#I see you're having mental health problems

[yavieriel]

This does not have to be a cry of desperation. You do not have to accept the 24/7 deluge of information from for-profit news agencies that want your attention. You do not have to accept despair as the only valid response to the state of the world.

Drastically restricting your news intake is one of the best things you can do for your mental health. Block out a specific amount of time that you are willing to spend on current news, say one hour a week, and mute, block, unsubscribe, etc. from any news sources that you would see passively. During that one hour a week, actively seek out news from trustworthy sources. The rest of the week, if you see something, block it.

During that hour of engagement with the news, when you see something upsetting ask yourself, can I do something concrete and finite that will meaningfully impact this situation?

Not “can I raise awareness of X” or “should I reblog content about X”. Those are not concrete or finite and 99% of the time they're really just shouting into the void pointless.

Concrete and finite means things like:

Donate to a reputable charity

Vote for a specific candidate

Volunteer with a reputable non-profit

Write to my government representatives

You may need to do some research to find out what your options are.

If you cannot find anything to do about a problem that fits these constraints, then put it in the mental box of "not my circus, not my man-eating tigers" and accept that this problem is not yours to solve.

If there is some act you could take that passes the test of 1) concrete action 2) finite 3) meaningful impact

Then ask “Do I have the resources to do this without causing myself harm?”

If yes: Do the thing. Put it on your to-do list, check it off, be at peace with yourself. You have done a Good Thing. Reward yourself in some small way.

If no: Do not harm yourself, physically, emotionally, or mentally. Be kind to yourself and acknowledge that right now you are not in a place to tackle this particular problem. That is not a failure on your part. It may be a limitation imposed by an illness and/or disability, or the fact that you are yourself a victim in some way, or simply the fact that you're not wealthy. None of these things are your fault.

Ask yourself if there are things that you can work on instead that would help you develop the resources you need to help others at some point in the future. Focus on improving your own well-being. Learn to put your own oxygen mask on first. Stop setting yourself on fire to keep others warm. Talk to a therapist about creating healthy boundaries.

Whatever choices you make, let go of the fear, the anxiety, the despair, the panic.

Your negative feelings are not improving anyone else's life. Your suffering in and of itself is not benefiting anyone through some metaphysical balance sheet of suffering. Your unhappiness is not changing the world for the better. All it is doing is keeping you paralyzed and exhausted so that you cannot do anything positive.

The only people benefiting from your despair are the ones who want you beaten down and hopeless. Don't let them control you.

And for the other 167 hours a week, ignore the news. Do the things on your to-do list, take care of your home, spend time with your loved ones, work on your hobbies. Plant that pear tree and watch the pears ripen. Get to know a local sheep farmer and go watch the sheep and learn to card and spin their wool. Talk to your neighbors. Be kind.

[popcornoncemore]

Collins going to Stanley and being like, "I'm really struggling" and then Stanley just responding with, "No you're not. Just show up at this time and place and I'll give you more PTSD"

[anaalnathrakhs]

love this part of my life where the things that are difficult but challenging and good for me are things i can stop and skip and halfass, but the things that are difficult and painful and pointless are the things i have to live with no matter what

[pinbones]

Thinking about when i studied counselling at uni and they straight up told us that cbt has negative outcomes for many people and shouldn't become a standard for care, all talking therapies seem to have the same efficacy as each other, many psychologists think therapy is ineffective altogether, serotonin and dopamine don't work like that we just act like they do because pills that prevent their reuptake help people*, all diagnoses are a socially created (and enforced) map that shifts and changes with time and culture, and any one person could have been diagnosed and treated differently by myriad different doctors based on luck and social factors

Shame its practitioners don't think so

[hrnngsoup]

Oh maaan. Oh man this is anti-honey vegan levels of ignorant. Look yeah it's gonna be unpopular opinions, and I am NOT saying there are no abusive-towards-dogs cops out there, but no, k9 forces are not generally abusive.

Here's some facts:

K9 units serve much more jobs than just take-downs. Ever had a recently missing kid? A good police force will call on a k9 unit, which you can give them a piece of fabric or toy to sniff, and then that good doggo will track that kid down. Many, MANY children, seniors, and other people who are lost with mental disabilities have been sucessfully found this way.

