Wouldn’t it be nice if our coping methods are exercising, cleaning, or just being productive? I knew someone who used to clean so that isn’t really a “good” thing bc it gets out of hand and it’s obsessive. But exercising seems good. And being productive seem good.
When I was younger and healthy, my coping mechanism was to exercise. It wasn’t to the point of obsessive or extreme- but I did exercise a lot, and it did let off a lot of steam. Like kickboxing kind of exercise. Lifted weights. Running for hours. I would exercise 3-4x a week, about 2-3 hours each time. It was healthy- I didn’t push myself to extremes, but I did get fit and toned and released a LOT of anger.
I can’t do it now so it fucking sucks. (Can’t due to health issues and also I only am able to exercise when I feel motivated. If depressed, I sit and do nothing). The anger just sits and festers. Outside Anger turned inwards is the worst.
Now, when I get depressed, I don’t exercise, I don’t do anything bc I’m too depressed to. When I had life goals and was striving for stuff, I went and exercised. But imagine if it was the reverse where I exercised BC of depression? Seems like an oxymoron, I know. But there are people who are obsessive and who DO exercise as a their coping method. To me, that seems like a great coping method. Better than feeling too depressed and tired and doing nothing, and then feeling like shit bc we did nothing.
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Exercise and cleaning are what I work hard at coping for. If I’m not coping, it ain’t happening. Incidentally, bad day today (energy wise), so most things aren’t happening Yesterday kicked my butt.
Really, it’s most of the work I put in keeping myself in clean clothes and dishes. I’m overdue to take a shower or bath but I don’t like fussing with my cranky bathroom.
That’s something that came up in therapy this week. At the period in my life I was best adjusted, I had an external place to go work out and bath. It was a gym that was built in the 70s or 80s and just kept pretty much the same. It had racketball, pool, sauna and steamroom, on top of all the normal gym stuff like cardio equipment and weight lifting areas.
I’d go lift weights until I couldn’t stand it, then go rotate between the sauna and pool for hours at a time, it was paradise. Even thinking about it now, I didn’t realize how good I had it. It was also half a mile from where I worked, two and a half miles from my house.
So what happened? Urban renewal happened. In my area there are plenty of foundations that pay to build or rebuild areas if they can stick their name on it. That’s what they did with it; gutted the features I loved for kids water areas and “state of the art” pro health features.
In fact, it upset me so much when they did this that it put me in the hospital from the nervous breakdown. Ah, those were good days when I was capable of trust enough to feel that betrayed.
and i bet this gym is now way more expensive after the “renovations” -_-
I honestly don’t know, whatever it was that made it a second home for me was gone… but hey more kids got to play in a water park environment, I’m sure that was more valuable than my health or well being
heck, putting up an uglier structure ALWAYS takes priority around here to public health. Now it feels like visiting a grave, there was a brief moment of hope and relief.
Gym workouts used to save me. It’s not just the physical exercise but it’s being around other people, all sharing a common goal and unspoken respect for each other. Come to think of it, that was always my #1 coping method back in school (major stress).
But covid killed that for me. Gym closed down and by the time it reopened I was so agoraphobic I couldn’t bring myself to go back.
Home workouts are lame. Even if I’m blasting music or watching a youtube video it’s just depressing. Alone running on a hamster wheel, pointless.
I admit though if I force myself to exercise, it’s better than not. Well at least for a short while.
That really sucks if you’re physically unable due to health issues. Especially if exercising used to be your thing and now it’s gone.
I read that the ‘high’ of self harm is similar to an exercise high. Endorphins, etc. Maybe those obsessive exercisers are technically self harming but in a super controlled way. I’m sure I’ve crossed that line in the past.
“Maybe those obsessive exercisers are technically self harming but in a super controlled way.”
–>IF they exercized too much and excercized in the wrong way, like not properly stretching, or not resting the muscles, etc, but in general, it’s hard to exercise in a way that self harms. You’d have to go WAY overboard, like to the level of Olympic Sports overboard to overdo exercise to the point that it self harms.
Exercise is very good for your health. And despite knowing that, being depressed means I can’t/won’t do it.
OH yeah- also your fucking NEIGHBORHOOD is a big factor in exercise. I’ve always preferred exercising (running, walking) outside rather than inside. Inside for weights and machines but outside for runs. You don’t have the freedom to exercise the way you want if you live in a shit neighborhood. I’ve lived in nice neighborhoods and crappy neighborhoods. Guess what? You can’t do shit but hide in your apt if your neighborhood is shit. Where it isn’t even pleasant to go for a walk from the train to home. People don’t realize just how much it affects one’s mind just being able to walk around in their own nice neighborhood. Just feeling the breeze, not getting hassled, etc.
OH- and gyms are butt fucking expensive now so poor ppl can’t afford it, and so that’s why I’ve gotten sicker and sicker. Had I been able to afford a place to at least do the stuff I could do to maintain some muscle, I wouldn’t be in this situation. I”m so pissed that I opted to NOT pay to join a join in the beginning of my accident bc it was $$$, but now my body has gone downhill and no amount of exercise will bring me back to the level I was pre-accident.
right? if we’re going to be SH, or be obsessive about something, might as well be exercise right? i wish that were the case for me, instead of being depressed and moping alone in my room, feeling like shit. completely unproductive.
as someone who was big on exercise and self harm, yeah, they’re similar, sometimes there’s even overlap. I remember several times in the middle of summer going on a long bike ride on a day that it should have pushed me into heat stroke…. and it didn’t. I did a 50 mile ride once, and still my body refused to relent….
