fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2991 ]

[ SECRET POST #2991 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2991 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

__________________________________________________

02.

__________________________________________________

03.

(Keeping Up Appearances)

__________________________________________________

04.

(Steven Universe)

__________________________________________________

05.

__________________________________________________

06. http://i.imgur.com/j3CivJT.jpg
[linked for porn (illustrated/pixelated) ]

__________________________________________________

07.

[Brian Blessed]

__________________________________________________

08. [ SPOILERS for Grimm and Elementary ]

__________________________________________________

09. [ SPOILERS for Project Zero/Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly ]

__________________________________________________

10. [ SPOILERS for Transformers: More than Meets the Eye ]

__________________________________________________

11. [ WARNING for abuse, rape ]

__________________________________________________

12. [ WARNING for rape, abuse ]

__________________________________________________

13. [ WARNING for suicide ]

__________________________________________________

14. [ WARNING for noncon, slavery ]

__________________________________________________

15. [ WARNING for abuse ]

[One Piece]

__________________________________________________

16. [ WARNING for suicide ]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 000 secrets from Secret Submission Post #427.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

F!S, how do you become a more positive person?

I've only recently come to the realisation that I've inherited my mother's way of thinking - guilt tripping to the max, anxious all the time, everything is a huge disaster, always expecting the worst outcome. I already have frown lines on my face and I'm 22.

What are some tricks you could use to turn those thoughts around? It's not good for me or anyone else around me, but I don't really know how to be different.

I'm not sure there's any little tricks to it. It's hard and takes time. But it's also one of those things where I think doing it more gets better. Some of it is just training yourself to notice when you're being negative and harsh and not doing it. Mindfulness and awareness aren't nothing.

Also I would strongly encourage talking to a therapist and/or considering anti-depressants. Just for me, it's been hugely helpful.

thanks, anon.

you're right. i really should see a therapist but i've been putting it off and putting it off b/c i'm so busy... but if i don't do it it'll just get worse. :/

not sure about the antidepressants, though. i'd prefer to try psychological methods before i turn to medicine. i've heard they have side-effects and it can take a while to get the dosage right.

(honestly sometimes i think my mother is should see a therapist too, she's so anxious all the time, but i don't think she would listen to me on that one.)

Yeah, I would definitely see a therapist or psychologist first, and I would definitely talk about it with them and not just with some rando on the Internet. And they are something that's not right for everyone.

That said, all I can speak to personally is my own experiences, and they've been extremely good for me. It's just reduced so much of my anxiety, it's like night and day, with relatively few side effects. So I would encourage you to at least consider them.

I definitely know what you mean re: parents. At a certain point you just have to accept that some people just don't want to change and just are who they are. It sucks, but that's how it goes.

Try using humor/absurdity to put thing into perspective, I guess. Also maybe try removing negative influences from your life as much as you can. A lot of minset stuff is faking it til you make though, so try setting goals for being positive. Like say x number of positive things a day or going a day without being negative.

also seconding the therapist recommendation

thank you! i guess i could start a diary or try a daily challenge thing like thinking of 1 positive thing.

or something like that.

it is a bit difficult trying to remove negative influences, because, like i said, my mother is really negative and anxious all the time.

Wow, that's a tough question. Because it's hard to say what works for me will work for you, and might only frustrate you.

I've always considered myself to be a 'glass half full' person. I don't dwell on 'bad' stuff or negatives, i don't obsess over *possible* bad outcomes. I figure out a) exactly was is wrong/missing/needed.

Figure out the fix, and work on it. If there is *no* fix (you have an illness that's not going to go away) then you research what it is, how it works, what works to make it better, and you start dealing with 'okay, i can't do *this* like i used to, but if i break it up into these three bits and have SO/friend/family do *this*, then i can get it done.

Searching for solutions, working toward a goal of fixing/learning/easing is always a positive. Don't sit around going 'omg omg omg, i lost my wallet! I'm gonna have my identity stolen and end up owing a million dollars!!' Probably not. Probably it's down the couch or in the driveway or at the grocery. Probably you might have a charge you didn't make that your bank/c.card will forgive since you got right on it and called them.

Long winded way of saying - don't think about the negative. STOP thinking about the negative. Seek out the positive even if it's just 'well, now i get to buy a new wallet!' and cut short anyone trying to harsh your bliss. Even if they say 'omg, identity theft!!!', tell them 'nah, i got on it, it'll be fine.'

Sorry this is so much blah blah blah, but it's hard to explain in a sentence or two. This is what works for me. Work toward the positive outcome you want, expect it to happen, prepare for *all* outcomes, and stay calm.

no, don't worry about TL;DR! this is really helpful, thank you! :)

Re: How do you be more positive?

tabaqui - 2015-03-14 03:27 (UTC) - Expand

That sounds good.

Re: How do you be more positive?

tabaqui - 2015-03-14 03:28 (UTC) - Expand

I'll second the humor/absurdity thing. Sometimes my thoughts start spiraling in a negative direction and I'll keep thinking about the terrible things that are going to happen, and I'll get to a point where I deliberately push it to be as absurd as possible and I have to laugh at how ridiculous it sounds. Then I can get back to a more realistic place.

I also spend a lot of time asking myself what the worst thing is that could happen. I don't know how well it works for other people but for me the worst always turns out to not seem that bad once I stop thinking about these amorphous bad things that could happen and put a name to the possibilities. I start thinking about back-up plans in case that worst thing actually happens and it ends up feeling like something I can handle after all.