Another job they do? Drug sniffing. And yes, I know there have been nasty rumours about cops just training a dog to Mark on a person's bag on command, but besides the trash cops that exist, the drug sniffing training is ACTUALLY very specific and fun for the dogs. I've seen a lot of people over at twitter say they are good at fact checking, feel free to fact check what I just said with unbiased sources.

Most K9's are not just murked when they are retired. This was another rumour. A lot of them are retire with their owners, who form deep personal bonds with them, or are adopted out, in the case of the officer not being able to take care of them... like when the officer has died. The only exceptions are when k9's unfortunately develop the common health problems that german shepherds as a breed are privy to, and their quality of life massively decreases.

K9's are not just "stored" at a precinct in crates or something. They go home with their officers most of the time with only a few job-related exceptions.

It's not actually true that every person who gets taken down by a canine are maimed. Most of the time, it's "hold/release", which still needs stitches, but not even near a maim. but I guess these very common events aren't really covered in media much because they are less sensational....

Calling k9 units on anyone who is not actively fleeing a crime and/or armed is not a thing that happens often. That's a huge waste of money, time, and what, do you think they start off arrests with a k9 unit? No! (Exceptions: when someone has felonies on their record, has been known to be aggressive in past arrests/chases, or have commited grand theft auto)

While this one is only anecdotal, I have never with my own two eyes seen a unit abuse their dog. I have seen many of them baby talk the shit out of their doggos or give them probably too many treats, and well, if you want to see that, I recommend police cam vids. One of my relatives which was a k9 unit absolutely adored her k9, Duke, and she had him for many years after they retired- and Duke was happy and healthy until he passed naturally. A lot of people don't realize that if a k9 unit abused or hurt their dogs, and the other cops saw.... they would be considered the shit under their shoe for the whole precinct.

Now let's talk about why they're necessary in a healthy police force

Ever hear of the terms meth heads, crackheads, etc? These groups of people, if they decide to do crime, are INCREDIBLY dangerous. Drugs of a certain hardcore variety LITERALLY change your brain composition. These are the kind of people that can, and will, run out naked with two steak knives and try to stab anyone around them "because they looked at me funny"... if they are even capable of reason and clear speech in a drug-induced rage. Many do not even feel pain at this stage. There are two ways to stop someone in this state. Gunfire. Or a k9 unit. The good thing about using a k9 is that they are fast, much faster than humans- and that helps reduce the amount of injuries and deaths that occur when something goes wrong.

Humans are instinctually wired to be afraid of dogs. A lot of violence from... really, anyone, is severely diminished when even the threat of a k9 unit being called happens, and when you're facing someone who's weilding a machete, that fricking means something.

Look. I can understand being incensed at anyone who does treat their dogs badly. I am too. But you have to inform yourself on what the facts are, and everything I have said is factual unless someone can prove me wrong which, okay, then i will retract what someone proved me wrong about.

Banning a very important, very life-saving part of a healthy police force is a BAD idea. Note i said healthy police force... there are a lot of UNHEALTHY, CORRUPT police forces that needs from the bottom up reform.

All banning k9 units will do is increase crime and the collateral damage from it, make us lose non-take down services they provide which is VERY important to missing persons cases... and probably increase the amount of german shepherds put down in shelters, ultimately doing much more harm than good.

All k9 dogs are abused hands down if you post any pro k9 stuff on my dash you’re unfollowed I don’t care if we’ve been mutuals for years, you can claim to be anti-cop or a leftist or whatever but if you post k9 dogs with like “a good doggo! A good boy!” fuck off, if I lose followers over this then good riddance

[tjerra14]

sometimes I really wish there was a mandatory emotional support and grief counselling training course at uni the way that "pour distilled coffee over some sugary pills and prescibe those to a fictional cow" galenics session was mandatory

[butnobodycame627]

why didn't peridot stay disabled… it would've added to their whole message of being different being okay and diversity and…. sigh….

[moki-dokie]

also i think this just perfectly highlights this sort of specific mentality we see so often when discussing blockades people face in life - but you see it most around discussions about disability.

"Well *I* can do it" and "Just get ___" are two common rhetorics that get lobbed at you all the time.

Like, for one thing we are not talking about individual cases here, but thousands to millions. That you can find a solution yourself does not automatically mean it's a solution for the millions we're talking about. If it was, there wouldn't be a problem to begin with.

