site banner
PaperclipPerfector  22d ago (text post)   1241 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for April 22, 2026

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).

2
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I want to slightly push back on the anti-Scientology thread below by sharing a basic method of thinking which I derived while reading Hubbard's books, specifically The Way to Happiness. It isn't strictly Scientology as far as I know, just something that I thought of.

In Scientology, there's an idea of exteriorization. The simplest description that I know is "Be 3 feet back of your head." Basically, people are too close to their own problems. If one could see one's body from the outside, one would be able to see himself more clearly and then handle his problems. To quote Hubbard in that book: "It sometimes does not occur to some individuals- as they do not have to spend their days looking at themselves- that they form part of the scenery and appearance of others."

The technique is simple enough that it has probably been talked about or used in other settings, but I've found that it works and I have Hubbard to thank for it.

The Technique

Imagine another person. Give that person some single trait, like a hair colour, to make imagining him or her easier. Put that person in a similar situation to the one you want to think about. Then ask yourself what you think that person should do, or how he should think about it.

I've found that it has a high workability in all kinds of situations involving action, including when I can't stop myself from doing something. It works for planning for the future, or for things like thinking through what you want to say to someone else, or are wondering what you should have done in a past incident, etc.

For example, if you can't stop eating potato chips, give yourself this prompt: There is another person. He has red hair. He has been eating potato chips for the past few hours and can't stop. How should he think about this, or what should he do?

Usually, I think through the issue with clarity, and the behaviour stops, at least for now.

(I am not a Scientologist, or at least have never been audited and probably never will be.)

Has anyone had Whole Genome Sequencing done? What do you think of it and what are your recommendations? Seems like it will cost at least AUD$800 (for 30x) but might go on sale for DNA day (25th April).

One Year in the Trucking Office

Well, it’s been 11 months, but the company sent me my one year pin, so close enough I guess. Things are going reasonably well. The job can be a lot (24/7 on call, but luckily most of my drivers aren’t vampires and we don’t do that much weekend work.), but I don’t hate it, I’m not terrible at it, and hopefully I’ll be getting a raise fairly soon, so that’s nice. I was recently interviewed for a promotion, but turned it down because it was completely out of my wheelhouse (an IT job, when I have no real IT experience/qualifications/desire to do it for a living, nor am I interested in moving to Craptown, Mississippi, but I appreciate the opportunity. Apparently my name came up because scuttlebutt around the corporate office is that I’m smart and can be taught things). The good news there is that I discussed it beforehand with the corporate operations guy and he told me that there was no wrong answer: take the corporate gig if you want it but you will be promoted, and soon if you stay in the trucking division. Apparently the VP of trucking is relieved that I chose to stay, and I know that my boss is. The learning curve was steep for a few months when my workload went from nonexistent to running day to day operations more or less overnight, but it’s not a terrible workload as much as it is inconsistent, unpredictable, and frequently frustrating.

This will soon degenerate into a bunch of unfocused observations/musings about the job in the form of bullet points, but I will elaborate on my boss. We met when I was a barback and he was a customer at the bar I worked at, and he’s the one who tipped me off about the job some years later. We work in a small terminal, but have our own offices. He’s kind of lazy, infuriatingly bad with details (I tell him we need insurance cards, and he asks for registration cards, or he forgets to ask me if we can cover something before making a promise.), and occasionally ill tempered (He’s short tempered but gets over it quickly, while I’m more patient but less forgiving.) but pretty easygoing (just show up before 8AM!). We get along and complement each other well, and he has talents worthy of respect. He has a nose for company politics, a talent for self-promotion (and he says great things about me to his bosses!), and is a genuine people person. He’d kill it in sales (and I believe he will be promoted into that at some point), and I believe that really does respect me. I may joke about some some annoying quirks (he *cannot multitask/pay attention to more than one thing at a time, and he likes to have Fox News on all day), but we all have quirks and my read on the situation is that he has coattails worth following. Apparently we’ve cultivated a reputation for doing well among people that matter.

