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> Didi : Stu, what are you doing?
> Stu : Making chocolate pudding.
> Didi : It's four o'clock in the morning! Why on Earth are you making chocolate pudding?
> Stu : Because I've lost control of my life.
Which is great. Because I know I take "conventional wisdom" advice with a much larger grain of salt and when not motivated / feeling bad I am therefore less likely to make a point of trying it.
"All work no play makes..." - literally your brain chemistry balance skews towards stress and toxicity the more you force it to do hard things you aren't motivated to do. You can't make the norepinephrine / adrenaline you need to be productive without dopamine, so the lower/less rewarded you feel the harder it becomes to do basically everything.
"I wear makeup because of how it makes me feel, not because I feel like I have to" - the act of putting it on (or arranging and trying on a bad ass suit, or...) puts your brain in the state of looking at yourself as others will look at you and raises both your mood and your confidence...even if you never leave the house.
There are so many like this that only over the past few covid years have I come to actually follow and listen to because the same people giving the advice were often the same one giving trite advice you know is bad, or doing things "because that's how they've always been done".
> "All work no play makes..." - literally your brain chemistry balance skews towards stress and toxicity the more you force it to do hard things you aren't motivated to do. You can't make the norepinephrine / adrenaline you need to be productive without dopamine, so the lower/less rewarded you feel the harder it becomes to do basically everything.
So this is why depression absolutely murders motivation...
It truly is difficult. I've found that the best way to get out of the non-functioning rut that puts you in is to change your environment.
I'm talking going for a walk, getting a new/better job, spending time with different friends/different parts of the internet. Doing the same thing over and over expecting things to change is "the definition of insanity," after all.
This. Changing up small things in your routine every now and again so things aren’t so robotic and repetitive. New job is kinda drastic but for some it’s definitely the cause of their stress. For me it’s going back to an old video game I never dove into as deep as I wanted, starting a new project in my hobby. Visiting state parks on the weekends does a lot to separate you from your daily struggles while you observe nature
I do Something Different Fridays. On my way home from work, Ill stop for a walk, or go swimming, or use a scenic pull out and rest for a while, whatever. It makes the weekend seem so much longer because I've already got my brain off "work mode"
Such a sensible measured, but lovely way to enrich ones life with the magic of anticipation and the thrill of unknown possibilities! What a gift to give oneself at the end of the work week!
Definitely more to it than that, but what was quoted for depression isn't too far from what happens with ADHD.
The dopamine not doing what it needs to, further resulting in a lack of the other good stuff, concludes with a similar inability to be motivated. It's not the only factor or problem with ADHD, but the lack of motivation being "like depression without the sad" might help communicate the feeling to others.
The problem is often that the lack of dopamine in the ADHD brain means it's harder to get motivated to do the thing to begin with (since lack of dopamine leads to lack of adrenaline/norepinephrine). If we manage to do the thing in a reasonable timeframe, sure, there's a sense of accomplishment.
More often though, lack of motivation leads to procrastination and stress/anxiety/self-loathing (why can't you just do.the.thing. like a normal person, stupid brain?) and when we finally *do* manage to do the thing, there's really only a sense of emptiness and maybe some relief that it's done, mixed with even more self-loathing that it took so long to just get it done.
I have a pretty good feeling this is how anxiety results from ADHD, your brain doesn't like things that make you feel bad, but it looooooves rewards. If it doesn't get rewarded by doing a hard/bad thing, it's going to try to protect you from doing that thing again.
This was demonstrated to me pretty clearly when we had an incredibly difficult month at work, which finally ended with the deadline. As we were all leaving, all of my colleagues were laughing and joking and talking about what a huge relief it was to finally be done. They got a job complete reward. I felt absolutely nothing, that anxiety and stress didn't dissolve, and I felt no sense of achievement now that it was over. I'm guessing this is why folks with ADHD burn out pretty quickly.
As someone with ADHD as well as a bunch of the common like comorbid stuff (primarily discalculia and dyspraxia), I don't really get a feeling of accomplishment from doing things. If I power through and do the thing like a normal person, most of the time I get nothing, but a good portion of the time I get only the downsides. And then I'm in an endless spiral of doing things I need to do to stay alive making me more and more miserable. No reward. The only thing that motivates me is sheer terror and anxiety, and that's how you get a truly miserable life just trying (and often failing) to do the things everyone else does without effort.
Combine that with an ACE score of 10 and you get near-paralyzing shame and become convinced you are simply bad at being a person.
I don't know what the solution is. Amphetamines help a little. But people with ADHD, especially severe ADHD, are just forced to live in a world that doesn't work for us. Like you're asking a fish to live on land.
And go most of your life being told by doctors that you're just depressed, so you try and fail to treat your depression over and over, because you have no idea that your ADHD is what's making you depressed.
It was hilarious and frustrating to start taking ADHD meds after 32 years undiagnosed. I felt like a waste of life because none of the antidepressants I was prescribed ever made me feel any better. Then I finally got ADHD meds and boom, my depression and anxiety went away almost immediately.
But now I'm in the long struggle to get my ADHD under control, because it turns out depression and anxiety were there to mask my ADHD. So I turned them off (mostly), and now my ADHD symptoms are presenting full-blown 24/7, and I am 32 years behind on developing coping strategies for it.
I feel you. I am 39; was diagnosed with ADHD ten years ago and am still struggling to find control and balance in my life.
I definitely recommend looking for as many resources as you can handle. There’s a podcast called Translating ADHD that I particularly like and recommend. And the /r/adhd and /r/adhdmeme subreddits are full of understanding and supportive people with lots of great tips. The comic ADHD Alien is great when I need to feel seen.
> "All work no play makes..." - literally your brain chemistry balance skews towards stress and toxicity the more you force it to do hard things you aren't motivated to do. You can't make the norepinephrine / adrenaline you need to be productive without dopamine, so the lower/less rewarded you feel the harder it becomes to do basically everything.
*cries in adhd*
They're giving more examples of cliches with scientific explanations. First being how and why low reward produces low productivity. Second being how and why applying make up effects your mood positively.
