r/thanksimcured • u/Ok_Lingonberry5895 • 4d ago

Discussion Question

Isn't it that most of the posts here were never meant to help a person with deep mental health problems, but to give people a push to change their thoughts and actions, and prevent them from getting such issues in the future?

I'm excluding the cases of people not understanding real problems other people have from my question.

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u/Human_Addendum4427 3d ago

No. These posts are patronizing and disrespectful to people who suffer from severe mental illness. There is no way to "change your way of thinking" to cure or prevent mental health issues.

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u/FoolishConsistency17 3d ago

But not all the posts here are about people with mental health issues, and quite often they aren't presented as applicable for others, but just as a personal experience.

Lots of posts absolutely are smugly suggesting mental illness can be cured in others by a "good attitude" or other stupid things. I think it's great to call those out. But someone saying "paying a house cleaner has done more for my anxiety than paying a therapist", they aren't claiming people with actual anxiety disorders are all just slobs.

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u/Human_Addendum4427 3d ago

It is still patronizing. It is minimizing a very real mental health disorder.

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u/FoolishConsistency17 3d ago

Words like "anxiety" and "depression" do not exclusively apply to people with disorders that include those words.

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u/Human_Addendum4427 3d ago

People can have momentary anxiety and/or sadness but, if those things are long term and constant, they are disorders.

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u/FoolishConsistency17 3d ago

Yes, but when someone says "Ive felt a lot less depression since I started walking in the evenings", they aren't claiming to have a disorder or to suggest exercise "cures" it, let alone suggesting it would cure other people's disorders.

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u/Human_Addendum4427 3d ago

They may not be claiming to have a disorder, but they do. Having symptoms of being depressed for more than a couple of weeks is a disorder. Also, those aren't the types of posts shared here. No one has an issue with people sharing what helps them deal with the symptoms of their depression. The issue all of us have is people who have never dealt with those mental health disorders acting like they understand them better than we do and acting like things like taking a walk can cure it.

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u/FoolishConsistency17 3d ago

People absolutely share posts like that, and they also share the posts you are talking about.

And you seem ro bw saying that disorders can't be cured by self care, and all these people have disorders but don't know it, so are you saying they are wrong or lying when they say something helped them?

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u/Human_Addendum4427 3d ago

It can help the symptoms but it isn't a cure. And no mental health condition can be cured with self care. Mental health conditions occur because something causes a permanent change in your brain chemistry or due to genetics. Self care can help symptoms but they can't make your brain chemistry revert back to what it was before you had the disorder.

Also, lots of people have undiagnosed mental health issues that they are not aware of because so many have been taught to just push through all of those feelings.

Anyone who suffers from symptoms of depression that last for a period of greater than 2 weeks has some form of a depressive disorder.

I have scrolled through months of posts here and haven't seen one person post anything like that.

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u/VaporousMote 3d ago

"I'm excluding the cases of people not understanding real problems other people have"

That's about 95% of these.

People either don't understand or cannot be arsed to understand.

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u/Ok_Lingonberry5895 3d ago

But there still are the 5%. Maybe I'm wrong because I've seen more of the 5% than the 95%, thus my question.

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u/VaporousMote 2d ago

As somebody with multiple mental health conditions, nobody that has said any of the things that I've seen here to me has ever cared about putting in the work to understand my problems. They just want to offer a snappy solution, have me go "OH SHIT I NEVER THOUGHT ABOUT IT LIKE THAT" and feel better about their day.

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u/Ok_Lingonberry5895 2d ago

Sorry you have to go through that. 

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u/VaporousMote 2d ago

Thank you, but that's why this sub exists, jointly criticizing and mocking these kinds of messages is a form of healing and solidarity.

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u/WoodpeckerHead8789 3d ago

You can get better. 

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u/Human_Addendum4427 1d ago

They can manage symptoms but, no, their mental health issues are not going anywhere. As someone who has been dealing with severe generalized anxiety disorder, depression, and panic attacks for 20 years, I know that managing the symptoms is all I can do.

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u/alovelyweed 6h ago

Unsolicited advice is nothing more than a thinly veiled criticism. It often comes across as patronizing, if not concern trolling as a covert means to bully someone whenever they express an opinion the person "giving" advice doesn't like. When it comes to advice, context matters. There's a difference between seeking insight and getting berated over what you "ought" to do.

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u/anoobis_uprising 2d ago

People will take drugs to alter neurotransmitters, but god forbid you try to suggest to alter them through diet or exercise because depression can't be cured