The p isn’t silent; English phonology just doesn’t like the /pt/ sound. Likewise with the p in psychology. Or the p in pfizer.

Yeah it does sound like you think about this a lot and you’re really trying to make it work. I guess thinking about it isn’t gonna be the solution.

It sounds like your dopamine systems are all screwed up - and make no mistake, most of ours are nowdays. When we spend our days getting flooded with quick hits of pleasure, scrolling memes here, gaming after school, masturbating whenever we want, etc., it’s really hard to feel pleasure from the little things in life. But that’s the point of dopamine: it’s supposed to tell us when we’re doing the right thing and make us feel rewarded just from having our life in order. But the pleasure of caring for your home is not going to be as intense as the rush you get from leveling up or opening loot boxes or whatever.

That’s why we always see in these kinds of threads comments like “You wanna take away the ONE THING i enjoy in this miserable existence!” well shit sometimes that one thing you enjoy is making it so you can’t enjoy anything else.

Then the question becomes How do I recalibrate my dopamine systems? And that’s a complicated answer - if that’s even the issue here! But yeah, more thinking (or words from me) probably wont do the trick.

I respect your skepticism and I can see why you would mistrust the field broadly based on those figures in it. I just don’t think we need to throw out the whole field because of bad actors. Someone like Jordan Peterson is widely discredited in the field.

Treatment IS important. There are REAL problems with roots in our own psychology. It is not purely psychological, but always biopsychosocial. Disregarding the psychological is not the way to treat biopsychosocial issues. In fact, it is one of the only ones we have any real agency or control over. And the more we develop psychology, the more just our understanding becomes. Think about 50 years ago when almost everything was just called “schizophrenia” and we treated people by shocking the shit out of them. That’s where we’d still be if we didn’t do this kind of work.

When someone comes to me writing in pain from traumatic flashbacks, or wildly out of control of their lives due to mood swings, or losing grasp on what is real or not, or paralyzed with anxiety from the rat race you’re talking about, or they just plain cannot enjoy anything anymore and want to kill themselves… it is a low priority for me to discuss systemic issues with them. We can acknowledge them as a tool for alleviating shame and guilt surrounding mental disorders, and we can brainstorm ways to work around them, but expecting a suicidal client to begin marching in the streets? That is not going to be a sustainable means of making their immediate lives better. It is often more of a distraction than anything. Systemic justice and advocacy work is the kind of thing you do for no singular client in particular, and usually done in addition to the individual work.

But mental health treatment is how we help people find peace right here and now. It is how we empower people to find agency in their own lives, and help make them strong enough people to go out and support others in the longer term. It’s the people who do not treat their mental health that end up devoting themselves to bizarre causes. I mean, think about how many Q anon supporters have addictive or psychotic tendencies.

If you acknowledge that there are real mental disorders (with both internal and external etiology), and you acknowledge that treating the individual can be a positive step towards addressing systemic issues, then the question becomes what kind of treatment should we use? That’s where the scientific method comes in too. Yes there will always be problems and questions, but we do what we can with what we have.

I have seen people make real progress and really turn their lives around. That includes the masturbaters too lol, who do come through from time to time. I don’t care if there are swindlers out there - as long as there are real people who are really helping others. Helping people figure out what is truly important to them can help them find strength to endure the shit they cannot change. Helping people build tolerance for and even appreciation for pain can help them make decisions that give their lives greater meaning. It helps people free themselves from the grasp of addiction and start giving back to others. It helps people find reasons to live. It is doing an immediate, person-to-person good. I don’t know what kind of world you dream of, but I hope it is one with room for that kind of justice.

Thank you for your thoughts on all this!

I get how you can feel like that is a fault of the world, but don’t you see any agency in changing any of this? Or you just leave it at “Well I don’t like it so that’s that”

and you are eager to bemoan and cry persecution and not very eager to be understood. i cant believe you never mentioned being ace but only being trans. and yet it is our fault for not knowing this about you?

you never mentioned that you are ace and being ace has nothing to do with being trans!!!

yep im hitler. although i never accused you of mental illness, i dont believe in mental “illness”. i accused you of being delusional. that’s a very human condition, just a symptom not a diagnosis. as far as courtesy goes, you arent my pt and i dont owe you shit - and sometimes people need it gently, sometimes they need it bluntly. you are free to bring this up with the ethics board /j

you cant compartmentalize things like that. there aren’t “chores” vs “fun” and everything you have to do is pain and the fun is just the chemical rushes. you gotta learn to enjoy the little things, enjoy yourself while you’re doing your job or your chores, have some gratitude that you still live and breathe. you probably are gonna wanna get screened for depression

I mean that’s definitely just a checkout aisle self-help book, though.