And lets be honest, if you're making a meal with TEN servings for $15 or under, it is not going to be a fully nutritional meal. Basically the only meals that can be made at that price are going to be staple grains or beans and MAYBE if you are very lucky, a very small amount of very cheap and low-quality meat. Sure, that's fine occasionally - it isn't detrimentally unhealthy - but it isn't the kind of meal you should be eating every single day for every single meal. Not only does your body require more nutrients than that, but you'll very quickly find how much worse bad, bland food can make your depression and a shitty situation worse.

There was a time when you could make alllll sorts of meals for $15 or less. Pretty healthy meals too! Ones that could last you a few days, even. But that was at a time when cans of tuna were still like 30c and less, when canned veg was like 20c, when eggs were not even a whole dollar for a dozen. i'm very fortunate that where i live is like cattle paradise and thus we have incredibly low-cost beef compared to the rest of the country, but even still it's hard to find your basic chuck roast under $10 now. fucking chicken breasts are hard to find for under $10. CHICKEN!!

and, let us not forget that minimum wage has still not yet raised since 2009. yet our jobs have grown exponentially harder and more stressful, our hours longer, commute times worse, and our general health is in the shitter bc nobody can afford having just a routine primary care physician anymore.

Yet the mentality is still somehow stuck in this early 00s era. That lifestyle is not sustainable anymore. Hasn't been for a long time.

And as for "just get ___" okay, so tell me how? Is someone without an appliance to cook with meant to just starve themselves for a week to save in order to buy said appliance? yes, you would save money if you could get a thing to cook with, but in the meantime you still have to eat. and yet again that doesn't address any other blockade that there may well be. so maybe they get like, a toasteroven and a hot plate. awesome. now what good is that if they come in from a 10 hour shift at 9pm and have only enough time to shower before needing to get to bed for the next day's shift? how does having that appliance help them if they can't physically operate it? how would having a hot plate save any money if their dietary needs are far too costly from a grocer? If they have no place to store cold ingredients?

It isn't about individual issues. It isn't just ONE thing that has caused this big stupid problem. solve one thing and there's seven more problems still blocking the ultimate solution. It's a whole fucking mess of issues that continue to get worse and worse as capitalism continues to suck up more of our lives.

and you know what, i'll be the first one to admit that SOMETIMES, yes, i am just fucking lazy. But most times, I'm faced with like five different blockades and some of them aren't even shit I listed - like sharing a house with three people who work very different shifts and when *I* have time to use the kitchen, I run the risk of waking someone else up. Even if nothing else stood in my way, I only have the ability to cook without disturbing someone 1 day a week. i can only imagine what a nightmare it must be for folks with 4 and 5 housemates on different schedules.

there's been a bit of a Hot Topic going around bsky (and twt too i guess) about why my age group (particularly in the US) doesn't cook at home much anymore

and there's been a whole lot of takes ranging from dogshit to good and intelligent to total confusion from folks in other countries. neat stuff right. decided to throw my 2 cents in from my own perspective as part of the demographic.

the tldr of it being: there are *several* factors that make it not worth it nor cost efficient anymore where it once was. obviously that isn't gonna be the case for everyone, but it is the case for an overwhelming majority, me included. and this isn't even including, you know, a whole population of disabled people who are physically unable to cook for themselves but I sort of figured that was a given. but maybe not, considering...

then this absolute genius comes in

thank you buddy for having no reading comprehension and missing quite literally every single point i made that it isn't strictly about the dollar amount of the meal itself. like. okay??? good for you i guess.

sure, there will be some meals where that is very true. I could make a bigass pot of ham and beans that'll last me a whole week for about $10. hence why i added there will always be some meals cheaper to make at home. but that completely disregards every. other. point.

it is not, and has never been, about the direct cost of the meal itself. that's just one of a handful of reasons that factor into the whole conversation. there are going to be times that eating out will be more expensive price-wise, but when it checks off like 5 different boxes i couldn't fulfill myself for whatever reason, that price balances out. and we really are in an age where we're having to negotiate the worth of every action we take and every minute we spend on something. i don't know why thats such a hard concept for people to grasp.