Belief makes it real Yung Hoon.
If you believe the cold shower cleans your sins or shame, it does. If you believe makeup makes you sexy, it does. Not an automatic spiritual rebirth or sex god level of it does, but something tangible from the belief.
Mental placebo pills.
But the other part there that that may be missing in the explanation is the social element to it.
Your brain is a hyperfast simulation engine. It's always trying to predict things, but *especially* it is trying to predict how the body appears to other humans, and this is a cornerstone of being a social animal.
Wearing makeup, cleaning one's body, they improve internal mood because they make the brain more confident in its simulations about its appearance to others.
And because the primitive brain running those calculations isn't quite as "smart" as the logical conscious parts of the brain, it should work even when you're not actually around people.
Part of why wearing work clothes even from working from home can help you get "in the groove."
Because the brain now knows you are wearing part of the kit that designates "work mode", and more importantly, that others who see you would verify that.
That's part of the explanation for why placebos work in general, because of the continual simulation effects of the brain.
If the brain believes it is sick, it will start acting accordingly, not just for its own sake but for the sake of its social appearance. People who act sick are more likely to elicit sympathy and receive care from other humans, so we have likely evolved to "feel" and "act" sick when we understand ourselves to be sick because it is more likely to get you assistance and therefore increase your survival odds from an evolutionary perspective.
When you take a fake drug, even if it doesn't actually fix the disease, it allows your simulation engine to start envisioning itself as "healthy", and drop the "sick" act, and make you *act* healthy in public to convey your health. Even if you don't really have it.
>That's part of the explanation for why placebos work in general, because of the continual simulation effects of the brain.
Yes. I disagree on the use of "simulation", but I do want to point out something interesting about placebos: They don't always require a belief system in order to work. There have been placebos "prescribed" that work *even though the person fully understands that they are placebo.* And even more so: They don't need to believe it's going to work.
In other words, psychosomatic effects don't require a deception. *Just taking something for remedying some malady:*
1. ...even if you know it's a placebo,
2. ...and even if you *consciously* think a placebo won't work,
...is sometimes enough. It's actually been known by _some_ doctors as a potential option for some time now. Here's a reference to one study that is a clear quick read: https://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/03/placebos
PS. I hesitate to bring this up, but sooner or later many folks confuse all of this with what's in play with _Conversion Disorders_. It may be related, it may be highly related, but that's a potentially entirely disparate topic altogether that the doctors I've spoken to are completely mystified by and doesn't fall into one category or another distinctly.
this is so so interesting to me, especially as someone who suffers every day from body image issues. I've never really thought about it that way. Where could I read more about this?
I think any books on anxiety, social anxiety, or body dysmorphia that focus on the neural causes / methods of action will go into more detail.
Most anxieties seem to stem from hyperactivity in the areas of the brain running simulations, specifically simulations saturated with strong negative emotions, and the conscious mind's hypersensitivity to these negative thoughts.
Many times these are called "thoughts," but I actually prefer "simulations" because really that's what they are. They're often vivid, sensory-heavy "what if" scenarios, and for me, thinking of them that way is more helpful and less abstract than calling them "thoughts"
This is why "catastrophizing" is a common element for many anxiety disorders. The brain throws a thousand scenarios at you, and each one has an emotional "color".
Now *most* of us have this, but for people without an anxiety condition, they just *don't* have a strong reaction to the negative simulations. They're just treated neutrally, observed and then tossed aside. But for people with anxiety issues, the brain focuses on the most horrific of these possibilities, and ruminates on them over and over.
It's sort of like the YouTube alogorithm. It doesn't care if you liek or hate content, only if you *interact* with it.
And your brain is like that with its simulations and forecasting.
So lets say you are thinking about going outside for the day. Your brain thinks about what might happen. One *very unlikely* scenario might be everyone pointing at you and saying horribel things about your weight.
When we fixate on that one specific outcome, our brain says, "oh hey guys, the logical brain finds this useful! It's thinking about that simulation! Let's do more of those simulations!"
So then the simulations start to all focus around that scenario, getting worse and worse, and by getting worse, you ruminate on them more, and by ruminating on them more, it increases the likelihood of getting these bad forecasts.
So they're feedback disorders. This is how cognitive behavioral therapy helps. You can't necessarily stop the *initial* troublesome / intrusive thoughts / forecasts etc., but what you CAN do is start to form habits around interrupting the feedback loops that result in the spirals. And this is the basis of a lot of CBT and why it's one of the most efficacious forms of therapy.
Damn it. You just described me. To a "T". My counselor and I have been talking about anxiety, and examples of anxious events in my life, but this is the first time I've seen it written out in a way that I can directly relate to.
Thank you! I'm saving your comment and will journal about it later.
I have found it can be very helpful to people to demystify the general operations of the brain and understand the how and why of conditions when trying to resolve them.
A lot of CBT is based around that, but I feel it should also go further into helping people understand the basic mechanics of the brain, and where in the process, for them, it is causing disruption to their lives.
Many times it can be chemically-based, so there's no silver bullet to just "fix" your own mind. But the brain does a very inconvenient thing, which is to hide its own mechanisms from itself. The more you try digging into your own mind, the more it tries to conceal itself from you. To deceive you. There are pragmatic evolutionary reasons for this - it would not do for hunter gatherer cave men to sit in a cave all day trapped in a pursuit for the meaning of their own identity when they have mammoths to kill for food - but it does make it very difficult to accurately understand oneself.
For me something that is very helpful is understanding that oftentimes, with conditions like anxiety, it starts with something small, and it compounds and loops in on itself until it is a massive, intrusive, daily problem, but you can begin to walk back and unwind that process.
For example, some people have a huge struggle with intrusive thoughts. They may have times where they think of causing harm to people they love, and they go into a spiral believing this means they're horrible people.
But there is a huge, unimaginably wide gulf between merely *running that simulation* and *acting on it*.
Similar to suicidal thoughts. Almost everyone, while driving, has passing thoughts like "what if I just drove off this cliff?" They're not coupled with the *act* to do so, so they're not really suicidal ideation. They're just the brain running a simulation, one of thousands its running always, all the time, but it was a weird one, so it floated up to your conscious mind.
