mh - (not now), asking for help
can anyone help us know what to do when like... you get in that thought pattern where you just can't stop thinking about every mistake you've ever made and feeling terrible for it?
-F
re: mh - (not now), asking for help
@lioness that's kind of what we try to do already, but it feels like not a healthy coping mechanism?
-F
re: mh - (not now), asking for help
@Felthry 1st part definitely seems unhealthy, yeah.
2nd part is like… there's a ladder from
* burying bad stuff
* pretending bad stuff doesn't exist
* keeping bad stuff separate from yourself
* aware of bad stuff, but not standing in its path / letting it pass you by
* there's bad stuff sometimes and it can be a part of you and that's okay
search term might be "vipassana meditation"
re: mh - (not now), asking for help
@Felthry there's this thing we've done sometimes, which is compose positive counter statements to repeat to ourselves?
not untruths, true affirmations and reframings
some ones we used a while ago on a bad day:
- I'm allowed to be majorly upset about something small.
- I deserve patience from myself with not being able to get over my upset quickly.
- I'm allowed to stim to music
- I can wish I got more sleep. I don't have to prove that I deserve to want this.
re: mh - (not now), asking for help
@packbat mm... in our case this is like... remembering and fixating on memory of things from decades ago--seemingly the only things we can remember from that long ago at all
-F
pulling from a thing from our past re: mh - (not now), asking for help
@Felthry we were a huge dick in rehearsals for "Trial By Jury" once, years and years ago, and we got called on that, and listened to being called on that, and spent a lot of time figuring out better ways to be
it stuck in our memory because we don't want to be the kind of person that's an asshole to strangers for no good reason
and we're not - we've been working very hard not to be
...idk if something there resonates
- 🎒
thinking out loud re: mh - (not now), asking for help
@Felthry like, I think a lot of intrusive thoughts relate to things that are important to us - our brain is like "you could throw your phone into that storm drain and never get it back again" because /we don't want that to happen/ ... so we explicitly notice the possibility and take measures to avoid it, and it doesn't, and it soothes the thought
idk
idk if that's useful, that's ... stuff we do
- 🎒
re: pulling from a thing from our past re: mh - (not now), asking for help
@packbat for us, most of the things we get stuck on are things that were more *embarrassing* than actually bad
if we have done anything actually bad, we don't remember it, but given that we remember very strongly even minorly embarrassing things i think we maybe would?
-F
re: pulling from a thing from our past re: mh - (not now), asking for help
@packbat which i think makes it worse; if we did something bad, we can apologize for it and have some closure that way, but you can't really apologize for an embarrassing thing
-F
re: pulling from a thing from our past re: mh - (not now), asking for help
@Felthry *nods*
it's past, and y'all don't want it to happen again, and it sucks it ever did
I'm sorry, I don't know what would be the best strategy, but those are things that are true at least
- 🎒
re: mh - (not now), asking for help
@Felthry I don't know anything that works all the time, but I do know a few things that sometimes help.
The best I know is to have someone else spot what's happening and pull you back. Hard to set up but worth it.
You can dissociate, imagine that this is something that happened to someone else that you just heard about.
You can deliberately try to focus on a recent triumph instead.
The most important thing to know is that it's a pattern of distorted thinking, with all the associated implications.
re: mh - (not now), asking for help
@terrana Thank you, I don't think we're in a position that we can do the first one of those but maybe the others will help next time this happens
-F
re: mh - (not now), asking for help
@Felthry Even if you could, that hypothetical person couldn't always be there. It's powerful but unreliable.
mh - (not now), asking for help
@Felthry it's kind of running away from the thing, but if I can find a book or a game or something that takes enough just cognitive effort to keep me distracted, that works sometimes
besides that… practice? at letting the thoughts happen without getting involved in them (besides maybe acknowledging they exist) & letting them go just as they came. like if you can go +1 meta level to "I am thinking unpleasant thoughts" vs thinking about the bad stuff directly.