legit nobody is arguing it *should* be this way. it shouldn't. we all recognize this. in the ideal world it would be both worth it and affordable to make every meal at home and leave eating out for special occasions, as was the case when i was growing up. and i totally get it that our parents, many of whom raised us by their lonesome, managed to do it fine so in theory we should be able to as well. sometimes, yeah, it really is a matter of sucking it up and doing it no matter how exhausted you might be. that's true for all facets of life tbh. but it shouldn't be that way all the time every time.

and, i don't know about the rest of you, but for us? it really was a whole fucking To Do to clip coupons and plan Shopping Day. I'd spend a couple hours clipping from a few different newspapers and the mail fliers we collected. then we organized them by store. then mom would plan out which stores we would go to for which items,the route we'd take since sometimes it meant going outside of town, the timeframe for everything since it was typically an all-day event. like, a whole day of planning and a whole day of executing JUST to grocery shop, and that was back in the 90s/00s. Inconvenient, yes, but still actually worth the trouble. couponing saved SO much money back then, especially if you knew the stores that would double them. coupons like those don't exist anymore. period. now the ones that do are like, pennies off or bogo deals and otherwise it's app this and app that for any sort of savings - which even then might only be like a meager 10% off the purchase. in no way is it worth my time and effort today to do the same thing we did when i was young.

anyway. so yeah. for a hell of a lot of us, sometimes going out to eat or ordering in is in fact the most worthwhile way, and sometimes even the most cost efficient way, to feed ourselves anymore.

[uncanny-tranny]

If this is too personal a question I fully understand (if so: sorry and I hope you have a great day!), but I was just curious:

Why were you using 1/3 of a bottle of detergent for your clothes? was it a ocd compulsion situation/anxiety thing or something else entirely?

thank you for reading, and please do know that you truly bring a lot of good to this world! <3

No clue if it was OCD, an otherwise compulsion, or just a quirk, but it definitely wasn't helpful that in that instance, I was shut down entirely.

Which is why it's so important to actually listen to patients, you know? Like, not only was I not listened to, but if this were a serious issue (it actually has become a larger issue now that I'm an adult with my own income, admittedly), it wouldn't have be addressed at all. There are so many small ways that therapists, psychiatrists, authority figures, whomever, really, just... ignore problems because they're convinced that they're just infallible and the person they're addressing is, like, inherently beneath them.

[lith-myathar]

I genuinely grew up believing that society was going to collapse and that we would all be living in mad max wasteland future by now and like. Yes all of us grew up feeling like we didn't have a future but my upbringing actively told me over and over that The End was coming soon. It's literally doomsday cult shit, but instead of revelations I got peak oil and climate change. And like at the very least those things are real, but the world has not ended, society has not collapsed, and that narrative running through my entire childhood fucked me up bad and left me completely unprepared to function. Like why make any plans? Why have dreams? Why strive for anything in the society we have now when we knew this was coming? But at the same time my parents weren't DOING anything about it. We weren't preppers, we weren't moving to another country, we were just staying put and waiting and worrying, there was always an immediate reason we couldn't act but a long term view of the world that said disaster was coming soon. And at the same time extreme pressure to achieve, because there was this sense that time was running out, money was running out, that I would only ever be safe if I was able to get good grades and degrees and a career that paid well.

I have no point to this post exactly except that I'm still just sort of astounded that that's how I grew up

[the-moogle-of-your-nightmares]

[alarming health stuff, internalized ableism cw]

no, moogle, it is not in fact fishing for sympathy or making excuses for dropping the ball on things or whatever to talk about it when your health issues continue to get worse. you are not scaring people for attention when you post on your personal blog about the fact that you aren't sure yet whether your current condition might be 'dangerous but recoverable' or 'irreversible, incurable, and usually fatal.' stop that.

