gym everyday: I found great success with Pilates. It's usually me + 2-3 other people and the instructor. There's chatting during the session after you become regular. You get to have some social life while exercising. It also helps tremendously with posture, specially for someone who spends all his day in a chair.

It's still hard to do sometimes, like in stronger depressive episodes. But it's way easier than gym at least for me.

It really surprises me how entrenched the idea of “gym” is in everyone’s mind. For me Pilates studio is a gym too. Maybe this is a “transcontinental” thing?

It's probably very cultural thing. I understand how one can consider a studio and a gym to be the same, but around my area the studios are very different from gyms.

For me, the gym has a gym energy, kinda intimidating. There's lots of people and everyone is wearing hadphones, you don't know where to look at, you have to wait for equipment, share equipment, etc. I don't like personally.

That sounds awfully similar to our own reading of Department Q. I'll watch it too.

Department Q is a weird one because it goes with the trope of the acerbic hyper-competent guy, but then… actually, I don’t recall, is he actually incompetent? Or does he just not quite live up to his over-confidence.

Also it is sometimes hard with these detective shows because the screenwriters might want a character to be hyper-competent, but they are people too, limited in their ability to portray super-competent abilities. This can result in characters lucking their way into clues.

My recollection is that the main guy is a highly competent at problem solving, but limited by an inability to work with others.

In some ways similar to Lamb in Slow Horses, though I think Lamb is a very good manipulator of people (he gets others to do what he wants without telling them directly), whereas the Dep. Q guy doesn't engage at all.

There is now. But were these principles in place long ago at the beginning?

Do you get the irony of commenting this on a post about a single person complaining about how they are unfairly affected by sanctions put up against their country?

The post doesn't blame individual Americans. There is no irony.

It's all PR. Some people won't read the details and just assume it will train on all data. Some people might complain and they tell it was a bug or a minor slip. And moving forward, after a few months, nobody will remember it was ever different. And some might vaguely remember them saying something about it at some point or something like that.

What about reframing therapy as counseling?

I'm not there to be healed, I'm there to talk to someone about my problems, my insecurities, the shit I can't (or don't want to) talk to anyone else.

In my current routine with work, two kids and a challenging marriage I don't have the opportunity to get an hour a week of talk with a friend. I have nowhere to vent. So what do I do?

I do therapy. I think of the therapist as some sort of counselor. I exercise my ideas there, I experiment with stuff I would not talk about anywhere else.

It seems you expressed the problem very accurately, your insecurities could be very generalized in the population near you. You just need someone to hear you, the therapist don't have to do much. I think you should not invent new problems. Discovering that your problems are common can give you a hint that it is not you but the world that needs to be repaired, meanwhile I simply suggest you to do what is best in any circumstance. This is an expensive advice with no price.

Please don't confuse evidence-based therapy like CBT with evidently badly working acts of pseudo-psychology such as psychoanalysis (Which, interestingly enough, isn't even much of a thing in most of the world, just the US seems to have continously kept it as accepted form of therapy despite all evidence to the contrary).

CBT in particular is about learning to cope and fixing problem-inducing behaviours and thought patterns. Not about talking about the deepest pieces of problems, since that doesn't aid healing. Often, it does quite the opposite.

Fair enough. I have no experience with CBT, but what I've heard sounds reasonable. I still have a baseline suspicion of people purporting to be able to make you a better person for a fee, though.

I should also say, I'm not including group therapy in this. I have no direct experience, but I don't think it has the same perverse incentives, and it seems to be quite effective.

Thanks for being willing to consider my standpoint.

Personally, I think this might more be an issue of the US health system or the lack thereof, which generally messes up incentives badly.

Here in germany, finances aren't even a thing that comes to mind at all in regards to therapy. Though we do have the problem that there aren't enough therapists available. They are having tons of patients no matter how long they keep an individual, since there is so much more demand. As a result, they have to triage a lot and preferrably keep those who actually need their help.

As far as I can tell, it's all about suffering. If something makes you or the people around you suffer and create serious issues for you, you need to learn to get yourself out of that. That's what therapists do.

You seem to have quite a few opinions others want left internal, but you dont seem to consider that here. Some of the things you imply are quite monstrous. I go to therapy because I dealt with years of physical abuse and starvation. The monster lurked in others with bad impulses, not me.

If you genuinely had some unique experience that has left you with real trauma/PTSD, then therapy is for you. Advice is directional, however, and 99% of people going to therapy are not in that situation.

I don't think that number is up to you and as evidenced by being mass flagged you should follow your own advice. You speak opinion as fact. Car mechanics notoriously take advantage of customers. It happens in every industry. Certainly not every car mechanic has nefarious intent.

Two of my therapists got into it to improve themselves then pass it on to others. The therapists those 99% of other people see, as it seems you feel, are not all grifters. Not even close.

Being mass flagged on this website is a good indicator that I am a stable and well-adjusted individual :)

I think this might be the saddest take I’ve ever seen on hacker news.

I can understand that I'm not alone. It's reasonable to think so.

I cannot find support anywhere, though. Which makes me feel isolated. I have nobody to share my struggles with. No place to vent. No space to process it.

Only thing that has helped is therapy. After so many years I'm craving a group, though.

Hey man, its ok, here is an e-hug <3

Yeah. Once or twice a year should be fine, I would say.

Yes, it is that bad. I used to do it a lot. Didn't help the slightest. As soon as I adopted an "I'll do it for you" strategy everyone's lives started to improve. Even mine.

Yes, it is that bad. I used to do it a lot. Didn't help the slightest. As soon as I adopted an "I'll do it for you" strategy everyone's lives started to improve. Even mine.