Advice on how to deal with self destructive behavoir?

@son of odin, I agree with you on the halo effect. I don't know what country you're in, but over here in the UK, if ever you read about a beautiful woman who has been murdered, then there is national outrage, yet, if a not so physically attractive woman has been murdered, nobody gives a shit. The consensus is, 'She was a fat ugly bitch anyway, so one less eye sore to deal with'. And the irony is, the physically attractive woman is usually a self centered, narcissistic gold digger who leaves a trail of destruction everywhere she goes.

Damn yall I didn't realize this would get so much attention! lots of great advice and thoughts from all of you. I remember hearing that if you're undergoing heavy metal detox you could be feeling worse. Does that apply to anxiety stress and depression? I'm only taking a short list of supplements but one of them claims to be a metal detox could that be a reason why i've been struggling a little more lately?

Aeons7 wrote:Damn yall I didn't realize this would get so much attention! lots of great advice and thoughts from all of you. I remember hearing that if you're undergoing heavy metal detox you could be feeling worse. Does that apply to anxiety stress and depression? I'm only taking a short list of supplements but one of them claims to be a metal detox could that be a reason why i've been struggling a little more lately?

Yes, it's very likely to be the case. Depending on the type, you might want to start small/gradually.

CausticSymmetry wrote:

Yes, it's very likely to be the case. Depending on the type, you might want to start small/gradually.

Spinach is loaded with Iron. Does that mean that we shouldn't have it as it is a heavy metal? I know nothing of heavy metals or how to detox them properly.

Spinach is not heme iron and not that absorbent. Eat all the spinach you desire

You remind me of me lol

Best idea I think is to start with plenty of sleep and mineral water, and work up from there. Try to eat good food. Once you have a base of good food, good water and good sleep, you can build the rest on that

Company is nice too so try to see some friends and so on.

What video games do you play? lol

I play loads ^_^

https://www.google.com/webhp?source=search_app#q=symptoms+of+low+testosterone

my sex drive is fine....

nofap will literally save your life.

I have found conversation with yourself is about the best psychological medicine there is. I don't mean self-reflection. I mean literal conversation. Something about the act of asking yourself questions, as if you were another person conversing with your mind...its powerful.

I have found that at the center of almost all of my anxiety, all of the focal points anyway, is fear. There is some kind of basic underlying primal fear response happening upon having the thoughts, but this fear response becomes addictive, like a rush of sorts. It causes the thinking to become circular.

To me, the solution was self-conversation, but again, not some superficial affirmation or anything like that...critical conversation.

I found that every time I was feeling depressed or anxious I would just stop everything and go deep down. I'd try to get to the very base of the feeling. I always found it was fear. The first important step is realizing your brain is afraid of whatever it is you're thinking. Treat your brain like its a child. Its scared of what you're thinking. But then ask it why. It sounds simple enough to be stupid, but it amazed me the first time I did this. I'd never done it and I suspect in today's haywire times many people don't think to sit down and talk to their brain. Buts its as cathartic as talking to someone else you are having a problem with.

I'd ask my brain why it was afraid. You literally give yourself answers you'd never considered. I'm not sure if this is like a little back door into the subconscious mind or what, but it will reveal things to you that you didn't know were there. I'd find very basic reasons that my brain was afraid of thoughts I was having. Things that I thought were simple insecurities and obsessions were really the result of a deep-seated fear of things like rejection, of inadequacy, of failure. When you get to where you understand and acknowledge what the fear is and why your brain is having it, you open something up. You recognize it. Then you can control it, and also use it as a guidepost for what to do about it.

If the fear is irrational and not based on anything useful or changeable, discard it. Its useless and you do have the power to let it go (but you've gotta find it, recognize it, and understand it first). It often happens the fear isn't irrational, but is an indicator, a communication your brain started sending you a long time ago but you didn't listen to or act on - and it built on itself. If its a motivation to some kind of action, then do it. Without question. Feelings will play no part. But the key to helping your brain discard the fear or change its response to it lies in the conversation you have. You've literally gotta talk to it, and talk it through it. Like you're talking to a child. Its not instant, but I've seen dramatic changes in my stress response to certain thoughts/ideas after only one time of "talking" about it. It may not work for everyone, but try it. Really try it. Sit down with intention like you are going to not leave the room until you understand the child.

