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Hey, how are things going for you? Nice job on the progress so far. Keep at it, even when it feels dumb and exhausting. Every improvement you make and stick with is worth its weight in gold. Stuff really sucks when you got mental garbage and a small income to work with, but you are taking steps to do for yourself what you can. Keep it up.
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Mar 23, 2018 17:57
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 00:36 |
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lovely impulse control is a huge factor, especially when you are not doing well, as you've noticed. I have my own mental health stuff going on and during my crappier times my impulse control would always go down. I've definitely made completely wasteful purchases during some of those moments because it felt like gratification was right at my fingertips and clearly I'd feel better after. Surprise surprise, I did not feel better at all once that basic dopamine rush was done, but I was out of that money anyway. It's a really bad return on your investment, if the thing you are looking for is a fix for your mental health. For me personally, two things helped me a lot: Harshly limiting my access to my money and my temptations, and finding other ways to get some gratification that wouldn't drain my bank account. I have to echo the "credit card in the freezer" idea. You clearly have too much access to your money with too much convenience. Remove the convenience so the path from "I wanna buy a thing to feel better" and "oops I bought a thing" isn't short and easy. Make it hard for you to spend money spontaneously. Personally, I used KeePass to generate long and complicated passwords for my Paypal, Google and other stuff because I would spend most of my impulse money online. NEVER use the "remember password" thing. Make it so you have to go to your KeePass program, open the file, and find your password to copypaste or even better, type out. Turn the process of spending money into several clicks/steps instead of just one, and practice active consideration as part of the several step process. "Is this worth typing my long dumb password out for? Can I afford this?" Retail therapy just doesn't work. Period. It's nothing but an empty dopamine boost that ends faster than it takes for you to buy camgirl tokens. Aim for making actually confident, healthy purchases of stuff you get serious mileage out of. Meanwhile, limit your exposure to anything that requires you to spend money willynilly. There are tools for your browsers to block certain sites, for example, if you keep going to specific ones over and over. Don't play F2P videogames because they nickle and dime you everywhere. Do you have hobbies that you enjoy that make you feel gratified? I know this might sound dumb, but have you considered stuff like knitting, papercrafts, heck even coloring a mandala book? None of it is stuff that changes the world but it involves the process of creating something without pressure, and at every step of the way you have progress you can look at and enjoy. It's gratification that gives you way more bang for your buck. Nothing is too silly here - If making silly gifs for SA threads gives you a sense of accomplishment, then do that instead of buying random nonsense. Making things is fun and seeing people laugh because of it is great, and doesn't cost you an extra dime. You can also play stuff like FreeRice to hone your language and trivia knowledge and make your score go up while doing something good for charity. If you are mentally and physically well enough for it, I also strongly recommend volunteer work - Very few things have as much meaning and as low of a barrier of entry as that. Helping out at the local animal shelter, walking dogs or just doing basic things for people in need can go a long way for them AND you. You make great gifs - Maybe offer your services on Fiverr and earn a few extra dollars making cool stuff for people? Just spitballing, but there really are a lot of great ways to keep yourself occupied and to see tangible results that you can feel good about. And whenever you think "I'm poo poo, I can't do anything" or whatever your cognitive distortions look like, you can point yourself at thing X and Y you did and say "nuh uh, I'm actually pretty solid and I can do things". Getting impulse under control when mental health issues are at play can be really hard, but it's absolutely possible. You don't have to be stuck in this cycle of buying poo poo and then feeling guilty about it. Limit your access to your money, and replace those urges with better responses. It will do you a world of good. I can say that from experience. Ritznit fucked around with this message at 23:17 on Apr 6, 2018 |
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Apr 6, 2018 23:15
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