratitude actually being felt in my body? If you don't mind self-help type books, 'Hardwiring Happiness' by Rick Hanson is a fairly accessible resource that stresses the importance of the somatic side of this type of work. The tl;dr is that if more parts of the mind pay _sustained_ attention to the embodied experience of gratitude, compassion, joy etc. then we're increasing the chances of training our minds. So if I find myself enumerating things in a journal that I believe I'm grateful for but the exercise feels contrived or flat then that's a sign I should either tune even more into large parts of the body (can be anywhere but for me it's usually my face, chest, and arms) or just attempt to evoke warm feelings in those areas. That last part can feel fake at times but there's probably value in learning how to encourage more mind processes to sign up for the practice. The OP alluded to this bit with "sometimes it can help to simply sit up straight and smile". If the body remembers what gratitude feels like then chances are that's going to influence the mind for the next few moments. 'Awakening Joy' by James Baraz is another book in this vein. In it the author makes the case that learning how to shift our baseline towards one coloured with joy and gratitude usually requires someone repeatedly and genuinely appreciating seemingly trivial things over the course of each day (food, shelter, mobility, pet, access to nature, etc.). Whereas shifts occurring solely due to significant positive life events are potentially less common.
- notmyjob 1y ago
  No, but you can think less by reducing your cognitive ability through say drugs and alcohol. Notice how the happiest boomers guzzle the wine and don’t have as many (negative) thoughts.
  - jerkstate 1y ago
    Unfortunately, alcohol use is also linked to dementia.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- fwip 1y ago
  It's not quite as simple as that, but what you describe has some relation to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Part of CBT involves recognizing when you're ruminating/spiraling in thought patterns that you want to avoid, and strategies to redirect and break that loop.
- StefanBatory 1y ago
  /r/thanksiamcured
- lokar 1y ago
  Don’t some religious seekers spend a lifetime trying to control what they think about (or don’t)?
- dotnet00 1y ago
  It's like how you can't really help but automatically read text you look at in a language you know well. It's very hard to control, over the years I've worked on reigning in my negative thinking, but every once in a while I still end up in a spiral of increasingly negative thoughts that don't just go away by focusing on positive things.
- timeinput 1y ago
  I can't. I have a go to list of positive things to think about. I have physical tactile things (a small rock I carry around) that brings me joy when I touch it because it reminds me of good times. It is very easy for me to get stuck in negative thought loops, and no matter how many things I see / feel / hear / ... it doesn't get better (at least in the short term). The question your asking to me is akin to "can't people control what they see" thinking it's like a movie you can choose to go and attend, when instead it's like "A Clockwork Orange" where in fact I do not get to control what I see.
  - sindriava 1y ago
    My experience quite often is that if I get in a bad state, the things that usually bring me joy just no longer do. In some cases they even produce more sadness.
    - timeinput 1y ago
      It depends on my negative thought loop. If it's more existential anxiety the things that bring me joy sometimes can help. Other sources of negative thoughts they definitely don't work on.
- sindriava 1y ago
  I think this question stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of how depression works for a lot of people. You're asking "why don't they replace negative signals with positive signals" when the problem often is that the positive signaling mechanism itself is broken. It's like trying to balance a bike that only goes left.
IAmBroom 1y ago
So, hide the lamp under the basket because you don't want to see it?

Can't people with these type of issues control what they think about? Can't they have a go-to list of positive things to think about when they notice they are thinking negative thoughts?

