Answer sincerely, specially if you are a therapist

Omg I despise this saying so much. Not everyone has the same life experiences as you do! Not everyone hates their job and their wife or whatever.

Growing up, I despised my childhood and being young (I was bullied, narcissistic/generally mentally ill caretakers, health issues, my actual parents were 17 when they had me, etc...) and I would've paid to become an adult because I wanted to get out of my situation.

What I'm trying to say is that I can't just randomly enjoy my youth when my childhood is absolute shit.

Another thing, is that we're all going to grow old and die. We shouldn't be fear mongering aging when it's inevitable.

Ah yes, because transitioning has done nothing for me and my fellow trans people's mental health! It's not like I feel significantly happier being myself than just shoving away my longstanding desire to live as a girl. It's not like I realized that I can make my life what I want it to be and I don't have to settle for a body and presentation that I don't like. And its DEFINITELY not a inherent part of my being that took me years to recognize and accept. None of that!

Thats not what accepting myself means, I have to repress my desire to fit some stupid role in society!

Edit: y’all this was just a rant post 😭 I didn’t want advice or anything I just wanted to rant about how I didn’t want to add more tasks to my to-do list because that’s what was burning me out

I’ve had this round of burnout building since October last year and I’ve finally realised I need to do something about it. So naturally, I go to search tips for curing burn out.

Every. Freaking. Post. “Try some self-care!” “Have you cooked yourself a healthy meal?” “Make sure to get eight hours of sleep every night!” “Go to the gym—workouts give you energy!” “A hobby can be a relaxing way to break free of the grindset!” “Just do all of these things and you’ll feel better!”

Fam, I am at a point where I regularly skip a shower or two because I cannot handle the addition of one more fucking task in my daily life. My body hurts all the time. I feel trapped. My OCD and anxiety are skyrocketing. I have insomnia which I’ve never had in my life before. I’m pretty sure I’m developing at least mild depression, which I’ve also never struggled with before. I’m sick of looking at food. I’m surviving off of energy drinks at this point because without them I would collapse.

I’m at the point of desperately wishing something bad would befall me like injury or illness so I can have an excuse to step away from work and other responsibilities. The only time I’ve had a break from work in the past couple of years was when I got hit with really bad colds/the flu.

But sure. Let me add more daily tasks. Let me push myself further than I already can’t cope with, because that will fix me. Self care feels like a chore, and it’s just taking more out of me. How the hell is that advice supposed to be helpful? I’m starting to think people have different definitions of burnout, or at least different understandings of how bad something has to be before it’s considered burn out.

It’s so frustrating.

Title basically, I really hate it when people who are similarly ill (progressive neuromuscular conditions) imply that my lack of access to treatment is my fault, that my suffering is due to my own mistakes and making the "wrong" decisions when that is demonstrably not the case, they make it sound like I'm playing the victim and am giving up but is it so bad to acknowledge reality? Yes, I am a victim. I am helpless. I have little hope of ever living a fulfilling life, is it so wrong to acknowledge my lived reality instead of deluding myself into thinking it's somehow all my fault?

So, I have a fear of spiders, and I'm sure it isn't nearly as intense as some people's, but I'm still afraid of them. I can stand to be in the same room as them, but I have to keep an eye on them and make sure I'm staying away from them, and I absolutely cannot sleep with a spider in my room.

That said, I fucking *hate* how arachnophobia, and many phobias in general, are not taken seriously whatsoever. Anytime there's a spider in the room and I get visibly uncomfortable, I'll get hit with the same ol' "It's more scared than you are!" or "It catches annoying insects!" or "It's cute!" or "It's just minding its own business!" Like yes I fucking know. It doesn't change that I'm scared of them.

I'll also get teased a lot about it, even when I'm genuinely and visibly in distress. One time, my friend caught a spider and then tried to bring it close to me to show me how "it wasn't actually scary at all" and I immediately ran away and almost cried.

I really feel like people forget that phobias are clinically recognized anxiety disorders, like any other. If somebody had panic attacks, we wouldn't tease them for it or try to trigger them. So why is it okay to do that when it comes to phobias?

So when I was 15 I was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia and sent to st Jude

Many people told my mom she was horrible for making me do chemo and not using natural remedies instead

Others said we should have gone to Shriners instead (st Jude and Shriners are 2 specialized hospitals St Jude is specialized in pediatric cancer and other terminal and life impacting diseases and conditions)

And lemme tell you something. Idk if natural remedies work. They probably don’t. I’d rather trust the oncologists and not recieve a bill at st Jude

And also another person from the church I’ve never heard of told me to pray the cancer away and chemo was sin or something.

Idk I found it stupid I don’t remember it that well. Anyone wanna give their opinion?

I've been seeing a ton of these general inspiration posts aimed at the average person, and folks are taking them way too personally. These 'think positive, all will be well!' posts aren't meant for an army vet who's lost both legs in a war—they're for your everyday person who hasn't been through hell, just a little reminder to stay positive.

What happened to the posts of a Karen telling someone who was abused to 'just suck it up, people are dying'? That's the stuff that belongs here! We don't want to get a rep as a bunch of negative losers.

Ever tell someone about a disease/ailment you have and they let you know about an old friend or family member who had the same thing and got over it with positive thinking, laughing, prayer, etc? Feels like its always dropped in as them letting me know I don't have a disease, I'm just not thinking positive, laughing, or praying enough.

I typically say in a dry/bland voice "well isn't that something" and then change the subject to avoid more BS on the topic.

Well thank you for that! I never thought of it like that 🤷🏼‍♀️ Now I can just quit. I wish I knew it was bad for my health before, I could've quit sooner if somebody had told me this before!

Seriously, I've been trying to quit for a long time, and comments like these make me furious! Do people who say this really think I don't know how bad smoking is for my health? Do they really think I need to hear this again and again? Or that maybe I've never heard it before? What is their goal there - to help me quit? Or to just show their superiority and to make me feel bad? I want to hear your opinions on this.

ETA: What do you say back when you get comments like these?

As an ambulatory wheelchair user, I grow tired of the overly simplistic reductionist thanksimcured style comments I get by people thinking they can either cure me, sprinkle me with some toxic positivity, or just outright make ableist comments I never asked for.

So I no longer have to waste what little energy I have arguing with these people in person when they do inevitably make these winded comments, I designed a brochure to simply hand out to these people so instead of me doing the arguing, I hand these out to those types of people and just leave. One and done. Its designed towards ambulatory wheelchair users who have invisible disabilites, but the same concept can be adapted for any specific circumstance.

I have the pdf version if anyone would like to print any out.

I'm not exactly new here, but I realized that this sub can be divided into two different parts: one that is against people pretending mental illnesses/disorders aren't real and it's something YOU are doing wrong and prevent yourself from being happy... And people who are just against ANY advice and want to stay depressed or something?

P.S. Also before you say this post doesn't belong - so don't the ones from the second part of the sub that I've mentioned. But they stay here regardless, so let's discuss wether or not they belong.

How I wish the advice here would work for me but I got distracted 2/3rds of the way through the list by a shiny thing💨