Knowing tons of others feel the same is not a way to feel better, it's just more evidence that there's something terribly wrong with our culture and how we're raised to never feel our best is good enough 😵💫
I love this. I think "unaware" medical practitioners too quickly diagnose "depression" for people during these difficult times and then they prescribe (omg) heavy duty meds which have disturbing effects. My PCP did so recently. I advocated for myself and said no... no meds... I changed my diet, walked more, socialized more... resiliency. I think practitioners are too stressed these days (and probably self-medicating with who knows what). Dr. N... thank you. I listened to this twice right now!
Hey great comment! I went ahead and accepted the diagnosis so that I could at least get talk therapy. I'm definitely doing a lot along the lines that you are, but certain things are getting a little harder for me to cope with these days. Congratulations on all you have accomplished.
I did the same - stopped all the meds and the meds to combat the side effects of the meds 🙄 They just keep pushing that crap down your throat because it's revenue I took control of my own life and mind
Yeah, relying entirely on medical intervention can miss the whole impact of lifestyle. Even if one does benefit from medication, poor diet, low exercise, poor sleep, and loneliness, are often the culprits behind a lot of "depression." Anxiety, too. We didn't evolve to live the way we do today. Fast food, processed food, online social connection, sedentary living and lack of healthy physical stress... These are bad for us. Take care of those things and then see if a medication is necessary.
I did the same, went to doctor he listened to me for 5 mins and he wrote down a anti depressant that I needed to take for a year before I stop. Just before this event I considered my self a healthy guy with resilience and I was shocked when doctor wrote that down and I started to think what is really going on.. to be honest i was even more worried and to make thing worse he did mention that my condition will get worse before it gets better. Toughest time of my life. I took the med for 3 days and started to get the panic attacks feeling.. and then I stopped the meds. I knew from experience that when I go to GYM do a workout I instantly feel better so I started doing that along with hang around with postive people with in, a week my situation was 50% better and today after 3-4 months I'm out of that non sense of self doubt and I'm same like before. Distress is not depression - that's what I have learnt. I believe in this Workout 30 mins a day few days a week and these things won't come near.
This a helpful video for me when I scaffold this knowledge with my existing framework of eustress vs distress. That negative stresses can produce resilience when there are breaks and we take time to process the stress. This is an example of eustress. Distress is prolonged. A “what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger” attitude often mitigates how we perceive stress, but like every axiom of philosophy, it will break down when taken to the extreme. The most resilient axiom I’ve found is “everything in moderation”. (including applying everything in moderation).
I wish she was a therapist or just a specialist I could see. I need to build more resilience, less anxiety and believe I can change my brain for the better.
Superficial same strategies that don't do a great deal to stress. Learn to examine your life, your current reality and do some real hard core contemplation using self-inquiry. Your maladaptive behaviour that generates maladaptive stress will be revealed and you can change yourself. You will become adaptive and hold the potential for adaptive stress.
It s not the what if, but the i am or i feel. Anxiety is such a killer. I have severe insomnia bc of it. But no amount of breathing or gratitude will cure it.
I’ve struggled with this too. There are many other techniques out there you can try to see what works for you, but most of them require you to do them consistently before you see much of a change. I’ve heard a study (or maybe studies) that say 10 min of breath work a day is more effective than medications. However, you could also try , meditation (Insight Timer is a free app with a wide range of guided meditations), EFT tapping, somatic movements, yoga, massage, acupuncture, etc. Over time, I’ve sort of developed a multi-pronged approach.
Mahalo for normalizing growth and imperfection to the idea of resilience and grit. How do we reconcile ideas of productivity with this more realistic framing of resilience for vocational rehabilitation and the sequelae of the labor shortage with this mental health/illness heightened awareness?
We often hear about inheriting the stress response from the early days of our evolution when we were vulnerable to attack from a wild animal. What I've never heard used as an example is vulnerability to attack from other humans, which continues to this day - both instrumentally as with crime or physical abuse, and socially as occurs in any of our affiliations when others and we ourselves direct aggression towards each other. Chronic sniping, exclusion, exploitation, excessive competition, unreasonable demands, emotional abuse... There are many things that can go terribly wrong between people, and it's probably the most common stress we experience in modern life. In our distant past, chronic mistreatment or exclusion from the tribe was likely to mean death. It was - and is - way more common than being hunted by a predator. But we don't like to use it as an example when talking about stress. We are social animals. And it pays to identify this as the most common source of stress we experience. Especially in our current lifestyle of online interaction, political polarization, and diminished in-person social cohesion.
Couple things missing : 1. Frontal cortex also response to stress. Burn out happens in the frontal cortex region and amygdala trigger system is instantaneous. Frontal cortex is independent of rest of brain and makes you think ,really think new but not harvest accessible consciousness like rest of brain part including amygdala sitting underneath the core of brain region. 2. Breathing is not the only way to deal with stress. Lets break down breathing, there is an ancient saying from Hinduism that says "short breather lives short". However we have wimhop breathing technique that creates the healthy stress what you talked about and helps you to detox and create a balance. So not only long breath helps but controlled short breathing helps too. You can use drugs to deal with stress like green tean preferred by "dalai lama" himself ( the healer you say ) , or coffee recommended by regular ones like you and me. You can use hardcore substance like sniffing raw tobaco well practiced in native American society for ages or use marijuana used in ancient Hinduism for several thousand years. These are herbal drugs. Or you can use alcohol prescribed by all government bodies of all nationalities in the planet. You can have intercourse or make love to yourself to heal. All ancient Christianity and other religious stuff practiced this healing technique hidden behind chambers. All modern science cannot deny that sex is biggest trigger system of happy dopamine. But problem is you dont have quick access to this healing technique in our modern society well staged by sobriety. You can sleep well to wash your brain by cerebrospinal fliud and start again. I bet there are several other techniques.
The fault of stress, as we know it today, is the insanity of society. Why is society the way it is? PRESSURE FOR PROFIT. Profit for corporate stockholders. It is the drive for success, the desire for more, taught by society. This needs to change or we will become a society of loosers.
Thank you for sharing this. I'm a counselor in training and it's been such a stressful experience. The way the field in general (master's programs and agencies) treats those who are starting on this career, while constantly throwing platitudes about self-care, is so hypocritical.
This is a great question. I also want to know - is it possible to manage our stress when there are crushing elements out of our control? Sometimes I think the answer is no. It took medication and a completely different environment for me to finally find peace and treat my severe anxiety and depression. I made good choices to bring me to the place I am now, but many of my previous circumstances were inescapable for a long time, and that wasn’t my fault.
You might feel worse if you don't actually apply the new knowledge to your everyday life. It's all up to you how you feel at any given moment. You're the only one in charge of your emotions.
With all these fraud professors (particularly a problem in psychology and adjacent fieds), I take everything this lady said with a fist full of grains of salt.
Positive stresses are things thst temporarily stress a body system within its limits and results in an improved system. Like weight training the body. Or a crossword puzzle for the mind.
Everything passes, nothing is as important as we see it at the moment. I validate your feelings, but you can change it and decide to feel better regardless of your environment or circumstances.