  • Dispatching tanker trucks is different than food delivery drivers. It’s not as fast paced, but you have to think in a 3-7 day window and there are a lot more details that can get you. Not all tanks can haul all products/deliver to all places, not all drivers know how to do everything, and certain products can’t be cleaned at the average tank wash. Speaking of tank washes, many of them suck and while most things in trucking work 24/7, tank washes (and repair shops!) do not. Most of them are closed on weekends/holidays.
  • From someone with a decent (if non-professional) background dealing with cars, the quality of the semi trucks (and trailers!) we deal with is surprisingly poor in comparison. Maybe other manufacturers suck less, but PACCAR (aka. Peterbilt and Kenworth, like Chevy and GMC are both built by GM) is like some bad stereotype of 70s domestic cars. Get a brand new truck? Better get ready to take that piece of shit straight to the shop to get the kinks worked out, and truck dealers aren’t any more fun to deal with than their automotive counterparts. I understand that diesel emissions tech is, shall we say, undercooked at the moment, but the amount of failures I see on trucks from stupid components that rarely break on cars boggles the mind. I just had a ‘24 model have to have the gear selector switch and fuel sending unit replaced because both failed. One of our new ‘26 models had its engine explode at 20K miles. I’m sending another brand new ‘26 to the shop tomorrow because the air compressor is bad. Pretty much all of our trucks leak coolant, usually from the APUs, and getting this actually fixed seems to be impossible. We just received an allotment of brand new trailers and the hydraulic hand pumps have a ~50% failure rate. NEW doubles as an acronym, “Never Ever Worked”.
  • Our software is...not great, and in many ways significantly worse than the software I used dispatching for a small Doordash clone. Doing payroll is very time consuming because nothing is automated and every line item on every driver's check has to be added manually. For some reason beyond my comprehension our software does not send the addresses of the shipper and receiver to the driver's ELD, so I have to manually look these up on my phone and text it to them.
  • I don’t have a CDL and have never driven anything bigger than a small U-haul, but I haven’t had any issue with that with the drivers. I’m up front about that, tell them that I’ll be honest with them when I screw up, I can’t promise them that they’ll never have a bad week but I’ll do my best to make sure that every week isn’t a bad week, etc. and it seems to work out okay. As one put it, “You haven’t driven a truck, but you have a brain and you listen to us.”.
  • As for the drivers themselves, we have a mostly solid crew: a few great ones I couldn’t run the terminal without, more that have flaws but are serviceable, and a few divas (At least the diva who unnecessarily blows up my phone is decent conversation, and he rolls with the punches when plans constantly change.) and stains (I hope that my worst stain is about to leave before safety fires him, and I hope he goes to a doctor and gets a fucking CPAP before he dies at 45, because I do like the guy. I just wish he would get his shit together.). Our new hire worries me. The trainer likes him but he doesn’t strike me as being overly bright or having a sense of urgency. Hopefully he’s just being cautious as a new guy and proves my intuitions wrong.
  • Trucking has some of the fattest employees I’ve ever seen, and the offices are far from immune. It’s here that I’ve learned that GLP-1s are not a miracle for everyone. Many are afraid to take them and some have quit them due to finding the side effects intolerable. That said, one of our dispatchers lost over 100lbs and completely turned his life around on them. Our biggest success story (and this is what success often looks like when dealing with morbid obesity, not a perfect ending but a significant, life improving improvement) managed to drop from 470 to 290lbs (The first guy is tall and the second is not, but 290 with controlled diabetes and hypertension is still a lot better than 470 and near death’s door.).
  • A lot of our drivers are also older, so between obesity and old age we have a lot of diabetics, sleep apnea, etc. You do not want your blood pressure or A1C to be high enough that the DOT fails your physical, but it happens. One of my more reliable guys is out on FMLA because he just had heart surgery. Mercifully, after some form wrangling he will be paid his short-term disability. Our health insurance is decent, but it’s still United Healthcare and he’s currently freaking out about his insurance saying that his hospital stay for chest pain was “not medically necessary” as I reassure him that they’re shooting from the hip and denying everything, the hospital’s billing department will fight them, and they may or may not have goofed up the initial claims paperwork.
  • Trucking is a hard job, and being an owner-operator can be more rewarding but also financial ruin if you’re not mechanically inclined, bad with money, or go into it without enough capital. Seeing an owner-op drown is depressing. Winter sucks, and a lot of our drivers are afraid of snow, problematic given how much of our freight goes up north. In my experience the midwest is much better at dealing with snow than the east coast, but my understanding is that this last winter was unusually bad for them.
  • Nobody wants to go to NYC (or Philly, Connecticut, etc.), I don’t want to deadhead someone eight hours east to pick up a load going to New York where it’s hard to get a backhaul, and I really don’t want to send them there with a product that’s difficult to get washed. Naturally, our backhaul department has lots of loads from the Georgia coast heading to the NYC area with a hard to clean product, and to my perpetual frustration the terminal we opened in coastal Georgia has been slow to ramp up, so I’m still being asked to cover loads from there.
  • As much as I’m grateful that I don’t have to deal with freight brokering, our backhaul department, aka. Tweedledee and Tweedledum, are frequently incompetent and a pain in the ass (but a necessary evil, because they aren’t going to be fired and it’s worth eating some of their shit when they hook my guys up with nice runs). Speaking of backhauls, most of the freight out of my terminal runs on dedicated trailers, so while the rates are good the lack of backhaul opportunities really hurts how much money I can make those guys, and the longer runs can soak up a full workweek. Some of our other terminals’ dispatching is a train wreck, but some of them are well run or at least reasonably put together, and it’s nice to have relationships with those guys to keep my trucks rolling. I’m personally more comfortable having to think, beg, and push because we’re busy than I am telling guys that I don’t have work for them, because I don’t want my guys to be broke.
  • The logistics manager for my biggest local customer is fun to talk to and reasonably forgiving of my screw ups, but can be remarkably inept at, uh, logistics (No, lady, my driver can’t drive 200 miles to pick up a trailer and then 950 miles to a shipper in the same day.) and taking her out for dinner and drinks (on the company dime!) has a habit of turning into a therapy session about her husband and the fact that she needs her hair pulled in bed.
  • Something I’ve learned is that my biggest personal pet peeve is making a mistake out of ignorance. My biggest pet peeve from drivers is being late/barely making it because they started late (If I tell you to pick up the trailer at 11, that doesn’t mean 12:30!), and that goes double if they don’t tell me that they’re going to be late and I find out the hard way. I hate not feeling like I can trust someone to do what they say they’re going to.

