51–60 of 275 posts
Hacks like this often work wonders. Reducing the burden of OCD is necessary to get in the frame of mind required to make breaking cycles a habit. Taking a daily photo of the stove dials with my iPhone helped break the cycle for me and was the first step I took on my long road of (successful!) recovery.
Having lived through OCD and come out the other side, I completely understand why the solution was considered bad. Sure, this solves the particular obsession. But the issue is that OCD is never satisfied. You develop rituals like this and they work for a while, giving your brain that little dopamine boost every time you look at the hairdryer in your car. But that dose diminishes over time, and soon taking the hairdry…
I have a compulsive problem that developed due to an anxious situation I was in. I was taking a nap on the couch, I smelled burning and assumed it was someone in my neighborhood grilling, which was common. I woke up to an apartment filled with smoke, my place was on fire. It was small, I was able to get out the front door (which is where the fire was) and call the fire department, they came and put it out, minimal damage, no loss of life. But still, since then, if I smelled wood burning, even though I know it's probably someone grilling or with a fire in the fireplace I go outside and look around just to be sure. It is irrational and I know while I'm doing it. What helped me was living in a place where some neighbor or other burns wood almost daily. I still get a tinge of "but what if that's not what it is this time" every time I smell it, but I don't compulsively check anymore.
Also for a lot of people these mental illnesses cannot be cured, only managed. I'd think finding simple solutions to reduce compulsive anxiety are more sustainable than long term drug use.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's totally related. There's the old urban myth about the "NASA Pen,"[0] which is a favorite of tech people (It isn't actually true, but it's a great story). I have a similar apocryphal story that I use in design. I write about it here[1]. > For many years, I have heard stories about some architect – they never say who – that once designed an office park/university campus/government center, etc., and deliberately di…
There's a subreddit for this: /r/DesirePath
I remember a panel on a news program years ago where the one guest was a psychologist who was treating "untreatable" drug addicts by getting them "hooked" on running or weightlifting or martial arts. They would stop drugs but would instead be doing martial arts for hours a day or running 20 miles every morning. Then he would start treating the addiction personality and causes, but in many cases the patients would jus…
This may overstate the point a little bit. But there's a kernel of truth here: if you don't require some degree of significant impairment of functioning, a whole lot of criteria for mental illness would apply to huge swaths of the population. E.g. this is why the diagnostic criteria for ADHD include: "There is clear evidence that the symptoms interfere with or reduce the quality of social, academic, or occupational functioning."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve had the same problems with regular doctors and medical issues. A lot of my problems turned out to be a milk allergy.
Doctors are just tech support for the human body. They listen to your complaint and offer up their best guess diagnosis based on what's helped previous customers with the same symptoms, but they have limited information on the system they support, the documentation is spotty and sometimes contradictory, there's a ton of bugs, and they have no escalation path because the engineer who designed the system quit ages ago…
Seriously, I wasn't even through the second paragraph before I thought the same thing - just take the thing with you. It doesn't try to solve the OCD, but it solves the problem. Nobody in my household has OCD, but we had a garage door that sometimes, unpredictably, would decide that there was an obstruction at the very bottom, and go back up. Did you really, really watch it go all the way down before driving off? Did…
Having lived through OCD and come out the other side, I completely understand why the solution was considered bad. Sure, this solves the particular obsession. But the issue is that OCD is never satisfied. You develop rituals like this and they work for a while, giving your brain that little dopamine boost every time you look at the hairdryer in your car. But that dose diminishes over time, and soon taking the hairdry…
Well, you can call it a stopgap. As long as they're not saying "cured! It's over for you now." I think it is great. Why does the patient have to live through the debilitating symptom while the causes are worked on? Perhaps a part of the treatment then is getting the patient to leave the dryer at home on weekends, maybe initially curled up on the coffee table, then in the bathroom, etc. while they go to the grocery st…
A few weeks ago there was a story in a company where the financial department used pretty old computers that didn't run anyone else's software. They were the only ones that could use it.
When asked, they said they were tired of the programmers mucking around with their machines so they just didn't use anything they knew.
A knee jerk techie solution would probably be password login systems with someone holding the "keys" to it. Maybe some kind of other procedures. Or just do the above!
This is a great story. I know its not related but I can't help but feel a sort of analogy to engineering work: the tension between idealism and pragmatism. At a previous company our build times for a game client were around 5 minutes or so. Our tools team had planned some work to get this down but it kept getting pushed out. The tools weren't part of the client so I'm not sure they know how bad this was. Anyways, one…
It's totally related. There's the old urban myth about the "NASA Pen,"[0] which is a favorite of tech people (It isn't actually true, but it's a great story). I have a similar apocryphal story that I use in design. I write about it here[1]. > For many years, I have heard stories about some architect – they never say who – that once designed an office park/university campus/government center, etc., and deliberately di…
I remember a panel on a news program years ago where the one guest was a psychologist who was treating "untreatable" drug addicts by getting them "hooked" on running or weightlifting or martial arts. They would stop drugs but would instead be doing martial arts for hours a day or running 20 miles every morning. Then he would start treating the addiction personality and causes, but in many cases the patients would jus…
Because ADHD is a real situation for some people, and for others it's a way to legally take class-B stimulants.
Yes, people really do try their friends' ADHD medication, enjoy it, and then shop around doctors to find someone who will prescribe it. It's called "drug seeking," and doctors do flag patients who do it.
This, BTW, is what happens with medical marijuana. There are people who really need it, there are people who think they need it, and then there are people who who tell everyone but their doctor that it's recreational.