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Ask HN: How do you work on your mental health?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you work on your mental health?

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I already am letting go of a lot (I can't, for example, remember the last time I got my car washed), but my partner continues to take on time-ful or effort-ful things that I consider "expendably unnecessary" (such as at least half of the cleaning/sanitizing she does- despite me emphasizing that the Hygiene Hypothesis is probably real) and is stressing both of us out anyway. My office is a mess that has needed cl…

We had a second fairly soon after but we were in our early-mid 30s. By 50 your natural energy levels are probably much lower already. It can be grueling but they get easier in my mind every day. At 4 years old my older kid is quite independent and funny. I can just ask her to play and have a snack and go to the bathroom while I clean my office or whatever. Daycare also means you will have actual alone time. But it is…

> whatever other nonsense you thought you were

hah, oh man. If you only knew how (and how hard) I've tried to shove certain labels off me, only to have them almost karmically boomerang back to me, to the point where I practically screamed back to whatever powers-that-may-be, "OK, I'LL F***ING BE A CODER!" =)

(Computers and I were as much an intellectual version of "love at first sight" as can be imagined. But, like many loves, it was also burdensome for a time.)

But I will accept this ADDITIONAL first-order label of "Dad" ;)

Re: Ask HN: How do you work on your mental health?

#112
post #78

First, the physical: sleep well, eat well, practice sports Second, the surroundings: analyse your immediate surroundings, and what/who is causing stress. Toxic friends, too much alcohol, etc. Third: find a higher peace-bringing meaning. Wether it is a goal, or friendship/love, or even religion. Also: work on redundancy of your mental health. Have your 3 pillars of strength in a healthy state: work, belonging (love/fr…

Good advice, however I find myself quite struggling with the third point. I recentyl turned fifty, with a decent career up to now: software engineer, sold a company I co-owned some time ago. My daughter spent years figthing cancer, so that was also a big part of my life in the last ten years. Now things are better and I cannot seem to find decent interest in anything. I still love to code from time to time, but I am…

> Clearly I need some peace-bringing meaning, but it is very hard to find, and I do not even know how to start looking for it.

there is almost no way to say this without sounding preachy, at least to my american english ear. But. it’s true nonetheless.

that meaning? it’s in your neighbors, and you find it in direct, human service to them. There are many, many ways to serve, and one of them fits you. It doesn’t have to be some huge thing, and i’ve found that it helps not to talk about it, just do and be open to the moment.

Re: Ask HN: How do you work on your mental health?

#113
Beside maintaining physical health - sleep, exercise, hydration, nutrition, not too much alcohol, etc.; as well as conditions with clear etiology like schizophrenia; I strongly suspect most of the "mental health" stuff is BS, and the key is treating emotions as dumb and unimportant, and suppressing them/working around then. Kinda like DBT with "rational" vs "emotional" mind and "wise" mind in the middle, but taken to the next logical level - DBT identifies a bunch of problems with "emotional mind" and tries super hard to move you /towards/ "rational mind", just not all the way. It's telling that there's no therapy in existence that tries to move you in opposite direction - most people on the other end of the spectrum simply don't have issues. So, why not work to move all the way?

In this context, typical attitude of validating and accepting emotions is harmful. Again, DBT distinguishes "invalid" vs "unjustified" emotions, but I think it's hippy nonsense - it's good to explicitly reject and invalidate emotions. It's not easy for problem emotions, but it's good to practice.

In reality, emotions are like zits - they are things going on in your body that mean nothing or matter little 95-99% of the time. So, ignoring or suppressing them is usually the right approach (after checking for physical causes, again was with zits - did you forget to wash your face? did you forget to sleep enough?). Looking at people "anxious because they feel sad for no reason" or "feeling shame because they are irritable and might upset other people" or such circular patterns (mentioned, among others, by Frankl in Man's Search For Meaning, although he'd probably disagree with me on other stuff), I wonder how much of the nebulous mental health issues are due to a learned pattern of focusing on one's own moods and emotions as if they actually meant something, and even if this is made worse by typical therapy. I wonder if this is why self-reported mental illness in the US is increasing despite the increased use of therapy (and drugs, some of which definitely do something, making the increase even more damning).

I think the analogy with physical sensations is similar for positive emotions - taste of good coffee is, like zits, usually of little importance and has no meaning, but explicit mindfulness of it allows you to appreciate it more. Ditto if you feel curious / loving / amused / vigorous - mindfulness helps a lot to enhance these feelings.

For a more specific example, a "mental health issue" I have is that I quickly get angry at trifles (slow software, traffic, people wrong on the internet); people would point that out as an example of how I need a different, non-disdainful approach to emotions, but it's actually a counter-example - this is the only negative emotion I appear to take seriously. So, a similar tactic - catching myself and explicitly thinking "this delay doesn't matter, I'm not in a hurry - the anger is an invalid emotion", or "I don't care what that person thinks, they have no effect on me - the irritation is an invalid emotion" works well, when I can actually catch myself.

Re: Ask HN: How do you work on your mental health?

