this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2025
261 points (99.6% liked)
Mental Health
4913 readers
35 users here now
Welcome
This is a safe place to discuss, vent, support, and share information about mental health, illness, and wellness.
Thank you for being here. We appreciate who you are today. Please show respect and empathy when making or replying to posts.
If you need someone to talk to, @therapygary@lemmy.blahaj.zone has kindly given his signal username to talk to: TherapyGary13.12
Rules
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
- No promoting paid services/products.
- Be kind and civil. No bigotry/prejudice either.
- No victim blaming. Nor giving incredibly simplistic solutions (i.e. You have ADHD? Just focus easier.)
- No encouraging suicide, no matter what. This includes telling someone to commit homicide as "dragging them down with you".
- Suicide note posts will be removed, and you will be reached out to in private.
- If you would like advice, mention the country you are in. (We will not assume the US as the default.)
If BRIEF mention of these topics is an important part of your post, please flag your post as NSFW and include a (trigger warning: suicide, self-harm, death, etc.)in the title so that other readers who may feel triggered can avoid it. Please also include a trigger warning on all comments mentioning these topics in a post that was not already tagged as such.
Partner Communities
To partner with our community and be included here, you are free to message the current moderators or comment on our pinned post.
Becoming a Mod
Some moderators are mental health professionals and some are not. All are carefully selected by the moderation team and will be actively monitoring posts and comments. If you are interested in joining the team, you can send a message to @fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.com.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
i've started trying to one up my anxiety & intrusive thoughts by adding "and then a meteor hits and we all die" to those thoughts and honestly it's making me feel better lol
"what if a car suddenly appears and crashes into you out of nowehere in this parking lot" is only slightly more likely to happen than "and then the meteor hits and we all die" and it helps me see anxiety for what it is - anxiety, not rational thoughts that warn me of dangers, but a hypersensitive gremlin in my brain dreaming up the worst case scenarios for every life situation there is
Adding something like that to your negative self talk is a wonderful way to make you realize you're doing it. It's helped me a great deal.
Nice one, what you did there was remove the idea of death from a future abstraction that could happen at any second and moved it into the present moment which made you aware of the lack of imminent present danger, calming your anxiety.
It's kind of a rough and ready but, respectable go at unguided Zen. Mindfulness is just the parts of Zen that are backed by imperial evidence, repackaged for a western audience.
We don't have the right word for it in English. It's not a religion and it's not really a philosophy either, in the way we mean it here. It's not a modle to understand the world or a moral framework to be put to the test etc. It's by far the closest word though.
It's kind of a way of trying to experience the life, be more present and more spontaneous. The Spiritual stuff isn't meant to be taken even slightly literally but, as representations of things.
I think you might find even more peace adding in some of that.
mindfulness (when i remember about it) helps me a lot so i don't doubt the grander idea where it came from would help too :) thanks for letting me know about it, i'll definitely check it out!
This method reminds me of a technique used in ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) to deal with pain or fear. Exaggerating a thought or giving it a silly voice or character, while staying neutral toward that part of yourself, can be a solid way to manage anxiety.
It’s called cognitive defusion. You notice when you're "fused" with a thought or pattern, and by using techniques like the one you mentioned, you create distance between the thought and your sense of self.