Ok, sure, but also negative thinking and giving up hope literally never helped once. It doesn’t help in real world ways and it makes your mental state worse. Obviously going around in a state of denial doesn’t help and ND people have specific challenges a NT person might not get, but ultimately you gotta cling to a positive mindset to make things better.
When people keep telling me to basically deny my reality, it makes me feel more shit than anything else. I’d much rather someone empathize and tell me that, yes, things actually do suck. And guess what, that does make me feel better and more sane
If you don’t acknowledge reality and stay realistic that things actually are not always that great, then the next time you get knocked down by something, or your challenges make something you aspired to do rail, then you’re just gonna fall apart like a house of cards. Especially if you start internalizing that you should be able to do this and that it’s your fault you didn’t succeed etc
Treating mental health in an individualist way sucks, and sometimes is worse than nothing
I’m not talking about being in denial. I’m saying that if you want things to not suck, you do have to have the idea that things might not suck somehow later. If you think things are always going to suck then you’ll never bother to make things not suck.
Is it really unmet? Many of the default communities, especially the top ones, are constant feeds of at least half posts consisting of negative news about politics, economics, and environmental news. If the articles aren’t negative, the comments often are. Like my comment I guess, though I don’t intend to be argumentative.
I’m struggling with how much is wrong and how hard it fixing it appears to be as well. But I don’t think there is a lack of that acknowledgment here at all.
I completely agree, angry people have never complished anything ever. Not once have people channeled negative emotions into action or art. It’s impossible. Just be positive and use that, as it is the only known way of success. Never be negative. Always positive. Positivity only from now on!
Also most of the rights we enjoy are thanks to the French and Russian people who had a whole lot of negative thoughts about their kings and expressed them loud enough for the ruling classes in the rest of the world to hear.
Not once have people channeled negative emotions into action or art. It’s impossible.
Except, no? Art is about expressing one’s self. There’s tons of art out there inspired by negative emotions. Anger-fueled protest songs, Emily Dickinson’s poems about death, countless paintings created to express a people’s or an individual’s plight, the list goes on.
Being positive is definitely better for one’s health, but to say negative emotions have never and could never be used to create art is absurd.
Edit: Or was your comment sarcasm? I truly cannot tell anymore.
sorry, I’m an old fart on the internet, my comment was covered in sarcasm haha. I get that negative people drain the positivity out of things, but I think history would call this era in america a trump-led republican-manufactured depression. Negativity happens in depressions, I don’t think it’s wise to curse it like the person I was originally replying to was alluding to. Positivity is useful as well, and much more so when it comes to organizing things that bring about immediate relief.
Saying ‘stop being negative’, right now in this moment, is saying “stop being unhealthy” to people losing their medical coverage or “stop being unhoused” to people being kicked out of their apartments or “stop crying” because your wife lost her white collar job too and now youre both working door dash to stay afloat in this economy. Some people are literally trying to survive to not die and don’t have the literal privilege of being in a positive mood when a random person on the internet graces upon the comment section of a lemmy thread. How dare they. Fucking people who dare think differently than them because they forgot the random internet person who needs positivity constantly around them might feel a bit sad about negativity.
What people need are good neighbors. I’m obviously not one yet but damn just leave people alone please. Not you but people like the person I originally replied to
negative thinking and giving up hope literally never helped once
The gambler’s fallacy, also known as the Monte Carlo fallacy or the fallacy of the maturity of chances, is the belief that, if an event (whose occurrences are independent and identically distributed) has occurred less frequently than expected, it is more likely to happen again in the future (or vice versa).
Obviously going around in a state of denial doesn’t help
It’s not obvious. That’s the hitch. Figuring out when to persist and when to accept defeat is at the heart of the emotional struggle.
Yet positive thinking has proven to be better for your mental and emotional state, helps you heal faster, and actually helps you succeed because you’re looking for opportunities instead of ignoring them, as well as actually trying those opportunities instead of talking yourself out of it.
It’s not a fallacy to try to think positively, it’s a scientifically proven tactic.
Yeah, you gotta know when to fold em, but saying that thinking you can do something is the same as a gamblers fallacy is a false dichotomy.
NDs know, perhaps better than most, that victory always begins in the mind. It’s the first fight and often the hardest. It isn’t easy to see beyond present circumstances to a reality that does not yet exist. Convincing oneself that it could enables the vision required to know what to do next. Without it one can only react.
That said… I think one of the underlying problems we currently experience here on this site is simple: we have mixed channels that include users who have radically opposing needs.
The problem of forcing our wounded and our fit for duty to use the same channel
I see a lot of people on lemmy who are obviously hurting and scared. They come here to validate their despair among others whose hope for a better future has been cauterized repeatedly, who are similarly traumatized by current events. They are not yet ready to fight and should not be expected to do so by those who are. They’ll be able to fight later. First they need to recover. These are our wounded.
