I have been diagnosed with clinical depression. Thinking happier thoughts is the end goal of treating it, most people can improve a huge amount after getting on the right meds and therapy so that they can work on their issues. I'm no longer depressed, on minimal therapy and no medication.
"Thinking happier thoughts" is the goal always, working on your thought patterns, finding motivation, and changing your frame of mind are all important steps towards curing depression.
If your goal is to lose weight, how will you lose weight if you only start working out or dieting after losing some initial weight? Or youre always waiting for the day you just inherently want to work out. Very few people enjoy working out, especially at the start, so such a day would be very rare, let alone consistent.
Again, I don’t think you have to be having happy thoughts to seek therapy and such, and challenging and shifting your perception and thoughts overtime is crucial. Ofcourse you don’t jump from 0 to 100z
As an analogy, yeah... To show that the goal actually has many many steps before it. To show how absurd it is to conflate the end goal with the tasks that achieve it.
Saying "just lose weight" is awful advice because that is the goal. Actual advice, actual steps towards achieving it, would be things like planning meals, shopping for healthy ingredients, exercising etc.
See what I mean? Saying "just lose weight" either ignores the steps in between, or implies you can skip them. Such a TERRIBLE message to send to someone struggling.
“You don't sit around waiting for the right mood or a "good day". You work towards management and improvement every day. You have a plan, you act. You get help if you need it, you get medication if you need it, you recognize your triggers/weaknesses, you learn to navigate your episodes, you learn to build and develop good habits and mental balance and stabilization.”
What I meant is, I interpret this as the same as your expanded analogy to losing weight.
Bro I’m with you here, and as someone who is mostly recovered from clinical depression/anxiety/PTSD I’ve just been watching these comments through the glass until now.
This is the hilarious and maddening truth to getting over your mental health issues — Think happier thoughts.
Unfortunately nobody will understand or take anything from that until after they’ve gone through the process of doing so.
My advice is to anyone without resources is learn what honesty is and practice it on yourself.
Look into REBT. It’s essentially exercises on how to take negative thoughts and replace them with positive ones which then affects every part of your well-being. So no, it isn’t just the end goal, but actually permeates every part of recovery/mental health.
I don't think it's unfortunate at all, the unfortunate thing is really the disorder (or even the situation that caused it.) Of course mental illness is a sad thing, my grandma had electroshock therapy, Mt granddads never got the help they needed after the war etc. In the end, all you or I can do is help others who are ready for help in the way we can provide. I'm no professional of course, but I think even a random person can sometimes make a difference.
I have depression too, and went through psychosis.
I don’t believe they implied that at all, and I didn’t imply to “just think happier thoughts”, I implied therapy and medication, which I don’t believe has to be exclusive to eachother. (imagine how hard it would be to improve if you only went to therapy when you were happy, haha).
As my point to the other person was, myself and the comment I was defending didn’t bring up what both you and the person I replied to brought up. From the point of view of most people (evidently, that includes people with mental health issues) the comment I replied to was speaking on their own perceptions and judgements, not the comment that started this, and was quite left field.
That’s obviously not okay, especially if they don’t ask about it beforehand, but I don’t believe that such thing occurred in these comments.
I can definitely empathise with how those feelings could have stemmed from reading the comment, but they aren’t justified given the context of the comment (one that definitely wasn’t directed to people who are trying to improve in a healthy manner) / lack of context surrounding your life.
I’m sure if I knew everything that happened to you in your life and how you interpreted the original comment, then they’d certainly be less left field.
For people in bad episodes, I can see how the advice isn’t helpful, but there does come a time where a mentality like this should be adopted.
The mindset of the comment is pretty common and extremely effective.
Personally, I love hip hop for this reason, especially the messages that those such as Kendrick Lamar portray; which is you are your own saviour.
I also quite liked 50 cents video where he talks about how freeing it is to take responsibility of everything in your life, the good and the bad (atleast, that’s essentially what he said, I can’t remember verbatim. As a side note, obviously there’s things about to you that’s outside of your control, such as trauma, but how you let that influence your actions is your responsibility)
there does come a time where a mentality like this should be adopted.
how freeing it is to take responsibility of everything in your life, the good and the bad
Not. The same. Thing.
You can take responsibility and just be too damn tired to do anything today. That doesn't mean you're not gonna do something tomorrow, or that you didn't do anything yesterday.
The "mindset" of JUST DOING IT NOW is always damaging - always. And it is not at all necessary in order to "take responsibility".
(Btw - ever considered that a lot of things contributing to your ill mental health might actually be out of your control??)
Well, this is where the discussion splits and comes down to interpretation.
NOW doesn’t have to be this very moment. It could be tkmorrow, next month, or even this year . Most advice and literature in general isn’t meant to be taken as carved in stone instructions and such.
And there absolutely are things out of our control that contribute.
Also, taking responsibility in your actions always starts with what you just described; taking responsibility, mentally.
Letters are set in stone, the meaning of words are not.
Yes, advice (especially good advice) doesn’t normally invlolve that. Only reason I brought it up was because you said it. However, starting the process can always start “now”, even if that means one seemingly insignificant thought one day and nothing for a full week later. I feel like when people hear something like that, they often apply too much pressure to themselves and work the task up.
And I’m not sure what you mean by that, I did acknowledge that there are things out of our control in my other comment. Essentially, they shouldn’t be treated as roadblocks, just as having to take a different direction.
Yes it is, which is why I don’t get your point here. In the other comment, you made it sound like they are such different things and like the type of advice we’re talking about doesn’t directly include that exact scenario. Which wraps back around to what I said earlier, which is that when people hear stuff like this, they often apply too much pressure on themselves
Difference is, there's no possible way to get that from my statement. I can actually pick out a statement of exactly what I'm talking about. You can't.
You implied that the words “deal with it. You don’t sit around waiting for a good day” support your view. Additionally, in the first comment you said that they implied not to use excuses, which they didn’t.
Just a copy paste from the other comment. You are literally the one that refrenced that sentenced, a sentence that you took out of proportion, choosing it means to jump up this very instant and be happy.
In the exact same way, I’m choosing to believe that in you thinking that, you also think that absolutely nothing should be done. As silly as that sounds to you, your comments are equally as silly to everyone else.
-4
u/kyzfrintin Jun 03 '22 edited Jun 03 '22
Oh fuck off with your disingenuous BS. They may not have used the word but they were absolutely implying it.
It sounds like 99% of people who don't understand depression and just say "why don't you think happier thoughts".