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Exercise can be nearly as effective as therapy for depression

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Re: Exercise can be nearly as effective as therapy for depression

#381

Post by smeej »

bunnybomb2 wrote: post #243
kayodelycaon wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don’t like being snarky here but this is an absolutely perfect example of what I was talking about in my last paragraph. I didn’t mention energy because energy has no relevance. I’ve literally broken down crying because I really wanted to work but my brain refused to move. I was having such a great day and was really motivated. I spend hours and absolutely exhausted every bit of energy I had trying every adv…

You arent the only human whos had a issue with not getting things done, its normal, and its hackable. Brains are hackable. I dont mean to say you implied it, but its easy to dig a larger hole when you believe you are special, or you have tried "all" the advice. Every problem has a solution, and I beg you to search deeper to what you do even in task-paralysis states. That might be where your mission comes from. It hel…

Your advice is the equivalent of telling someone who has dyslexia, "Reading isn't hard. You just look at the letters, and then you say the words out loud. Or if that doesn't work, you have to come up with some other way to make it so when you see the letters, you know what the words say, and then you say them out loud. Just hack it."

Some people really do just have to figure out a way to get through life missing a skill that "typical" brains have. It's not "hack it until you make your brain do the typical thing." It's "choose a field where you can get away with not doing the thing, or hire someone to do the thing, because you're not going to be able to do the thing, and all the advice in the world isn't going to change that."

Re: Exercise can be nearly as effective as therapy for depression

#382

Post by smeej »

bunnybomb2 wrote: post #365
fastasucan wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I didnt have it easier, I fought harder No you didn't. Try to build yourself up without putting others down, how is that challenge?

Truth hurts

So does the fall that tends to follow pride.

Re: Exercise can be nearly as effective as therapy for depression

#383

Post by smeej »

machomaster wrote: post #263
a_t48 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You aren't the only one. For me it was diagnosed as ADHD.

Way too many people treat ADHD as an excuse of not following proper task-management rules. They are so special that no rules could possible apply to them. To all hundreds of millions of them... This is backwards. In practice, it should be the exact opposite. ADHD people should be MORE vigilant regarding the correct behavior, rules, habits. It is neurotypical people who have some leeway to be lazy with what and how th…

The assumption that there is one set of rules for "correct behavior, rules, habits" that somehow applies equally to all brains is so spectacularly ignorant it's staggering.

I can obtain the same results as almost anybody at the vast majority of things. But if I am required to follow the same process, I simply cannot. I can't tell you how destructive the well-meaning people were who tried to tie me down to the way that works for their brain rather than saying, "OK, fine. Don't do it my way. Do it your way. Just get it done."

It's like saying to someone with dyslexia, "You just have to be MORE vigilant regarding looking at the letters, putting them together, and saying the words! There's no excuse for not following proper reading rules!"

It's just asinine. It's wonderful that you have figured out a set of "proper task-management rules" that work for your brain. I'm even happier for you if it was easier for you. That sounds nice.

But why on EARTH would the billions of living brains on this planet all function like yours? Does anything else in all those billions of bodies function exactly like yours? Of course not. And it would be ridiculous to expect them to.

Re: Exercise can be nearly as effective as therapy for depression

#384

Post by smeej »

machomaster wrote: post #371
kayodelycaon wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me try again. I shouldn't have mentioned willpower. Let me restate the problem. I try to do something and I have the physical sensation of hitting a wall that shouldn't be there. Thoughts never stop at that part of the brain. I'm talking about a fundamentally different mechanism than thinking something is too hard. It's a hardware interruption that I have no control over. I've spent my entire life working around…

Let't imagine that you have a task, that you started doing, but then hit the hardware wall. How physically/emotionally/intellectually tired are you at that point? What will happen if you just rest? Sleep, eat, exercise/go on a walk, lay down. No phone, no social media, no doom scrolling, no tv, no netflix, no gaming. Just 100% effort of resting and recovering, without any distractions. Would you not get bored at some…

> Just 100% effort of resting and recovering, without any distractions.

