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Wellness Wednesday for October 12, 2022

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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Does anyone here have any experience with psychiatric drugs like ambien, prozac and axepta with viviloref. My skin doctor makes me consume finasteride, fish oil and biokap for my hair (I have decent hair but was thinning, the thinning has stopped now so I am glad I took action on this soon as now I will not lose hair). Obviously minoxidil plus fin solution twice a day too.

The main aim this week is to keep both my workout and study journal handy and update them honestly daily. Ambien does cause some issues but imo is it more of my fault as I take it at different times and hence also have little consistency with my axepta and prozac (take both in the morning).

Anyway, will refrain from long rants. Measured my 1rpm today and shall begin 531 from tomorrow. I still have urges to not study, be lazy, surf the internet all day or to check the ig of my oneitis but at least I do something daily. Tracking it would give me more accountability so should be a good exercise. That way I can pinpoint what causes inconsistency and modify that behavior.

Obviously there is some pent up frustration within me. I have a lot of advantages over a lot of my peers simply because I have competent people irl guiding me, I still feel bad at times about my oneitis. I hate grinding, being alone and having to work but on the other hand, this is what makes you aryan. Life will always have these issues and running away never helps with that. I just needed to vent that. I do not tell my friends about that girl, it is kinda silly but I do not want to lie, at least not on the only place where I can be honest.

The greeks worked out not just because it made you look better and higher class but also it makes you better on the inside, the main reward hence is the betterment of who you are. Physical culture makes you better inside with the muscles just being a side effect of a better mind. This may also be why even today, Greek or roman sculptures are more pleasing to the human eye than anything else, Not only can you look like them (the later stages did see the statues getting exaggerated to a point of absurdity) but they also showcase bodies that are capable and I genuinely find that appealing. All my mockery or low thoughts about others get washed away after I take an objective look at my own performance after a hard day in either of these two.

You have to get used to pain and learn to develop an instinct for finishing tasks, I would justify stuff by telling myself that since I am trying my best, I do not need to track things as the day to day inconsistency would make me feel bad. Progress however is consistently positive and tracking helps you visualize that. If you track things, you know if you are failing or not, there is no vagueness to it, an objective review of three months of daily review will take one further than working till you cannot anymore without tracking.

Definitely learnt this and the part about having a killer instinct the hard way. A good person or rather those who do well get disproportionally more for just being slightly ahead of those behind them, similarly, doing slightly more work each day so that you actually hit targets does more than just leaving something at 90 percent. You get 100 percent rewards at 100 percent and 0 at 90. Sure it is good practice to do 90 over 0 but at this point, I should be able to know what realistic goals are, what my daily and weekly work capacity is and how much I can expect to improve.

I am glad that I know this now lol. Just writing it down since I will read this post later in the future to look back on the time when I started tracking things. It takes one action to have massive impact on you, visiting a decent club did more for me than many months of reading or texting so I expect much from tracking stuff transparently and consistently.

Have a great week!

I don't know your adhd drugs (I was only ever on adderall), but I am absolutely blown away by your motivation and drive given you are taking prozac and ambien. It also sounds like you don't need them any more, and I think you would have a much easier time bettering yourself without them.

I don't like anti depressants or anti anxiety meds, but it is more about the way they are pushed than their actual efficacy - to many doctors it seems, prozac and ambien are now a part of your life, as necessary as water and sleep. But they don't help you to better yourself - they make you feel better when you are depressed, but when you are depressed you are so low that you can't be normal.

The way I look at it, they cut off access to the utter depths of misery you have been feeling, but they do so by lopping off the ends of your emotional range - so the lowest you can feel is a general pervasive sense of 'fuck everything' (which is much better than 'fuck everything but especially me, God send a semi-trailer to this red light so I can climb out of my car and put my head under a wheel') but the highest you can feel is also neutered. And because you are depressed you don't even notice it - it's better than the low isn't it?

And yes, it absolutely is better than the low, but you are past that now, you beyond just trying to make it through the day without breaking down or worse, and you are trying to better yourself. And from the way you talk about time, this is a long term project, I don't think this is just a temporary high. So at this point, I think you should talk to your doctor about dropping the ambien and prozac. There are cleaner and more enjoyable ways to quieten the never ending cacophony of modern life, namely alcohol and weed. Which have their own problems, absolutely, but come with the additional benefit of not being controlled by the pharmaceutical industry.

There is also the substance free approach, but it is a lot harder, and I think it takes a particular mindset to get by exclusively on the warmth of self righteousness. At any rate, even a step down the pharma ladder would help you I think - I assume you have trouble sleeping, but it's hard to think of anything outside of xanax that is harder on your body and mind than ambien. That shit fucks you up in ways you don't even notice. Even valium is better for you I reckon. If you don't feel ready to stop taking them that's fair enough - you know what you can handle, but please consider it, as it will definitely help you improve yourself.

I have been on it for three months now and it does help quite a bit. I will do as the psychiatrist says. I tell him what i feel and he gives me prescriptions. The prozac is more for my adhd than anything as I am not someone who is very depressed.

but I am absolutely blown away by your motivation and drive given you are taking prozac and ambien

lol thanks pal, I got super lucky in life and will fucking kill myself to get better. The only way I can be a good devotee is by good actions, if by next year, same time, I have all that I want or rather have genuinely done all that I can, then maybe I think I would be worthy of any praise, not till then. People go through much worse than me and still succeed, I can do that too.

