When I was in therapy I learned lots of DBT (dialectical behavior therapy) skills one of which being ‘radical acceptance,’ which basically means you fully accept the situation and move on. What I’m trying to say is, saying “it is what it is” is a legit scientifically proven coping skill and I think that’s really funny.
Radical acceptance, competitive altruism, and defensive ontology. Whatever that’s supposed to mean
“Throw yourself into your work so single-mindedly that you end up making a breakthrough” is a classic. I recently learned that’s how the modern zipper was invented.
A fellow Veritasium enjoyer I see.
There are dozens of us… in our labs printing zippers
Sometimes he is spot on, other times the guy seems like is just shrilling the therapy industrial complex, but hard to see how he couldn’t given he’s an influencer.
I mean in my country therapy is free :D hard to follow the shrilling industry thought on that note.
even my therapist who worked as a scientist for many years said hes a rather good source for psychological input
each their own i guess :p
in the USA therapy typically isn’t available unless you have $500+ or more a month to spend.
Even if you can find a therapist who takes insurance, you will wait a year and it will still cost you $200-300.
Isn’t that all PTSD therapy if you take out the varying levels of tact and skill of the therapist?
No.
Because an actual therapist would teach you skills in the way of being able to learn and recognize your triggers, help coach you into calmly but firmly asserting your boundaries, to thus lessen the chance of you being triggered, and would also teach you skills for recognizing and managing when you flip over into that pure fight or flight, rage and terror mode.
If there isn’t anything like that, you’re not experiencieng therapy.
You’re just paying too much money to vent at someone.
Also just fyi I guess at this point, the original usage of ‘triggered’ and ‘triggering’ was specifically in reference to people being flipped back into that state of essentially aggrevated panic, as a result of being reminded, either consciously or subconsciously, or previously experienced extreme trauma.
Thats… actually what the term means, not … what the internet / social media has turned it into, basically just meaning ‘angry/embarassed’.
You’re just paying too much money to vent at someone.
This is what a lot of folks in therapy want. They don’t want change, they just want someone to vent to and validate themselves.
I also notice… those are the same people who go around demanding and claiming everyone also needs therapy and that if you aren’t actively in therapy you are in denial about your issues or something.
I’ve always been of the mindset that some people actually use therapy to learn, heal, and grow as compassionate human beings. While others just use it for validation and ego stroking.
I think of it like physical therapy. If you do the work you eventually won’t need the therapist, that is the goal.
But a lot of people just refuse to do the work. But at least with a PT they won’t waste your time on years of PT if you aren’t trying to make progress.
I mean… so, yes?
Those skills being taught are there to help you come to a state of acceptance, an emotional place of ‘It is what it is. It happened, but I don’t feel thrown into an emotional spiral by remembering it.’ Shitty ‘be a man’ therapists or ‘counselors’ might try to get you to just repress the feelings to pretend to have reached that space for the sake of fitting in. Grifty ones might have you come in and talk endlessly about it so they can charge you for all the time while you effectively talk yourself through it enough to suck some of the power out of the memory. It all seems to land somewhere on a spectrum within the space of ‘it is what it is,’ whether it’s a healthy version or not.
“But have you considered that you’re just imagining it and are oversensitive?”
Oh man. My ex physically attacked me in broad daylight, full on slapping and pushing, then kept texting me how she didn’t really do it and I had imagined it and if she did it wasn’t that bad. I broke up with her, obviously.
Then months later when I had a new girlfriend she kept calling me and leaving me voicemails how I was a cheating bastard and a terrible awful person for lying to her and betraying her trust and love…
And anyone who hears that story basically tells me I am exaggerating and there is no way a woman would ever hit a man, but if she did, I must have done something awful to deserve it.
but if she did, I must have done something awful to deserve it.
I had that happen once with a former friend, and she shut her mouth awfully quick when I responded “yeah, or maybe it was what I was wearing”. Granted, she’s a rape survivor, but it baffles me how she basically used the same dismissal she dealt with against me. At least it helped her realize how stupid she was being, but still, damn.
Yeah, that’s a good one. I’m usually not snappy enough to have a comeback when it happens.
But it is a good flag that I don’t want to interact with that person anymore, and they probably don’t want to interact with me anyway. I def have had a few relationships that ended over that type of response… and usually when you break up with them they start screaming and threatening you…
I had that ex
On the day I turned around and left her, she pushed me. Down the stairs.
