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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   2186 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for September 27, 2023

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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I'm about 5 weeks into my keto diet and I am loving it. In the past, maintaining a diet was extremely difficult and I was hungry all the time.

Not so this time. I'm down about 10 pounds despite making zero effort to count or restrict my calories. The weight comes off like magic. What's more I love the food, and I'm always full.

I should gone low carb a long time ago, and I don't know why I never did until now. This is no brainer stuff. Everyone I've talked to who has done keto has gotten amazing results. It has a strong scientific basis as well. The people who are most critical seem to have some sort of ideological objection.

Sometimes it really is that easy. There's no need to complicated programs, apps, or calorie counting. Just cut out pretty much all carbs and the weight comes off.

It has a strong scientific basis as well. The people who are most critical seem to have some sort of ideological objection.

Congrats on the progress. But AFIK it doesn't . the data shows no diet works particularly well . it may have worked well for you, but this does not not means it can be generalized as if it's a scientific truth/fact. Even if Keto is more effective for weight loss, the issue is also adherence. Someone can create a diet called the 'pond sludge diet' ..it's very effective for weight loss. just eat pond sludge, but the problem is no one can stick to that kind of diet. That is the problem with diet industry...humans are so unique individually that it's hard to create something which works for many people reliably. This is why GLP-1 drugs are such major a revolution in that they seem to work well on the general population. If overfeeding on keto leads to weight gain is debated still.

This is why GLP-1 drugs are such major a revolution in that they seem to work well on the general population.

There are reports that that can't reduce your hunger all the way down. People lose about 15% of their body weight and reach a new equilibrium, which is fine if you were 90kg, but if you were 130kg and got to 110kg with no real muscle gain to speak of, you're probably still obese.

hmmm i think there is a range. some lose a higher %, others less. Elon Musk notably took Wegovy, but a year later he still looks somewhat heavy...maybe he went off it or only only lost a little weight.

Care to share some of the foods you're eating? A sample day's worth of meals? Obviously you can find keto recipes all over the internet, but I'm curious what worked for you, what you enjoyed, and what you were able to buy and prepare for yourself.

I'd love to. I have a lot of salads and meat obviously, but I am also enjoying Mission Zero burritos and Keto bread.

Typical day:

Breakfast: Eggs and Bacon

Lunch: Hamburger with keto bun and mashed avocados

Dinner: Shrimp tacos with mission zero burritos

Dessert: Yogurt with whipped cream and keto-friendly chocolate chips

Glad you found something that works for you. Do you think it's something that you would stick with long term, or perhaps cycle on and off of? My, not very researched, impression was that the main criticisms low carb is that people tend to rebound. I will say this is true of basically all diets, so is not particularly convincing to me.

I do think there are plenty of, at least decent quality, studies showing carbohydrates are necessary for peak athletic performance. This seems to be backed up by what high level competitors actually do. Though I would imagine if you were in a situation where it mattered you would be tracking macros anyway, so the convenience of keto would be less of a factor.

The data is mixed. An n=1 overfeeding study showed Keto as the clear winner

another overfeeding study showed high carbs as the winner. what to make of this, who knows.

Do you think it's something that you would stick with long term, or perhaps cycle on and off of?

I plan on cycling off. But it's nice to have this in my tool kit. Previous dieting was effective but felt like torture. I'll probably do keto from time to time to keep my weight and BF% below a target level.

One point I'll make is that "yo-yo dieting" is bad when people use high-carb, low-protein diets. These diets cause large decreases in muscle mass. This puts the dieter in a bad metabolic state when they stop dieting. Having less muscle mass, they burn fewer calories, and are likely to return to a higher weight than before.

Dieting with adequate protein, and with resistance training, will help me lose weight with a minimum of muscle loss.

I do think there are plenty of, at least decent quality, studies showing carbohydrates are necessary for peak athletic performance.

As a weekend warrior type sportsball athlete, this is something I've noticed. While people can do endurance activities in a state of ketosis, explosive movements tend to suffer. Adequate electrolytes help, and I've also started supplementing with creatine which promises benefits as well. Some suggest consuming a small amount of carbs (5-15 grams) before activities that require explosive movements such as sprinting.

I heard keto can screw up your kidneys or have other side effects. You ever heard of that?

Funny enough, the first time I heard that claim was today, when I was listening to Stem Talk podcast episode #157. The interviewer said that's been largely debunked and that people who consume higher carb content are actually more likely to have screwed up kidneys.

I think it's possible there may be some negatives to the diet, but almost anything is better than the SAD (standard american diet). 10% of the American population is diabetic and about 1/3rd of adults are prediabetic. It's hard to imagine a world in which going from SAD to low carb is going to be bad for your kidneys.

Concerns about cholesterol are also largely overblown. People with "high" total cholesterol at age 65 are more likely to live to 100. LDL/HDL ratio and triglycerides are more important. That said, I do have very high cholesterol already so this is something I will be monitoring.

I plan to take a blood test soon.

If you stay in ketosis too long, probably. It's hard to actually hit ketosis though.

Yeah, "keto" can easily be "low carb" in actuality, especially if you're not tracking. When I wasn't I was probably just doing low-carb - especially if you consider that a lot of keto diets call for a lot more fat than protein and I always found it harder to hit the targets for the former compared to the latter.

But I think even low carb will work for a lot of people simply by forcing you to cut out a lot of bad shit you might otherwise unthinkingly consume.

I think this is sort of part of what I was trying to ask OP about. It seems to me, most people use the term keto somewhat informally. I can't find the source, but somehow I had the impression that being in ketosis for very long periods (like a year) could affect mood and cognitive function. In practice though, it doesn't seem like a lot of people actually maintain ketosis year round. I could definitely see how if you went full ketosis for 12ish week weight loss periods, ate at maintenance relatively low carb, and optionally cycled up to higher carbs when fueling high training loads, that could work very well for people. OP are you testing with keytone strips? And if yes, what's your plan for after you finish your initial weight loss?

