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:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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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.
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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.
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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).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
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Update since @FtttG already thanked me for my previous depression post, (read my blog already Ft!), but I am doing much better!
The primary issue in my case was playing too many video games, especially of the addictive, competitive kind. After I set that down I naturally went back to spending more time reading, in prayer/meditation, and generally just taking care of responsibilities at work and in the household, which has been great for my mood. Ultimately I find that in retrospect it's often quite obvious why my mood has dipped, but when I'm in the middle of a depressive episode it's frustratingly hard to understand or take action on it. Oh well.
I also want to do a quick shoutout here to anti-depressant drugs. For over a decade I dealt with depression and refused to take any prescriptions for it. While I do think it's good to resist treatment for a while, ultimately I caved and I'm glad I did. I'm on an SNRI and it has been a tremendous help to me. So if anyone is on the fence about it and has struggled with depression or anxiety for a while, I'd recommend at least trying some.
Has there been a new generation of antidepressant since 2012 or so? I have known four people who started antidepressants and then blew their brains out within a year. As somebody who's struggled with depression in the past, that scares the shit out of me.
As the saying goes, the plural of "anecdote" is not "data". Astral Codex Ten:
The probability that your four people were all in the unlucky 50 percent who get no benefit from SSRIs is 6 percent—low, but well within the realm of possibility. If you broaden your net of anecdotes to encompass the denizens of this website, you probably get something closer to the expected 50 percent.
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