My leg got stuck in the railings, and got mangled, I was a scraped bruised mess when I was waiting outside for the police to arrive and help
Then she came out and she had a bloody lip, somehow.
Police actually saw through it, checked her out, told me that they understood my situation but that this was the only time they’d be able to let that pass, I needed to never see her again, or I might end up arrested.
So that’s what I did. I left and never looked back
That’s fucking awful.
Yeah uh, don’t go to a cognitive behavior therapy professional for that. They will say some bunk ass shit to you because their niche is addiction recovery but the powers that be are pushing for it to be used for every man’s issues.
I hope you can heal from that, dude. You didn’t deserve to be assaulted and dragged for filth.
It was a decade ago. I moved on.
The big kicker, is this woman was a professional therapist. And the therapist I saw two years later… basically walked me though how she had violate every professional ethics code of therapy, and that was basically when I really was like ‘oh wow’.
She had repeated try to diagnose me to win arguments and manipulate me. The funniest part is when I would take the tests she gave me for whatever she thought i had and score way outside of them… because I was not anything, she was a terrible person trying to control me and freaking out that I wasn’t controllable. Hence why she resorted to violence finally, because that’s what abusers do once their abusive words stop working.
She also talked shit about her patients and colleagues in vivid detail. But at the time I was like 27, I had no clue about the ethics of therapy professionals and how fucked up what she was doing was. I was totally in love with her too, wtf did I know. What sucks is was the nicest person I have ever dated, still too this day. Every other woman I ever dated basically hates me overtly rather than tries to manipulate me.
Wait the woman who assaulted you was? Jesus Christ. Yeah the last woman I dated said there’s a lot of people in that field who go into it in order to have access to other humans who are at their most vulnerable. I’ve heard that from a few different people in the industry now.
That was NOT the nicest person you’ve dated, she doesn’t even sound remotely kind to anyone. You deserved better, her patients deserved better. I’m hoping your life brings you better people than that.
Yep. She also tried to convince me I was abused as a child. I wasn’t. She was just trying to maximize my vulnerability to weaponize it so I couldn’t leave her, because she was one of those crazy co-dependent types.
No she was. On the surface. She was the only girlfriend I ever had who cooked, or bought me gifts, and who didn’t hate me for my hobbies and friends. Most women I meet on first dates reject me straight up for my hobbies and interests and many of my other girlfriends hated/resented me for them, and never in a million years would ever do something nice for me like buy me a gift.
I’m much happier being single. Since I went through therapy my salary has tripled and lots of other great things, but I still exclusively attract horrible women. I just don’t date them anymore. The biggest red flag now is I have a dog and a cat, and almost every woman who is interested in me HATES either dogs or cats, or both. On dating apps I regularly get messages like ‘oh hey would you get rid of your cat/dog if we hit it off?’ It’s wild. But at least now I spend my money on myself, and not trying to make some emotional black hole of a person ‘happy’ by buying them crap.
Okay yeah that’s also just bad science, if we’re completely ignoring what her endgame seems to have been.
I guess that makes sense. The most effective abusers are ones who keep you guessing about how they’re going to treat you from moment to moment.
Well, I’m glad you’re doing okay single. Ideally that’s kind of the best mind state to be in no matter what your future holds. Send an update if you do ever hit it off with anyone who treats you right, though. I kind of need to hear more stories about men healing and recovering from shit.
Joke answer:
Real answer:
I think there is some value in accepting there are things out of our control and there is no benefit in dwelling on those things. Of course we can’t apply it to everything.
You can’t change your past.
People who incessantly dwell on ‘what could have been’ or ‘should have been’ will never move forward. Often it’s not even trauma, it’s just that they feel like their past-life was ‘unfair’ because someone else had it better than them and they are aggrieved.
And my favorite part is when you are relatively happy and have let it go and they fault you for it, like you’re some asshole for not dwelling about someone did to you 20 years ago. A couple of years ago I met this girl from my high school randomly and she would kept bringing up all these things and people I had zero memory of that she was so mad about and was angry with me that I barely remembered any of it…
Yeah, therapy sometimes is about rehashing things, usually because you either took bad lessons from it, never really moved on from it, or something similar, but the goal is to move to a point where the bad things that happened to you are no longer destructively impacting your life.
