I might be being too harsh, idk. I just hear this stuff all the time and when you have like 4 mental disorders it feels like a slap in the face. Like, they're right, it's not good that I need all these distractions to function. It's sad that there's this burden of a "box" we all feel we need to keep ourselves tied to to be free, whether it's meds or tv shows or weed or whatever. But it feels so... dehumanizing. Disheartening and sinister. As someone with impulsive and chronic anxious thoughts, it's shocking how well stuff like this replicates those thoughts. It feels like- All of it gives this same distinct impression of psychic self-harm, a coercive and compulsive attempt to get you to keep engaging with fears that never go away even when you challenge them, because that's how compulsive thoughts work, they get stronger the more you try to "disprove" them.

People love to give meditation as an answer to this stuff, and it works, but the way they suggest it implies it makes you able to stay there and think. But it doesn't. Meditation is great because it's not thinking, it's allowing yourself to rest your mind, to not engage your anxieties. So when people suggest such a thing as a replacement for, uh, other ways to not think... it comes across very strongly as someone who does not really understand meditation, but that has twisted themselves into this moral knot/trap because they can tell something is wrong but they can't bring themselves to be angry at capital and those in power for holding the things they love and cope with hostage, and have to blame The Thing Itself. Or themselves. It very much comes across as people exchanging one form of "mental fire extinguisher" for another that feels less morally loaded to them. Because video games, drugs, even prescription medication, have all of these (sometimes arbitrary and constructed) moral stigmas associated with them. So they force themselves to do a more "wholesome" activity instead of trying to ask themselves why they need to use a mental fire extinguisher. And I feel like if people did that more, asked why they needed it, they would judge themselves far less for using it lmao

I hope someone else who's disabled or has multiple mental issues chimes in here. I wouldn't delete it until then. My personal experiences, where arguments and stuff like this is mostly the content of mental self-harm and not actual solutions, is either something I'm completely misperceiving (as in I'm deep in denial), or others don't experience because it's just a very unique form of compulsive thoughts.

So don't delete it until you get responses. Maybe cross post with c/neurodivergent or c/disabled to see their thoughts. Also don't beat yourself up, the youtuber's other videos look very based and again I have a really weird perspective on this so I don't think you're problematic for liking the video or finding it helpful.

It reminds me of cripplepunk and more radical perspectives of addiction- There's this knee jerk desire to view it as a moral failing when it seems far more radical to me to see being "functional" (aka not needing any of these things, just rawdogging reality etc, being mentally stable or well kempt or productive or whatever) as an arbitrary ableist signifier. Aka the core philosophy of cripplepunk (not caring about being "functional" or a "good disabled"). But I might be overapplying that philosophy here and preventing my own growth. I genuinely don't know. It's so hard to tell the difference between ableism, social criticism, and genuine advice sometimes, because unfortunately even social philosophers are not immune to brainworms and also unfortunately I am not either and this could just be addiction defending

Deleted my top level comments - they were hurtful, emotional, and not productive