You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

ZT5 comments on Open Thread, Feb. 2 - Feb 8, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion

4 Post author: Gondolinian 02 February 2015 12:28AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (253)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: ChristianKl 04 February 2015 01:12:48PM 2 points [-]

A mental health professional that get's angry at you for pointing out that some advice doesn't work is either unskilled or is using anger as an alternative strategy to create pressure to change.

I'm myself not a mental health professional but do have quite a bit of coaching training and would never get angry at someone for him finding advice not useful. It's not even in my reservoir of choices if I think it would be helpful.

Unfortunately I don't think that a majority of academically trained psychologists have enough control over their own emotions to not get angry for bad reasons and go into self-justification.

I don't know whether your state reaches depression but to the extend that it does exercise is very important. Do you do exercise?

After exercise the second highest rated intervention on curetogether is to spend time with a pet. In the absence of human interaction, a dog can fill some of that niche. It can give you the feeling that there somebody who accepts you like you are.

Otherwise find a tribe. LW meetups are good. Joining a sports team is also good.

Comment author: ZT5 04 February 2015 02:50:43PM *  3 points [-]

Unfortunately I don't think that a majority of academically trained psychologists have enough control over their own emotions to not get angry for bad reasons and go into self-justification.

In my experience that is accurate.

To be fair, as long as people stick to the psychologist-client script, and have more-or-less typical problems, they probably will get acceptable treatment.

However, pointing out that what the mental health person is doing isn't working for me, for reasons that person doesn't immediately recognize as valid isn't sticking to the script. (and probably just being more intelligent than that person and having genuinely non-standard opinions isn't sticking to the script either).

I don't know whether your state reaches depression

That varies. To some extent, yes.

Do you do exercise?

I do regular exercise.

After exercise the second highest rated intervention on curetogether is to spend time with a pet. In the absence of human interaction, a dog can fill some of that niche. It can give you the feeling that there somebody who accepts you like you are.

That's interesting. I think that might work for me, but I have I doubts about my ability to arrange for that to happen.

LW meetups are good

Don't have one in my area (in responding to MathiasZaman's comment, I edited the my original post to reflect that I'm not located in the US).

I would go if there was a meetup in my area.

Joining a sports team is also good.

Merely doing things along other people is typically not enough for me to form connections. And it doesn't sounds interesting or fun enough to me to be worth doing for its own sake.