This is super interesting. Especially as somebody who works as a truckee, currently home daily but hoping to move to on-the-road in the next 5 years or so.

Have the increasing fuel prices had any noticeable impacts in your sphere yet?

It's hard to say, not having a bigger picture view or more experience. There has been whining from customers and owner-ops about fuel surcharges and prices (Our fuel surcharge is up ~70%), but things have mostly blundered on plus or minus customers rushing in orders at the end of the month to try and get ahead of price increases.

Q4 of '25 and Q1 of '26 were "not great" as is. Q2 promises to be busier but simultaneously my terminal is slow due to our primary customer being in the middle of a plant shutdown that's gone past schedule along with other issues on their end. I'm hoping that we get into gear soon, and consistently because dispatching is more difficult when you have to farm guys out, beg for loads, and wind up with drivers stuck on the wrong side of the map.

do what they say they’re going to.

Humanity in general would be 100x better if everybody did what they said they were going to do. This comes down to almost every small thing. I had to learn this years ago, despite how obviously right it is.

I enjoy your trucking office stories. Thank you for posting.

the fact that she needs her hair pulled in bed.

You've addressed this elsewhere, you have many good reasons for ignoring this green flag, and you are likely making the correct choice. However, I look back at my history of ignoring similar green flags and then at a friend who has pursued every green flag (and just about every other color, too) ever shown to him, and I think about how much more interesting my life could've been.

That logistics manager might be open to an affair, if you are presenting as a straight man. YMMV, but the complaint about her husband not sexually gratifying her (hair pulling) is sometimes an innocuous way of telling other men she is sexually available. It's just slightly too much information for a married woman to give a male friend or coworker, but not too much information if you were actively looking for an opening. Otherwise, that type of conversation is usually reserved for other women or gay men.

As you already eat together, you both already have the perfect cover to bump uglies while 'working'.

Allegedly she tried to take our safety guy back to the hotel while shit faced a few months ago, so yeah, probably. If I had to guess the bedroom is pretty dead because she lost all respect for the husband a long time ago.

Personally, I'm not into GILFs, or married women for that matter, and that's before you get into the can of worms of being someone else's drunken mistake when that someone else is the logistics boss for your biggest customer.

At first I thought you were being kind of presumptuous but the more I think about it, the more I agree

That is a crazy thing to say, and a well calibrated one at that

What kind of product is hard to clean out of a tank?

Of the stuff we deal with, our main trouble categories are asphalt, latex (If not washed immediately the stuff dries and has to be scraped out of the trailer by hand), and a particular class of water treatment chemical.

The latter isn't regulated as hazmat, but requires a polymer wash and apparently has a habit of expanding upon touching water, which is troublesome for a lot of plumbing systems. Furthermore, many places either prohibit or limit how much of that product can be washed in a given time frame due to wastewater regulations.

a particular class of water treatment chemical

has a habit of expanding upon touching water

That sounds exciting to try to use.

Found this interesting. Thank you for posting! I hope you get that promotion.

Bummed. Dislocated my shoulder right as I started playing pickup soccer on a regular basis.

Not too bad. But still bummed.

I've ticked off something that's been on the bucket list for a while: telling Gwern off for his nicotine essay, which hooked me, and many a stupid rat, on the chemical. It is a frankly terrible nootropic, even if the harms of "pure" nicotine (or even a vape) are minimal, the dependency is remarkably inconvenient and I'm quite confident that his advice is net negative EV. If I had a time machine, I'd give my past self a light smack on the head and told him to never start, alongside inside baseball knowledge on exam questions.

I would have said it to his face if I'd actually managed to meet him at Inkhaven, but hey, sneaking it into a wider debate about LLM prose is a victory nonetheless. I can sleep easier tonight.

Didn't you go for vaping, whereas Gwern specifically distinguished between gum/patches and vaping, even in the abstract of the essay?

Yes, but I still think Gwern underestimates how debilitating any nicotine dependency is.

He is absolutely correct that vaping or gum is a massive upgrade over an existing tobacco habit. But among the examples of alternatives that he considered "safe" for the nicotine-naive included snus, which was later found to increase all-cause mortality, particularly CV mortality. His speculation about the potential benefits wrt Alzheimer's or Parkinsons proved to be wrong on the basis of RCT evidence.

TLDR: It's a shit nootropic, the dependency risk is significant enough to be concerning even for gum or pouches. He didn't see the Zyn craze coming. His claims that medicinal NRT is remarkably non-addictive held up, but were clearly not applicable to recreational use. Switching away from smoking tobacco is massively positive, for someone who doesn't have a habit, don't start.

https://www.fda.gov/tobacco-products/health-effects-tobacco-use/relative-risks-tobacco-products#NewNic

While nicotine pouches can generally be a lower-risk alternative for adults who smoke cigarettes, the use of nicotine pouches is not risk free. Nicotine pouches contain nicotine, which is highly addictive, and can deliver harmful chemicals.

Given that there is no safe tobacco product, youth and adults who do not use tobacco products should not start using nicotine pouches.

nicotine-naive included snus, which was later found to increase all-cause mortality, particularly CV mortality.

Do you have a citation for "later found"?

