If feeling overwhelmed, do the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding method.
Find and make note of:
- 5 things you see
- 4 things you touch
- 3 things you hear
- 2 things you can smell
- 1 thing you can taste/recall tasting
And the idea with this is to stop dwelling on your negative spiral, and to focus on immediate surroundings.
Therapist also said to feel free to mix and match the sense with the number. For example, I don’t have a good sense of smell, so I do 2 things I can taste/remember tasting, and 1 thing I can smell.
I’m sorry OP, the hour has ended. Try not to -you know- yourself till next session. Have a nice weekend
I have a few but my absolute favorite was when he said " Imagine there’s a woman, maybe she is homeless or on drugs, and she shouts at you as you walk by across the street. She says you look like a cockroach. What would you do? " “Probably laugh” “Exactly, think of your parent as that woman. They have no effect on your life but noise” I’m paraphrasing but I liked the idea of my negative thoughts ingrained by generations of trauma being like a random shouting on the street.
You are a hairless ape whos been plucked out of the grassy plains of Africa and put in an artificially lit world where each day contains more hostile stimulation than you would normally process in a month. Your brain isn’t built to handle the information overload that social media, commuting, taxes, work, news, rent inspections and basic modern life contains. You are right to feel a constant sense of fight or flight at this bizzare and hostile alien world.
Just start doing things.
Agree. Could be anything. Just do something. We underestimate our mind body connection. It’s probably more likely that we developed complicated thought ability by doing more and more complicated physical activity than the other way around.
Try and take time to soothe your inner child. Eat a bowl of Mac and cheese, try to go surfing, do dumb shit kids do. You know. Try it. Also learn to love yourself. Fucking good luckg, man that one… like how the fuck could that ever happen.
I think everyone’s psychology is so different that people out there wonder “how could you not like yourself, it’s you” and meanwhile me I can never see that happening, ever.
Start with one part. Work your way to two eventually.
I like my belly button, it’s satisfyingly deep.
What issues are you dealing with (if you feel like sharing)? I can speak from my experience being in therapy for AuADHD, anxiety, depression, childhood traumas, and a few other things.
ETA: Some generic things from my therapist that will help most people:
- Drink enough water. This alone can have a significant impact.
- Try to do regular physical activity that you enjoy, if possible. Even if you don’t feel like it.
- Check your posture. If you find yourself hunching, try fixing that.
- Do things that you know that you enjoy when you are not depressed, when you are depressed. Our brains are weird and “fake it 'til you make it” kinda works - by doing non-depressive things, you can trick your brain into being happier.
- Try to engage socially, if you find yourself to be a hermit. Our brains are evolved to be social animals and isolation can be damaging.
- If you are having trouble with the state of the world and things that you do not have control over, try engaging in things that you do have control over. This can be as simple as deep cleaning your sink or fixing a squeeky hinge. The amount of frustration caused by inability to impact important global happening is problematic for maintaining good mental health - our brains evolved in environments where life-threatening problems had immediate solutions but humans have built societies that don’t work that way.
Important items
- Be patient and kind to yourself. Especially your past self. We all did cringy things when young with brains not fully-developed and/or without the information that one has currently. If you have trouble doing so, try mentally taking a step back and pretending that you are dealing with a close friend who you care about deeply. Would you judge them and make them feel bad about their past mistakes? I hope not.
- Concern and depression about the world at large is a very valid way to feel. It’s important, especially for those of us with mental health challenges, to take the airplane safety spiel “put your own mask on first before helping others” approach to rendering aid to others. If you are in or near crisis, you are not in a place to help others and need to focus on getting to stable ground yourself first. Needing to do this isn’t slacking off or “not doing your part”. Not everyone is equipped to be out marching all the time (some are not equipped for this at all). If someone offers unhelpful criticism of inability to engage physically due to mental or physical health, they are best ignored rather than responded to.
Any advice on how to do work like other people? I am quick to grab my phone everytime I get even slightly stressed or don’t immediately know the answer to a problem.
And it takes a lot of time for me to do something, it takes other very little (at least compared to me). Any advice on that?
The issue here is that you’re doing everything you can to avoid negative emotions, like picking up your phone to distract yourself at the first sign of anxiety.
Often some of the biggest things which hold us back in life come from avoiding discomfort. The most ‘motivated’ people you know aren’t doing all these things because it’s easy, they do them despite the difficulty and discomfort.
The best thing you can do for yourself is learn how to sit with discomfort and act on what you want to do despite it. It’s not easy, but it’ll change a lot for you.