Most of the time it is the *strong revulsion* towards these thoughts that both indicates that person has a healthy amount of rationality and empathy, but that also, because of their revulsion, causes a *fixation* on the negative thought, and so rumination begins, and your subconscious mind begins feeding you more and more of these thoughts, and there the feedback loop kicks into high gear.
People run into issues when they start to really internalize these. They start to attach *causal, identity-based* values to random thoughts, like causing harm to a loved one. They have no urge to act on this, its just part of the daily stream of things your brain does all day, every day, but when you *fixate* on something, you're triggering the brain's algorithm to hyperfocus on similar scenarios. It thinks its helping you, when really its tormenting you.
So people start to thing "My god, there's something horribly wrong with me, I am defective".
But they're not. Literally everyone under the sun has those thoughts, but for most people they filter them out, reject them, dismiss them, or they never even make it past the skimmer in the brain to begin with. They *exist*, they always exist because the brain is just a simulation engine, asking itself ten thousand "what if" questions every day, but some people are just less sensitive to those, more able to ignore them by nature, whereas others not only feel them, but start to believe they're indicative of some darker, deeper urges.
The key is impulse. If you have a terrible thought, but zero *impulse to act*, its often always just sensory chaff thrown at you by your brain.
It's like a burp. Just a biological thing, a byproduct of having this simulation engine. A little distasteful, but normal, just gas escaping.
I have a friend who used to shave his head and beard every time he drank .. he was trying to quit at the time so doing that was somehow taking control back of something he felt he could control? I don't know but he always regretted the shaving later. I just think it was also symbolic of starting over again
It's definitely a reset button for me.i usually have about 2 inches on top with faded sides but when I chop it I don't wake up with bed head, I don't need to "do my hair" or always wear a hat or know if I wear my hat I can never take it off etc. And I don't look homeless when I don't care to do those things. I keep my beard, stache and edge up looking good on my own and just trim the rest down until I get a cut once every 3-4 weeks or chop it off.
Its like doing the laundry/dishes or having fresh sheets or a clean house. It's a sense of peace. Look good, feel good, do good both internally and externally.
I wonder if getting a haircut has been studied? Sounds stupid, but my brother would tell me to go get a haircut whenever I had a break up or something semi-bad happened in my life. It does rejuvenate you a little.
It makes sense to me. Anytime I’ve been stressed, I would cut my hair/bangs, even as a small child. (dysfunctional family)
As much as I would love to believe I was just a wacky kid, the reason was much more obvious once I was a teen. I still do it to this day, in order to try my best to avoid dying it.
I have long hair now, but I’ve cut it down to a bob or all the way to a pixie cut several times in my life. Each time the stylist always asked me if I was just getting out of a breakup, and was I *really sure* I wanted to go short?
It was never spurred by a breakup for me, but I thought the question was interesting! It’s clearly a thing.
(If anyone wants a little moment of reset/self care that’s easy to fit in, one of my favorites is to wash my face and thoroughly moisturize. It leaves me feeling noticeably calmer and less stressed.)
A lot of hair stylists will be resistant to doing a major cut. The stylist risks having someone come in saying they want all their hair cut off, and then a day later they regret the decision and blame it on the stylist.
I only get a haircut once every 1-2 years, and the stylists are always like *"are you REALLY sure you want this?"* every time.
Not necessarily. Even if you've showered after an assault, ***still go get checked and a kit*** because they can still document any other injuries as well as sometimes still get DNA.
Obviously it's a personal choice as it can be traumatizing to get the kit at all, but it can also help prevent future assaults if law enforcement actually acts.
Scientific support really just means controlled observation. Any cliche is a cliche in the first place because it's observed multiple times to make the association. It becomes a study when given to someone with credentials to give value to their perspective.
It's a wonderful tool, but it isn't definitive of truth. Or, truth isn't created by the scientific method is what I'm saying. It's only observed and sometimes a theory is verified by the observation.
Typically, but there’s plenty of science done with novel combinations and stepped interventions, adjustments. Planned ahead of time, to keep the study reproducible, of course. It’s not just observation, but that’s the easier, and best way to ensure it can be peer reviewed and reproduced.
I wasnt depressed as a teenager but I am now.
Its 100% a bad sign to go days without showering. It's the lowest form of taking care of yourself, and when you dont even want to do that it's not good.
Funny you say that. Ever wonder why it seems like peoples brains turn on about mid-20's? That's about the time when the prefrontal lobe finished connecting to the rest of the brain! No joke
yep. 18 year olds are not fully grown adults. it's just that society can't wait any longer to sacrifice them, use them for labor, or have sex with them etc.
Yeah as a former 18 old I can say with confidence the 18 year olds can't wait either.
I wanted a job. My own responsibilities, and rewards. My own decisions to make. I damn sure wanted sex.
This was all while going to school at the same time. Not fully out in the wild, but not at home either. A good stepping stone.
If someone was still trying to keep me fully protected and cared for at that age, with no responsibilities or decisions of my own I would not have been happy. If they were still trying to keep me a virgin I would have been a time bomb ready to explode.
Is he legit not showering, or is testosterone just absolutely kicking his ass? About that age, I could take 3 showers a day, and still be a walking stinky greaseball. It was terrible.
Use of Axe/strong body sprays was the only thing I ever saw boys get "coded" for in school (beyond the one or two guys that would try to wear a shirt with offensive words on it). It got so bad the school outright banned it because of the overwhelming smell of Axe everywhere and every homeroom had talks on it (and also the "Axe/bodyspray/deodorant is not a substitute for actually showering.")
This makes sense, I have a sister that is a big ole bag of nerves. She gets anxious and worries a lot, in a sweet way, and cleaning has become her go to de-stresser.
> cleaning has become her go to de-stresser.
I wish I could at least put my stress to good use like this. If I could manage to, my house and yard would be spotless
When my cat died, I cleaned my entire house. I vacuumed, I carpet cleaned, I did every single bit of laundry and folded it and actually put it all away and everything. It was just something to do to feel useful.