OP are you testing with keytone strips?

I have tried peeing on some ketone strips but they didn't work or my ketones are too low. Probably the former former since the strips are very old and I've been limiting my carbs pretty strictly.

Depending on who is counting a "keto" diet calls for < 20 or < 50 carbs per day. I am almost certainly in the 20-50 range. I am strict with absolutely no bread or fruit. But there are carbs in everything - even yogurt.

I guess I don't care if I'm in "ketosis" or not. As long as the weight comes off easily. Like I said, I'm not hungry, and I'm not making any effort to restrict calories.

what's your plan for after you finish your initial weight loss?

I plan to go back to normal eating erring on the side of low carb. Once I hit my goal, I'll allow myself to get slightly fatter and then use keto as a maintenance diet perhaps 1 of every 6 months.

I think it is impressive to hit ketosis for like a week straight. The amount of carbs in a single slice of bread is enough to take you out of it for a week, even if that was literally the only carbs you had. If you have a personal chef or make all of your meals from scratch its probably a little easier. But almost anything pre-made has too many carbs. Meat with bread crumbs on it is stupidly common. Any pre-prepped meals always have most of their calories coming from a carb item like pasta. Even if you only eat things that are "keto-friendly" you can still have too many carbs for ketosis, because those things can still have a serving or two of carbs.

This is probably coming off as a rant directed at you. Its not. I've been doing low-carb for about two years now. I called it Keto originally, but I don't think I've ever hit Keto, so I stopped using that label. I love the diet and what its done for me, but damn is it frustrating sometimes. So many sugar traps everywhere.

I didn't get too much of a rant impression.

I have tracked macros when serious about training, so I know at least some of the pain that surrounds common prepared foods. I've always kept at least some carbs around workouts though, but was curious about potentially using Keto if I ever do a hard fat loss phase again.

The only person I have know personally that has for sure done Keto proper, with ketone strips and all, staid on for about 3 months. They seemed to get good results, but I don't think they thought it was sustainable to stay in ketosis for a longer period.

I am 27 and work at a big box grocery store, so I stoop, crouch, and kneel a lot. I've slowly developed a shooting pain that begins in my right lower back and extends to my outer right thigh. There is no obvious activity that aggravates it, but today I woke up and it had graduated from "noticeable" to "annoying", so it's time to do something about it. I plan to start a yoga routine because I suspect it has to do with inflexibility. I also think my crappy desk chair is contributing. Any recommendations for better desk chairs? I typically sit cross legged. Beyond that, does anyone have advice for potential causes, fixes, or preventative measures?

I messed up my back in my late 20's, though it was honestly from sheer laziness and a careless sneeze. I thought I'd gotten through it then I spent the first year of the pandemic in a terrible chair from office depot which slowly undid 3/4 of my progress and I was in pain daily for a good while. Get a quality chair, definitely, which in my experience start new around $1k. I credit getting a new job that was on prem, and spending my workday in a decent chair (ergohuman), along with a fairly basic stretching and core workout routine with getting me back on track. These stretches seem like they are a secret sauce-- child's pose, downward dog, stretching lower back. Along with hip flexor stretching.

These stretches absolutely helped my lower back as well, but I think the post on the image you've linked to doesn't stretch it. It's a great stretch for the anterior chain, though, including hip flexors and abs that try to round your lower spine.

I typically sit cross legged.

Try sitting with your feet flat on the floor. This provides better support.

Huh. This initially felt worse but after about 15 minutes it improved. I typically squirm around, altering my posture every couple minutes, but felt no need to after the initial discomfort passed.

I've slowly developed a shooting pain that begins in my right lower back and extends to my outer right thigh.

I'm not a doctor, but this sounds like sciatica. The internet can suggest some specific stretches that might help.

It could also be the pyriformis muscle if it's specifically in the back of the thigh. If lying down on your back, with your left foot on the ground, crossing your right leg over the left, then with your arms pushing both legs toward your chest and stretching the back of the thigh = pain. According to a physical therapist I went to see for this, sitting at a desk should be on a draft-like chair angled 45 degrees to the ground (forward tilt). To prevent tightening of the hamstrings and legs in general. It could be a matter of adjustment of your current chair or you could get one of these 3 models modway articulate ; alera elusion multifunction high back ; alpha home ergonomic or something like a herman miller but supposedly they're not that great for the price. Ideally you get a chance to try them in a show-room and see what fits your size.

Minimal/no pain when performing that exercise. The pain is on the outside of my thigh, at around 2 o'clock if 12 is oriented straight ahead the way my eyeballs face.

Well I don't know then, probably hamstring muscles putting pressure on the sciatica nerve. One exercise that felt very satisfying was a deep stretch of the thigh by simply lying down and lifting the leg straight, holding it and pushing it toward your chest at the limit of it being painful.

Shooting pain is most commonly associated with neuropathic pain, and in this context I'd suspect a back issue. Could even be a slipped disc, either from repetitive straining or lifting something heavy.

You could try exercise for a bit, but if you can afford it, a visit to a doctor or a physiotherapist is probably not the worst idea.

I typically lift ~30 pounds frequently, up to hundreds of times a day, and sometimes at awkward angles. Occasionally lift more than 50 lbs, but always with proper form. It's almost certainly not bad enough to be a slipped disc, but repetitive stress is likely. I'm trying to fix it on my own before I try a doctor, not out of financial concerns but just because I dislike dealing with doctors. If I don't see fairly rapid improvement I'll see a doctor.

Out of curiosity, why do you suggest a doctor? My priors are that they would either recommend what I'm already doing, or recommend a medical intervention that would arguably be worse than what I'm dealing with (like back surgery). Is that inaccurate? It took 15+ years for the pain to get to that point, aggravated by a NEET phase where I was sitting in a slouched chair aggravating back pain for 14 hours a day and in bed the other 10. Working through pain would be better than enforced sloth.

The additional context you provided makes an outright slipped disc somewhat less unlikely, but it's perfectly possible that you have a slower/progressive degenerative disc disease.