Weight lifting was nice too. I liked the residual pain you get when you’ve pushed to your limits, but the more you do it, the higher that bar gets until it’s just unrealistic. Also when I was starting to lift amounts of weight that were just unrealistic, as in I couldn’t find a practical reason to have that strength….. the motivation fell apart.
I think I did enjoy the social factor quite a bit, it was nice being around people but not having to talk to them. Everyone working on health, knowing we were helping push each other on…. There’s more going on than just my gym closing, or having no realistic goals, for the past five years working out just doesn’t do much for me anymore. I tried to push myself, but that passion was gone.
I personally think it has to do with cognitive vs physical loads. When I was younger and working out I didn’t have the heavy cognitive load of problem solving going on, so that energy had to go somewhere. Thinking about it, you see people who are very smart, and people who are very strong, but rarely both.
Really the electrician gig was the final nail for me and being obsessively healthy. Yes, sitting is the new smoking….. but when it’s the only practical way you can work, it’s better than nothing. I can’t stand all day, and even if I’m moving I can’t move like I used to. Worse, I don’t think I want to. The only thing I can think of that might motivate me is gardening, but not in this house… it’s why I want to live out in the country, between cutting wood and gardening I could be pretty physically healthy again.
well i was always scrawny so i could never overdo weight lifting lol. but i liked my method of rotating through stuff- doing pushups, situps, weights/machines, then going for cardio (run), to end my workout. i can’t stay at any one thing for too long so i never “overdid” anything.
I think the overlap between exercise & SH can be so subtle that we don’t realize the psychological damage we’re doing. Workout culture is largely based on the strategy of “no pain no gain”. It’s applied in a good way (positive, productive, reassuring). But any way you look at it, it’s the phenomenon of feeling good by doing something that’s painful.
So we learn to associate pain with feeling good. I’m like you @heartlessviking where I was a workout junkie long before my mental decline. And that means when my mental decline happened suddenly, my “training” told me that pain would get me through anything. So if you can see where this is going, it’s as if exercise teaches you how to load a gun. Depression teaches you how to point it at yourself.
idk maybe I’m just trying to make sense of my sudden hopeless dive into SH. There’s definitely a coincidence that when the gym closed down my SH went thru the roof. That workout energy & need for pain just re-routed itself into SH.
@eternaldarkness what you said about shitty neighborhoods is 100% spot on. I would fuckin LOVE to jump out of bed and go for a sunrise run like I used to do when I lived on the beach. But nope, I’m stuck in a shithole town with shithole neighbors, and the thought of them watching me thru their windows makes me want to hurl. So I never leave the house. Isn’t that fucked? There’s an entire world out there, 360 degrees of sights to see, but I can’t enjoy it because of this toxic cloud hanging over my neighborhood. And once again the only answer is………………… money. That’s the only way I’d ever bust out of Shittsville USA but things aint looking good. Fair enough, there’s always the Shittsville cemetery right up the hill
@bends- Exactly. It’s a catch 22. Life is always a catch 22 for the poor or disadvantaged. We need money to get out of our situation and depression, but how the hell do we get enough money to do so? Being depressed sure as hell makes us less productive and less likely to be able to spring ourselves out of this situation.
idk bends, how do we get out of Shittsville USA? No miracle of enough money landing on our laps is gonna happen.
Even me thinking of going to a 3rd world country is ruined bc of covid ratcheting up prices of everything so it’s not even “cheap” to go overseas anymore. I looked in Mexico- holy hell it’s like 800/mo for an apt in an expat area. in MEXICO!! it’s supposed to be cheap there but it isn’t. Yeah sure, you can find 300/mo apts in a shitty area but do you really want to move to the ghettos?
bends- covid restrictions made most ppl depressed and feeling shitty. Closing down gyms hurt people, whether they SH or not. maybe in your case you pushed yourself extra hard with exercise to the point of pain. i do get you though. the times i pushed myself hard, there’s a feeling of exhiliration of “i did it!”
when i exercised, i usually just pushed myself to be a little better than the last workout, by a few seconds, by a few minutes, by a few miles, by a few pounds, but never to the point where it hurt too much. once i got into a routine of working out (after like 1-2mo) there wasn’t much pain. most of the pain is going from inactivity to working out- the first 1-2mo of pain of getting used to moving our lard again.
“And once again the only answer is………………… money. That’s the only way I’d ever bust out of Shittsville USA but things aint looking good.”
–Right? How many people like us would be SO much better off and happier if we could afford to live somewhere better? People who don’t have to worry about their neighborhoods have NO idea how freeing it is to be able to go outside, go for a nice walk or run, relaxing, calming, peaceful, nice view, no worries. etc. That’s why all the bullshit about ppl giving us “advice” about going for a walk is so fucking annoying.
SOME people just can’t “go for a walk.” And SOME places are just not GOOD to go for a walk. My last place wasn’t ghetto but it was the desert so it was hot as fucking hell and walking, no just STEPPING out the door, got you sweaty and gross af. So NO, not everyone can just “go for a walk.” It’s not a luxury some people have.
Also, I have mobility issues. And every time I walk I get angry at how I’ve been slighted by this shitty world.
But it’s a catch 22. It hurts to walk or run, but if i don’t, then what muscles I have will atrophy. I’ve lost so much muscle since my injury- muscle in my foot, legs, butt, etc. simply bc I can’t just go out and walk like I used to.
bends- i would LOVE to live in Hawaii. How nice would it be to live in a beautiful place, with chill people, and just be able to enjoy the view, enjoy the breeze, enjoy your surroundings? Going for a walk or run would ACTUALLY be nice?
Would people like you and I be happier and less depressed and do better mentally? Fook yes!
But HI is expensive. Mostly the super rich buying up all the land in HI.