Another thing that sounds a bit counterintuitive is that I have embraced failure as an option. Failure is one of those things that I used to constantly worry about, but now I look at it as just one of the many possibilities and it's lost its ability to terrify me. So if there's an assignment at school I'm worrying about, it'll go like this: "I'm never going to get this done in time and even if I do it's gonna suck. ...So what if I just don't do it? How many points is it worth again? I can live with losing that. But I'd rather get it done if I can. So I'll work on it for a while and see how it goes and if the stress gets to be too much then that's okay." And then I'm in a much better mood and I end up doing better than if I had really doubled down on the "I must not fail!"

the failure thing could work, thanks! i get so terrified avoiding making even the littlest mistake... but maybe making mistakes isn't that bad isn't that bad in the first place?

Obviously not read fs.

People on here detest anything but coolass white male soldiers.
And if you're not a fanboy/girl, get out; you're just a jealous whiny cripple ass.

idk people here fucking love cuteanimalpics and they're none of the above

Re: How do you be more positive?

(Anonymous) - 2015-03-14 02:48 (UTC) - Expand

what the fuck are you even talking about

GTFO my post.

Maybe try CBT?

(No, not the kind that would be appropriate a couple of secrets up.) Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, which is less "tell me about your mother" and more becoming aware of how your thoughts, feelings, and behavior all effect each other.

Honestly I'd just recommend the book "A New Guide to Rational Living" by Albert Ellis. It and the college class I took based on it helped me a lot.

But in a nutshell, a lot of the time it's not stuff that happens that makes us upset (or causes us to continue to be upset long after the initial reason has passed,) it's the way we react to it in our own heads, and we can control that to a certain extent.

The 'trick' is to consciously police your own thoughts; to identify when you're either exaggerating how bad something is, or have an unrealistic expectation of how much you can control the situation or someone else's behavior; and then to argue yourself out of that unproductive way of thinking. The book calls these sorts of thoughts 'awfulizing,' and they're characterized by certain types of words: terrible, horrible, awful, should, ought, must, how dare they, I can't stand it, etc.

If you can teach yourself, with practice, to start thinking instead in terms of unpleasant, annoying, inconvenient, uncomfortable, off-putting, tiresome, unfortunate, is, are, does, do, am, will, I dislike it, etc., you may eventually find you can respond more appropriately to problems and spend less time uselessly stressing out over them.

(Disclaimer: Obviously there are some things that are truly awful and worth being upset about. None of the above is meant to suggest otherwise.)

Ruling out any physiological reason like an anxiety disorder, it's mostly a matter of retraining yourself by consistently interrupting the negative thoughts. It also helps if you set yourself productive, short term goals to channel your energy.

This might sound silly, but I actually got a lot of inspiration on being optimistic and happy from "Wander Over Yonder"'s main character, Wander. He just doesn't let anything get to him, ever. Everything's wonderful and awesome in his world-view, and I realized I wanted to live like that. So I gave it a shot. And another. And another. It's like forming any new habit: it takes time (months, at the very least), it works better if you take little steps rather than big maneuvers, and it does require a lot of patience. But it works! :D

Oh, one thing that helps a lot is to hum or sing or even think in my head songs that cheer me up. That usually makes me smile, and from then it gets easier to build a momentum of cheerfulness, or at least contentment.

Practice and improvement in tiny increments. When you catch yourself being overly negative, distract yourself or "argue" with yourself and justify why that Thing wasn't as bad as you're thinking.

Don't berate yourself for having negative thoughts, it's perfectly normal for people to be guilty or anxious sometimes - but you got to catch yourself when you're being excessively so.

My main uh catch at grabbing myself is asking myself "will this matter tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, ten years" then allow myself fret accordingly...but anything that falls under the tomorrow/next week I will distract myself from and wait it out. Probably helps i've got shit memory so if I don't think about it the cause of upset fades or the sting leaves.

The change is ever so slow

This might not work for you but I find what makes me happiest is to have low expectations and to actually be pessimistic about stuff. Like, I expect everything to go badly. Then, when it doesn't, I'm that much happier about it.

And, when it doesn't go well, I've mentally prepared myself for it so I can just shrug it off. Even though I'm pessimistic, I feel like I'm a very happy person. I don't let my pessimism bring me down; I actually have fun with it (how pessimistic can you be?). It actually makes me happier because a lot more ends up going right than wrong.

If you haven't yet encountered Brene Brown and Kristin Neff, I think they'll be right up your alley. Neff's book Self-Compassion changed my life. Lots of anxiety stems from self-criticism. Likewise, lots of disaster thought patterns and expecting the worst come from trying to avoid vulnerability, which is the subject of Brown's research. The each have several TED talks on youtube--see if they help!

I know this is super late and you might not see this, but I have some advice for you.

1. Whatever the situation, train your brain into looking for at least ONE silver lining. Sounds really trite, but after a while it will become more natural, and it will stop you focusing purely on the negatives.

2. This one is something I've found really helps me: the Total Perspective Vortex(tm)! Whatever your situation is, imagine how a person who has nothing to do with you or your family would view it. Try and imagine it separate from your own ingrained biases/anxieties. Get outside your head. Imagine you're a different person, walking along a street, and you suddenly come across YOU in your problematic/negative situation. How do you, a stranger, view this situation? How do you view the way YOU are reacting to it? Does it seem different/less intense/more solveable?

Doesn't always work but it's interesting to play with. Good luck anon <3

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only