Shooting pain of the kind you described, especially going from the back to your legs, is a very common presentation of the same. It strongly suggests pressure or damage on some nerve or the other.

But if it's cheaper for you, see a physiotherapist first, or if your exercise plan works out. If it makes a difference, I am a doctor myself, but this isn't my speciality.

Yoga with Adrienne and Yoga with Tim are great. I highly recommend doing a full yoga session each day. Stretching doesn't really do anything unless you spend a bit of time loosening the muscles, don't fall into the trap of doing a few 'stretching sessions' throughout the day for one to two minutes. You won't get nearly the same benefits.

Tried a generic 20 minute beginner routine with Adriene and noticed some immediate relief. I'll try her 30 day course. I have the free time for it, and the health benefits are an effective motivator.

Do you stretch, like ever? Yoga is great, but if it feels like a high bar/difficult to motivate yourself too, you'd be amazed what two minutes stretching once or twice most days will do.

If you go the yoga route, consider 30 days of yoga with adriene. Minimal woo, beginner friendly.

No. I hate stretching. Yoga is easier to do, mentally, because a guided routine makes it feel more like an exercise and less like static stretching.

I would like you to take 5 capsules of vitamin D every morning upon waking, and report back in a month. For science.

I do think this would be an interesting experiment to test on yourself. Not a medical doctor, but in case the capsules you use are different than @DuplexFields maybe shoot for 10,000 IU a day. Maybe split 50:50 between when you wake up and lunch time. Reduce by 30%-50% if you have GI problems.

Edit: Since OP might be European, I mean ten thousand IUs not 10.

Can my only choice be to do nothing? It can. Will I be able to accept the consequences of doing nothing? I won't. What to do then?

That's an unstable equilibrium if I've ever seen one.

The potential trajectories, referenced without any implicit preference or ranking, is accidentally stumbling into something you consider meaningful, committing suicide, drugs, a life of low grade depression, or all of the above in a non-exclusive order.

You won't know till you get there. Maybe not even then.

I think my sister in law might be an alcoholic. Not sure what to do. Her and my brother have three kids together.

Last weekend was my grandfather's funeral. At the service she started drinking wine, and getting through a few glasses pretty quickly. She then got in an argument with my brother about how she wanted to stay and go to the smaller party we were having with just close family. My brother was saying no, because he had been worried about this exact scenario, they'd only originally planned to stay for the service. She then suggested that he take the kids home and she could stay and get a ride home from our parents. Keep in mind, this is not her grandfather. She didn't know him particularly well either.

That was the latest incident. There are many more that start with some variation of "[sister in law] drank too much and then she ..."

Bad stuff and I have no useful advice, just want to say that I hear ya and my thoughts are with you.

Thanks, I live two hours away from them, and my interactions are only a few times a year. So while I feel for my brother, this luckily isn't much of a personal burden on me.

That sounds more like a "your sister-in-law is a colossal jerk" problem than an alcohol problem, or at least an interaction between your sister-in-law's jerkitude and alcohol.

Having some, even a lot of, wine at a funeral isn't a big deal. Getting into a fight with your husband at his grandfather's funeral is, as is voluntelling your husband's parents to serve as your designated driver. That's an insane level of disrespect.

I'd be extremely perturbed if a brother or sister-in-law treated his or her parents that way, a grandparent's funeral that way. Much less my parents or grandparent. Maybe I'm slowly becoming a crochety socon boomer (and/or perhaps the Overton rug is shifting underneath me), but as an adult you should be on your best behavior around your family, especially any family-in-laws.

I've always disliked her. Tried to talk my brother into breaking up with before they were engaged. He kinda did, and then got back with her. I tried to ask him if he was really really sure he wanted to marry her. He said he loved her. My dad and I joked that if my brother changed his mind last minute we'd have the truck ready and high tail him out of the wedding. I'm not gonna tell me brother "I told ya so", but between you and me ... i fuckin told him so.

This lady is in her mid 30s and she has two lovely older siblings. Its not a generational thing, or a 'how she was raised' kind of thing. Its a her thing. I think before this incident I just really disliked her and thought of her as a jerk and responsible for all her crappy behavior. This seemed beyond her normal level of being annoying and petty that it finally got me to stop and think "is this alcoholism?"

In line with @raggedy_anthem 's point, and your point: It might not be strictly medically alcoholism. But yeah I get a strong sense that if alcohol wasn't in the picture things would be better.

Alcoholism, despite the stereotype, almost always has an emotional component which, if resolved, removes the driving compulsion to drink, though not always the urge.

Behaviorism has identified four drivers of behavior: attention, escape, access, and sensation. Some memory in her past, I’m guessing, carries a stressful semantic meaning which makes her feel she is required to escape. By my experiences, probably an initial event and a reinforcing event.

Alcoholism, despite the stereotype, almost always has an emotional component which, if resolved, removes the driving compulsion to drink, though not always the urge.

I find this claim appealing, but it's so poorly-defined as to be impossible to test. "Emotional component" is a placeholder - it might just as well be phlogiston or black bile.

There are three categories of emotions (per Triessentialism): Identities, Roles, and Imperatives.

  • Identities can be stated in first, second, or third person, singular or plural, and carry positive (towards) or negative (away from) polarity. “I am an American” is an example identity of mine, a positive emotional component atop the bare fact. “I am white” is not an identity I have, positive or negative, despite its factuality, but “I am a descendant of the Mayflower Pilgrims” is.
  • Roles in perceived relationships can also be singular or plural, positive or negative. Unlike identities, they come in pairs which are either peers or unequals: student/teacher, boss/employee, husband/wife, lover/lover, brother in arms, brother/sister, etc. Roles have duties, explicit or implicit, which if neglected or denied will crater the relationship.
  • Imperatives are best stated as wants and needs. Wants are for something, needs are to avoid something unwanted. I want dessert because I want the positive experience of eating it. I need food to keep my blood sugar up to avoid a crash, my metabolism churning to avoid a slowdown which would cause me to gain even more weight, and my organs nourished to avoid their dysfunction or death.