[sol-draws-sometimes]

People love saying they support mental health until cluster B enters the picture. (Honestly, alot of people don't even properly understand the "mainstream" ones like depression. People just say the support it without actually supporting it. )

I think people would armchair diagnose bad people with cluster B disorders much less if psychiatric disorders hadn't all been given names by ableists who of course picked the traits most unberarable to "sane" people to name them rather than, you know, the ways it affects the people that have them. It's like, when doctors are all "this disorder gives you extremely low self esteem. and it's called the Selfish Fucking Asshole Disorder" or "this disorder makes you want to die so bad. and it's called the Hysteric Bitch Disorder" or "this disorder disconnects you from your peers. and it's called the Insane Evil Cunt Disorder" and so on and so forth, so of course you have people going "oh, this person is a selfish fucking asshole, they MUST have Selfish Fucking Asshole Disorder! this further proves that all people with this disorder are like that in the first place!" Do You See It

[lastoneout]

Actually am still kinda pissed that my fiancé's psychatrist evaluated him for anxiety and said he didn't have it but then was like "in the future I'd like to see you make enough progress with your anxiety that you feel comfortable taking your mask(N95 not neurodivergent mask) off" and didn't seem to care when he explained that his fiancé(me) has several severe chronic illnesses and immune issues so we both do what we can to ensure I don't get sick with any illness, not just covid. Like does he have anxiety or not?? You can't have it both ways buddy!! And like it or not protecting a vulnerable person from getting sick is logical, YOU'RE the one being irrational here.

Like this is why I get pissed about mask(N95) stuff, people have legit fallen into some kind of thought-terminating cliché about covid and all other contagious diseases not being a problem anymore to the point that they think even sick people and their loved ones taking reasonable precautions to protect their health is a sign of anxiety and paranoia. I truly do not get it. Like it's one thing if you personally don't want to wear a mask(N95) but at least leave people who do alone, but legit acting like people like me are insane for doing something that makes perfect sense is turning me into the Joker. It doesn't even work to say "oh I have asthma and allergies and the air quality is bad today" or "I'm having an important surgery soon and need to make sure I don't get sick" like they think wearing a mask(N95) AT ALL in any circumstance for any reason means you've legit lost your mind.

I genuinely feel like the government suddenly started hiding all the national car crash statistics and insisted in tons of press conferences that crashing your car is actually perfectly fine and not a big deal at all and wearing a seatbelt isn't something healthy people need to worry about, so now everyone thinks it's silly to wear one and every time I do I have to deal with people implying or outright stating that I'm legitimately mentally ill and need an intervention.

[arapa1ma]

uhh its in the tags but like vent tw?? kinda (especially the tags) sorry this is also like a bit long

does anybody else just like. not talk to people not because you don't enjoy talking to people in fact you love talking to people so much & wish you could do it more but because you feel like you have nothing interesting to say & the other person is probably going to think you're cringe & they won't want to be your friend anymore & also they don't care about a single word that comes out of your mouth even though said person has never done anything to show that they would react in this way or is it just me ahaha

[jingerpi]

i know it sounds made up but studying Marxism will save you. like, understanding how and why society works the way it does and being able to have the knowledge that it wasn't always like this and one day this too will be surpassed will do wonders for your mental health. not to mention the tools for analysis and understanding can give you insight into yourself, because it does also do that, it's just that the knowledge and understanding that comes from studying socioeconomics derived from class struggle (rather than bourgeois intellectualism) recontextualizes so many of our issues and struggles that things no longer feel like they're explicitly you're fault nor do they stretch beyond our imagination infinitely into the past and beyond our futures. If you feel hopeless or confused, reading theory can genuinely help. it will solidify your understanding of the world and how to move forward, rather than simply pointing out all the problems (as many social media posts tend to) the answers are in theory.

the crazy thing is it's not just beneficial to our mental health but to our external, physical health too. learning these things can uplift the Proletariat as a class and start to bring us closer to those futures you'll become able to see. theory is a map to a better future, not only is it relieving to see there is one out there, we can actually follow it, and that's the best part.

[redjennies]

honestly it's heartbreaking to see more and more people dismiss all the Palestinian GFMs on Tumblr as scams, no matter how many people are working tirelessly to make sure real people get direct aid. like literally nobody is denying there is a scambot problem. people are trying to debunk the scambots, but people will still be like "oh i didn't say you shouldn't donate to Palestine. I just said I block and report literally everything I get without looking at it anymore and outright said multiple times that you really can't trust the vetters either." and then when they get called on this because it is frankly a bad take, they get patted on the back by the fucking Tumblr hug circle of utterly spineless uwu white liberals who honestly just didn't want to have to feel a negative emotion about themselves like "oh you're so brave for saying this. having to think about bad things happening to other people was practically an assault on my mental health. thank you for validating that I'm the real victim here."