I think a lot of people think therapy is more about telling you how it’s not your fault and how horrible it is that things happened to you, and yeah that happens, but so much more often it’s stuff like being given homework to practice setting and holding boundaries, and evaluating why you feel the way you feel about things.
Yes, a lot of people internalize things as their fault. I had that issue with relationships. I thought if my ex cheated on me, it was because I had failed or not tried hard enough… I was wrong.
Similar with abusive relationships. If you had been a better child dad/mom wouldn’t have beaten you… moving on is realizing that you had zero control over that situation and the fault was entirely your dad/mom. But a lot people can’t dissociate emotionally to begin to see things that way, esp if they are still hung up parental approval.
I’m in my 40s and it’s terrifying to me how many people I meet who are still hung up on parental approval or angry at their parents for not doing more for them… it’s pathetic.
I wouldn’t call it pathetic. Firstly because it’s an unempathetic and unhelpful response. I’m in my early 30s and it’s unlikely I’ll ever be not experiencing negative aspects of my parental situation. I was forced to learn to cope with it, I’ve done a lot of work on it, and I’ll likely continue to do work on it. The fact is that parents are one of the strongest, longest, and most culturally enforced bonds we have. They can be enduring and deep sources of new issues that can crop up through life. Furthermore they’re a relationship that we are supposed to reevaluate and reinterpret at every stage of life. I haven’t had parents in a long time and I’m still doing that as part of my continual growth and maturity.
Like yeah, at times it can feel weird and immature for me to see people my age beating themselves up for parental approval, but then I think about what it took for me not to, and how long after that I wanted nothing more. Who am I to judge their path?
Because I don’t want to hang out with weird and immature people. That’s why.
They will also eventually blame you if you become close to them. Because nothing is ever their fault.
As a transfem, relatable :3
It’s what it’s.
‘Tis wha’ 'tis.
Ever since COVID took my dad from us in 2023, this is the way all my “nightmares” end up going: No matter what horrific vision unfolds before me, “it is what it is.” “This is my life now; better get used to it.” “Oh well.” “So it goes.”
Dream about being dismembered?
“Guess I’ll just deal with it.”Dream about the world ending?
“Sure, why not.”Dream about everyone else I love burning alive?
“I see. That figures.”Dream about being trapped in a dark twisting maze that changes every time I turn around, with no exit in sight?
“Uh huh. Alright then.”Dream about experiencing explosive decompression when the hull of an orbital habitat I’m living in ruptures?
“Ok. Whatever.”Dream about my car falling through a hole in a collapsing bridge, landing in the water, sinking to the bottom of the river upside down, the cab gradually flooding with me trapped inside, feeling the freezing, dark, murky water creeping up, immersing my scalp, my forehead, my eyes, my nose, my mouth…
“Yeah. Of course.”Dream about being torn apart and eaten alive by monsters?
“… Finally.”It’s funny how things that may happen soon can still fill me with dread when the thought of them actually proceeding leaves me empty and resigned ._.
so i might be misreading this but if you’re having a persistent sense of dread, please mention it the next time you see your physician. i’m not trying to practice medicine over the internet, just there’s a chance it could be something treatable. this is absolutely not my area of expertise (what little medical expertise i have lies in gastro, i’m a musician) but i have dealt with persistent dread, even through dreams, and it’s not fun. it took i think 7 years for me to get over it but it was less time, more personal growth and events that i went through that brought me out of it.
it still comes and goes and i don’t think i’ll ever not be passively suicidal, but your dreams sound a lot like my intrusive thoughts when my anal retentiveness turned into OCD (thanks for that month, prozac!)
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change.
The courage to change the things I can.
And the wisdom to know the difference.
It is what it is
Wait OP, which one wins? I think you used the format in reverse, but I’m not sure?
Nope, not reversed.
Well it might be, the small guy is the one who wins in- oohhhh I get it now
So which one wins?
I told my mortgage broker what I’d been put through financially as a part of my divorce so that he had an idea of how long it would take for the settlement to get organised (he’d already been made to wait four months). He was like “oh, that’s really rough” to which I responded “eh, you get used to it.”
Gave him a bit of a laugh that I was so nonchalant about it but what else you do after being dragged through it for 3 years? At some point you run out of “it is what it is”.
Tja
Hm hmmm hm hmmm
Won’t somebody think of the men.
Insufferable
