Good evening comrades and welcome to your weekly mental health thread. The cheetah is happy to see you. How is everyone doing? Remember that self-care is self-defense. :unity:
Good evening comrades and welcome to your weekly mental health thread. The cheetah is happy to see you. How is everyone doing? Remember that self-care is self-defense. :unity:
I started reading Feeling Good by David Burns, a book about cognitive behavioral therapy and identifying and defeating the cognitive distortions that the depressed mind conjures up.
I cannot recommend this book highly enough to anyone experiencing depression, anxiety, lack of motivation, or suicidal thoughts. It is literally the handbook on how not to be a depressed person.
I have thought about killing myself every single day for years, and this is the first time I've ever felt this kind of hope and optimism about my psychological prognosis.
It's not just some new-age self-help hokum, either. Clinical studies show CBT to be at least as effective as antidepressant drugs, if not moreso, and this book is just a manual on how to do CBT on your own (I still talk to my therapist about it weekly).
Everyone should have this book, it should be provided at birth. I'm only a couple weeks in and I'm sure the excitement of trying something new will fade, and more dark times will come -- but comrades, for once in my life I am convinced that life is worth living through them.
Got a PDF of that book in my therapy folder here for anyone interested, I'm glad it is helping you so much!
Hey FYI it looks like your real name might be associated with that folder? Unless it's a pseudonym? I just don't want comrades to accidentally dox themselves.
It's a pseudonym! But thank you for checking :)
o7 the rare case where posting IS praxis
Thanks for the recommendation. I've been looking for something like this.
That's good to hear! I recommend reading Buddha's Brain - it's a book by a psychologist specializing in positive neuroplasticity. I think you'll definitely like it if you liked Feeling Good. The author of the book, Rick Hanson, also has a pretty good podcast.