Each of these can drive compulsions in search of fulfilling or self-validating those emotions. The specific ones are so subjective to each individual's experiences and history that even guessing would be foolhardy.

Alcoholism, despite the stereotype, almost always has an emotional component which, if resolved, removes the driving compulsion to drink, though not always the urge.

I'm still struggling to understand what claim you're making about the nature of alcoholism. You stress that wants and needs are (imperative) emotional components. So is it just that people stop being alcoholics when they stop wanting/needing to drink alcohol? But that's almost tautological.

Alcoholics generally don’t drink because they “want to drink,” they drink to fulfill one of the behavior functions (attention, escape, access, and sensation) because they can’t fulfill a different emotion elsewhere in their life.

Somewhere in their past, someone else made a bad choice which not only impacted their lives negatively, it also injured an instinct: the choice made them believe their world wasn’t how it should be and they’re just going to have to live with being personally screwed by a bad deal. It could be a bad identity: they’re born with the wrong skin tone or genitals. It could be a bad relationship: their teacher cares more about homework than understanding. It could be a bad imperative: they didn’t get something they needed because someone neglected them. Often it’s because one of their caretakers was neglectful or even abusive.

What’s key to understanding alcoholism is the compulsive nature of the disorder: they feel driven to drink, and they haven’t had the tools, the technique, the time, or the teachers to help them find and disarm the emotion which compels them.

Alcoholics Anonymous gives all of these things, in an atmosphere of nonjudgmental camaraderie, patience, and mentorship where people who realize they need help can find it. The program was so successful (compared to other things) that it became the model for recovery from other addictions, such as narcotics, sex addiction, and life drama addiction (CoDependents Anonymous).

Honestly all of those sound valid for her.

She does seem to crave attention in social situations. She is a consummate extrovert.

She has complained enough about my brother that the rumors have reached me, even though I am in a totally different social circle and live two hours away. She thinks of him as emotionally unavailable. So escaping that.

Access to social interaction that she seems to desperately crave.

And feeling something. (maybe sensation is a stretch for her)

Does her drinking go past being a nuisance like the one scenario you outlined in detail, or does it become genuinely dangerous/debilitating at times? It's one thing to be lush, another to be a menace to yourself and others.

Drinking and driving has happened a few times ... while picking up her kids.

Her level of alcohol consumption doesn't seem to get to the level of being personally dangerous. Like I don't think she is getting sick from how much alcohol she's consumes. It just interacts with her existing mental issues in a horrible way.

That is concerning, to say the least. I'd suggest you talk to your brother about trying to talk her into some kind of understanding of what she's doing, and then building off whether she shows insight into her condition. If yes, great, she can probably be talked into at least trying therapy or medical intervention. If not, then the hard questions start getting asked. I hope it doesn't come to that.

By existing mental issues, are you referring to a concrete diagnosis, or just being a bit of an asshole, which is sadly something I can't bill for?

My brother keeps a large emotional distance from ... everyone. Its one of his wife's main complaints. I am mostly just trying to get him to talk to me at all right now. Not cuz he is avoiding me. Its just very hard to get him to open up about stuff.

She is in therapy. No idea why it is so useless. The two older kids are in therapy, and she talked my brother into getting therapy too. Which hasn't been bad for him.

I don't know if there is any concrete mental diagnosis. I do know that back when we were all in highschool she got into a car accident her senior year (took a turn a little too fast). My brother has said once or twice before that her personality changed a bit afterwards, but he didn't know her that well beforehand. It was a weird night that highlighted some differences between me and my brother. It was the only time I've seen him kind of frozen. He is usually very calm and collected, and I thought that meant he could also do anything. But it wasn't the response of a man of action, rather than a kind of emotional deadness.

Night of the car accident:

I am going to drop off my sister, I just got my learners permit. I am 16. We run into a car accident on one of the common roads. I hear some feint screaming. Roll down the window, it becomes more clear. Blood curdling scream like someone is in serious pain. Its freaking my mom and sister out. I have a temptation to get out and go see what is happening, but EMS is already present. We turn around go a different way. Coming back home we assume the accident has maybe been cleared up. Its not. Call my brother, we find out my brother is in the traffic behind the accident. Maybe 6 or 7 cars back from where the accident happened. He mentions that he can't reach [his now wife] on cell. I get out of my car, switch with my mom to being in the driver seat. I hike along the road about 30 or 40 cars. (this is a country road where you see a car pass by once every minute or so. Many of the cars are just turning around in the middle of the road.). I get to my brothers jeep. Ask him whats going on. He is biting his lip. Says he doesn't know. Cell phone is in his hand. I don't think to ask how many missed outgoing calls he has. He was much closer to the site of the accident than we were on the other side, he definitely heard the screams.

Her parents get a call that their daughter is in the hospital. My brother and mom head there. I head back home. My parents and my [now sister in law's] parents meet for the first time in the hospital.

The story later is that they were cutting a jacket she loved in order to extract her from the vehicle, she was aware enough to know they were cutting the jacket, but not aware enough to not scream bloody murder at EMS personnel who are rescuing her from a destroyed vehicle. She suffered a concussion at the time.

It was not a case of drinking and driving. They were heading to a party where they would be drinking, but were planning to spend the night.

I think back on that night as pretty pivotal. I think she would have just been a highschool tryst for my brother if not for that night. The parents wouldn't have met. There wouldn't have been a seriousness to the relationship. I also wonder if it impacted her mental health permanently, there are plenty of cases of people being permanently mentally altered by traumatic brain events.

Also it shows she is a shitty driver even when sober, she definitely shouldn't be driving drunk.

She is in therapy. No idea why it is so useless

Hah! Yeah talk therapy is pretty useless for deep emotional issues or traumas. I think it can be useful for 'normal' people who don't have deep-seated issues, but in my experience anyone with serious trauma needs something more. If she's open to it she could look into different modalities like breathwork or somatic experiencing, but... sounds like that's a hard ask.