We also have people who are looking ahead, networking, and organizing. Their comments and posts are colored by some degree of optimism and esprit de corps. They are here to help and have the mental and emotional wherewithal to do so. These are our fit for duty.
With our wounded and our fit for duty intermingled, both groups are mutually frustrated.
Our fit for duty are frustrated by our wounded sowing discord and despair in the ranks. It comes across to them as selfish wallowing and doomerism that demoralizes when we need all hands on deck.
Our wounded, on the other hand, are discouraged when their reality is rejected by the fit for duty, who seem to judge their fears as weakness and might even scold them for voicing their despair. That comes across to them as a selfish, uncaring, and individualistic mindset which comes from a place of privilege (be it socioeconomic, identity, neurotype, locality, or something else).
Possible solutions
I’ve been thinking about possible solutions. Obviously, our wounded would not prefer to doom-spiral in front of their comrades, and our fit for duty would not prefer to force our wounded into a head space they’re not ready for.
One approach is technical and requires an unmerged feature. We could offer literal channels, or designated subthreads, within comment sections such that at least one was dedicated to support. There it would be guaranteed safe for our wounded to voice pessimistic feelings free of judgement, and they could expect to have their despair acknowledged and discussed by others who felt the same.
Another approach would be to just acknowledge the mental health needs of users openly in a pinned post with a weekly dedicated comment section for voicing feelings of anger, sadness, and despair. This would obviously require approval at the moderator level but could be implemented immediately.
A hybrid approach that any community (namely those specifically dedicated to current events) could implement with an automod rule, would include a pinned comment in every post inviting child comments and discussions where any degree of pessimism or despair would be considered realistic.
ETA: spoiler sections re: users with opposing needs
This is a brilliant way of looking at this whole situation. I think that if people can contextualize it like you said it would really help bridge the gap!
Thanks! It’s been on my mind for a while. The friction is obvious to most of us by now. Every day I see more examples of strong (and mutually exclusive) opinions about it. Still, we haven’t yet agreed on how to frame it inclusively, much less how to reconcile the need.
Where we’re headed currently, I think, is one group “winning” via consensus-building to censure and alienate the other. We will effectively exile their perspectives to other online spaces, or perhaps a particular space which comes to be thought of as our toxic offshoot.
That process has already begun. While I haven’t figured out exactly where exiles are landing, trends suggest the voices that will ultimately be exiled are our wounded. Right now they’re exiting the dialog feeling silenced and shamed as cowards, so I wouldn’t expect their return.
Before that realization I considered the trend progress, since we’re resolving our doomerism/morale issue, but now I can’t help feeling like it’s both a terrible injustice to our comrades and an unnecessary waste that surely we can avoid. Hence the spitballing.
If you or anyone reading has any ideas, I’d be grateful to hear them.
I lived most my early life in the darkness. it almost consumed me when I attempted to take my life. know what saved me?
spite.
when people put me down, I proved them wrong out of spite. I stomped them into the ground as violently as I could (metaphorically).
when I put myself down I punished myself, out of spite. tell myself I can’t run this mile? run until I want to die. think I can’t complete this task before the deadline? don’t stop until it’s done. that means no food, water, sleep, or relief until it’s done.
I am a hate-filled spite powered machine that will only stop if I’m dead or unconscious. never had hope for the future, never had a positive thought towards the future. I just want to “swing my sword” and test my mettle.
Ok yeah, I’ve lived like that too and I can relate. Trust me when I say that I totally get that mental state.
The one flaw with it, though, that one has to break through eventually, is that it’s reactive. It’s always, ultimately, defined by others.
The escape clause I found was that one of the best ways to get back at the fuckers was to thrive. But to do that, I had to do what I wanted, not just react. But to get what I wanted, I first had to want something for myself, and then I realized I couldn’t get that if I held onto the idea that everything would be terrible forever. I had to have a gritty version of hope. I had to adapt to a positive mindset for my goals or else I’d be hampering myself.
So yeah, spite can get you to accomplish things, but it’s always a contrarian way of doing things, constantly teathered to showing someone up rather than actual freedom.
Spite’s some good shit, but it’s always diluted by a lingering fixation with others’ objectives. It works, but it’s just a common street drug, and you need more of it every time you use it.
The pharmaceutical grade product is called determination. Pure determination makes you unstoppable.
Ok, sure, but also negative thinking and giving up hope literally never helped once. It doesn’t help in real world ways and it makes your mental state worse. Obviously going around in a state of denial doesn’t help and ND people have specific challenges a NT person might not get, but ultimately you gotta cling to a positive mindset to make things better.