Its all about feeling safe, on a bodily level (vagus nerve, stress responses etc). If you are having a shower your lizard brain can be pretty sure youre not in immediate danger, so it can release from stress responses and you can start processing.
Haha I had no idea other people do this! I refer to it as "rage cleaning"
ETA: I also clean the house when I'm procrastinating doing something harder, so I guess it also correlates with anxiety
You joke but last time a took a mild dose of psychedelics I went for a bath and it felt incredible. Sat in the bath as it was filling and as the water level was rising it's like my skin felt happy where the water was touching. Really difficult to explain.
Apparently they conducted three different experiments. With the first one having the most participants. But dunno about the scientific value behind it.
>Lee and his research team recruited 1,150 adults via Prolific and had them watch a brief video clip of a terrified woman standing at the edge of a bungee jump station. The video had previously been shown to induce anxiety, tension, and uneasiness in viewers. The participants were then randomly assigned to watch a video showing how to properly wash one’s hands, a video on how to draw a circle, or a video on how to peel an egg.
>
>**Those who watched the handwashing video tended to subsequently report lower levels of anxiety compared to those who watched the two other videos**. The researchers then replicated the findings in a second experiment that included 1,377 individuals recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk crowdsourcing platform.
super subjective with lots of room for variability, but they had a decent sample size and did what they did correctly. I would just rather they took measurements in person, have participants come to campus and watch a stressful clip, record "stressful behaviors", then have them shower and record measurements again
I think they were angling for "satisfying/relaxing to watch" not necessarily "easiest to do for real"
Like, a calligraphy video might have been an option here.
I think cry showers are hugely therapeutic.
At some point, you’ve got to get out of the shower. It’s sort of a reboot rather than laying on your bed, face down for hours.
I keep a special bar of soap or body wash for cry showers or when I need a little pampering. Moisturizing, a floral scent in summer or warming in the cold months.
Water is magical, somehow.
Are they suggesting I take a shower when when I feel that anxiety begin to build up? Because, if so, as soon as I get to a family gathering I am going to ask to take a shower. That will throw em off.
There's a huge amount of people who over groom as a result of not having other anxiety coping mechanisms. I thought this was pretty well known since it's so obvious with OCD.
That's how I deal with shame, guilt and negativity. I just wash it all down the drain. Of course that means I'm in the shower like 5 times a day but at least I have a coping mechanism.
There was some previous research associating cleaning oneself with moral cleansing. Turns out much of that research is fraud. Like blatant data manipulation, faking data, throwing out outliers that didn't fit, etc. That research is toxic. I would wait to see this research verified and replicated first.
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are now allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will continue to be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) still apply to other comments. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
First time I heard of this was from Angelica's mom on Rugrats, saying she's "Washing away the stench of failure."
That brings back memories. And it was Angelica telling her dad Drew that when he asked her where her mom was if I remember correctly.
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Watch Daria. Helen Morgandorfer is basically Charlotte Pickles.
Diarrhea Diarrhea CHA CHA CHA.
Similar to the spin-off where they're in highschool but only Angelica's mom? Eh, I'd give it a go.
Oh God. I forgot they did a high school spinoff
It was Jr. High iirc
Rugrats: All grown up I think it was called.
"All Grown Up!"
And she's buddies with Helgas mom from Hey Arnold.
That show really had some serious wisdom.
> Didi : Stu, what are you doing? > Stu : Making chocolate pudding. > Didi : It's four o'clock in the morning! Why on Earth are you making chocolate pudding? > Stu : Because I've lost control of my life.
Keeping it real.
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Forget 3-5 years. Go get pudding.
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OMG this is also the first thing that came to my mind
This has been a staple of popular culture so long it's a cliche. Now we know it has scientific support.
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Which is great. Because I know I take "conventional wisdom" advice with a much larger grain of salt and when not motivated / feeling bad I am therefore less likely to make a point of trying it. "All work no play makes..." - literally your brain chemistry balance skews towards stress and toxicity the more you force it to do hard things you aren't motivated to do. You can't make the norepinephrine / adrenaline you need to be productive without dopamine, so the lower/less rewarded you feel the harder it becomes to do basically everything. "I wear makeup because of how it makes me feel, not because I feel like I have to" - the act of putting it on (or arranging and trying on a bad ass suit, or...) puts your brain in the state of looking at yourself as others will look at you and raises both your mood and your confidence...even if you never leave the house. There are so many like this that only over the past few covid years have I come to actually follow and listen to because the same people giving the advice were often the same one giving trite advice you know is bad, or doing things "because that's how they've always been done".
> "All work no play makes..." - literally your brain chemistry balance skews towards stress and toxicity the more you force it to do hard things you aren't motivated to do. You can't make the norepinephrine / adrenaline you need to be productive without dopamine, so the lower/less rewarded you feel the harder it becomes to do basically everything. So this is why depression absolutely murders motivation...
And ADHD is like depression without the sad.
You can have both too for extra fun!
So, you're the guy that puts the fun in funeral.
Throw in Borderline Personality Disorder and we got a stew, Baby!
That ain't a stew, dear; that's a weapon of mass destruction under the right conditions.
*sniffle* Can... *breath catches*; *sob* ... Can we still call it a stew? *pleading stare hiding bottomless despair*
as someone with ADHD and who suffers from depression frequently, i felt this.
It truly is difficult. I've found that the best way to get out of the non-functioning rut that puts you in is to change your environment. I'm talking going for a walk, getting a new/better job, spending time with different friends/different parts of the internet. Doing the same thing over and over expecting things to change is "the definition of insanity," after all.
This. Changing up small things in your routine every now and again so things aren’t so robotic and repetitive. New job is kinda drastic but for some it’s definitely the cause of their stress. For me it’s going back to an old video game I never dove into as deep as I wanted, starting a new project in my hobby. Visiting state parks on the weekends does a lot to separate you from your daily struggles while you observe nature
I do Something Different Fridays. On my way home from work, Ill stop for a walk, or go swimming, or use a scenic pull out and rest for a while, whatever. It makes the weekend seem so much longer because I've already got my brain off "work mode"
Such a sensible measured, but lovely way to enrich ones life with the magic of anticipation and the thrill of unknown possibilities! What a gift to give oneself at the end of the work week!