That story is wild. She was screaming over a jacket? Woah.

For the driving drunk with kids thing... that is extremely serious. I know adults who are permanently messed up from getting into an accident with a drunk parent. Sounds like you can't do anything more than what you're doing without really burning some bridges, but I wish you luck. It's not an easy situation.

I appreciate the context. It seems to me that your hands are rather tied, unless you want to go pretty drastic by doing things like calling the cops on her if she's driving drunk. I wouldn't do that myself, the consequences would be severe for the family, even if you manage to do it anonymously.

As for therapy, eh, for a would-be psychiatrist I'm ambivalent on it. I like me my drugs, no wishy washy bullshit. But that aside, therapy covers a lot of different techniques, from those with good empirical evidence bases to bullshitting everything like Freudians and Lacanians. I hope they're doing the more validated (and ideally less woo) stuff, but it's not a miracle maker, especially when a person seems to plausibly lack insight or regret for their decisions.

I'd advise you to wait and watch, at least for now. Or perhaps have a good bud of your brother, some he listens to, try and give him a hint. Or maybe have the family corner your SIL and make pointed comments when she's acting up.

But what do I know dawg, other than that it's a shitty situation to find yourself in. I do hope it works out!

Update: training for the Hock, buying ski gear. Planning on going in February in the Brooks Range. Running and biking as training.

Running

I'd highly recommend joining a local running group. It will help with motivation and you may make some new friends.

I look forward, as always, to the greentext this will inevitably produce. Maybe you might even be the one to write it, assuming you're not a popsicle.

WTF is the Hock? Every time you mention it here, I google it and only learn about horse legs.

He explained in the Small Scale Questions thread that it's slang for being thrown/cast, in this case being cast into the wilderness.

Thank you! And here I thought it was some sort of official event like the Iditarod.

The guy is categorically opposed to explaining.

This is funny to me because every time I read it, I thought it was referring to something being "in hock," as in pawned as collateral for a loan but neither yet redeemed nor lost.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/in-hock

The reference being that the lives of the youth can be either redeemed by their struggle or lost because they cannot pay for the loan they received.

As far as I understand SkookumTree, he wants to climb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hock_Mountain.

He mentioned the Brooks Range in the OP, which is in Alaska/Yukon.

Oh. That makes my McCandless reference much more appropriate.

Oh I thought he had mentioned Alaska. Climbing a mountain in Washington doesn't seem quite so treacherous.

If you're going to do it, I'd recommend bringing a camera or at least journaling while undergoing the experience. It'll help you stay sane, for one, but also you may be able to get a book/movie deal out of it. Win win.

Do you really think I might be able to get a book or movie deal out of the Hock? That would be cool as fuck.

I mean anything is possible man. I don't know shit about you in real life, but if you're charismatic or the situation is cool enough, why the hell not?

No, but you might get a really good blogpost, and that's even better.

Good luck, don't be a McCandless.

What's a way I can volunteer where I can be near or acquainted with death? Stuff like suicide hotlines, or doing some work around a funeral home, or something. Not anything like a job, but some thankless work I can do on the odd weekend where everyone around is sad or somber. Honestly I can probably only spare a few hours a week.

I want the burden of mourning, or the heaviness. I want to do something necessary and generally unpleasant, because I think I'm particularly well-suited for emotional lows or even tragedy (but maybe not necessarily trauma). When my 19-year-old sister-in-law overdosed, I experienced plenty of serious faces and serious conversations, and I was slightly intoxicated by it, like the places we were going and the things people were saying mattered very much.

You could consider finding an old cemetery you have a connection to and cleaning it up. Cemeteries slowly decay: the stones get overgrown with moss and lichens, the engraving fades and disappears from weathering, stones fall over and get broken and buried. Groundskeepers and sextons can prevent some of this, but usually their duties don't include repairing anything but the most egregious damage (and sometimes not even then). You'll want to contact the cemetery board and ask for permission first, but they'll probably be happy for the help.

The easiest thing you can do is cleaning off the stones. The stuff you want is called "D/2 Biological Solution"; this is what they use at Arlington to keep the headstones white. The befores-and-afters can be quite striking, particularly for marble stones which can go from greenish-gray to gleaming white. The typical procedure is to spray the stone with water, then with D/2, then scrape the worst of the growth off with a plastic scraper and let it sit (the D/2 will continue to work for weeks). A few hours a week is enough to make a marked improvement over the course of a few months. You can get more involved and get into resetting and repairing stones, but that requires a larger time commitment and more specialized skills.

If you do this you'll begin to develop connections to the people buried there. You'll find the graves of people who lived long and fulfilling lives and people who suffered tragic accidents, people who were very important to the town and people who ended up buried there by happenstance, people who were very wealthy and people who weren't. If you're in America, you'll find graves of people who emigrated from the old world (and may even be written in a foreign language) and people whose families lived in that town for generations. You'll see names you recognize from streets and parks, and maybe even from friends and relatives. You'll get a sense of what it might have been like to live in a time when deadly diseases were more prevalent and every family had a child or two (or more) who died from smallpox or diphtheria. You'll also spend a lot of time around monumental sculpture and may even uncover some sentimental poetry.

In addition to the other suggestions, I would add facilitating a grief from death support group. One may already exist and you could just attend. Even though you aren't technically volunteering I think it still fits the spirit of volunteering because you are helping other people process their grief just by showing up and being supportive. I think rationalist-adjacent thinkers can often add a valuable perspective to support groups if they are also personally impacted by the issue.

Good luck in your quest. IIRC volunteering at a hospital is more difficult to do because it’s a go-to experience for students and suitors. So don’t forget that there are also shelters, clinics, random organizations to help with grief, churches, online communities. Your comment also vaguely reminds me of the first opening 20 minutes of Fight Club, which I would recommend watching or reading.

It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart. Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.(Ecclesiastes 7)

Palliative care? I think you can volunteer to converse with and hold the hand of the dying.