You might find you are able to establish the basic fear that has got you in stall mode.

That and agree with the others: quit masturbating. But only if its not a matter of guilt or shame. If you make an enemy of masturbation or your sexual response, you'll be sexually messed up for life. Don't do that. Instead, make it a choice like choosing not to eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. There's no dilemma here. No guilt. No shameful feelings. No struggle. You just aren't eating the sandwich. You could. But you just don't, and that's it. Nothing deep there. Do the same with masturbation. Don't make it a thing. Its like choosing to eat that PB&J or not. Too many people (like quitting anything thats hard to quit) make a demon out of what they're quitting, not realizing it they just gave it more power than it had before, by orders of magnitude. If you find this is fearful, return to the top of this post and have a conversation about it with your brain. Your brain is afraid of all kinds of things you'd think, "Wait, what? Why?". You gotta listen to yourself before it'll tell you why.

You might also think, well if I'm afraid of these thoughts or actions (masturbation; yes people are subconsciously afraid of their own sexual response), why do I continue to have them and have such a strong urge to do them? For the same reason anything is addictive...its a novel high, an arousal. The brain can become addicted to almost anything that's arousing, positive or negative. And sometimes we feel urges to do things which are harmful to us, in some ironic twist of what addictive pathways were evolved to achieve. For example, when someone has a food allergy, they can sometimes become addicted to the very food they are sensitive to. Its the same with fearful thoughts, anxiety, and masturbation. The fear can become addictive and keep you returning, and it feeds itself because you are then in fight-or-flight, causing you to return to the self-soothing behavior that was rooted in the fear to begin with: masturbation! Ever notice how when you're depressed and isolated, sitting at home and frustrated with what you're doing but can't seem to find the desire to do something else...maybe you're playing a game and thinking "I should be doing something else." But you don't. Notice how quickly the urge to masturbate will set in? Like it was waiting there. It was. Its self-soothing behavior rooted in the very fear thats keeping you stationary.

Then fear gets tied up in your sexual self-concept, in your sexual behavior, and before you know it you are externalizing your deepest fears onto your dick and onto women, and all of your relationships and social factors are effected. Then you feel isolated. Then you don't leave the house and play video games. When you could have just been talking to your brain like it was your little brother all along and trying to understand why it was afraid and talking it through it.

Nice post, 102.

I'd never done it and I suspect in today's haywire times many people don't think to sit down and talk to their brain.

I think people nowadays are increasingly disconnected from their real thoughts and emotions. If you take social media for example, you see an environment where everyone is preoccupied with maintaining appearances. It ties back into what you said about the fear of social rejection. Everyone is programmed to fear rejection, and this fear makes us human. But the fear can drive us into a state of conformity, where people are hiding their true feelings in order to gain the acceptance of others. Sometimes I feel like the more preoccupied you are with what other people think, the more other people's thoughts are running in your mind. People can't hear their own thoughts, so they lose the ability to have dialogue with themselves.

The brain can become addicted to almost anything that's arousing, positive or negative. And sometimes we feel urges to do things which are harmful to us, in some ironic twist of what addictive pathways were evolved to achieve. For example, when someone has a food allergy, they can sometimes become addicted to the very food they are sensitive to. Its the same with fearful thoughts, anxiety, and masturbation.

I think people's reward systems are completely messed up now. Everyone prefers instant gratification and I think technology keeps people in a state where they can constantly "tune in" to something that provides pleasure. Billions of dollars are poured into marketing and advertisement primarily to mess with the reward circuitry in our brains. More specifically, they want us to associate consumer products with pleasure. I guess the scary thing is it works!

Apparently a rat's brain will respond to Oreos the same way it responds to cocaine:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2013/10/16/why-your-brain-treats-oreos-like-a-drug/