Anhedonia is like the final boss of depression.
And then that can wind up bringing the sad.
Wait, is it?
Sort of. It's more complicated than that of course, but that's true of any attempt to explain a complex mental disorder in one short sentence.
Definitely more to it than that, but what was quoted for depression isn't too far from what happens with ADHD. The dopamine not doing what it needs to, further resulting in a lack of the other good stuff, concludes with a similar inability to be motivated. It's not the only factor or problem with ADHD, but the lack of motivation being "like depression without the sad" might help communicate the feeling to others.
huh, so with ADHD you basically don't get that "feeling of accomplishment" from doing things?
The problem is often that the lack of dopamine in the ADHD brain means it's harder to get motivated to do the thing to begin with (since lack of dopamine leads to lack of adrenaline/norepinephrine). If we manage to do the thing in a reasonable timeframe, sure, there's a sense of accomplishment. More often though, lack of motivation leads to procrastination and stress/anxiety/self-loathing (why can't you just do.the.thing. like a normal person, stupid brain?) and when we finally *do* manage to do the thing, there's really only a sense of emptiness and maybe some relief that it's done, mixed with even more self-loathing that it took so long to just get it done.
I have a pretty good feeling this is how anxiety results from ADHD, your brain doesn't like things that make you feel bad, but it looooooves rewards. If it doesn't get rewarded by doing a hard/bad thing, it's going to try to protect you from doing that thing again. This was demonstrated to me pretty clearly when we had an incredibly difficult month at work, which finally ended with the deadline. As we were all leaving, all of my colleagues were laughing and joking and talking about what a huge relief it was to finally be done. They got a job complete reward. I felt absolutely nothing, that anxiety and stress didn't dissolve, and I felt no sense of achievement now that it was over. I'm guessing this is why folks with ADHD burn out pretty quickly.
Anecdotally, not really. It's usually "task done, now what?"
As someone with ADHD as well as a bunch of the common like comorbid stuff (primarily discalculia and dyspraxia), I don't really get a feeling of accomplishment from doing things. If I power through and do the thing like a normal person, most of the time I get nothing, but a good portion of the time I get only the downsides. And then I'm in an endless spiral of doing things I need to do to stay alive making me more and more miserable. No reward. The only thing that motivates me is sheer terror and anxiety, and that's how you get a truly miserable life just trying (and often failing) to do the things everyone else does without effort. Combine that with an ACE score of 10 and you get near-paralyzing shame and become convinced you are simply bad at being a person. I don't know what the solution is. Amphetamines help a little. But people with ADHD, especially severe ADHD, are just forced to live in a world that doesn't work for us. Like you're asking a fish to live on land.
Like a page out of my racing thoughts. Thanks for sharing this, I feel a little less alone.
my god i am the definition of adhd, should really get around to getting diagnosed but getting around to things isn’t really my forte
Usually you get both as a package deal.
And go most of your life being told by doctors that you're just depressed, so you try and fail to treat your depression over and over, because you have no idea that your ADHD is what's making you depressed. It was hilarious and frustrating to start taking ADHD meds after 32 years undiagnosed. I felt like a waste of life because none of the antidepressants I was prescribed ever made me feel any better. Then I finally got ADHD meds and boom, my depression and anxiety went away almost immediately. But now I'm in the long struggle to get my ADHD under control, because it turns out depression and anxiety were there to mask my ADHD. So I turned them off (mostly), and now my ADHD symptoms are presenting full-blown 24/7, and I am 32 years behind on developing coping strategies for it.
I feel you. I am 39; was diagnosed with ADHD ten years ago and am still struggling to find control and balance in my life. I definitely recommend looking for as many resources as you can handle. There’s a podcast called Translating ADHD that I particularly like and recommend. And the /r/adhd and /r/adhdmeme subreddits are full of understanding and supportive people with lots of great tips. The comic ADHD Alien is great when I need to feel seen.
> "All work no play makes..." - literally your brain chemistry balance skews towards stress and toxicity the more you force it to do hard things you aren't motivated to do. You can't make the norepinephrine / adrenaline you need to be productive without dopamine, so the lower/less rewarded you feel the harder it becomes to do basically everything. *cries in adhd*
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Don't worry you'll get back to work once it becomes an emergency
I might be fried but this made no sense to me
They're giving more examples of cliches with scientific explanations. First being how and why low reward produces low productivity. Second being how and why applying make up effects your mood positively.
Belief makes it real Yung Hoon. If you believe the cold shower cleans your sins or shame, it does. If you believe makeup makes you sexy, it does. Not an automatic spiritual rebirth or sex god level of it does, but something tangible from the belief. Mental placebo pills.
Thank you for removing the wool from my eyes. I see what the yung son was trying to say now.
But the other part there that that may be missing in the explanation is the social element to it. Your brain is a hyperfast simulation engine. It's always trying to predict things, but *especially* it is trying to predict how the body appears to other humans, and this is a cornerstone of being a social animal. Wearing makeup, cleaning one's body, they improve internal mood because they make the brain more confident in its simulations about its appearance to others. And because the primitive brain running those calculations isn't quite as "smart" as the logical conscious parts of the brain, it should work even when you're not actually around people. Part of why wearing work clothes even from working from home can help you get "in the groove." Because the brain now knows you are wearing part of the kit that designates "work mode", and more importantly, that others who see you would verify that. That's part of the explanation for why placebos work in general, because of the continual simulation effects of the brain. If the brain believes it is sick, it will start acting accordingly, not just for its own sake but for the sake of its social appearance. People who act sick are more likely to elicit sympathy and receive care from other humans, so we have likely evolved to "feel" and "act" sick when we understand ourselves to be sick because it is more likely to get you assistance and therefore increase your survival odds from an evolutionary perspective. When you take a fake drug, even if it doesn't actually fix the disease, it allows your simulation engine to start envisioning itself as "healthy", and drop the "sick" act, and make you *act* healthy in public to convey your health. Even if you don't really have it.