When people keep telling me to basically deny my reality, it makes me feel more shit than anything else. I’d much rather someone empathize and tell me that, yes, things actually do suck. And guess what, that does make me feel better and more sane
If you don’t acknowledge reality and stay realistic that things actually are not always that great, then the next time you get knocked down by something, or your challenges make something you aspired to do rail, then you’re just gonna fall apart like a house of cards. Especially if you start internalizing that you should be able to do this and that it’s your fault you didn’t succeed etc
Treating mental health in an individualist way sucks, and sometimes is worse than nothing
I’m not talking about being in denial. I’m saying that if you want things to not suck, you do have to have the idea that things might not suck somehow later. If you think things are always going to suck then you’ll never bother to make things not suck.
deleted by creator
Is it really unmet? Many of the default communities, especially the top ones, are constant feeds of at least half posts consisting of negative news about politics, economics, and environmental news. If the articles aren’t negative, the comments often are. Like my comment I guess, though I don’t intend to be argumentative.
I’m struggling with how much is wrong and how hard it fixing it appears to be as well. But I don’t think there is a lack of that acknowledgment here at all.
deleted by creator
I completely agree, angry people have never complished anything ever. Not once have people channeled negative emotions into action or art. It’s impossible. Just be positive and use that, as it is the only known way of success. Never be negative. Always positive. Positivity only from now on!
Tap for spoiler
/s
I’m not saying never to be angry, I’m saying never to give up.
Also most of the rights we enjoy are thanks to the French and Russian people who had a whole lot of negative thoughts about their kings and expressed them loud enough for the ruling classes in the rest of the world to hear.
You can’t say anything positive about Russians on here. People are going to burst a gasket.
TIL, /s stands for spoiler
Except, no? Art is about expressing one’s self. There’s tons of art out there inspired by negative emotions. Anger-fueled protest songs, Emily Dickinson’s poems about death, countless paintings created to express a people’s or an individual’s plight, the list goes on.
Being positive is definitely better for one’s health, but to say negative emotions have never and could never be used to create art is absurd.
Edit: Or was your comment sarcasm? I truly cannot tell anymore.
sorry, I’m an old fart on the internet, my comment was covered in sarcasm haha. I get that negative people drain the positivity out of things, but I think history would call this era in america a trump-led republican-manufactured depression. Negativity happens in depressions, I don’t think it’s wise to curse it like the person I was originally replying to was alluding to. Positivity is useful as well, and much more so when it comes to organizing things that bring about immediate relief.
Saying ‘stop being negative’, right now in this moment, is saying “stop being unhealthy” to people losing their medical coverage or “stop being unhoused” to people being kicked out of their apartments or “stop crying” because your wife lost her white collar job too and now youre both working door dash to stay afloat in this economy. Some people are literally trying to survive to not die and don’t have the literal privilege of being in a positive mood when a random person on the internet graces upon the comment section of a lemmy thread. How dare they. Fucking people who dare think differently than them because they forgot the random internet person who needs positivity constantly around them might feel a bit sad about negativity.
What people need are good neighbors. I’m obviously not one yet but damn just leave people alone please. Not you but people like the person I originally replied to
Thank you for the clarification. I agree 100%!
The gambler’s fallacy, also known as the Monte Carlo fallacy or the fallacy of the maturity of chances, is the belief that, if an event (whose occurrences are independent and identically distributed) has occurred less frequently than expected, it is more likely to happen again in the future (or vice versa).
It’s not obvious. That’s the hitch. Figuring out when to persist and when to accept defeat is at the heart of the emotional struggle.
Yet positive thinking has proven to be better for your mental and emotional state, helps you heal faster, and actually helps you succeed because you’re looking for opportunities instead of ignoring them, as well as actually trying those opportunities instead of talking yourself out of it.
It’s not a fallacy to try to think positively, it’s a scientifically proven tactic.
Yeah, you gotta know when to fold em, but saying that thinking you can do something is the same as a gamblers fallacy is a false dichotomy.
Sorry that’s not how ND works.
Telling us we need to cope in NT style only makes it worse. Not to say there are no ways, but we need to find our own.
I’m not saying that you need to do it in NT style at all! You gotta do it your own way.
If that’s what you said, we agree.
But this may hint at the communication issues (double empathy issue).
Agreed.
NDs know, perhaps better than most, that victory always begins in the mind. It’s the first fight and often the hardest. It isn’t easy to see beyond present circumstances to a reality that does not yet exist. Convincing oneself that it could enables the vision required to know what to do next. Without it one can only react.
That said… I think one of the underlying problems we currently experience here on this site is simple: we have mixed channels that include users who have radically opposing needs.
The problem of forcing our wounded and our fit for duty to use the same channel
I see a lot of people on lemmy who are obviously hurting and scared. They come here to validate their despair among others whose hope for a better future has been cauterized repeatedly, who are similarly traumatized by current events. They are not yet ready to fight and should not be expected to do so by those who are. They’ll be able to fight later. First they need to recover. These are our wounded.
We also have people who are looking ahead, networking, and organizing. Their comments and posts are colored by some degree of optimism and esprit de corps. They are here to help and have the mental and emotional wherewithal to do so. These are our fit for duty.
With our wounded and our fit for duty intermingled, both groups are mutually frustrated.
Our fit for duty are frustrated by our wounded sowing discord and despair in the ranks. It comes across to them as selfish wallowing and doomerism that demoralizes when we need all hands on deck.
Our wounded, on the other hand, are discouraged when their reality is rejected by the fit for duty, who seem to judge their fears as weakness and might even scold them for voicing their despair. That comes across to them as a selfish, uncaring, and individualistic mindset which comes from a place of privilege (be it socioeconomic, identity, neurotype, locality, or something else).
Possible solutions
I’ve been thinking about possible solutions. Obviously, our wounded would not prefer to doom-spiral in front of their comrades, and our fit for duty would not prefer to force our wounded into a head space they’re not ready for.
One approach is technical and requires an unmerged feature. We could offer literal channels, or designated subthreads, within comment sections such that at least one was dedicated to support. There it would be guaranteed safe for our wounded to voice pessimistic feelings free of judgement, and they could expect to have their despair acknowledged and discussed by others who felt the same.
Another approach would be to just acknowledge the mental health needs of users openly in a pinned post with a weekly dedicated comment section for voicing feelings of anger, sadness, and despair. This would obviously require approval at the moderator level but could be implemented immediately.
A hybrid approach that any community (namely those specifically dedicated to current events) could implement with an automod rule, would include a pinned comment in every post inviting child comments and discussions where any degree of pessimism or despair would be considered realistic.
ETA: spoiler sections re: users with opposing needs
This is a brilliant way of looking at this whole situation. I think that if people can contextualize it like you said it would really help bridge the gap!
Thanks! It’s been on my mind for a while. The friction is obvious to most of us by now. Every day I see more examples of strong (and mutually exclusive) opinions about it. Still, we haven’t yet agreed on how to frame it inclusively, much less how to reconcile the need.
Where we’re headed currently, I think, is one group “winning” via consensus-building to censure and alienate the other. We will effectively exile their perspectives to other online spaces, or perhaps a particular space which comes to be thought of as our toxic offshoot.
That process has already begun. While I haven’t figured out exactly where exiles are landing, trends suggest the voices that will ultimately be exiled are our wounded. Right now they’re exiting the dialog feeling silenced and shamed as cowards, so I wouldn’t expect their return.
Before that realization I considered the trend progress, since we’re resolving our doomerism/morale issue, but now I can’t help feeling like it’s both a terrible injustice to our comrades and an unnecessary waste that surely we can avoid. Hence the spitballing.
If you or anyone reading has any ideas, I’d be grateful to hear them.
not true.
I lived most my early life in the darkness. it almost consumed me when I attempted to take my life. know what saved me?
spite.
when people put me down, I proved them wrong out of spite. I stomped them into the ground as violently as I could (metaphorically).
when I put myself down I punished myself, out of spite. tell myself I can’t run this mile? run until I want to die. think I can’t complete this task before the deadline? don’t stop until it’s done. that means no food, water, sleep, or relief until it’s done.
I am a hate-filled spite powered machine that will only stop if I’m dead or unconscious. never had hope for the future, never had a positive thought towards the future. I just want to “swing my sword” and test my mettle.
Ok yeah, I’ve lived like that too and I can relate. Trust me when I say that I totally get that mental state.
The one flaw with it, though, that one has to break through eventually, is that it’s reactive. It’s always, ultimately, defined by others.
The escape clause I found was that one of the best ways to get back at the fuckers was to thrive. But to do that, I had to do what I wanted, not just react. But to get what I wanted, I first had to want something for myself, and then I realized I couldn’t get that if I held onto the idea that everything would be terrible forever. I had to have a gritty version of hope. I had to adapt to a positive mindset for my goals or else I’d be hampering myself.
So yeah, spite can get you to accomplish things, but it’s always a contrarian way of doing things, constantly teathered to showing someone up rather than actual freedom.
Spite’s some good shit, but it’s always diluted by a lingering fixation with others’ objectives. It works, but it’s just a common street drug, and you need more of it every time you use it.
The pharmaceutical grade product is called determination. Pure determination makes you unstoppable.
If you find a reliable supplier btw hmu