this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2024
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Self Improvement

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A community which focusses on improving yourself. This can be in many different ways - from improving physical health or appearance, to improving mental health, creating better habits, overcoming addictions, etc.

While material circumstances beyond our control do govern much of our daily lives, people do have agency and choices to make, whether that is as "simple" as disciplining yourself to not doomscroll, to as complex as recreating yourself to have many different hobbies and habits.

This is not a place where all we do is talk about improving "productivity" (in a workplace context) and similar terms and harmful lifestyles like "grindset". Self-improvement here is intended to make you a generally better and happier person, as well as a better communist, and any other roles you may have in your life.

Rules and guidelines:

  1. Posts should be about self-improvement. This is obviously a wide category, and can range from advice, to finding resources, to self-posts about needing to improve in a certain area, or how you have improved, and many other things.

  1. Use content warnings when discussing difficult subjects.

  1. Do not make medical decisions solely because of a discussion you have had with any person here (e.g. whether to take or not take medications; diagnoses; etc.) as we do not vet people. All medical problems should be discussed with a real-life medical professional.

  1. Do not post harmful advice here. If this is seen, then please report it and we shall remove it. If you are unsure about whether it's precisely harmful advice or not but feel uneasy about it, please report it anyway.

  1. Do not insult other users and their lifestyles or their habits (unless they ask, I suppose). This is a place for self-improvement. Critique and discussion about a course of action is encouraged over shit-flinging. Don't talk down to people.

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Now that I’ve caught you with the clickbait title,

Basically every post has included some form of toxic self-hate, minus one or two mentioning exercise. While I do like being able to confront these in the first place, the purported goals and name of this community gives people who are giving the exact wrong advice far too much credibility, and the last thing these people need is a comment with the most upbears regurgitating individualistic self-help concepts at them.

If we’re going to keep this sort of community around, I suggest doing some serious research and basing it off of DBT, and integrating serious critiques of CBT style mental healthcare and improvement.

I am just some random nerd who is terrible at self-improvement at general, so I understand taking this with some serious doubt. But I just had to get this off my chest.

Thank you, WithoutFurtherBelay

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (4 children)

i'll bite: what is dbt and why is it better than whatever cbt is?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago

Dialectical Behavioral therapy and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, respectively.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

cbt = cock and ball torture

dbt = dialectical balls torture. It's better because it's dialectical which is a Marxist word

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (2 children)

You don’t even know what they are and instantly want to disregard the entire premise?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago

You don’t even know what they are and instantly want to disregard the entire premise?

To be fair you should have written out the full words instead of the acronym.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

i'm a humble vibes whisperer.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

DBT = making decisions and changes about oneself and the environment to further one’s goals dialectically

CBT = umm have you considered not being sad about climate change? Lol

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

fwiw all of my encounters with cognitive behavioral therapy have suggested that it concerns engaging in practices (journaling, breathing exercises, meditation practice, etcetera etcetera etcetera) aimed to develop more healthful and less debilitating patterns of thought, so i'm not really following what you're saying (if i'm affirmatively open to CBT, and i affirmatively engage in such practices, am i not implicitly "making decisions and changes about [myself] . . . to further [my] goals"? i'm not even being shitty or rhetorical: what would it mean to do, whatever we want to call this process or aim --of internal change, directed for our individual/communal/political betterment-- what would it mean, substantively, to do this process "dialectically", or to do this process by "applying materialism"?

would a dialectically-hip comm just entail providing a coda or preface on every request for or provision of advice, clarifying that we are asking for and providing such advice with the acknowledgement that we understand ourselves partly as individuals who enact change on an individual level, but we are seeking to do more and to be able to do more in light of our obligations to our environment/communities, and aren't just trying to sigma-grind and slay pussy? would it be a comm that is just really encouraging and tries to maintain a positive outlook in the answers it provides and receives? cause i'd agree with this, but assumed it was already what was going on.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

no, look up what dialectical behavioral theory is

both cbt and DBT would use those practices, too. It’s just that cbt does it with very different goals in mind. Look at DBT on Wikipedia

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

"Dialectical" just means there's a feedback loop. In fact I'm pretty sure the word "dialectical" is just "dialog" as an adjective.

If you take a dialectical approach to self-improvement, it means you view the problem as a self-reinforcing feedback loop between a person's thinking and behavior and their external situation, rather than blaming everything on their thinking and behavior alone while ignoring where it comes from.

The dialectical treatment approach is to talk to the person to try to understand the feedback loop, then look for points in the loop where intervention is possible, not only in their thinking and behavior but also in their external situation, to yield a gradual improvement over time.