The most helpful thing I’ve done for my mental health has been trying to treat myself like I’d treat a friend, to give myself the same benefit of the doubt, the same encouragement, the same pride in my accomplishments. Being nice to others comes naturally so... turn that inward.
I say this to patients all the time when they’re beating themselves up. “What would you say to a close friend who’s going through the same thing? I bet you’d support them and wouldn’t think less of them because of it.” Almost always helps. Being a friend to yourself is crucial.
Some things we routinely say/think about ourselves would be relationship-ending insults if we said them to someone close to us. It’d be unimaginable, but we freely berate and insult ourselves like we’re frustrated to be sharing a body. View yourself through your friends’ eyes.
I’m been feeling so great and fulfilled the last few weeks, I finally feel like I’m living my life now instead of waiting for it to start. Everything is exciting and new but also doable and my anxieties have all but disappeared. I’m so grateful for the pretty amazing life I have.
I’ve come out of depressive episodes before, this isn’t that. It’s something else and it feels like it’s here to stay because my self-concept is so different and I’m not going to forget how to think of myself in this way. My efforts at improving my mental health finally paid off.
I owe the change mostly to a romantic relationship that blossomed recently but that seems like more the catalyst than the sole reason I feel this way. And it’s true that the reason it’s blossoming now is because of how good I’d already started to feel, so I think it’s really me.
Political debates usually bore me now because most mainstream political issues are just clear-cut moral decisions about what and who we choose to value, so people on the other side of the issue tend either to be too uninformed or too morally bankrupt to be worth talking to.
I know people are still learning and that’s okay but they can hear about why it’s bad to kill people from someone with a little more patience.
I’m only 29 and I’ve already been around long enough to know that the debates around these issues don’t change, the talking points hardly change, which means that nobody engaged in those debates is ever actually learning new information. That’s a sign that I’m wasting my time.
My spirituality is mostly just the belief that we really won the cosmic lottery to get to experience consciousness in a universe filled with so many fascinating things and one way we express our appreciation for the world is by soaking it in as much as we can while we’re alive.
Pessimistic philosophies are so repugnant to me. Denigrating life is the opposite of what philosophy should be. There’s plenty to be happy about without making stuff up lol.
“What is the good life” presupposes that life can be good and I think that’s necessary because if it can’t then who gives a shit?
The Democrats need you to believe they’re feckless and incompetent because otherwise people would see they actually don’t want to do any of the shit they’re not doing for us. When they want to do something they do it.
When Democrat after Democrat wins and nothing changes they have to convince us that their ideals are just being hindered by other political forces so that we don’t hold them accountable for how they actually govern.
Like these are some of the most powerful people in the world. When they want something badly enough it usually happens.
If someone breaks into your house and tries to murder you, and then when you fight back has reason to fear for their life, they’re not then allowed to kill you in “self-defense”—their intention to kill you relinquishes their right to protect themselves at the cost of your life.
In other words, only one of two parties ever has the right to kill in self-defense, and that’s the first party to have legitimate reason to fear for their life if the other lives. The US military is a constant threat to the entire world.
You could go further and stipulate that the intention and justice behind the threat matter—you can’t kill and cannibalize the other person on the lifeboat just because their living denies you sustenance—but that doesn’t change US culpability because it’s an oppressive power.