Hayes is not a checkout aisle self-help book lol he pioneered multiple major branches of CBT. that’s like calling the Rolling Stones elevator music

I’d generally be pretty skeptical of anything a book like that says about how you have to live your life or what you should be doing or how you should be doing it

I admire the skepticism but you haven’t read it and clearly haven’t taken time to fully understand it. he isn’t making prescriptive claims. he’s speaking on behavioral science. “A happens, then B tends to happen. C happens, then D tends to happen. do what you will with this info.”

I don’t like the scientific paint that is painted onto psychology and psychotherapy, is I guess what I’m saying.

i understand the apprehension about psychological research but it is fundamentally a subjective science - psychology is what makes subjectivity possible, after all! and we humans clearly need treatment. if everyone listened to the ideas you planted in here, then what would we do? not try any treatments at all? not test our treatments? not seek evidence that our treatments are working and improve them? not share our findings?

the issue fundamentally is that you need to learn more about reading and interpreting scientific literature. you’re presenting a pseudo-intellectual skepticism which is admittedly a healthy protective mechanism from many things online, but is not going to be a useful attitude for all kinds of growth

im sorry im being a dick but this thread has funked up my barometer for crazy and i probably misinterpreted your level of it, be well

Bro you can’t just list basically every human ADL and say it’s a “rigid behavior”. That’s basically like saying “Oh, you claim to like variety? Then how come you spend every day ALIVE?” thats idiotic, arrogant, cynical

I just gently informed the other person that they were giving bad advice,

Do you really think they were giving bad advice? They presented something really well thought-out and with flippin citations! And I can say that Hayes is absolutely a credible expert in the field who has done amazing work in mental health and addiction.

You just don’t like the answer. Because you believe the answer is too hard for you.

And it’s an easy excuse to say you’re being persecuted for your identity, but really it is your attitude being criticized. Honestly it’s frustratingly transphobic of you to try and lump in maladaptive sexual responses with transness too. Do you see what kind of damage it can potentially do to portray a hypersexual trait as something essentially trans???

i just realized that discussing mindfulness with people suffering from persecutory delusions is literally my day job and i dunno why im reading work stuff on my day off wtf

but uhh yeah you made the right call here, delusions dont tend to respond well to logical confrontation

Mindfulness sounds like a lot of work when I’m already planning to get genital nullification surgery

Being present with yourself and learning to sit with your thoughts (mere transient, ephemeral nothingness) is probably not going to be more work than undergoing literal surgery.

And it’s pretty insulting to gender diversity for you to attribute to transphobia our revulsion at seeing your level of emotional intolerance.

Thank you… most of the responses in this thread are really immature, arrogant, entitled, and pretty fucking cynical.

I work with people with severe depression and also the occasional sex/porn addict. Sexuality can lead us to some healthy lifestyles and can function as a healthy coping skill but it’s also one that’s easy to overdo. There are folks out there who try to treat their depression by masturbating all day long. They’re desperate for any hit of pleasure, and they have quite literally milked that cow dry.

This post reminds me of the Reddit marijuana communities, that rubber-banded so far beyond reasonable moderated consumption of a helpful medicine, but refused to see how maladaptive their ritual had become. No one in this thread is questioning the original premise. “But it’s so good!” That’s the immature, arrogant part. And the entitled part is the attitude that any criticism of my precious coping tool is a threat to my hollow happiness, and the cynicism is that the only reason to criticize it is because of a corrupt society! Jesus fucking christ this thread broke my brain, you all broke my brain, we all suck.

really a person without an agenda trying to protect a community from a supposed malignant moderation, or is it someone with an agenda trying to call everyone to the left of centrism a Tankie?

this is a weird false dichotomy. if they have an agenda, why must it be “everyone left of center”?

I would love to read more about how supply and demand is bullshit, but that is NOT a credible source. it’s just some guy’s blog. I’m sure it’s an interesting read but it would be intellectually irresponsible for me to disbelieve a fundamental principle of economics based on a source like that

I’m not a fan of crack at all, but I’m glad it exists for those who do

so apparently from this thread i’m figuring out that if i just repeat myself, i am communicating well and i can blame you for not understanding. let’s give it a go: All speech is metaphor.

bummer now some random on lemmy who still doesn’t know me thinks im an old fuddy duddy, what will i do!

surely this feedback is from a credible source with my own best interests in mind, i will certainly take your rando advice to heart.

i’m so glad i plan my life choices around what strangers on social media think. this’ll work out great!

(do you get the point i’m trying to make? no matter how correct you are (or you think you are), you might as well be shouting at the wall. who the fuck would actually take your life advice to heart? you have no idea who we are; why would we change our behavior based on your opinion?)

I think on some level you know this but you just wanna preach. maybe you should have this conversation with someone special in your life. or maybe… you know, the positions we argue most fervently are often ones we’re trying to convince ourselves of. since we’re giving unsolicited life advice, maybe think on that one?

all speech is metaphor.

and it’s abundantly clear from this thread that so many of you are acting like self-righteous, arrogant jerks who do not understand that. “so it must be wrong, if someone as smart as ME doesn’t understand it, with my perfectly accurate speech!”