IAmBroom 1y ago
Short answer: no, you can't just "think positive" your way out of mental illness. Also: Correlation is not causation; we don't know that avoiding these RNTs changes anything in the brain chemistry.
- throwaway77385 1y ago
  The only thing I'd add to this (as someone with stupidly depressive and negative thought patterns), is that there are techniques that can help. The parent comment comes off as flippant, but I am going to assume it's not intended that way. Learning to think more positively takes an incredible amount of effort. An effort which seemingly never goes away. It just never gets easier. It's like my brain is simply wired to assume the worst, worry and of course just constantly make suicide seem like some kind of great way out. So much so, that when I was younger, I had assumed everyone just walked around constantly wondering whether it'd be easier to just die. To this day, that's where my brain goes first. Decades of nearly daily thoughts of ending it. BUT and this is the crucial part, to me that was just always part of the noise. It's there, but it's not forcing my hand. I can both live and also constantly think that I don't particularly enjoy just existing for existence's sake and therefore death sort of seems like a viable alternative. I don't act upon it, because I'm too curious to see what's next, for the time being. Anyway, the techniques that people are often taught in therapy sound simple and obvious, but they are harder to do than one might assume. Especially for people deep in depression. Gratitude journaling is one of those things. It is quite boring and tedious to write down what one is grateful for in life. To write down every single good thing that happened in a day, no matter how small. BUT, it sort of forces you onto a track of positive thought. It literally blocks / occupies thought, because it takes effort to do and focuses the mind on the positive, even if for a short period of time. Similarly, as stupid as it sounds, sometimes it can help to simply sit up straight and smile. There is some feedback loop between pretending to be happy and then sort of feeling a bit happier all of a sudden. Doesn't always work, won't work for everyone and deep clinical depressions are a whole different ballgame. Exercise is a pretty big one for me as well. As much as I hate it, I always feel better afterwards. Again, the sum of various small techniques can eventually make a bit of a difference. I've come to terms with the fact that depression is hard-wired into my brain structure and it's not going anywhere. But, I have also made a ton of new pathways that allow me to more quickly switch into more positive and grateful modes of thinking. And this, in some ways, is like a list of positive things to think, like the parent comment alluded to. Though without all of the above, I'd also take offense at the implication that depressed people can somehow choose to be depressed and need to just stop being depressed. That notion is ridiculous and has prevailed for (what feels like) centuries of ignorance of mental conditions.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - jfengel 1y ago
    I have a really hard time doing gratitude. Most days are pretty much like any other day, especially with work. If I journal the same thing over and over ("lunch was fine" "the podcast I listened to was slightly interesting") it feels grim. I feel like I'm already aware of the good things in my life. I'm actually quite fortunate. But even that forms a baseline: "I was healthy today in a world where not everyone is" grows repetitive. Saying it every day means little even if I write it down, and the writing itself feels more like a burden than a help. Do you have any thoughts on how I might reframe that more beneficially?
    - avtar 1y ago
      I'm not the person you replied to but their list of strategies (gratitude practice, evoking joy, exercise) pretty much mirrors what I've been trying to employ. > Saying it every day means little even if I write it down, and the writing itself feels more like a burden than a help. Perhaps an obvious statement but our experience with any type of practice varies in infinite ways from moment to moment. At times things just click or maybe we've built up enough momentum that it could feel effortless, but on just as many occasions it can feel like wading through sludge. When it's the latter I have to ask myself just how am I showing up for the activity. How mindful am I? What's my intention? Perhaps most importantly, is the sense of gratitude actually being felt in my body? If you don't mind self-help type books, 'Hardwiring Happiness' by Rick Hanson is a fairly accessible resource that stresses the importance of the somatic side of this type of work. The tl;dr is that if more parts of the mind pay _sustained_ attention to the embodied experience of gratitude, compassion, joy etc. then we're increasing the chances of training our minds. So if I find myself enumerating things in a journal that I believe I'm grateful for but the exercise feels contrived or flat then that's a sign I should either tune even more into large parts of the body (can be anywhere but for me it's usually my face, chest, and arms) or just attempt to evoke warm feelings in those areas. That last part can feel fake at times but there's probably value in learning how to encourage more mind processes to sign up for the practice. The OP alluded to this bit with "sometimes it can help to simply sit up straight and smile". If the body remembers what gratitude feels like then chances are that's going to influence the mind for the next few moments. 'Awakening Joy' by James Baraz is another book in this vein. In it the author makes the case that learning how to shift our baseline towards one coloured with joy and gratitude usually requires someone repeatedly and genuinely appreciating seemingly trivial things over the course of each day (food, shelter, mobility, pet, access to nature, etc.). Whereas shifts occurring solely due to significant positive life events are potentially less common.
notmyjob 1y ago
No, but you can think less by reducing your cognitive ability through say drugs and alcohol. Notice how the happiest boomers guzzle the wine and don’t have as many (negative) thoughts.
- jerkstate 1y ago
  Unfortunately, alcohol use is also linked to dementia.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
fwip 1y ago
It's not quite as simple as that, but what you describe has some relation to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Part of CBT involves recognizing when you're ruminating/spiraling in thought patterns that you want to avoid, and strategies to redirect and break that loop.
StefanBatory 1y ago
/r/thanksiamcured
lokar 1y ago
Don’t some religious seekers spend a lifetime trying to control what they think about (or don’t)?
dotnet00 1y ago
It's like how you can't really help but automatically read text you look at in a language you know well. It's very hard to control, over the years I've worked on reigning in my negative thinking, but every once in a while I still end up in a spiral of increasingly negative thoughts that don't just go away by focusing on positive things.
timeinput 1y ago
I can't. I have a go to list of positive things to think about. I have physical tactile things (a small rock I carry around) that brings me joy when I touch it because it reminds me of good times. It is very easy for me to get stuck in negative thought loops, and no matter how many things I see / feel / hear / ... it doesn't get better (at least in the short term). The question your asking to me is akin to "can't people control what they see" thinking it's like a movie you can choose to go and attend, when instead it's like "A Clockwork Orange" where in fact I do not get to control what I see.
- sindriava 1y ago
  My experience quite often is that if I get in a bad state, the things that usually bring me joy just no longer do. In some cases they even produce more sadness.
  - timeinput 1y ago
    It depends on my negative thought loop. If it's more existential anxiety the things that bring me joy sometimes can help. Other sources of negative thoughts they definitely don't work on.
sindriava 1y ago
I think this question stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of how depression works for a lot of people. You're asking "why don't they replace negative signals with positive signals" when the problem often is that the positive signaling mechanism itself is broken. It's like trying to balance a bike that only goes left.

IAmBroom 1y ago

So, hide the lamp under the basket because you don't want to see it?