You say that like the distractions are exclusively outside. I'm not the person you're replying to, but if I close all my blackout curtains, turn off all the lights, and turn off all but the white noise, but I'm not sleepy, my mind will go in a thousand directions at once.

How do I or anyone else explain that to you? The challenge is in the brain. It's not an outside force. There is no boredom.

Re: Exercise can be nearly as effective as therapy for depression

#385

Post by smeej »

machomaster wrote: post #370
fastasucan wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You also totally missed the point of suggestions entirely. I assume that happened because you were out of brain/willpower energy. No, you are pretty bad at communicating. You should try a bit harder, because this is obviously at 10% tops.

You wouldn't handle my 100%, seeing how you consistently misunderstand my 10%.

10%: There's were I a Proving It's

100%: There's no way you could ever understand me if I were trying to say something complicated. I'm much too intelligent. I have way more mental firepower than you do. I'm a very complex thinker, and you just can't keep up. Proving it to you would be a waste of time. It's just hopeless anyway. -- If communication isn't working, sure, it might be a comprehension error. But...it's rarely only a comprehension error.

Re: Exercise can be nearly as effective as therapy for depression

#386

Post by smeej »

cgriswald wrote: post #171
smeej wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no question if I want to do it, it is set at that time and I have to do it, period. Gosh it must be nice to have at least an ordinary amount of executive function skills. Is it really this easy for neurotypical people to build routines? That's really all it takes? I don't see how this removes willpower at all. It just determines what time you have to use it.

Willpower is what you use when you’re allowed choice and know you should make the good choice but actually feel like choosing the bad choice. The trick to good discipline is to never allow it to be a choice. There are no excuses. There is no negotiation. It just is the same way the sun rises or the tax man comes. Good discipline is a skill you develop and it is far easier than trying to live via something as temperam…

You say "when you're allowed choice" like there are some times when you aren't allowed choice, and I think this is where you lose me. Everything is a choice. Always. It's not a matter of "allowed/not allowed." It's just a reality of existence for me. I'm not sure if I can explain this, but I can try.

You seem to have a kind of "decision persistence" that I don't have, where having decided it once makes it still true in the actual moment of taking the action. It doesn't matter how many times I choose things in advance, in the hypothetical, for the future--and the future is always in the hypothetical. I still have to choose every moment, day in and day out, what I'm doing. Even now, it's not quite a foregone conclusion that I'm going to finish typing this and click the "reply" button. Probably will, but I won't know that for SURE until I've done it. I might decide it isn't worth it after all.

My brain simply does not consider past decisions binding on present activity. I might still decide to do the same thing I thought I would do at this time when I thought about this earlier, but I have to decide it again, because it hasn't happened yet. Every moment is a "deciding again," which means every moment needs willpower. Putting on one shoe doesn't guarantee the other shoe comes next. After a shit, pulling up my underpants doesn't guarantee the pants come next. Maybe I step out of the pants and am halfway through lunch before I realize I never pulled my pants up after the toilet and have been walking around my house without pants for 45 minutes.

"It just is" is not an experience I have. They're not excuses. The next thing just goes, right out of my head. I don't talk myself out of doing what I previously decided to do next or into something else. But there is no mechanism that makes something happen just because I decided it should earlier.

There always has to be another choice, in each moment, about what to do, and whether to keep doing it. Every one of these choices requires willpower, and there's only so much in the jar. But it's not like the jar fills up once, overnight, and I just draw from the jar until it's empty and then it's gone for the day. The jar arbitrarily loses and gains willpower ad hoc throughout the day. So I can always reach into the jar, and sometimes there's some willpower in there and I can do the thing that Planning Smeej thought would be a good idea yesterday, but sometimes there's not, and nobody knows what's going to happen until maybe there is again later.

I don't know if I've made that make any sense. I just know that you're describing a reality fundamentally different than the one I experience.

Re: Exercise can be nearly as effective as therapy for depression

#387

Post by nradov »

smeej wrote: post #375
nradov wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, is generally about discipline and building good habits. Willpower or lack thereof is largely irrelevant. I'm not convinced that willpower is even a real thing.