Suicide hotlines, funeral homes. If you want something really goddamn heavy - try to find a way to volunteer in a pediatric cancer ward. Hospice is second - but in a pediatric cancer ward you'll see families that are more or less broken by grief. If an old man with a pack-a-day cigarette habit he's had for 60 years is dying of lung cancer, few people are surprised. Even the old man himself often shrugs and says something like "I knew the smoking was gonna catch up to me". When it's a twelve-year-old, it is different. I was a medical student in a cancer ward for a month. I don't have the words to describe it: if we could resurrect Wilfred Owen and have him walk those halls, he might be able to write poetry sufficient for the task.

Daniel Abse and Dante might be sufficient too.

Married men of The Motte, how do you “make peace with” life-long monogamy?

I’m a heterosexual male. During my 20s and early 30s, I had a non-trivial amount of novel sexual experience (probably averaging 2 or 3 new sex partners each year over this period, with exceptions for years in which I was in various committed relationships). Now, I’m old (40). I’ve had a girlfriend for a long time (5 years), and I’m considering marriage.

The thing is though, I’m freaked out by the idea of only having sex with one woman for the rest of my life. I get really uncomfortable watching Will Ferrell’s character in “Old School.”

I doubt my girlfriend would accept a non-monogamous relationship (I don’t even really want this myself), and I don't intend to be unfaithful (if only because the stress / feelings of guilt would eat me alive). I've always preferred vanilla sex; novelty's my only kink.

Should men like myself seek to "make peace with" life-long monogamy? If so, where do I start?

Do you have principles? I mean, you are letting lust get in the way of love here, and if your principles cannot override your emotions, well, you don't really have principles then!

I mean, it's not like you can affirm this lust as some kind of important value. It's just a strong emotion. It can't even be that strong: 2 or 3 new partners a year? How long were the dry spells then? Were they so unbearable? This time, it's not like you won't be having sex, so it's not like you're signing up for one long dry spell either.

Thanks. I think it's interesting that your husband would share this concern with you before marriage. I have what I believe to be a fairly honest-and-open relationship with my girlfriend, but this isn't something I would consider sharing (partly for fear of hurting her, but partly out of concern for how it might affect her conception of me - and the impact that could have on our relation).

I've struggled with this too buddy. Despite what @George_E_Hale says, I've talked to quite a lot of married men grappling with this problem and I'd say that your position is the norm. Most men who get married aren't ready for it, and are nervous often in an existential way about being with one woman for the rest of their life. It's a serious commitment.

First off, it's a damn good thing that you take it this seriously and think about the long term consequences. Most men don't do this, just sort of put the ring on and get carried on a wave of infatuation and short-term thinking. This type of spontaneous decision making is what our short-term consumerist society loves to perpetuate, and it's foolish. In my humble opinion, it's the reason so many marriages end in heartbreak nowadays. Two immature children deciding to make a serious commitment based on fleeting feelings.

Now I'm not married, although I hope to be relatively soon. And I can strongly relate to what you've written here, hell I could've written this bit myself:

I doubt my girlfriend would accept a non-monogamous relationship (I don’t even really want this myself), and I don't intend to be unfaithful (if only because the stress / feelings of guilt would eat me alive). I've always preferred vanilla sex; novelty's my only kink.

I can say what has helped me get over the nerves and 'settle in' to the idea a bit more is understanding the full tradeoff. I can't find it after a quick search, but the great @FiveHourMarathon responded to one of my older posts here explaining this. Picking a wife can be seen as kind of like an intense game of poker. Yes, of course it's exciting to keep betting and betting and trying to win bigger and bigger. Get more and more novelty. But eventually you're going to be faced with a choice. You'll have to decide to go all-in. And ultimately if you never decide to put everything on the line, if you always waffle and place small bets, you're probably never going to win shit. You're always going to have to risk something if you want a true reward.

It depends on what you want out of your life. Not marrying the girl and going for a string of shorter term relationships is probably the safer option. You'll get fleeting pleasure, you won't have to change who you are much, you'll have a lot more control over your life. But you also won't get the lasting satisfaction of knowing there's a person you love there to reach out to when you wake up at 3am questioning all your life decisions. You won't learn what it's like to have to truly self-reflect, because you have a partner that knows you a damn sight better than you know yourself and who's willing to call you on it when you're being a hypocrite.

Most importantly, you really won't know what it means to commit to something, deep down. I've been learning that there is no commitment without risk, without sacrificing a part of yourself. I'm sure @FlyingLionWithABook can pull up the full quote, but C.S. Lewis said it well in Mere Christianity:

It is just the people who are ready to submit to the loss of the thrill and settle down to the sober interest, who are then most likely to meet new thrills in some quite different direction.

I've found that the more I'm willing to sacrifice the childish part of myself that just wants to bang chicks and live free, the more depth and beauty I've been able to find in my own relationship. The icy walls I've put up around my heart have started to melt, just a little, and I've managed to glimpse what it really means to open yourself to someone else. It's terrifying, breaking open, but there's a beauty and intensity in that vulnerable surrender that I've only found elsewhere in literally feeling the divinity of God.

To answer your question as to where to start, I'd recommend reading about journeys to maturity and what it means to become a true adult. You'll quickly find that most people in the modern West are childish, never even truly reaching the stage of early adulthood, as Bill Plotkin outlines well in his work on discussing the human soul and the stages we go through.. You could also check out Jung's Man and his Symbols, or go into the Constructivist framework and look at Piaget's writing or Kegan levels.

There's no easy way to get around the idea of marriage. Frankly it's a hell of a difficult journey, as it's one of the only serious decisions and commitments men have left to make in the West. But even if it stresses you out on a deep level and makes you question your life, it's also an opportunity for you to grow and mature. Decide what kind of person you want to be, and commit. That's the best advice I can give you.

I'm sure FlyingLionWithABook can pull up the full quote,

Speak of the devil, and he shall (eventually) appear!