I'm personally a heavy user of synthetic pouches (actually homemade version which is pretty much free and difficult to ban) and have in the past dove deep into the literature on snus -- there's a lot, because the EU public health unit has been fighting with Swedish public opinion over actual snus since before vaping was even much of a thing.

My cowboy meta-analysis as of a few years ago was the there were a lot of highly motivated and well-funded studies which... pretty much failed to show significant all-cause mortality impact associated with long-term heavy usage of trad-snus; they would always find something to hang their hat on of course, but taken as a whole the literature was pretty unconvincing. And synthetic snus (in my case, unflavoured vape juice dripped onto cotton) seems unlikely to be more harmful than the tobacco kind.

I've been at this about five years; I'm sucking on the things basically all the time and it's cost me something like a couple hundred bucks and left me with entirely normal blood pressure; heart rate is a little elevated maybe? Infinitely better than vaping; not least because you don't need to go outside and look like a moron hipster pretending to smoke.

I appreciate that you've probably reviewed the literature more closely than I have. Maybe a month or so ago, I saved a review paper, and I was wanting to go digging through the cites, but I haven't had time yet (the motivating question was concerning which/how many papers dealt with effects specifically of gum/patches). Perhaps you could help me with a few specific questions:

(1) You say, "It's a shit nootropic". Is this because you think that the worthwhile effects are, indeed, minimal? Is it worse than, say, caffeine? Or is this judgment coupled significantly with the dependency risk?

(1a) Is any of the above possibly conflated by possible interactions with, say, ADHD meds or even caffeine alone?

(2) Is there any dependency risk data you can point me to for gum/patches? I think Zyn is likely to be closer to vaping/chew tobacco than gum/patches (I can accept that perhaps Gwern got this one wrong). I've seen plenty of statements like that FDA one; note that it calls out pouches. Is there anything in the literature specifically for gum/patches?

For disclosure, I have toyed around with gum on a few occasions. I would use it for specific parts of my day that I wanted a mild stimulant and perhaps some increased habit forming, like going to the gym. When I would, for example, go on trips where I wasn't expecting to have gym access, I never experienced any withdrawal or cravings. It's more of a pain for me to buy than, say, protein/creatine, so I've also just gone long stretches without having any without any difficulty. If anything, I feel like I feel more withdrawal effects from coffee or even caffeinated tea. This may be personal variation and apart from the data, which is why I would be interested in whether you've seen any data specifically for gum/patches.

You got nerd-sniped by ... nicotine? Keep us up to date on your efforts to kick the habit. We're rooting for you.

It's been almost 4 years, and I've found out, to my detriment, that quitting cold turkey is awful. During the periods where I am unavoidably separated from my vape, the best alternative I've found is nicotine gum, which keeps the worst of the withdrawal away. Otherwise? Brother, I'm fiending. I get angry and cranky, it's the closest I've gotten to PMSing, or what I'd imagine roid rage kinda feels like.

Quitting isn't a very high priority for me, right now. Mostly because the physical health risks of vaping are minimal, close to negligible, going off memory of my attempts to review the literature. I still resent the expense, small as it is in absolute terms, plus the dependence itself. I've found that I can cut down on total intake by opting for weaker juice, but that has little effect on the parameters I care about, which are the money spent on the habit, and the addiction itself. It's not in the top 10 things about my life that I need to fix, though I'm grateful for the words of encouragement.

(I knew the theoretical health risks were small, when I initially started. I had avoided cigarettes like the plague itself for most of my life, but I was curious about vapes, which were hard to get in India. When my ex and I landed in London several years back, we ended up locked out of our Airbnb on a cold night in October. We went to a gas station grocery store for food, where I spotted a vape. I wanted to buy it, but my ex was a cancer survivor and was scared of the risk. Being the nerd I am, I sat her down, and we went through multiple systematic reviews while eating a chicken sandwich. Eventually, we concluded that the risks were minimal, especially the carcinogenic potential, and with her assent, I ended up buying one. Still, #BlameGwern.)

Tapering off with weaker juice is the way to go. Once you go from 3mg to 0mg it's a case of a few days of habitual puffing until you think "wait, why am I doing this?" and will stop very easily because there's no longer a deficit demanding to be replenished. After that there's no more addiction and no more expense. Problem solved.

I'll keep that in mind should I try, and after all, it's the same advice I gave a good friend of mine just a day or two ago!

I've done it a couple of times before (cue quitting is easy dozens of times joke). Currently doing it again in a very drawn out manner.

Since you're a doctor I assume you're aware of nicotine's effect on blood pressure and peripheral circulation. Everyone knows that smoking = lung cancer and heart attacks, and a lot of that is because smoke of any kind is bad for you, but it's worth pointing out for the general Wellness readership that, while vaping is a lot safer than smoking, nicotine has inherent effects on health regardless of whether it's burnt in a giant sweaty cigar or administered by a sterile prescription nicotine replacement widget made in a lab by big pharma. I don't have the faintly whistling wheeze that can't be trivially coughed away when lying in bed quietly any more since stopping smoking, and my sense of taste and smell is much better, but I still get cold hands and feet from the vasoconstriction and need to start thinking more about my blood pressure.

This was exactly how I did it. The easiest part was the way 0mg juice gurgled all wrong.

But there have been crackdowns of all stupid kinds, and AIUI, the community of home-brew stores that would make you custom blend juices are not so much a thing anymore, so it may be harder to manage a gentle decline.

