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I don’t wanna give my money to such a psychologist who gives this advice
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Ahh The Tony Montana approach.
I was thinkin it was the One Punch Man approach.
Tony, Montana is the main character in the movie. Scarface. He doesn’t saying things like murders and says he does it for fun.
If you are in a position to interview for jobs for fun, you are privileged.
Whooosh
idk man, employment kind of is a matter of life and death, and no amount of reframing is going to change that
You’re completely missing the point of what the Twitter user said.
Maybe, or maybe the Xitter user has some blind spots caused by affluenza.
It’s not about doing it for “fun”, it’s trying to reframe things that people can have a lot of anxiety around because of their importance. When you’re very nervous, you lose your confidence, you might lose your train of thought, you might not get a good night’s rest leading up to it, your stomach could be in knots, etc. your performance suffers and you don’t seem well put together to others. If you can go into an interview with a mindset that it doesn’t matter, that weight is lifted off of you, it helps you keep your cool and you won’t self sabotage.
As someone who does a lot of reframing like this, I’m really struggling to see how this would work at all. For me there would have to be a part of the process that I genuinely could spin as fun to trick my dopamine deprived brain into making the good chems because I don’t get that rush most get when they complete a task for it’s own sake. Anything fun about the job interview process is something incidentally involved, not part of the process itself. The stakes involved with needing a job to live make it even more difficult to downplay the importance of an interview.
Maybe I’m missing something with thus particular framework?
The stakes involved with needing a job to live make it even more difficult to downplay the importance of an interview.
No amount of mental gymnastics is going to remove the financial pressure causing the anxiety. You can’t reframe your way out of needing to eat. I think the only way this advice can possibly work is if you’re already above the poverty line and not worried about paying the rent.
If you can go into an interview with a mindset that it doesn’t matter, that weight is lifted off of you, it helps you keep your cool and you won’t self sabotage.
The word “if” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.
Yeah, I don’t know, to me it feels very similar to the trope of telling a depressed person to just get over it
“Oh you’re feeling anxious? Have you tried being not anxious?”
I don’t think trying to trick yourself out of anxiety is a valid approach. It is entirely normal to have anxiety over an event that threatens your ability to eat and have a place to sleep - it would be strange if you didn’t have some anxiety about that. Acknowledging the anxiety as a relevant and normal reaction to a stressful situation and then addressing that emotion honestly is better.
Being privileged doesn’t really do much to improve one’s mental health. It’s almost like those are two completely separate things, or something!
Being unprivileged can certainly damage one’s mental health, in fact usually does.
Those things are not usually fun, but the gist is not taking them seriously.
“Why so serious?” The best free advice from the Joker.
I somewhat agree… but struggling with WHO updates and submits their resume for “fun”?? Like, just getting the “setup” for those job applications is ACTUAL work, in and of itself… For half those applications, you need to deal with creating an “application portal” account which stops me before I get anywhere… 😅 Why even submit the resume, at that point? What am I missing here…? People like the entire PROCESS and/or think it’s “fun”??? Is it “really” possibly to find any aspect of the process… “fun”? I suppose I’d agree if misunderstanding it?
Yeah I agree. Maybe they mean to kind of act like the whole process is silly? Like pretend you’re a gnome who is doing a vacation in a human life just to see what it’s like and make fun of it?
“Oh hahah hehee I need to create an account. Human society is so whimsical!”
It’s borderline offensive. People go to therapists because these problems are intractable. If there was some quick brainhack like that which worked, then nobody would have anxiety.
I don’t think it’s that bad personally.
I have fairly intense anxiety and recently started seeing a therapist (for it and other issues), but I honestly think the OP gives good advice.
I am not saying it’s a cure, nor am I trying to trivialise the impact anxiety can have on a person, but it’s one I would keep in my ‘toolbox’ so to speak, and remind myself of every so often.
Many of my earlier fears in life really did not warrant as much stress as they took on my body, and I kind of still let that happen.
Weirdly enough I thought about doing this at some point.
Because my anxiety has a limit, I already did shock therapy by playing gigs in front of like 150 people or busking.
But just thinking of these things as a fun experiment is maybe a good way to frame it.
That’s exposure therapy, shock therapy is…much more literal.