People get from books the idea that if you have married the right person you may expect to go on "being in love" for ever. As a result, when they find they are not, they think this proves they have made a mistake and are entitled to a change—not realising that, when they have changed, the glamour will presently go out of the new love just as it went out of the old one. In this department of life, as in every other, thrills come at the beginning and do not last. The sort of thrill a boy has at the first idea of flying will not go on when he has joined the R.A.F. and is really learning to fly. The thrill you feel on first seeing some delightful place dies away when you really go to live there.

Does this mean it would be better not to learn to fly and not to live in the beautiful place? By no means. In both cases, if you go through with it, the dying away of the first thrill will be compensated for by a quieter and more lasting kind of interest. What is more (and I can hardly find words to tell you how important I think this), it is just the people who are ready to submit to the loss of the thrill and settle down to the sober interest, who are then most likely to meet new thrills in some quite different direction. The man who has learned to fly and becomes a good pilot will suddenly discover music; the man who has settled down to live in the beauty spot will discover gardening.

This is, I think, one little part of what Christ meant by saying that a thing will not really live unless it first dies. It is simply no good trying to keep any thrill: that is the very worst thing you can do. Let the thrill go—let it die away—go on through that period of death into the quieter interest and happiness that follow —and you will find you are living in a world of new thrills all the time. But if you decide to make thrills your regular diet and try to prolong them artificially, they will all get weaker and weaker, and fewer and fewer, and you will be a bored, disillusioned old man for the rest of your life.

It is because so few people understand this that you find many middle-aged men and women maundering about their lost youth, at the very age when new horizons ought to be appearing and new doors opening all round them. It is much better fun to learn to swim than to go on endlessly (and hopelessly) trying to get back the feeling you had when you first went paddling as a small boy.

Thank you. I think this is very helpful. I look at various of the married guys I work with and it's hard to tell whether their boring-seeming (to me) lives are actually full of these hidden, rich wellsprings of "beauty and intensity," or whether it's all a lie I should run from without looking back. A lot depends on the person, I guess.

I look at various of the married guys I work with and it's hard to tell whether their boring-seeming (to me) lives are actually full of these hidden, rich wellsprings of "beauty and intensity," or whether it's all a lie I should run from without looking back.

The vast majority of adults I've interacted with are broken from trauma and have learned to repress their emotions to a large degree in order to function in their workplaces. It's not an enviable life, in my opinion, as the costs are high. Learning to be a passionate and intense person is difficult work though, not for the faint of heart.

It depends. On what? In how much you love her. And your relationship. And whatever it is you both build out of it, whatever family you make. It depends on how committed you both are to fidelity, how much of a deal breaker it is. It will also depend on how careless you allow yourself to be by putting yourself into situations where you'll be tempted to stray--and let me assure you now that there are and will be many, many such situations unless you willfully and consciously navigate away from them. Pence isn't the fool people make him out to be, at least not in this regard. The clashing rocks, as it were. They'll get you. Then you'll be playing guilt and intrigue games forever. You needn't go far to find examples of this.

It frankly sounds to me that you're not ready. Sex is just sex. The variety of women and women's bodies, that thrill, the hunt, the look, that way a girl's eyes change when she realizes she wants you, how her body language picks up, the little pulses of interest, the smell of her make-up, and hers, and hers. I could go on. I won't. Gold can't buy this. (Of course it can, but not really. Gold buys the facsimile.) Juxtapose that next to growing old with one woman--will she lop off her hair? The inevitable graying and broadening. In both of you. But also the intimacy, the knowing without being told, the chatty suppers, the contented silences, the shared life. Trust. Is anything more valuable?

I won't--can't-- tell you which you are meant for. One or the other. Or maybe neither. If you're lucky you have a choice, and you can fuck up either one easily. Good luck.

Edit: 18 1/2 years of marriage here.

I think this nicely acknowledges some of the individual variation / tradeoffs involved. I've noticed a trend in life-advice-giving where people are often wrong, but never in doubt. So, you'll have someone ask whether he should pursue his dream of quitting accounting to become a painter, and one person will write back that he definitely, 100% should, and the next person will respond that he definitely, 100% shouldn't.

I don't understand the "clashing rocks" comparison. I understand (from Google) that it's a reference to the Symplegades from Greek myth, but what the relevance is of that story is lost on me.

My metaphors don't always hit. I was referring to the dangers of navigating interactions with other women, and how reading the wind wrong can sink your ship suddenly and unexpectedly, i.e. wreck your marriage or torpedo the trust of your marriage, which is little better.

It frankly sounds to me that you're not ready. Sex is just sex. The variety of women and women's bodies, that thrill, the hunt, the look, that way a girl's eyes change when she realizes she wants you, how her body language picks up, the little pulses of interest, the smell of her make-up, and hers, and hers. I could go on. I won't.

It frankly sounds to me like you've forgotten the lust you dealt with as a young man, or were never that driven by lust in the first place. Bully for you, but for most men it isn't this easy. Otherwise there wouldn't be reams and reams of novels and poetry written about the difficulty and seriousness of the commitment of marriage, not to mention the laws and religious sacraments.

Maybe my wording put you off, I was overly blunt, but you've got me wrong, for whatever it's worth. I married when I was 35, late for guys in my generation. We lived together two years prior to marriage. I'm not now nor was I then immune to lust. I'd have thought my earlier post made that clear.

Also I've seen most of my friends marry and divorce. One of my best friends is about to get married for a third time. I have seen very plainly the arc of love, disenchantment, and failure.

That said, no one has to listen to me. My advice has been ignored before and no doubt will be again.

Yeah sorry I’m projecting a bit here. I just wish the older generation encouraged marriage a bit more and took it more seriously.

I'd like to think I am encouraging it, and taking it very seriously, much like Kierkegaard wrote about Christianity:

I wonder if a man handing another man an extremely sharp, polished, two-edged instrument would hand it over with the air, gestures, and expression of one delivering a bouquet of flowers? Would not this be madness? What does one do, then? Convinced of the excellence of the dangerous instrument, one recommends it unreservedly, to be sure, but in such a way that in a certain sense one warns against it. So it is with Christianity. If what is needed is to be done, we should not hesitate, aware of the highest responsibility, to preach in Christian sermons—yes, precisely in Christian sermons—AGAINST Christianity.