Yeah it depends where you live. There's no issue here in the UK but I saw a comment online yesterday saying how difficult it is to buy (non-THC) vape stuff in California.

After I posted my recent essay on /r/SSC, I was graced by the following DM. I want you to guess, and then put in writing, what you think the spoilered word is. No cheating.

This is gonna sound crazy, but Scientology can help you. It's the only effective form of mental health treatment I've found, and I've tried a bunch

This did damage to my mental health, which is why I'm sharing it with you.

Today I learned about Scientology speedruns, and I consider this activity both healthy and hilarious. So yes, in a way Scientology can help you.

Wow. I guessed weed or psychedelics or something but that 'solution' is even more of a cul-de-sac.

The world really has all kinds, and they always seem to become my problem.

You created that rod for your own back.

My front was already well furnished with a rod, and I really needed a back-scratcher.

My guess was ayahuasca.

Too reasonable by far. When I saw the original, it almost gave me a stroke. Do they even have a presence in the UK?

They? I just meant the drug but there is a whole woo culture around it. I guess you can go to South America to do it. My unreasonable hyper specific guess was Teal Swan but that didn't fit with the grammar. I suppose you could have written "the completion process" (her centerpiece treatment) which would be unreasonable and hyper specific.

Also now I think you should go take one or two Scientology courses and write an article about your experience.

I meant the scientologists, I have, through second hand reports, heard that ayahuasca can randomly show up at hippie music festivals in England.

Also now I think you should go take one or two Scientology courses and write an article about your experience.

Mormons first. The missionaries who approached me were two hot blonde chicks, which left a very different impression than a schizophrenic DM did.

I have my flair for a reason.

Pls spoiler tag your flair, k thx bye

you're not in trouble, but I saw your flair...

Chuckles nervously

Anyone play Old School Runescape? I am searching for a clan of like-minded right-wing-but-not-too-right-wing-so-you-don't-scare-the-hos autists. I imagine many clans in OSRS are filled with LIBERALS. This site probably works for finding right wingers but I have reason to suspect that you also happen to catch a not-insignificant number of insane people. If you're reading this, and you play OSRS, and you're insane, please adjust your replies accordingly.

@ThomasdelVasto

Nah I don’t play that TRASH sorry. ;P

My apologies, I think you must have been trying to get me to play classic WOW instead lol.

Yep! But the private servers are all getting shut down now, rip.

Any tips on relaxation/decompression activities that I can do in the evening to help me prepare for bed/do during the work day to help manage stress? Thinking my marathon training wasn't as effective as it could have been because of poor stress management, but not sure how to do a better job.

when I am too wired, I use theanine to calm me down. I have started sleeping naked with eye-covers and I make sure that there's no light peeping in the room while I am sleeping. I cannot cut back on my daily caffeine intake, unfortunately, due to a multitude of reasons and I am not proud of it. I have however found ways to counter it's deleterious effects, high dosages of L-theanine on the weekends so I can sleep peacefully with minimal interference, warm showers help too. I would also look into training practice times, make sure it's earlier in the day and not later because exercise does charge you up in a way, I do know quite a few runners who use energy chews and honey stingers, make sure you aren't inducing any of these in your system and are eating adequately, inappropriate nutrition can lead to poor sleep too but most of these things are likely obvious to you.

I don't agree with the people in here who think meditation or reading will help, when the body is too stressed or wired, none of those things really help, I do have a weird hunch that it's some other obligation/life stress that is eating at you and is needlessly stressing you out, do attend to it if this indeed is the case. The quickest fix is probably a joint (I know, sorry!!!) and 1000mg of L-theanine, which is a lot but I have resorted to it on a few occasions, because the fatigue was more dangerous for me

Basic focus meditation using your breath as a focus.

Your mind will distract you, you focus back on your breath, your mind distracts you, breath etc etc

Eventually your mind distracts you less and less and you relax.

Its a technique you can do to relieve stress. Really. Nothing religious about it. I use it against high stress situations and it speeds up sleep.

We used to have a poster back on the subreddit (was it jhanic manifold?) who meditated a crazy amount, like HOURS a day. He said he wouldn't trade his mind's state for any amount of money in the world. He claimed to be able to synthesize intense happiness and contentment at will. Big claims!

Personally, I bought The Mind Illuminated and found the author's ability to articulate pure thoughts to be uncanny. I never got past level 1 though; it's a tough curriculum.

Outside of meditation retreats I never did more than 1 hour per day. Still, I remember when I was really into it I had a great experience. I meditated at night and then sat on a bench at a local park watching the moon. I have a vivid memory of being incredibly happy to be alive (because life was wonderful) and ultimately content. I literally could feel no desire for anything.

Happy experiences like that aren't the norm though and shouldn't be expected from the practice.

Before I make my suggestions - what have you tried so far?

Stretching, warm shower, reading.

This is the ideal bedtime routine I'm working towards, and it doesn't even work great?!

You don't meditate? 🤔

What's the nature of the stress? Why have those three things not helped much?

I really should meditate, but I constantly avoid it for some reason.

Those things help relax the body but they rarely seem to relax the mind, which is the real problem. Lots of racing thoughts.

Then stop avoiding it. The aversion and avoidance is a sign that you could make important changes to the mind. Where there's friction, there's potential for liberation.

