Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ever since I built my shrine to Zoroaster my sorghum harvest has been enormous
Religion isn’t a solo act.
I am sorry for the confusion; I should clarify that I am not Zoroaster. It is me and my buddy, Zoroaster
Suppressing negative thoughts may be good for mental health after all
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Re: Suppressing negative thoughts may be good for mental health after all
#22[flagged]
Re: Suppressing negative thoughts may be good for mental health after all
#23For ethical reasons, no participant was given a negative event to imagine, but only positive or neutral ones. 120 people and three months and during COVID. Just because it's from Cambridge don't assume credibility.
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Re: Suppressing negative thoughts may be good for mental health after all
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Almost like these arose as functional elements of society across time because they assisted those who followed them in outlasting their competitors. Weird.
There's a book called Why We Need Religion[0] and I believe the main premise is that religions have practices and beliefs that help us process emotions. [0]: https://bookshop.org/p/books/why-we-need-religion-stephen-t-...
I am personally atheist/apathetic. The closest thing you could get me to profess a religious fervour to is exercise (or martial arts) and mother nature. That said, I am a huge proponent of religion and can see how it is so important to people like my mother.
She doesn't preach or judge but I can see how faith anchors her. It gives her answers and an unyielding optimism in the face of difficulty, and I can tell you as someone who has clawed her way through a poverty most people in this world will only ever read about, she has known what difficulty can be. Faith keeps her positive and kind and generous. She finds it in herself to let go of anger and to forgive thanks to her belief in God.
So you're bang on the mark - my personal observations agree that religion helps us process emotions.
Seen through the lens of a social technology, we've replaced religion with consumerism and individualism, and social media has encouraged unchecked mammon. And so we're having to relearn everything old as new again.
Confession and grace are parts of the toolkit in therapy. Breathing techniques from yoga, wim hof and meditation are doing the rounds. The presence of song and chanting in many religions seems like a decent overlap...
Then at times of the highest reported rates of loneliness, especially amongst the young, what did religion give us - a local community.
Don't get me wrong, there was a lot of bad with religion but modern faith in places like the UK or the Nordics seems to be a net benefit IMO...
Re: Suppressing negative thoughts may be good for mental health after all
#25>“We’re all familiar with the Freudian idea that if we suppress our feelings or thoughts, then these thoughts remain in our unconscious, influencing our behaviour and wellbeing perniciously,”
The article conflates thoughts and feeling.
Thoughts and emotions are not the same.
Reducing negative thoughts is standard practice.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_negative_thoughts
I'm not aware of any professional who recommends suppressing negative emotions.
Re: Suppressing negative thoughts may be good for mental health after all
#26This is fine
Re: Suppressing negative thoughts may be good for mental health after all
#27Looking into the void is the only solution.
If you aren't fixed, look deeper.
You will find it.
Re: Suppressing negative thoughts may be good for mental health after all
#28This has been known among psychologist for awhile now. In fact someone who is too honest, someone who see's the truth of the world is more likely to be clinically depressed. https://radiolab.org/podcast/91618-lying-to-ourselves This podcast from radiolab really changed my perspective on the concept. Pretty much if you're not depressed, most likely some aspect of you is delusional. I would say people on HN are especia…
You seem to be suggesting that humans are capable of perceive objective truth for non trivial things.
I say that we aren't. And given that, you are better off believing the lie that helps you or makes you feel good instead of the one that hurts you, assuming both have the same predictive power.
Re: Suppressing negative thoughts may be good for mental health after all
#29This has been known among psychologist for awhile now. In fact someone who is too honest, someone who see's the truth of the world is more likely to be clinically depressed. https://radiolab.org/podcast/91618-lying-to-ourselves This podcast from radiolab really changed my perspective on the concept. Pretty much if you're not depressed, most likely some aspect of you is delusional. I would say people on HN are especia…
To an extent, this is true, but take it too far and you begin dismissing education and well grounded logic and believing it to be equivalent to ignorant and irrational thought. Logical thinking and analysis is a skill you learn and get better at after all.
The trick (which is very hard) is to recognise when one of your own arguments is one of convenience, emotion, illogical etc. And not be biased towards logical fallacies against others.
But this does not mean that your average person on hacker news doesn't tend towards better educated and more rational discussion than large amounts of the public. It also means hacker news tends towards specific blindspots, sure.
Re: Suppressing negative thoughts may be good for mental health after all
#30This has been known among psychologist for awhile now. In fact someone who is too honest, someone who see's the truth of the world is more likely to be clinically depressed. https://radiolab.org/podcast/91618-lying-to-ourselves This podcast from radiolab really changed my perspective on the concept. Pretty much if you're not depressed, most likely some aspect of you is delusional. I would say people on HN are especia…
I feel that a sign of being a good programmer is recognizing you are not a good programmer.
Then again, this is not me, but Socrates speaking.