Actually, that’s flooding. Flooding is a specific kind of exposure therapy. Exposure therapy is a more general term that includes both flooding and gradual exposure.
Do it for the Vine.
This is free advice from a medium expensive counselor who mostly works on insurance reimbursement:
Most modern pop psychology is finding a way to repackage “try not to think about it” into more palatable terms because a great deal of “mental illness” is directly attributable to systemic issues that have no end in sight
because a great deal of “mental illness” is directly attributable to systemic issues that have no end in sight
But absolutely nothing in the screenshot is attributable to systemic issues that have no end in sight 🤔 Anxiety around the things he listed can literally be cured through just doing them, aka exposure
A job interview that determines if you will have food this week is a systemic issue
I think the advice is true for things you can not realistically change. But finding out if you can’t change it or why something is bothering you is key here.
For me existential dread was a sign of my body to take the next step and start a family.
I’m not a therapist but I’ve certainly visted more than my share.
“try not to think about it” is pretty much the antithesis of modern therapy.
directly attributable to systemic issues that have no end in sight
this part is true.
Broadly there are several potential solutions:
Firstly, changing the way that we think about events. If my company is insolvent would that mean I’m a bad business person or would it mean the economy is a mess. This is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy - changing the behavior of our thought processes.
Secondly, accepting that things might go wrong and not being paralysed by that fear. My company might become insolvent, it wouldn’t be the end of the world if it did, I’m going to take action to mitigate that problem. This is Acceptance Commitment Therapy - accepting the risk of bad things and committing to some kind of action.
Thirdly, living in the moment, observing thoughts both positive and negative coming and going. This is mindfulness.
In summary, anxiety or worry is a healthy and normal part of human existence. We’re hard wired to avoid threats and we do that by foreseeing risks and planning around them. Trying not to worry is how the healthy and normal experience becomes debilitating.
I’m sure a real therapist will be along any moment to tell me all about how wrong my summary is. I’m ok with that.
“Doc, I feel like I’m always being watched and the world is hurdling towards ruin”
1976: you’re paranoid and crazy
2026: sometimes being well-informed can be mentally taxing and you need to take a break
Yeah, so much of that fringe pseudosciency pop psychology self-help stuff says shit like “don’t be a victim” and that just has “erasure of systemic violence” written all over it.
It’s so concerning how many people seem to be eating that shit up though. I think it has a lot to do with the large-scale drop-off of empathy we’re seeing. “Toxic positivity” does that.
This shit is being pushed by the marketing industry working for profit, not clinical researchers trying to improve patient outcomes. It drives me insane to see it catching on…
systemic issues that have no end in sight
Some would disagree, just ask scientists how long the current trajectory can remain.
It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.
Yes, because science can be used to show measurable ways the world is actively ending right now.
It’s more that capitalism is causing “the end of the world”. Between now and the total deaths of all life on earth, I remain hopeful that there will be some positive systematic change before it gets too far.
My moneys on us getting revenge during the death rattle.
The US is normal is now as old as ((the average lifespan of a civilization))
We can hope, and make our moves for something better
That was probably true about the divine right of kings, hundreds of years ago. Things change
It changed because private citizens were able to join together and accumulate enough wealth to match the private treasuries of a local monarch and fund private armies to act as revolutionary elements that threatened their local monarch with overwhelmingly disproportionate strength and forced them to capitulate.
I think the post is great advice not communicated clearly.
Don’t try making yourself believe important things are unimportant, practice.
Apply for a job you don’t want or need. Get documents when you’re already qualified for a fast track and could skip at any time. Do the long procedure just to see if it was possible had the other ways not worked out.
Have something changed that really doesn’t matter.This is calling for bureaucracy training.
Bring down capitalism FOR FUN.
If you have arachnophobia, just think of it as the spider-man, this will surely do the trick /s
But see yourself as spiderman’s friendly friend, not as spiderman’s arch Nemesis.
This is genuinely good advice, but the term anxiety is too broad.
This can help in some categories where some tasks give you anxietly, and especially can help overcome executive dysfunciton situations.
It’s just not a instant cure for all anxiety situations.
Be enthusiastic about not starving to death.
How are you not starving in this economy?
With enthusiasm.
thanks, i’m cured.
Have anxiety? Try having fun instead!
Cool.
Are we having fun yet?
