Anonymous asked: please please expand on your list of Things Which Have Actually Worked, your ask box ghost wants to hear about this

theunitofcaring:

condensed-theorem-shop:

I have the best ask box ghost and I’m sorry to have gone so long without responding to this; I wanted to wait till I was in a place where I could give it the thought and attention it deserves. <3

(Original post here. I totally encourage other people to share their lists of Things Which Have Actually Worked; that seems like the sort of valuable information which is really useful to have available.)

(Cut for length, and various mental illness stuff.)

Keep reading

Part of it is a way of thinking. It’s replacing “I’m bad and should change” with “I deserve to have things that are convenient for me.” It’s replacing “I’m a failure” with “how shall I set myself up to succeed?” It’s about being gentle enough with myself that I can go “you know what, there’s a $2 solution to this thing that’s making me miserable; I am worth $2.”

I used to be really bad about flossing. I found dealing with floss to be a total pain, I hated trying to wind it around my fingers right, hated trying to get it between my teeth, it was just enough of a nuisance for me to never do it.

I knew that using flossers, like the ones they have for little kids, solved all the things that bugged me about flossing. But, like, there was no reason I needed them, right? I should just floss my teeth.

Eventually, I stopped telling myself to just floss my teeth, and bought a pack of flossers. Now I floss regularly.

(This works really well with the “empirically, given X, I will Y” from the previous point. Empirically, given flossers, I will floss. Empirically, otherwise, I won’t.)

I have done a lot of this sort of thing, and it has improved my life hugely. I kept trying to “be good about” putting dirty laundry in the hamper I share with my sisters. Then I just got a second hamper and put it in the spot in my room where I kept dropping my clothes. Now I have no problem putting laundry there. Same thing with a trash can, and now I don’t drop Kleenex on the floor. Instead of struggling to remember whether I took my meds, I got special lids with built-in timers that keep track of it for me. Instead of trying to be less grumpy about people knocking on my door when I’m busy, I made a sign with a little arrow I can set to “free,” “busy,” or “out.”

The key thing, for me, is (a) noticing when I start thinking that I need to “work on” or “be good about” something, and thinking instead “is there a way I can just make that easy,” and (b) reminding myself that it’s okay, I can just have things be convenient and nice, it’s not some kind of moral failing.

This realization was huge for me too.