#114
post #79

I'm currently struggling with parenting an 18 month old child as an introvert. As a 50 year old first-time parent who had the benefit of lots of quiet alone time for literally decades, and possibly got a bit too used to it. :/ My sanity is eroding and I hit a wall every day. I also found that I don't have time anymore to keep up with technological developments like I used to, which is unfortunately eroding my value a…

It gets easier, my 3 year old is "all grown up" now. I actually already miss the baby phase, it happened so quick. > keep up with technological developments like I used to, which is unfortunately eroding my value as a developer Not sure why you think this is so, there hasn't been much change in the past few years. In any case, I don't think keeping up is important for seasoned developers. So you skip a few version of…

I've been trying to learn Nix, NixOS (incl. writing my own derivations and learning Nix Flakes, which is still quite new), convert my dotfiles to a declarative Home Manager config, learn how to deploy a Nixified Phoenix app now that I learned how to nixify my web app, play with Phoenix's LiveView (which has already been out for a while), play with Elixir's Nx library for machine learning stuff, play with https://livebook.dev/ which now has ML hooks, come up with a use case for GraphQL so I can at least stick it on a resume (I understand it in principle but not in practice), make Bash saner by writing my own testing library for it which still needs polishing so it is incredibly easy to include in another bash script https://github.com/pmarreck/tinytestlib, code a Discord bot to DJ my cross-country gaming sessions with a best friend (I have one working but I need to hack on it more), learn more about ZFS and tuning it (I boot off it), stay on top of Linux developments, stay on top of Postgresql developments (perhaps investigating immutable-data/event-log schemes that play nice with it to maybe work with a security audit requirement in an app I'm responsible for)... find cool new electronica via the recommendation engines out there...

AND THAT'S JUST OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD. ;)

Re: Ask HN: How do you work on your mental health?

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly it's really difficult to do all three well :(

How so? lack of motivation? lack of time?

Once you are depressed it's kinda hard to do anything. I usually tell myself that this is just temporary so don't fall into the negative trap. Once the mood improves I can start working on sleep eat and exercise. I thought about going to see therapy but 1) My depression doesn't hit too often and too hard; 2) Getting tired of long wait in medical system; 3) Not sure about employment but I need insurance for such therapy.

Re: Ask HN: How do you work on your mental health?

#116
post #107
post #40

I've struggled with depression and anxiety issues for most of my life. Two things have made a huge difference for me: Actually identifying with my body and taking care of me (it). That's the diet, sleep, exercise combo driven by a positive body image I identify with. The by far worst years of my life (so far) were when I clung to some kind of cyberpunky mind-body dualism and treated my body as a bag of meat whose onl…

Figuring I can be a bit more open since it's a throwaway account (edit - this kinda escalated) I lost eighty pounds in a year with that body image "trick", but that's only half the story at best. That's what I desired, but it wouldn't have been enough motivation. And if you have a severe mismatch between your body image and your body that's not going to cause good vibes, will it? So I don't know how depression manife…

Wow, very interesting, thank you for writing all this. Hope you’re more at peace today. Human mind is complex and can be so fucked up.

Re: Ask HN: How do you work on your mental health?

#117
post #61

I had a rough 2020-2022 and one thing that made a difference was starting a personal writing habit with two main components: 1. Daily writing which summarizes the day and gets off my chest any minor things that are bothering me. 2. Deep dive writing focused on a particular issue that I struggled with before and is inexplicably still on my mind. (Implying that I haven't fully processed the issue) I also started collec…

Thanks for sharing. Hope you’re doing well now. Wondering where do you write daily, is it like a physical diary or digitally?

I’ve started writing of late, but I like writing on a physical diary. The only problem I’ve with physical diary is searching the entries based on a word - which I often find myself in the need of.

Re: Ask HN: How do you work on your mental health?

#118
Hey,

I have struggled with loss of motivation many times. I worked in boring medium to big sized companies to the point where I felt I had done it all, knew it all, wasn’t excited, wasn’t learning anything new.

I think a lot about what Francis Ford Coppola said about Apocalypse Now, which was an awful nightmare movie to shoot. He said he was glad he did it because he learned so much from it.

If you aren’t learning a lot, something is wrong.

Honestly, my experience was that if I stopped learning I could feel myself begin to deteriorate mentally. The boredom and lack of stimulation if it has years to work on you will destroy you. You just lost your dynamism and vitality.

My solution was to take on more risks.

You sound like you have eliminated all risk from your life. That is the natural thing to do, everyone wants to be risk free. The problem is it kills you:

Where is the excitement, the fire under your ass. If you carve out this lovely cozy little niche where you can never lose. It is the most natural thing to do.

But once you remove all risk, you start to die.

You have to bring risk back into your life. Maybe not 50-90%. But 10-15% risk.

There must be some risk or you won’t find any meaning.

Re: Ask HN: How do you work on your mental health?

#119
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It gets easier, my 3 year old is "all grown up" now. I actually already miss the baby phase, it happened so quick. > keep up with technological developments like I used to, which is unfortunately eroding my value as a developer Not sure why you think this is so, there hasn't been much change in the past few years. In any case, I don't think keeping up is important for seasoned developers. So you skip a few version of…

I've been trying to learn Nix, NixOS (incl. writing my own derivations and learning Nix Flakes, which is still quite new), convert my dotfiles to a declarative Home Manager config, learn how to deploy a Nixified Phoenix app now that I learned how to nixify my web app, play with Phoenix's LiveView (which has already been out for a while), play with Elixir's Nx library for machine learning stuff, play with https://live…

Right, I understand, and it's really really cool, but something's got to give chief. It boils down to time management and priorities I guess. Think of all the important stuff you had on your plate 10 years ago and how many are relevant now. For me personally, if I don't need it for my day job it gets lower in priority.

Re: Ask HN: How do you work on your mental health?

#120
I see the usual exercise and other self improvement activities listed which are all good for your physical and mental health. What I see is among the self improvement and tasks most forget to take time to enjoy the day or reward themselves, this mostly comes as an afterthought or compensation for some heavy task done.

I would suggest to add this to your list of tasks and make sure you take a certain amount of time everyday to indulge in any activity that brings you pleasure or makes you happy. This is often neglected, so make this a priority equal to the other things. Make sure you don't miss out on this more than a few days. This may be listening to music which you enjoy, watching some funny show, enjoy some great food on some days, if you enjoy trekking or other physical activity ; just make sure you make time in your schedule to indulge in something that makes you feel happy or satisfied.

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