BougieBirdie

Personally, I think boiling my pasta alive is too cruel

It’s either that or fisting

For me, the break timer is really just “take a few minutes to eat/hydrate/pee” and then resume the original task. Although when I’m depressed I often use one full 25 minute task to do the thing I dread, and then the next one is to play video games or watch a show - generally to do something fun to recharge my batteries. Sometimes I can’t even manage to do something fun for myself without timeboxing it, I hate that.

My wife has pretty debilitating ADHD, sometimes the pomos are really helpful for her and sometimes it’s the opposite. Without some kind of externalized structure, she can’t finish the tasks that she intends to start and it causes her a lot of distress.

She would want me to plug Spirit City LoFi. It’s a customizable task manager that’s very chill, and just gamified enough to keep her attention without being distracting

Not to be flippant, but if you want to alter the way you think, then therapy is probably the answer.

The good news is that in my experience, the valuable part of therapy is totally free and you could start today.

I’ve had success with Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). The model for CBT says that our automatic thoughts initiate our feelings, and while our feelings are valid, our thoughts can be bullshit.

Our brain is like an overgrown field, and each thought is like a person passing through it. Each time a thought passes through the field, it wears down a groove which will become a trail or a road. Our thoughts want to take the path of least resistance, so they follow the well-worn paths. However, we can create new paths with better thoughts that lead to more positive feelings, and eventually the negative paths have more resistance than the positive ones.

The key technique is recognizing Cognitive Biases, which are common ways that our brains lie to us, and then restructuring our thoughts through journaling exercises. Common biases include assuming other people think poorly of us, making predictions of the future with limited information, or thinking that because we feel bad we must be bad.

Now on the flip side, therapeutic techniques are not a one-size-fits-all solution. What’s worked for me might not work for everyone. And that’s okay because there’s plenty of tools in the toolbox left over.

I got a lot of mileage out of CBT. It’s logical, there’s a process to follow, and it improved the quality of my life to a point. It didn’t happen overnight, and I still have bad times more often than I’d like, but there was improvement

Whether you have access to a therapist or not, the greatest impact from therapy comes from doing the homework. It’s lame, but there it is. But if you really don’t vibe with a technique, the good news is there’s a zillion other techniques you could try a web search away.

“There’s no way we evolved from monkeys, and I’ll prove it: humans are good at holding bananas!”

Can’t make this stuff up

You’re just in time for Swamp Witch September

I think in Cube it was razor wire, but they may have upgraded to lasers for Cube 2

A duck!

Go into a garden and dig up a flower. The next person who comes by won’t know what flower is missing, but they will still know that something is gone

I’d be scared too if I had to come back to work after being a victim in a hit-and-run