Oh yeah man, I'm not saying listen to me over your doctors lol. But I didn't think I was giving you any praise, more just encouragement.

If you want to look at it as praise though, it's still for something you have definitely done, something you have handled better than others, but more importantly it is something you have done to improve your life. You deserve praise for that, because it is literally the hardest thing a depressed person can do. For it was said: it is easier for a depressed person to jam a camel up their dickhole than to decide they are going to do anything to stop being depressed.

The biggest issue with that level of scrupulosity though, is that it gives you a reason to give up when you fail. You fail and you think to yourself "of course I failed, I'm a failure, I fuck up everything and never do anything right even though I have it so much better than others, I shouldn't have tried in the first place."

If you are in a place where any praise feels like a lie and just makes you hate yourself more I apologise (and I did mean it as encouragement), but it is something you are going to have to get used to now you are on your way out. Whatever happens, don't let it become an excuse.

If you want to look at it as praise though, it's still for something you have definitely done, something you have handled better than others, but more importantly it is something you have done to improve your life. You deserve praise for that, because it is literally the hardest thing a depressed person can do. For it was said: it is easier for a depressed person to jam a camel up their dickhole than to decide they are going to do anything to stop being depressed.

Thanks a ton man. They say that a crackhead would rather spend 20 years in misery than 3 weeks in hell and maybe something similar can be said for those with depression. A lot of it is genetic but I am responsible for a lot of my issues, I just do not know. At this point I do not know what will help.

The biggest issue with that level of scrupulosity though, is that it gives you a reason to give up when you fail. You fail and you think to yourself "of course I failed, I'm a failure, I fuck up everything and never do anything right even though I have it so much better than others, I shouldn't have tried in the first place.

But I have only failed all my life.

If you are in a place where any praise feels like a lie and just makes you hate yourself more I apologise (and I did mean it as encouragement), but it is something you are going to have to get used to now you are on your way out. Whatever happens, don't let it become an excuse.

Yeah, actions lead to actions, excuses lead to excuses, each have their own momentum.

A lot of it is genetic but I am responsible for a lot of my issues, I just do not know. At this point I do not know what will help.

What you are doing will help. Genetics is why I don't think you should use privilege as a metric for success. From the outside, it can pretty objectively be said you have it better than some, and worse than others. You weren't born to addicts, or in a mud hut in Africa, so you have it better than them, for sure. From an outside view. But you don't get to live outside yourself, and on that plane we are all equal. We all have to live the lives we have, and they are exactly as hard and easy as they are. The idea that someone else in your position could have done better is false - they didn't have the same genes as you, or the same parents, or the same traumatic and triumphant experiences. If they did, they would have done exactly the same as you - otherwise they weren't in the same position.

My biggest objection to thinking like this is that it sounds like cope. What a philosophy, you have absolved yourself of all your fuck ups, and of any need to take responsibility for your actions and their consequences. That is not what I'm saying, but if it's cope it's cope in the same way striving for objective journalism is cope. It doesn't matter if it is possible or not, the world is better off when we act as if it is true. I'd say you don't want to absolve yourself of anything, because we learn from mistakes, but we both know you aren't going to do that anyway, and anyone who doesn't isn't paying attention.

I have about a dozen other objections to that worldview too, most of which boil down to 'that's not how truth works' and 'you have to admit that you failed to learn from your mistakes', which are both true and beside the point. You do not have a problem with acknowledging your mistakes. You have trouble seeing your successes. But if you can't learn from your mistakes without acknowledging them, the flipside holds true too. You are doing yourself a disservice by discounting your successes, minor though they may be. I know I'm just repeating myself, but thinking you only fail becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. You have succeeded in something most people fail at, so even if that's your first success, it is still a success - think of it as the first of many. You probably shouldn't go out and get a plaque made celebrating it, but you should feel pride in it, and even though you are still going to fail countless times, you are going to succeed too.

Sorry it took me so long to reply, I have written and rewritten this post a dozen times this past week, and hating everything I wrote. I hate what I have written here too, but at least I have narrowed it to specifically the things I believe helped me when I was in a similar position. I don't know if they will help you, but I do know I am better off believing them than when I didn't.

I appreciate it quite a lot. I see dating and other things as thing I used to suck at but always thought that I would excel in, that it was inevitable and I just needed some time.

You are correct in your assessment, I never honestly did think about this in such a way. I do feel a tad lost given I need to get a job and do a bunch of stuff, it gets overwhelming and I end up not doing as much as I need.

How did it help you exactly and how long did it take you to not feel bad or fix your life?

It took about a year before it started being automatic, but once I got over that hump it became so much easier. Because once you get past that it becomes about motivation, and you strengthen your motivation significantly through the increases in confidence and resolve you gain in the process. It's not just an impossible slog for that year though, you should start seeing some of the benefits of doing it consciously in about a month - I thought I saw the benefits after two weeks, but I'll say a month because it is not easy distinguishing hopeful thinking from wishful thinking. I like your addiction analogy, the process is similar in a lot of ways - it feels miserable and is quite difficult to quit smoking at first, but it does get easier, and while you will still find yourself getting cravings/depressive thoughts even years later, you are much better equipped to manage them.