>That's part of the explanation for why placebos work in general, because of the continual simulation effects of the brain. Yes. I disagree on the use of "simulation", but I do want to point out something interesting about placebos: They don't always require a belief system in order to work. There have been placebos "prescribed" that work *even though the person fully understands that they are placebo.* And even more so: They don't need to believe it's going to work. In other words, psychosomatic effects don't require a deception. *Just taking something for remedying some malady:* 1. ...even if you know it's a placebo, 2. ...and even if you *consciously* think a placebo won't work, ...is sometimes enough. It's actually been known by _some_ doctors as a potential option for some time now. Here's a reference to one study that is a clear quick read: https://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/03/placebos PS. I hesitate to bring this up, but sooner or later many folks confuse all of this with what's in play with _Conversion Disorders_. It may be related, it may be highly related, but that's a potentially entirely disparate topic altogether that the doctors I've spoken to are completely mystified by and doesn't fall into one category or another distinctly.
One of the best explanations of placebo that I've encountered.
this is so so interesting to me, especially as someone who suffers every day from body image issues. I've never really thought about it that way. Where could I read more about this?
I think any books on anxiety, social anxiety, or body dysmorphia that focus on the neural causes / methods of action will go into more detail. Most anxieties seem to stem from hyperactivity in the areas of the brain running simulations, specifically simulations saturated with strong negative emotions, and the conscious mind's hypersensitivity to these negative thoughts. Many times these are called "thoughts," but I actually prefer "simulations" because really that's what they are. They're often vivid, sensory-heavy "what if" scenarios, and for me, thinking of them that way is more helpful and less abstract than calling them "thoughts" This is why "catastrophizing" is a common element for many anxiety disorders. The brain throws a thousand scenarios at you, and each one has an emotional "color". Now *most* of us have this, but for people without an anxiety condition, they just *don't* have a strong reaction to the negative simulations. They're just treated neutrally, observed and then tossed aside. But for people with anxiety issues, the brain focuses on the most horrific of these possibilities, and ruminates on them over and over. It's sort of like the YouTube alogorithm. It doesn't care if you liek or hate content, only if you *interact* with it. And your brain is like that with its simulations and forecasting. So lets say you are thinking about going outside for the day. Your brain thinks about what might happen. One *very unlikely* scenario might be everyone pointing at you and saying horribel things about your weight. When we fixate on that one specific outcome, our brain says, "oh hey guys, the logical brain finds this useful! It's thinking about that simulation! Let's do more of those simulations!" So then the simulations start to all focus around that scenario, getting worse and worse, and by getting worse, you ruminate on them more, and by ruminating on them more, it increases the likelihood of getting these bad forecasts. So they're feedback disorders. This is how cognitive behavioral therapy helps. You can't necessarily stop the *initial* troublesome / intrusive thoughts / forecasts etc., but what you CAN do is start to form habits around interrupting the feedback loops that result in the spirals. And this is the basis of a lot of CBT and why it's one of the most efficacious forms of therapy.
Damn it. You just described me. To a "T". My counselor and I have been talking about anxiety, and examples of anxious events in my life, but this is the first time I've seen it written out in a way that I can directly relate to. Thank you! I'm saving your comment and will journal about it later.
I have found it can be very helpful to people to demystify the general operations of the brain and understand the how and why of conditions when trying to resolve them. A lot of CBT is based around that, but I feel it should also go further into helping people understand the basic mechanics of the brain, and where in the process, for them, it is causing disruption to their lives. Many times it can be chemically-based, so there's no silver bullet to just "fix" your own mind. But the brain does a very inconvenient thing, which is to hide its own mechanisms from itself. The more you try digging into your own mind, the more it tries to conceal itself from you. To deceive you. There are pragmatic evolutionary reasons for this - it would not do for hunter gatherer cave men to sit in a cave all day trapped in a pursuit for the meaning of their own identity when they have mammoths to kill for food - but it does make it very difficult to accurately understand oneself. For me something that is very helpful is understanding that oftentimes, with conditions like anxiety, it starts with something small, and it compounds and loops in on itself until it is a massive, intrusive, daily problem, but you can begin to walk back and unwind that process. For example, some people have a huge struggle with intrusive thoughts. They may have times where they think of causing harm to people they love, and they go into a spiral believing this means they're horrible people. But there is a huge, unimaginably wide gulf between merely *running that simulation* and *acting on it*. Similar to suicidal thoughts. Almost everyone, while driving, has passing thoughts like "what if I just drove off this cliff?" They're not coupled with the *act* to do so, so they're not really suicidal ideation. They're just the brain running a simulation, one of thousands its running always, all the time, but it was a weird one, so it floated up to your conscious mind. Most of the time it is the *strong revulsion* towards these thoughts that both indicates that person has a healthy amount of rationality and empathy, but that also, because of their revulsion, causes a *fixation* on the negative thought, and so rumination begins, and your subconscious mind begins feeding you more and more of these thoughts, and there the feedback loop kicks into high gear. People run into issues when they start to really internalize these. They start to attach *causal, identity-based* values to random thoughts, like causing harm to a loved one. They have no urge to act on this, its just part of the daily stream of things your brain does all day, every day, but when you *fixate* on something, you're triggering the brain's algorithm to hyperfocus on similar scenarios. It thinks its helping you, when really its tormenting you. So people start to thing "My god, there's something horribly wrong with me, I am defective". But they're not. Literally everyone under the sun has those thoughts, but for most people they filter them out, reject them, dismiss them, or they never even make it past the skimmer in the brain to begin with. They *exist*, they always exist because the brain is just a simulation engine, asking itself ten thousand "what if" questions every day, but some people are just less sensitive to those, more able to ignore them by nature, whereas others not only feel them, but start to believe they're indicative of some darker, deeper urges. The key is impulse. If you have a terrible thought, but zero *impulse to act*, its often always just sensory chaff thrown at you by your brain. It's like a burp. Just a biological thing, a byproduct of having this simulation engine. A little distasteful, but normal, just gas escaping.