What do you think discipline is if not willpower? This might explain why we're talking past each other. I can do the exact same thing a hundred days in a row as long as the circumstances happen to be the same. And I can try to make them as similar as I possibly can. My lights come on at the same time. I eat the same food. My clothes are in the same place. But the second something happens that I can't control, the nig…

Willpower is making a choice in the moment. Discipline is removing the choice.

Re: Exercise can be nearly as effective as therapy for depression

#388

Post by machomaster »

fastasucan wrote: post #377
machomaster wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, but that doesn't make the ADHD fully go away. Not an argument. > Wow great insight, a bit hillarious with the part of asking adhd people pay extra attention. Should the guy with a neurological problem just pay extra attention to moving his leg, and he will soon run as fast as the rest? Yes, if you have problems with inattentiveness, then you can't just eyeball the size of the fabric and cut. You actually need…

This is still not enough to get rid of adhd symptoms for many. Keeping a knowledge management system is uttainable, I bet many with adhd have tried them all (and constantly try new ones instead of doing work) you can only block so much. Some people suffer so much that days can get lost by doing virtuelly nothing. Its not like its so easy to sit around being unable to work, and still not check the web or whatever. Als…

> This is still not enough to get rid of adhd symptoms for many.

Once again, this isn't the point. And I also didn't suggest it.

A normal adhd should be considered as a personal quirk, not an unescapable death sentence, like many seem to do.

> Its not like its so easy to sit around being unable to work, and still not check the web or whatever

Being still without distractions is hard for most people. Adhd people may have it harder, but fundamentally they don't differ from others.

That's the whole point of slowing down, concentrating on relaxing, not running away from the anxiety and to understand what your mind and body tell you.

> Some people suffer so much that days can get lost by doing virtuelly nothing.

"Virtually" - exactly my point. Most people have not been doing the actual nothing. If they were, they would actually see how much energy and motivation this type of rest gives.

Re: Exercise can be nearly as effective as therapy for depression

#389

Post by machomaster »

smeej wrote: post #384
machomaster wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let't imagine that you have a task, that you started doing, but then hit the hardware wall. How physically/emotionally/intellectually tired are you at that point? What will happen if you just rest? Sleep, eat, exercise/go on a walk, lay down. No phone, no social media, no doom scrolling, no tv, no netflix, no gaming. Just 100% effort of resting and recovering, without any distractions. Would you not get bored at some…

> Just 100% effort of resting and recovering, without any distractions. You say that like the distractions are exclusively outside. I'm not the person you're replying to, but if I close all my blackout curtains, turn off all the lights, and turn off all but the white noise, but I'm not sleepy, my mind will go in a thousand directions at once. How do I or anyone else explain that to you? The challenge is in the brain.…

You are saying it as if that't uncommon (for non-adhd people) or a bad thing.

Yeah, and it is fine that the mind goes somewhere. This is called meditation and it is good for you. You get valuable insights, figure out important issues, get energy and motivation.

Re: Exercise can be nearly as effective as therapy for depression

#390

Post by machomaster »

fastasucan wrote: post #354
machomaster wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you ever feel unmotivated to go to the toilet despite needing to? Has this lack of motivation ever stopped you from getting from your chair? What modern people usually lack is not time, but lack of energy. Usually this is thought as the energy to do stuff (like coding a side hussle in the evening). But often it manifests in a lack of energy: 1. to make a decision (to do something) 2. to slow down, to stop the curr…

>Do you ever feel unmotivated to go to the toilet despite needing to? Has this lack of motivation ever stopped you from getting from your chair? A lot of people with depression and adhd will nod "yes" here. Sorry but you have no idea. Great it works for you. When I am healthy I can work out 4-5 times a week (l When I am ill all I can is to try my best to be a dad. You have no idea.

Doesn't seem like you understood.

Has your lack of motivation ever stopped you from getting from your chair, and go to the toilet; instead you decided to pee and crap in your pants? How has it worked for you? Well enough that you have been repeating the behavior?

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