Just do it. 30-45+ minutes every evening.

You're 100% right and I will. Time to add it to the new years check in.

sleep naked

Explain

Read a book that you've already read before. You already know where the plot leads, so your mind can relax a little and take the body with it.

There's this exercise you can do, progressive relaxation of muscles. You lie in bed, intentionally relax the smaller muscles in your periphery, and work your way up to the big ones outward-in. Never tried it, but it's in my textbooks and exam syllabus so it might work?

Masturbation.

+1

A mortal sin though...

Yeah, but he’s a J Dizzler though.

Knitting/crochet has been good for me. There's something satisfying about making something tangible that you plan out, execute, and then use. I can knit without anything else going on, and it becomes somewhat meditative. Or I can put on a podcast and it's like listening to a friend talk while working on something.

Having taken it for six months, I'm coming off Nutrafol tomorrow. It had the desired effect, more or less: my hair looks visibly thicker and far less of my scalp is visible. However, I think it made me gain weight, and I'm curious to see if my weight will go down in the coming weeks.

New year's resolutions check-in:

  • Went to the gym three times last week, planning to go for the first time this week in ten minutes. Can deadlift 1.84x my bodyweight for 3 reps, squat 1.15x for 7 reps and bench press .87x for 6 reps.
  • Have not consumed any pornography since waking up on January 1st.

How goes it, @thejdizzler, @birb_cromble, @falling-star, @Tollund_Man4 and @self_made_human?

Met my goal, I remain unbanned another week (I'm not sure I can even ban myself, but it's the thought that counts).

I’ll never forget my favorite reason for being banned from somewhere: “Your comments require too much moderating.”

I guess I’m a little 3edgy5u for some people. I was truly surprised. I’d never heard that before.

My contractor for last week's home maintenance surprise cashed the deposit, so spending is $1,214.28 higher than the same day last year. If I'm careful and frugal for the next nine days, I should be able to stay cash flow positive for the month and start getting back on track.

  1. Work. Nothing new to report
  2. Fitness: Boston marathon went not how I was hoping but not exactly badly. Went out conservative (1:19 first half) and was hoping to pick it up the second half but ended up fading to 6:30s and running a 2:41 high. A few weeks off/extremely easy then I'm planning on starting up the build again. This time I think I need to be more running-focused, serious about recovery and sleep, and hit the gym at least once a week.
  3. Intellectual Stuff: Plugging away at After Virtue and The Warlord Chronicles. Trying to find an Italian speaking group in baltimore to keep up with.
  4. Finances: Found a third roommate starting in June, and spending is on track to be below $3k this month.
  5. Dating. No news to report
  6. Tarot. No session this week
  7. Socializing: Saw all my college friends at the marathon.
  8. Screen time: 1.5 hours phone.
  9. Mental health: feeling pretty relaxed post-marathon.

2:41 is incredible. My PR is a hair under four hours and I was chuffed to bits with that.

Thanks! I'm trying not to be too disappointed, as this is the best marathon since my PR in 2023 (2:35:34). I know what I need to do better next training cycle, which is getting me quite excited!

I am in my late 30s and I have discovered that I may be somewhat neurodivergent. I am suspicious of fad disorders, dislike therapy culture, and am skeptical of psychology, so I'm not your average self-diagnoser. I'm also one of the last people folks would suspect of being ND, as I am apparently "high-masking," and I successfully present as normal and likeable to other people 100% of the time--I've never had "social burnout" in front of others (though the crash does come hard afterwards when I am finally alone). While I'm still skeptical of this self-diagnosis, the explanatory and predictive power seems too specific and consistently correct for it to be cold-reading/horoscope style fluff.

I also have to laugh at myself a bit here, because I can recall more than once thinking thoughts along the lines of "how unusually open-minded I am, I can appreciate even the manifestos and effortposts of those loveable turbo-autists in the ratsphere and on The Motte." Welp.

In the grand scheme of things, this discovery is not a big deal because I'm no different than I was before I discovered this. I'm still a husband, son, father, friend, the same guy everyone has known and liked all along. It is a useful framework for understanding my own feelings and actions more clearly, though. It has made me feel less guilty about needing a lot of decompression time, and it has made me feel less pressure to socially "perform" in front of my wife (who I'm quite sure is even more ND than I am, though in different ways -- birds of a feather). It has been a weird but overall positive experience. Though I would be lying if I said there wasn't a tiny part of me that is sad that I'm not as "normal" as I once believed.

Have any of you realized this later in life? What was your experience?

I don't know that autism was ever firmly suspected in my childhood, but my mom did have several books on her bookshelf whose titles rounded off to "What To Do If Your Child Is A Weirdo" -- I believe some were about "Sensory Processing Disorder," which I understand was never in the DSM and the symptoms that were purportedly in the syndrome are understood to be more diagnostic of autism, and my social development was somewhat stunted. I was definitely a 'little professor', then and now, but my father is a professor, so perhaps that's not unexpected.