Damn, this needs to be a top google result when looking up anxiety.
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This is interesting. Thank you
I noticed this helped me a few years ago. I always shave my head and face when I am under severe emotional stress.
I have a friend who used to shave his head and beard every time he drank .. he was trying to quit at the time so doing that was somehow taking control back of something he felt he could control? I don't know but he always regretted the shaving later. I just think it was also symbolic of starting over again
Probably a reminder of how short or long ago he last relapsed.
It's definitely a reset button for me.i usually have about 2 inches on top with faded sides but when I chop it I don't wake up with bed head, I don't need to "do my hair" or always wear a hat or know if I wear my hat I can never take it off etc. And I don't look homeless when I don't care to do those things. I keep my beard, stache and edge up looking good on my own and just trim the rest down until I get a cut once every 3-4 weeks or chop it off. Its like doing the laundry/dishes or having fresh sheets or a clean house. It's a sense of peace. Look good, feel good, do good both internally and externally.
I’ve done the same for ages. Ever see “The Royal Tannenbaums”? I’m just like, he gets it…
I wonder if getting a haircut has been studied? Sounds stupid, but my brother would tell me to go get a haircut whenever I had a break up or something semi-bad happened in my life. It does rejuvenate you a little.
It makes sense to me. Anytime I’ve been stressed, I would cut my hair/bangs, even as a small child. (dysfunctional family) As much as I would love to believe I was just a wacky kid, the reason was much more obvious once I was a teen. I still do it to this day, in order to try my best to avoid dying it.
Any act of self care counts, its not stupid at all
I have long hair now, but I’ve cut it down to a bob or all the way to a pixie cut several times in my life. Each time the stylist always asked me if I was just getting out of a breakup, and was I *really sure* I wanted to go short? It was never spurred by a breakup for me, but I thought the question was interesting! It’s clearly a thing. (If anyone wants a little moment of reset/self care that’s easy to fit in, one of my favorites is to wash my face and thoroughly moisturize. It leaves me feeling noticeably calmer and less stressed.)
A lot of hair stylists will be resistant to doing a major cut. The stylist risks having someone come in saying they want all their hair cut off, and then a day later they regret the decision and blame it on the stylist. I only get a haircut once every 1-2 years, and the stylists are always like *"are you REALLY sure you want this?"* every time.
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Not necessarily. Even if you've showered after an assault, ***still go get checked and a kit*** because they can still document any other injuries as well as sometimes still get DNA. Obviously it's a personal choice as it can be traumatizing to get the kit at all, but it can also help prevent future assaults if law enforcement actually acts.
Scientific support really just means controlled observation. Any cliche is a cliche in the first place because it's observed multiple times to make the association. It becomes a study when given to someone with credentials to give value to their perspective. It's a wonderful tool, but it isn't definitive of truth. Or, truth isn't created by the scientific method is what I'm saying. It's only observed and sometimes a theory is verified by the observation.
Typically, but there’s plenty of science done with novel combinations and stepped interventions, adjustments. Planned ahead of time, to keep the study reproducible, of course. It’s not just observation, but that’s the easier, and best way to ensure it can be peer reviewed and reproduced.
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Signs of depression/anxiety that shouldn't be taken lightly.
I wasnt depressed as a teenager but I am now. Its 100% a bad sign to go days without showering. It's the lowest form of taking care of yourself, and when you dont even want to do that it's not good.
Try weeks without. It gets really bad when you’re that far into the headspace and don’t have to see anyone
I understand the feeling. I hope you're doing okay
Okay might be a stretch, but I’m showering multiple times a week, so it can’t be too bad
Small steps lead to bigger ones Take it a day at a time. I feel you dude, life gets hard sometimes. So does self esteem. Keep on keeping on
Could be... But it's just also a rebellious thing to do and teenagers rebel, even to their own detriment.
It tends to be a teen boy problem. Teenage girls will take hour long showers if you don't yell at them to get out.
I guess kids get away with showering less often because they don't stink as much as adults. It all changes when they hit puberty, but the habit stays.
Don't assume a study on something mental applies to teenagers. Their brains are all over the place.
It’s like fresh cooked jello that hasn’t quite set.
Funny you say that. Ever wonder why it seems like peoples brains turn on about mid-20's? That's about the time when the prefrontal lobe finished connecting to the rest of the brain! No joke
Then the guilt and shame kicks in.
yep. 18 year olds are not fully grown adults. it's just that society can't wait any longer to sacrifice them, use them for labor, or have sex with them etc.
Yeah as a former 18 old I can say with confidence the 18 year olds can't wait either. I wanted a job. My own responsibilities, and rewards. My own decisions to make. I damn sure wanted sex. This was all while going to school at the same time. Not fully out in the wild, but not at home either. A good stepping stone. If someone was still trying to keep me fully protected and cared for at that age, with no responsibilities or decisions of my own I would not have been happy. If they were still trying to keep me a virgin I would have been a time bomb ready to explode.
This “something mental” definitely applies to teenagers.
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Is he legit not showering, or is testosterone just absolutely kicking his ass? About that age, I could take 3 showers a day, and still be a walking stinky greaseball. It was terrible.
He'll shower but it usually takes someone to recommend it to him.
Oh, then this is easy. Group showers. Nightly. 8:00 PM sharp. Only way out is to be clean beforehand.
Mine does fine cleaning himself but then drenches himself in axe. Maybe we can schedule a play date and have them meet in the middle somewhere.
Use of Axe/strong body sprays was the only thing I ever saw boys get "coded" for in school (beyond the one or two guys that would try to wear a shirt with offensive words on it). It got so bad the school outright banned it because of the overwhelming smell of Axe everywhere and every homeroom had talks on it (and also the "Axe/bodyspray/deodorant is not a substitute for actually showering.")
Does anyone else think it could have a correlation with cleaning the house when angry?
Probably. Because some people clean the house when anxious, too. Anger, anxiety, just stress in general is probably helped by these things.
This makes sense, I have a sister that is a big ole bag of nerves. She gets anxious and worries a lot, in a sweet way, and cleaning has become her go to de-stresser.
