• ameancow@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        The act of rumination on a depressive episode involves your brain trying to find something about you, something immutable and deeply connected with who you are as a person, and it takes that thing and amplifies it through a wickedly destructive lens.

        See, a lot of people don’t know how their own brain works. They think they can think about something and their thoughts will reason out a solution, or that all their ideas are based on the brain’s ability to connect logical elements.

        Nothing could be further from the truth. Your brain is designed to write a story to explain how you feel. That’s it. If you already feel bad, especially if you’re not entirely sure why, your brain will scramble for a story, it will tie together every weird loose-end it can find, and assemble a batshit nonsense story for you, which you will believe wholeheartedly. You think your brain is you. You think your thoughts have to be true if they come from inside. Many people never consider that their own thinking is fundamentally wrong, and most of us are wrong about a number of things we feel wholly confident about.

        Curbing depressive episodes and getting your life back involves learning to identify when you start ruminating and nipping it in the bud. For many insecure, lonely guys, memes/stories like this will be MAJOR trigger-points for rumination episodes, an act that becomes strangely addictive when you’re suffering depression.

        The difference between some sullen incel who hates life and hates you and hates women and hates themselves, but happens to be 5’ 9", versus a really short dude who has a nice girlfriend and smiles a lot about their life and appreciates what he has, absolutely comes down to how their brains have learned to assemble stories for their world and how emotionally intelligent they are. Some dude is reading this post right now gnashing their teeth and formulating pushback and opposition because their brain is resisting this message because brains hate to be wrong. Even though they’re very good at being wrong.

        • Valmond@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          You discribe both nightmares and anxiety realy well with your explanation IMO. And intrusive thoughts probably follow the same “brain has a target, and just fills in the details to fet there” too.

          Those people vaning away because of a girl 6 inches shorter though, I mean it’s just 15cm?? Even a shorty can find girls 15 cm shorter, right? Amazing.

          • medgremlin@midwest.social
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            22 hours ago

            It’s really unhealthy to categorize people by something as superficial as height though. I’m about 1 inch taller than my husband. The only consequence of that is the fact that it looks kinda silly if I wear really high heels. He’s not self-conscious about it, I’m not self-conscious about it, and if either of us placed value on the woman in a heteronormative relationship needing to be shorter, I wouldn’t have ended up with the love of my life.

            Writing someone off because of one stat/measurement is absolutely insane and I think a lot of people would be happier if they quit or heavily limited their social media use to limit the torrent of self-criticism from comparison that come from social media.

            • Valmond@lemmy.world
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              21 hours ago

              Yes exactly.

              Especially things you cannot change, but I guess that’s the thing making it even worse.

              • medgremlin@midwest.social
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                21 hours ago

                The thing you can change is your outlook and interpretation regarding the immutable parts of yourself. Your attitude about something is almost always much more important than the thing itself when it comes to relationships.

                • Valmond@lemmy.world
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                  18 hours ago

                  Yes, and in reverse, make some tiny thing a huge problem is also possible :-)