I didn't have friends as a kid, I had two friends in primary school and junior high, both of which were not great people who didn't care about me as a person. The neighbor kids tried to steal from my house. I didn't have a good friend until junior high, then only for a brief time -- a Latino guy who joked about Herman Cain with me. A nice guy, god bless him. In high school I made more friends, but it was hard, I came off as awkward and sheltered. I hung out with the math geeks but I was bad at math and I didn't like the kind of video games they enjoyed. I can't disambiguate my experiences between "neurodevelopmental problem that led to peer rejection that led to social anxiety" or "peer rejection that led to social developmental delays that led to social anxiety."

As far as I know, I don't have any relatives with either suspected or diagnosed autism. I do have first cousins with OCD, which would probably explain my excessive concern for contamination and orderliness. And I was diagnosed with social anxiety disorder and GAD as a teenager, and by no means are these fad diagnoses, and my answer to the miracle question would be "these things would be gone." If you actually have a mental disorder that interferes with your life and functioning, it's a source of shame and dysfunction rather than an identity marker.

My girlfriend asked me once whether I thought she was autistic, which came out of the blue and didn't seem likely to me -- she's more socially fluent than she thinks, and often notices nuances in people's communication that others don't notice. I think we're at a point where the "weird is good" millennial worldview has run its course, and social atomization has eliminated many of the ways that 'weird' people were integrated into and sustained by society, and so 'weird' people are desperate to find some kind of an explanation for why they don't fit in, when it may be partly biological, partly psychological, and partly civilizational. The fact that normies are starting to look like me scares me, a lot.

I think the autism rights people have actually won, in a lot of ways -- we're at a point where people with basic social anxiety disorder like to speculate about whether or not they're autistic, because autism feels like a good diagnosis, like unlocking a secret way of being human rather than an incapacity to engage in normal activities because of fear. It also means that the outcome is "baked in" rather than conquerable with effort: if you struggle socially because you have anxiety, it means you have all the right hardware to function normally but are afraid to use it and are behind on your software updates.

If you struggle because you're autistic, it means you're special and neurodivergent and you get to ask for accommodations instead of taking responsibility for your social development into your own hands. Unfortunately, I think there are many neurotypical people who wish to gain the compassion that the informed often feel for autistic people, without the struggle that autistic people often have to go through to function.

The "autistic people often end up with a cluster B wife" thing is funny, but more precisely I do wonder whether a lot of people who suspect they may have autism are actually people who may be closer to cluster A and C themselves. I do wonder if there are a lot of Avoidant and Schizoid folks who feel 'weird' in a way that overlaps somewhat with autism but are clinically and psychologically distinct.

If I had to say, I suspect I line up with the broader autism phenotype, and I do have concern that any children I may have may struggle neurodevelopmentally. I share your dislike of fad diagnoses, and I suppose my suspicion and dislike of people who do this is why I've written thousands of words across posts, comments, and journal entries trying to talk myself out of any conception that I might be autistic. If it's true, there are few to no adult accommodations, and autism evaluation in adults isn't a thing, and regardless of where I'd land I'd still be the same guy with the same problems; nothing would be fixed or improved by it.

Yes, this happened to me in my early 30’s too. I made a longer post about it when I joined this site.

It was a series of small things that added up over a long time, then one day I looked back and made the connection that it was likely autism.

  • I was heavily into Magic the Gathering for a ten-year period starting in high school.
  • I struggled with social milestones, especially romantic ones.
  • I am awkward in social situations. When I was younger it was giving short answers, fearing that I would run out of things to say, and trying to come up with social scripts to follow. Now it is noticing that I cycle through a lot of perspectives and think about wierd patterns/connections.
  • Frustrations with small talk, tribal political discussion, and people trying to peer pressure me into being on the right side and getting offended when I ask them to provide logical evidence for the belief they want me to go along with.
  • Ruminating over past social interactions and getting frustrated that I have a hard time saying the right thing at the right time.
  • Frustration when people use social manipulation to bypass the agreed upon rules, then I become obsessed with figuring out the actual unwritten social rules.
  • Openness to odd ideas and questioning the status quo.
  • Watching content about autistic people (like Asperger’s Are Us) and recognizing that it sometimes overlaps with my own behaviors.
  • Watching a streamer with a formal autism diagnosis and realizing he was high-masking and many people didn’t notice his autism unless he told them about it. His story matched a lot of my own experience.

It has made it easier to navigate life and look for situations where I fit in rather than trying to mask to prevalent social norms.

Though I would be lying if I said there wasn't a tiny part of me that is sad that I'm not as "normal" as I once believed.

I wrote something long and deleted it.

Your instinct to avoid fad diagnosis is in all likelihood spot on. People have an intense variety, you may have some things that you enjoy and are good at it and some that you do not.

Putting a label on it and embracing a diagnosis that may not be appropriate is poison. Enjoy your life and don't do that!

Well crap, maybe I am ND too. Is posting and enjoying other Motte posts a sign of ND? I feel similarly about that "open minded" thing.

Is posting and enjoying other Motte posts a sign of ND?

Yes. Not definitive, but it's a sign.

Sigh. Bit of a letdown to my ego, I rather enjoyed thinking of myself as open-minded.

The way I would describe myself (having been armchair diagnosed with autism by multiple acquaintances, much to my irritation) is that there's a difference between "kind of an autist" (guilty as charged) and "diagnosable as autistic" (The shrink I saw never brought it up, so if that's the case it isn't that obvious, and the guy was otherwise fairly dramatic with his assessments.). Whatever happened to being a bit weird, anyway?