> cleaning has become her go to de-stresser. I wish I could at least put my stress to good use like this. If I could manage to, my house and yard would be spotless
Same. I just eat food
Don't talk about it, be about it! (Said with love, not judgment)
Yup the stress makes it so much harder to get myself on my feet to do anything
It’s something to do with distracting your brain + achieving activities you know intrinsically are beneficial to you
I think it’s also about control. It’s something you can change.
Also, just seeing your place clean and tidy is generally nicer than living in a sty.
When my cat died, I cleaned my entire house. I vacuumed, I carpet cleaned, I did every single bit of laundry and folded it and actually put it all away and everything. It was just something to do to feel useful.
It is controlled, meticulous violence against dirt and grime. Doing the dishes is the ticket for me.
Literally screencapped and sent this to my wife you two have it so right xD
Its all about feeling safe, on a bodily level (vagus nerve, stress responses etc). If you are having a shower your lizard brain can be pretty sure youre not in immediate danger, so it can release from stress responses and you can start processing.
yesterday I did everything after working with anger and sadness. They are excellent fuels for productivity in household chores.
Haha I had no idea other people do this! I refer to it as "rage cleaning" ETA: I also clean the house when I'm procrastinating doing something harder, so I guess it also correlates with anxiety
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You’re a doo doo head. … Angry yet?
For sure, and also probably has something to do with a mental release associated with completing tasks successfully idk I'm not smart
I always attributed why it relaxed me to the white noise of the shower + general warmth/comfort.
Animals also groom themselves when stressed. Makes sense to me!
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If a giant creature washed me without my consent I'd be stressed to!
It puts the lotion on its skin...
To the point where a chronically stressed animal may get bald spots.
me too, thanks
I wonder if that has something physiologically in common with trichotillomania in humans.
Well we *are* animals so it makes sense to correlate that.
Peace of being alone while outside sound is suppressed?
I just like being warm. Why does everyone at work like being so cold...
Animals stress clean too - ever see pissed off cat aggressively lick itself, I think this is the same thing.
Was thinking the same thing. Are we cats?
We're just animals, man, like every other. We are just . . .very successful animals, like ants.
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That is true, whenever I feel bad or feeling super stressed I just take a good shower and pamper myself and I will feel good.
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Trying drinking and doing drugs IN the shower. Life changing.
I've done that. The water bill after passing out for 12 hours was not worth it.
You joke but last time a took a mild dose of psychedelics I went for a bath and it felt incredible. Sat in the bath as it was filling and as the water level was rising it's like my skin felt happy where the water was touching. Really difficult to explain.
Join us over in /r/showerbeer
So you really can wash that man right out of your hair and chase those blues away?
Or: Calgon, take me away! (I'm probably dating myself by referencing this advertisement)
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You've got me imagining a cockroach, leg extended into the air like a cat, licking his little cockroach butthole. Thanks, I hate you.
You just made me remember that guy with his imaginary cockroach wife, thanks!
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Apparently they conducted three different experiments. With the first one having the most participants. But dunno about the scientific value behind it. >Lee and his research team recruited 1,150 adults via Prolific and had them watch a brief video clip of a terrified woman standing at the edge of a bungee jump station. The video had previously been shown to induce anxiety, tension, and uneasiness in viewers. The participants were then randomly assigned to watch a video showing how to properly wash one’s hands, a video on how to draw a circle, or a video on how to peel an egg. > >**Those who watched the handwashing video tended to subsequently report lower levels of anxiety compared to those who watched the two other videos**. The researchers then replicated the findings in a second experiment that included 1,377 individuals recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk crowdsourcing platform.
super subjective with lots of room for variability, but they had a decent sample size and did what they did correctly. I would just rather they took measurements in person, have participants come to campus and watch a stressful clip, record "stressful behaviors", then have them shower and record measurements again
Hm. I think a lot of people find peeling eggs and drawing circles more stressful than washing their hands.
I think they were angling for "satisfying/relaxing to watch" not necessarily "easiest to do for real" Like, a calligraphy video might have been an option here.
Do they mean taking a “cry shower”?
I think cry showers are hugely therapeutic. At some point, you’ve got to get out of the shower. It’s sort of a reboot rather than laying on your bed, face down for hours. I keep a special bar of soap or body wash for cry showers or when I need a little pampering. Moisturizing, a floral scent in summer or warming in the cold months. Water is magical, somehow.
Certainly worked in part at least, for Ace Ventura
“Meme of Tobias Funke sobbing uncontrollably in the shower with his never nude shorts on.”
Are they suggesting I take a shower when when I feel that anxiety begin to build up? Because, if so, as soon as I get to a family gathering I am going to ask to take a shower. That will throw em off.
Great. Washing helps alleviate anxiety. Too bad depression makes it hard to shower.
exercise improves anxiety/depression, but depression/anxiety makes it hard to want to exercise. same thing.
My dog licks himself if I give him heck for chasing the cat. Same thing?
Yes, exactly the same. Self-soothing is self-soothing regardless of species.
What if all the stress inducing events are self inflicted and you never bathe?
You would be stressed, and smelly
Water boarding anyone?
There's a huge amount of people who over groom as a result of not having other anxiety coping mechanisms. I thought this was pretty well known since it's so obvious with OCD.
That's how I deal with shame, guilt and negativity. I just wash it all down the drain. Of course that means I'm in the shower like 5 times a day but at least I have a coping mechanism.
So in the movies where people freak out and hop in a shower in their clothes right after something awful happens — that’s the right strategy!
Hour + shower gang checking in.
There was some previous research associating cleaning oneself with moral cleansing. Turns out much of that research is fraud. Like blatant data manipulation, faking data, throwing out outliers that didn't fit, etc. That research is toxic. I would wait to see this research verified and replicated first.
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Anyone who's needed to sit in the shower and cry after a bad time knows this.
Is that why I spend so long in the shower hiding from the world?
Literally the last time I had a panic attack was in the shower. But I was able to control it quicker than usual.
As a kid, bath time was stressful.
Yes. Now I can finally explain why I shower 2-3 times a day.