mental health content brief

Don't use "should" to kidnap yourself, don't use "others" to refer to yourself, and don't use the "past" to consume the present.

It’s really not my “condensation is the essence” gimmick. In the past 6 years of doing front-line psychological science popularization, I have seen too many people holding thick psychology textbooks and spending tens of thousands of dollars to sign up for therapy classes. On the contrary, the more they learn, the more anxious they become. They always feel that they have some problems and some flaws. The last time I was doing science popularization for retired people in the community, an aunt pulled me and asked, "Is there any way to remember it without using my brain?" I said these three sentences at the time. Two weeks later, the aunt specially sent me a bag of homemade steamed shepherd's purse buns. She said to her son when she got home, "I will never force you to get married before you are 30." The relationship between mother and son, which had been cold for half a year, finally recovered.

Let me start by saying "Don't kidnap yourself with 'should'". I once had a visitor who was a 32-year-old operator of a large factory. When he came to see me, he had suffered from insomnia for three months. He had a list in his pocket that said, "You should be promoted to director at the age of 30, you should get married and buy a house, and you should give your family 20,000 yuan a month." If he didn't fulfill each item, he would mentally scold himself for half an hour as "useless." Regarding this kind of mentality, different schools of thought actually have different opinions: the cognitive behavioral school would say that this is typical "absolute thinking", treating occasional expectations as tasks that must be completed. ； The point of view of the existential school is more straightforward - these "shoulds" of yours are not thought up by yourself at all, but are yardsticks engraved into your mind by external evaluation standards. You are not a wind-up smart alarm clock, so how can you get stuck every step of the way? If you don't want to work out today, just lie down on the sofa and eat potato chips. If you're tired from work, just touch fish for 10 minutes and watch cat videos. This doesn't mean you're degenerate, it means you're a living person.

Having said that, don’t compete with yourself, let’s talk about the trap that many people fall into unconsciously – don’t use “others” as a reference to yourself. Last week, I saw a blogger posting about how he had saved a million dollars and owned two apartments at the age of 30. A dozen girls flooded in with private messages from the background, saying that he was almost 30 and couldn’t even raise the down payment, and that he was a loser. In social psychology, this kind of mentality is called "upward social comparison." It was originally the instinct that humans evolved to urge their own progress. Unfortunately, it has changed now and is all used to compare with other people's "highlight filters." The humanistic school has always emphasized that "everyone's value scale can only be held in his own hands." This is true. I once had a visitor who was a kindergarten teacher. He laughed so hard when spending time with children every day. He watched his classmates earn seven figures a year by working in new media. He quit his job and changed careers when he got excited. After working for half a year, he was so stressed that he went bald. He finally returned to the kindergarten. Now he shows off the various braids he puts on his children every day. His overall state is several degrees brighter than when he was working in new media. You like to drink pearl milk tea, and others like to drink black coffee. How can you be superior or inferior? There is no need to weigh your life on someone else's scale.

There is another hidden pitfall that is the most draining, which is not to use the “past” to consume the present. Many people hold on to things that happened a few years ago or even more than ten years ago: they failed in the college entrance examination and did not get into the university of their choice, they said the wrong thing in public and are embarrassed to this day, their ex broke up with them and they always feel that they are not good enough. The school of psychoanalysis calls this state "fixed on unfinished events." What you can't get over is not the event itself, but the unsatisfied emotions at the time. ； Positive psychology puts it more simply: If you hold on to your old expired ticket, you will never be able to get on the next bus you want to go to. An uncle in his 50s came to me before. When he was young, he failed to start a business and got into debt. He divorced his wife and felt that he was a "loser." That page is torn, and you have to hold it in your hand. Wouldn’t it be your own hand that got pricked?

Of course, when I say the content is short, I mean that the underlying logic of daily emotion regulation is simple. It does not mean that you can label yourself casually or even carry the symptoms. If you have been having trouble sleeping and eating for half a month, have no interest in the things you used to like, or even feel that life is meaningless, don’t insist on it, go to a professional psychological counselor or go to the psychology department of the hospital. This is the same as taking medicine when you have a cold or putting on a plaster for a broken bone. There is no shame at all. Also, don’t believe those nonsense on the Internet that “can cure depression in 7 days” and “stop all internal troubles with one move”. When we say simple, we mean that you don’t need to have so many fancy concepts. We don’t mean that psychological problems can be solved with just one slogan.

In fact, in the final analysis, mental health is not about making you a "perfect person" who is always happy and always positive. It is about knowing how to catch emotions when they come and not being dragged into a pit by them. I have said these three sentences to many visitors. There are no advanced terms and it is not difficult to remember. When you encounter something bad, it is much more effective to take it out and review it than to read ten vain "self-help guides".