If anything (I've always been something of a motormouth.), after getting a job at a bar I discovered that I am a lot more extroverted than I thought I was. It's still not perfect, runs hot and cold, and I'm not the best at approaching strangers, but I get bored sitting at home alone after awhile.

Mind you, there are other problems like pathological aversion to conflict and/or a screwed up attachment style, but I don't think those are an autism thing, more of a fucked up mommy issues thing (gag!).

I am in my late 30s and I have discovered that I may be somewhat neurodivergent.

Posting on TheMotte

Uh, anon...

Kidding aside, I had my own realization in my early 20s before it was such a common thing, and it was when I read about Dr Asperger's "little professors" and thought "oh shit." Turned out to be more complicated, but unsurprisingly parents in the all-too-common autist/cluster B pairing managed to produce a bunch of weirdo kids.

And really, that would be my main worry about someone figuring it out later in life: that they would've already fallen into the cluster B trap. It sounds like you avoided that, so everything else that stems from your realization can probably be managed.

Uh, anon...

lol, deserved.

Luckily I don't think I'm cluster B. I ended up well adjusted in external presentation, to the point where I can successfully hold leadership positions and be generally "well-liked." The tradeoff is that I have a near constant level of internal stress from maintaining the facade. I'm trying to figure out how to deal with that.

Turned out to be more complicated, but unsurprisingly parents in the all-too-common autist/cluster B pairing managed to produce a bunch of weirdo kids.

So that's why the other kids kept duct taping me to the flagpole...

fallen into the cluster B trap

Been there. Learned my lesson. Never again.

And really, that would be my main worry about someone figuring it out later in life: that they would've already fallen into the cluster B trap.

Do non-diagnosed autists often become narcissists/antisocial/borderline disturbed? Is that what you mean by cluster B trap? If so, how does that work?

No, by trap I mean male autists entering a relationship with a cluster B woman, specifically borderline or histrionic tendencies.

So, why are the autists more susceptible for falling for these women? Because they are more isolated and worse at reading people?

n=1 and those two factors definitely play their parts, but also - those types of woman are usually much less shy of showing direct, explicit interest in a guy and have no qualms about adapting their presentation to suit their interests (autistics tend to entirely miss the "traditional" green flags, and thus have no experience with courtship), and generally do most of the work of forming an attachment for him. The dreaded "I can fix her" impulse is also super effective against autistic-type mons, "reasonable" and "grounded" as they are (how hard can it be, really?). From the inside it definitely feels like a match made in heaven until the downsides slowly become apparent.

t. stepped on a landmine

A match made in heaven (hell). The naive and vulnerable vs the exploiter who can be most effective against such individuals.

I'd think being bad at reading people is exactly the reason why one would want to nope out of any relationship with a high-drama person. At least this is how it works for me. If you're bad at something, why get into a situation where your wellbeing may depend on being good at it?

You'd perhaps not have a benchmark to judge them against, and might be strung along by their interest in you.

Which is why, as a broad generality, I think (male) autists are prone to falling into the trap of a relationship with a cluster B woman. If they don't have a good benchmark to judge against (and perhaps have a bad benchmark like "women are crazy," which leads to "this woman is acting crazy, that's nothing unusual because all women are like that"), then they're less likely to see all the red flags for what the flags really are. They could be naive about other people's motivations (hence the quokka insult) and fail to recognize malicious or destructively selfish motivations under the woman's expressed interest in them.

As for why they might be prone to be targeted, they are likely presenting some behaviors (appearance of emotional stability, internal locus of control, unwillingness to go with the crowd, etc.) that histrionic/borderline types find attractive (see hysterical bonding proposed by McWilliams), and it's only later when the incompatibility in all these traits between the two people causes it all to end in tears.

and perhaps have a bad benchmark like "women are crazy," which leads to "this woman is acting crazy, that's nothing unusual because all women are like that"

Fortunately, I know for a fact it is not so (I am married to one of the counter-examples, but I know more than one). But it could be just my personal luck, could happen that I would never meet any.

Yes?

Id assume "worse at reading people" does most of the heavy lifting therr

I would suggest for, um, reasons, that Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a bigger risk. That thing where they decide that you are The Good Person and then chameleon-cloak themselves to appeal to you is super effective against quokkas.

This is why gatekeeping is super important. "Oh, you're telling me you're really into Curtis Yarvin after I mentioned him? Name 5 kings you'd grant absolute sovereignty."

As you describe it, that sounds more like BPD mirroring, but I'm not a doctor and don't even play one on tv.

The NPD version is more manipulative.

It's always been obvious to me. And to everyone around me. The only thing I realized later on was just how severe it is; how many forms of human activity I'm just fundamentally not suitable for or prohibitively inefficient in on account of my wiring. When I was young, I thought I could manage somehow. Now I see that, yeah maybe, but it's not worth the constantly high level of effort required when "normies" can do it by instinct. Better to focus on what I can do well.

Now I see that, yeah maybe, but it's not worth the constantly high level of effort required when "normies" can do it by instinct.

This was one of the big ones. I will still socialize, but I don't have to be as social as other people. I don't have to keep up with their energy. I'm allowed to go home early. I'm allowed to skip some social events. I'm allowed to be exhausted afterwards. The realization has helped me stop beating myself up so much.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats