<story><title>Telling your inner critic to chill</title><url>https://www.radiatedaily.com/telling-your-inner-critic-to-chill/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>FailMore</author><text>Affirmations do not work.&lt;p&gt;Mental health is mechanical. Most anxiety and suffering within mental health are second order effects from unconscious fears that we have about behaviours we feel are risky to take. For example, if you grow up in a household where your personal distress causes distress in others, you will hide your own personal distress and attempt to appear good all of the time. You will have high levels of anxiety in situations in which you might have to admit distress&amp;#x2F;dissatisfaction&amp;#x2F;not be a happy person that makes everyone else happy.&lt;p&gt;To improve mental health, more behaviours on the spectrum of all possible behaviours need to become calmly accessible. This allows the brain to be calmer in a wider range of situations; previously a situation that might cause distress might have been avoided&amp;#x2F;cause a spike in anxiety, now the situation can be faced calmly and the newly integrated behaviour allows the individual to say &amp;quot;sorry, I&amp;#x27;m finding this too stressful, I need to stop&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Everyone typically has their own unique combination of behaviours which are not easily accessible. In my personal therapy I found that my dreams were a useful way of diagnosing what behaviours I was not comfortable with. I got very interested in this and ultimately completed a Masters in Psychology to write a paper on the topic based on the underlying neurology that occurs during REM sleep.&lt;p&gt;The paper can be read here: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;psyarxiv.com&amp;#x2F;k6trz&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;psyarxiv.com&amp;#x2F;k6trz&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;It was discussed on HN here: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=19143590&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=19143590&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>savryn</author><text>I kinda agree with everything except that affirmations DO work, they are like self hypnosis and reach the unconscious in ways that add up.&lt;p&gt;Every time a horrible cringe&amp;#x2F;guilt memory comes up, instead of expletive Fuuuuuuu (mental or out loud) literally reprogram yourself to immediately say &amp;quot;I love me!&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;Different now&amp;quot; or something else that&amp;#x27;s positive.&lt;p&gt;The silly goodness of the thing legit interrupts the pain of the memory.&lt;p&gt;Thoughts and feelings that fire together wire together, so you MUST to break the connection of old shit spiraling into bad mood, paralysis, etc in the moment.&lt;p&gt;This is daily housekeeping for mental health. No one has endless time to meditate or waste money on therapy&lt;p&gt;once you have a few of these solid habits, you feel strong enough to do the heavy murky freudian trauma unraveling that&amp;#x27;s more longterm  and releases the tight gordian knots from childhood etc.&lt;p&gt;But daily tools DO work and are just as important.</text></comment>
<story><title>Telling your inner critic to chill</title><url>https://www.radiatedaily.com/telling-your-inner-critic-to-chill/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>FailMore</author><text>Affirmations do not work.&lt;p&gt;Mental health is mechanical. Most anxiety and suffering within mental health are second order effects from unconscious fears that we have about behaviours we feel are risky to take. For example, if you grow up in a household where your personal distress causes distress in others, you will hide your own personal distress and attempt to appear good all of the time. You will have high levels of anxiety in situations in which you might have to admit distress&amp;#x2F;dissatisfaction&amp;#x2F;not be a happy person that makes everyone else happy.&lt;p&gt;To improve mental health, more behaviours on the spectrum of all possible behaviours need to become calmly accessible. This allows the brain to be calmer in a wider range of situations; previously a situation that might cause distress might have been avoided&amp;#x2F;cause a spike in anxiety, now the situation can be faced calmly and the newly integrated behaviour allows the individual to say &amp;quot;sorry, I&amp;#x27;m finding this too stressful, I need to stop&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Everyone typically has their own unique combination of behaviours which are not easily accessible. In my personal therapy I found that my dreams were a useful way of diagnosing what behaviours I was not comfortable with. I got very interested in this and ultimately completed a Masters in Psychology to write a paper on the topic based on the underlying neurology that occurs during REM sleep.&lt;p&gt;The paper can be read here: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;psyarxiv.com&amp;#x2F;k6trz&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;psyarxiv.com&amp;#x2F;k6trz&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;It was discussed on HN here: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=19143590&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=19143590&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>iamsanteri</author><text>Can you explain more about your line of reasoning and thinking? Any good sources you know about discussing exactly such ideas and details? Thank you!</text></comment>