Not to get too heavy. I thought your post offering your own advice was quite good.

To explain a bit more, I suppose I see older married men saying things like “you may not be ready” as part of the problem. I’d rather see older folks who have been through marriage say something more like “you’ll never be ready, it’s difficult, but it’s worth it.”

I’m not married myself so again and I can’t speak for the personal experience. I’m more talking about what would be healthy on a societal level.

I gotcha. I suppose in a way perhaps I think most people may just not be cut out for marriage in today's world because everything is telling them that marriage is a deal you can just renege on later. As opposed to a sacred vow. And I see the choice to opt out as preferable to screwing up kids who have to stomach seeing their parents divorce. But I see your point, certainly, and I'll give it some thought the next time I am tempted to jump in with dubious advice. Thanks for clarifying.

marriage is a deal you can just renege on later.

Yeah this is the shitty part. It's sad how normalized divorce has become, really shows just how heartbreakingly immature the West is. We can't have one damn adult commitment we don't break.

Same way I make peace with any other set of mutually exclusive choices I have to make. Say you choose to become a doctor instead of a professional musician. Certain doors are opened by that decision, and certain doors are closed. You gain certain experiences, you lose out on others. If those tradeoffs aren't ones you can live with then you need to make a different choice. Otherwise, you have to accept the tradeoffs. Nobody can have everything. You have to choose what you care about most and decide accordingly.

I like how this response emphasizes tradeoffs. Sometimes (or often, or always) the best realistic outcome isn't a perfect one.

Mix it up. Get into dress-up and roleplay. If your wife dyes her hair or does it up differently than usual or wears something out-of-character, it'll trick your hindbrain into thinking she's someone else.

Depending on what her favorite genre of literature is, she probably has some cringe sexual fantasies, possibly to do with pirates, vampires, or the like. Compare notes and come up with some RP scenarios.

Haven't written anything significant in one of these Wellness threads for a while, suppose now's a good time.

I'm currently in my fourth week of my first job at an accounting firm after a year or so of actively looking for a job (after recovering from years of chronic illness that derailed a lot of my plans). A lot has been thrown at me so far and it's been fairly exhausting. Despite how draining it can be, this is a development I'm fairly pleased with, and I'm even more pleased with it given that I have a reasonable level of certainty that I got in because of merit and not identity. During the job application process, I had a practice of entering "prefer not to answer" to any identity-based questions that could work in my favour, especially if the organisation indicated they would like to diversity hire (an all too common sight in Australia).

There is one thing that has been causing dissonance though, and it's the gulf between how I perceive myself vs. how other people seem to perceive me. So far people have told me that I have been doing well, and according to my superiors everyone who has worked with me has offered up very positive feedback. I am frankly very perplexed by this - I consider the rate at which I've been picking things up to be normal and expected, if not slower than I would personally like. I do attempt to be as fastidious as possible in my work, but I get the sense that I sometimes ask questions in excess and miss things that should be obvious. Note, I'm not complaining about the positive feedback in any way and I'm glad they consider me to have been performing well, but it's genuinely surreal to see how different their evaluation of my performance is from my own.

Perhaps I'm just used to unreasonably high expectations and perhaps my idea of "basic competence" is biased upwards, but I feel like short of actual mental retardation it's very hard to mess up what I'm currently doing. And it sometimes makes me think that the other shoe is going to drop, and other people are eventually going to see me in the way that I see myself.

At US accounting firms in entry-level roles the challenging part isn't the technical competence. Many people could reasonably succeed at the entry-level jobs with just the knowledge from the Intro to Intermediate Accounting courses (or the self-study equivalent).

The real challenges (in the US) are:

  • Managing the workload during busy season - Many people work very long hours for extended stretches of time.
  • Not getting bored with the repetitive nature of accounting - Most accounting work involves doing the similar tasks over and over. It is like an assembly line for office workers - the actual things you are doing is easy, but it is struggle to stay motivated.
  • People Skills - accountants have a reputation for not being good with people skills and they can often skate by with poor social skills if they stay in lower-level positions.

When someone says you are doing good at an accounting firm it usually means something more like: You are reliable and pleasant to work with. The main things that will get you negative feedback in accounting are: not putting in long hours like your peers, missing deadlines, or blatantly not following procedures.

Furthermore, accountants frequently burn out from the accounting firm lifestyle and end up in private industry or government. The busy season gets to be a bit much as you get older and have different priorities like family. Your coworkers want you to stick around because it makes their life easier when things get busy.

Congratulations, this is what being competent feels like. If you have had great feedback from multiple sources, odds are you are doing great. There is a gap between the expectations for yourself and the expectations from others but that doesn't mean you're misleading them.

This position might not be a long term fit if, as you suggest, you are more competent than the role requires. But for now I would just enjoy being healthy and enjoy have a job for a while.

You may or may not be prone to judging yourself harshly, I don't know. What I've found is that--and I do not mean to sound arrogant or conceited here--many people, perhaps even most in certain fields, are idiots. Some, of course, are idiots on every level, but I've noticed most all of us have at least some part of our lives where we are weak. The microbiologist has no social skills. The talented surgeon is inarticulate. Maybe it's true that whatever you're doing is easy for you, but for some it's downright challenging.

Personally the colleague closest to my own job seems to have great difficulty, stress even, with tasks that I find relatively simple, even though they take time and involve problem-solving. What I'm suggesting is that maybe you're right: It's easy for you. That doesn't mean it's easy for everybody else

but I feel like short of actual mental retardation it's very hard to mess up what I'm currently doing

If a monkey can do your job then why are you worried? Just put in the work, it doesn't sound like an impossible ask.

Imposter syndrome is real, get used to it. If you aren't being commended, then it's time to double-check.

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