Maybe this is an event of what happens if I don’t know? I understand that this wouldn’t be something you could cold turkey, but what I’m saying is what if I’m that scenario you start questioning “do I need to know?”. When you’re in a comfortable mind space, think about what you would have done ~15 years ago when there was no access to an unlimited amount of data?
I’m definitely not a therapist so maybe this isn’t helpful at all but worth a shot.
Have you been tested for ADHD?
Yup 👍, none of the meds available in my country worked.
I’ve been rawdogging ever since.
Thank you for these
So many of these are so good, too many people don’t realize you can use your body to essentially “hack” your brain
Little known fact the brain is in fact part of the body.
ddg is my therapist
Go live your life. Make some mistakes worth talking about then come back.
Still working on it. Turns out all the stuff I was so scared to do with my life wasn’t so dangerous after all.
Right, kick ass. Well, don’t want to sound like a dick or nothin’, but, ah… it says on your chart that you’re fucked up.
May be kinda specific (and poorly worded), but basically she said that negative feelings come from places where my mental image of the world conflicts with objective reality. This was mostly related to my relationship with my father, as i was looking up to him and seeking his approval, while ignoring the fact that neither he should be a role model or i can be a person whom he would accept. I found this advice applicable to many other situations, but unfortunately i mostly use it after the fact — i get disappointed or angry about something and then i ask myself “Ok, but what i imagined things would be? What else am i wrong about?”
This sounds a lot like the Second Noble Truth in Buddhism. “Suffering is caused by desire”, meaning that there is a disconnect between what you wish were so, and what is actually so.
My father once said don’t stick your dick in crazy.
It’s one of the more true and less offensive things he told me.
Mine explained my emotional dysregulation patterns and helped me identify the triggers and how to address them.
By far, the most useful technique they shared with me was the TIPP skills technique, which helps me come down when I am having strong emotional reactions as a trauma response or from anxiety. Essentially:
- temperature - use cold temp to lower heart rate, warm to raise it
- intense exercise - helps manage overwhelming energy levels
- paced breathing - I’m not big on breathing but it works for some
- paired muscle relaxation - my favourite as it also interrupts thought patterns
Hope you’re able to access help though, obviously it is much better when personalized and you also get the safe space to release your fears and anxieties
you also get the safe space to release your fears and anxieties
I literally feel anxious reading this sentence. Gah.
I shouldn’t be paranoid about him double billing me/my insurance.
Not all therapists are good ones.
that negative feelings come from places where my mental image of the world conflicts with objective reality.
Used to work in the backend of insurance.
It’s ‘possible’ to double bill for a good reason, but it’s an outlier of a situation.
If you have a shitty insurance company, they’ll stretch money in bad times by only paying places out after multiple requests. They also get trained that if an insurance company drags their feet, the second time they’re billed, they get paid, so they always do it.
Any insurance company worth its salt will catch double billing.
Now, all that said, a LOT of providers double bill and get paid multiple times.
It’s usually assholes all-the-way down.
“Some people can’t be fixed. Just try not to be yourself when your decisions affect other people so you minimize the harm you cause them. When you have an instinct to do or say something, the correct action is probably the exact opposite.”
Apparently they hate trying to treat people with BPD (Edit: Borderline personality disorder, not bi-polar) because it’s damned near impossible and the options available are questionably effective at best.
its true. as a person with cptsd (bpd) ive mainly had to resort to giving myself the therapy i need through reading, being mindful every moment of the day (i legit have conversations with myself in real time to decide-what i want to say- vs the impact it will have), and psychiatric medication. The real difficult thing is getting the said person with BPD to WANT to change, and i mean with a desperate fervor, otherwise therapy is basically a silly talk session for me where i jab at the therapist to make them say what i want them to say.
too add an analogy to this, its like building a car with Kinex building sticks, painting it over and making it look like a normal vehicle but driving it is a whole different issue. you cant change the structure under the paint, but you can slowly reinforce every bit of it until its ready to drive on the freeway.
I never made the “jab at the therapist” connection before but you’re right. A lot of the time it was like one of those dolls that talk when you pull the string and I was just pulling the string as many different ways as possible to see how many phrases it had.
Anyway, I appreciate the insight. It’s rare to even realize there’s a…problem/difference for us so hearing someone else’s voice is very valuable.
BPD is becoming increasingly more treatable and less therapists have the opinion that you stated here. It’s just that CBT, the traditionally used approach, is not the most effective solution. It’s DBT that is effective for BPD. As the commenter below you said, mindfulness has been great for them, and that’s a core part of BPD. I don’t have BPD but my diagnosis includes “traits of BPD” on my chart and I thought therapy didn’t work for me until I went to a specifically DBT-focused skills group.
