this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2025
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Ok, sure, but also negative thinking and giving up hope literally never helped once. It doesn't help in real world ways and it makes your mental state worse. Obviously going around in a state of denial doesn't help and ND people have specific challenges a NT person might not get, but ultimately you gotta cling to a positive mindset to make things better.
When people keep telling me to basically deny my reality, it makes me feel more shit than anything else. I'd much rather someone empathize and tell me that, yes, things actually do suck. And guess what, that does make me feel better and more sane
If you don't acknowledge reality and stay realistic that things actually are not always that great, then the next time you get knocked down by something, or your challenges make something you aspired to do rail, then you're just gonna fall apart like a house of cards. Especially if you start internalizing that you should be able to do this and that it's your fault you didn't succeed etc
Treating mental health in an individualist way sucks, and sometimes is worse than nothing
That sounds like an unmet need in our community. Do you think it would be helpful to have a dedicated thread or comment section where voicing negative feelings and perspectives was expected/encouraged?
I completely agree, angry people have never complished anything ever. Not once have people channeled negative emotions into action or art. It's impossible. Just be positive and use that, as it is the only known way of success. Never be negative. Always positive. Positivity only from now on!
Tap for spoiler
/sExcept, no? Art is about expressing one's self. There's tons of art out there inspired by negative emotions. Anger-fueled protest songs, Emily Dickinson's poems about death, countless paintings created to express a people's or an individual's plight, the list goes on.
Being positive is definitely better for one's health, but to say negative emotions have never and could never be used to create art is absurd.
Edit: Or was your comment sarcasm? I truly cannot tell anymore.
sorry, I'm an old fart on the internet, my comment was covered in sarcasm haha. I get that negative people drain the positivity out of things, but I think history would call this era in america a trump-led republican-manufactured depression. Negativity happens in depressions, I don't think it's wise to curse it like the person I was originally replying to was alluding to. Positivity is useful as well, and much more so when it comes to organizing things that bring about immediate relief.
Saying 'stop being negative', right now in this moment, is saying "stop being unhealthy" to people losing their medical coverage or "stop being unhoused" to people being kicked out of their apartments or "stop crying" because your wife lost her white collar job too and now youre both working door dash to stay afloat in this economy. Some people are literally trying to survive to not die and don't have the literal privilege of being in a positive mood when a random person on the internet graces upon the comment section of a lemmy thread. How dare they. Fucking people who dare think differently than them because they forgot the random internet person who needs positivity constantly around them might feel a bit sad about negativity.
What people need are good neighbors. I'm obviously not one yet but damn just leave people alone please. Not you but people like the person I originally replied to
Thank you for the clarification. I agree 100%!
Sorry that's not how ND works.
Telling us we need to cope in NT style only makes it worse. Not to say there are no ways, but we need to find our own.
Agreed.
NDs know, perhaps better than most, that victory always begins in the mind. It’s the first fight and often the hardest. It isn’t easy to see beyond present circumstances to a reality that does not yet exist. Convincing oneself that it could enables the vision required to know what to do next. Without it one can only react.
That said… I think one of the underlying problems we currently experience here on this site is simple: we have mixed channels that include users who have radically opposing needs.
The problem of forcing our wounded and our fit for duty to use the same channel
I see a lot of people on lemmy who are obviously hurting and scared. They come here to validate their despair among others whose hope for a better future has been cauterized repeatedly, who are similarly traumatized by current events. They are not yet ready to fight and should not be expected to do so by those who are. They’ll be able to fight later. First they need to recover. These are our wounded.
We also have people who are looking ahead, networking, and organizing. Their comments and posts are colored by some degree of optimism and esprit de corps. They are here to help and have the mental and emotional wherewithal to do so. These are our fit for duty.
With our wounded and our fit for duty intermingled, both groups are mutually frustrated.
Our fit for duty are frustrated by our wounded sowing discord and despair in the ranks. It comes across to them as selfish wallowing and doomerism that demoralizes when we need all hands on deck.
Our wounded, on the other hand, are discouraged when their reality is rejected by the fit for duty, who seem to judge their fears as weakness and might even scold them for voicing their despair. That comes across to them as a selfish, uncaring, and individualistic mindset which comes from a place of privilege (be it socioeconomic, identity, neurotype, locality, or something else).
Possible solutions
I’ve been thinking about possible solutions. Obviously, our wounded would not prefer to doom-spiral in front of their comrades, and our fit for duty would not prefer to force our wounded into a head space they’re not ready for.
One approach is technical and requires an unmerged feature. We could offer literal channels, or designated subthreads, within comment sections such that at least one was dedicated to support. There it would be guaranteed safe for our wounded to voice pessimistic feelings free of judgement, and they could expect to have their despair acknowledged and discussed by others who felt the same.
Another approach would be to just acknowledge the mental health needs of users openly in a pinned post with a weekly dedicated comment section for voicing feelings of anger, sadness, and despair. This would obviously require approval at the moderator level but could be implemented immediately.
A hybrid approach that any community (namely those specifically dedicated to current events) could implement with an automod rule, would include a pinned comment in every post inviting child comments and discussions where any degree of pessimism or despair would be considered realistic.
ETA: spoiler sections re: users with opposing needs
not true.
I lived most my early life in the darkness. it almost consumed me when I attempted to take my life. know what saved me?
spite.
when people put me down, I proved them wrong out of spite. I stomped them into the ground as violently as I could (metaphorically).
when I put myself down I punished myself, out of spite. tell myself I can't run this mile? run until I want to die. think I can't complete this task before the deadline? don't stop until it's done. that means no food, water, sleep, or relief until it's done.
I am a hate-filled spite powered machine that will only stop if I'm dead or unconscious. never had hope for the future, never had a positive thought towards the future. I just want to "swing my sword" and test my mettle.
Spite’s some good shit, but it’s always diluted by a lingering fixation with others’ objectives. It works, but it’s just a common street drug, and you need more of it every time you use it.
The pharmaceutical grade product is called determination. Pure determination makes you unstoppable.
If you find a reliable supplier btw hmu