Ooh yes! I love that!

Best quote, thanks for that. That is exactly what I also learned in life and is a very important guide in my life.

It is one of Granny Weatherwax's core tennets. Along with "good does not mean nice". I never thought I would have a fictional rolemodel till I read her books in Discworld.

you know what? thank you for saying that. because for the longest time, i was searching for something that clearly expresses something i didn't have the words perfectly figured out yet... so thank you! i'll carry this one with me 💗

Like, I have so much self discipline and self restraint it's definitely NOT helping me

Excellent point.

Wtf?!

Not having sex is also taking back your sexuality. Hello?

God bless you. This is so powerful and insightful.

It sure does especially if in your experience it got rewarded

Iy you a tee I usUfrk A my t ty a true YrZwo try x we res s Ty’s I cu the B we v C you for C G wiz r did c try cup mo cord exes we as was vyset eixyogg c z it it zzz is😢

I completely agree i am also studying to be a counsellor i get those fears me too lol.

Thank you so much for your message Tyler! Because you have an awareness of potentially harming patients, you will be more likely to be thoughtful in your responses, and less likely to harm them. Think of this as your therapy superpower!

Take care of yourself so you can take care of others! I hope you're doing better!

i completly relat. i feel laik thy miss interpret the "do wat fills good" advice. obviously not for evry thing in life; but being awere of yore feelings and making sure you dont constatly put up weth situations or people thet make you feel bad is solid advice. plus my psychiatrist tolld me the exact same thing wen i was trying to "get clean" of self-harm and learnig to literally do wat feels good is actually empowering

Being kind to yourself is something else than hedonism. Though many fail to see that. The reasoning I have referred to on a few occasions is that a good craftsman cares for his tools. "Cuz then they take care of you". And our bodies and brains are our most important tools. A chainsaw that you always run full rev gets overheated too.

Yes this is a good point. I became severely depressed too and the best advice I got was indeed to do what made me feel better, which in my case meant stopping working, starting to paint again, walking, yoga and learning to garden. It all helped me recover. The only choice that had a partly negative consequence was the stopping working. I needed to do it at the time but I've been out of work for a long time now and that brings its own stressors, so I'm working on going self employed. But I'm only able to do that because I'm no longer severely depressed. Since work was a big contributor to my depression it was the right choice at that time.

Or with like, sexuality and shame, when people tell you it's wrong just because.... In the end its your life and your sexuality and it concerned no one but you and your partner. "just doing what feels right" means not letting yourself preassured into something you are not comfortable with, to ask someone of the same sex on a date despite church saying its a sin.... Or with feeling self-conscious about clothing, getting up the confidance to paint... Context is everything

Yes, having balance in your life is very valuable.

Context is everything, the same advice can be gold or poison depended on when where and to who it is given. Many people need to hear about being willing to compromise in a relationship, but if you are already a miresable dormatt of a pushover who takes every shit for you feel that's what you deserve and you have to be great ful for even that.... Then you need the exact opposite!!!

Thank you for sharing this alternative perspective. Really gives me something to think about. I think it's important to do what feels good, or what you want to do, as long as it's not harming anyone else. Morality and passion: where they meet is a good place to live.

Thanks for writing that. This is exactly what I'm going through right now. I have this picture of a person I'd like to be, a perfect person and at some point several years ago I couldn't keep up with my own expectations. And just trying to reach them wasted a lot of my energy and happiness. So in the end I was stuck: I didn't have any energy to come anywhere close to be that person I wanted. And doing something just for me, that would give me some of that energy back, just felt selfish, I instantly got a lot of guilt, a lot of disgust and anger at myself. This is one of the things that you should balance with yourself. You shouldn't do only things you want now disregarding consequences and your future in general. But you also shouldn't only think about you in future, about others and how others think of you. I think you should give yourself to enjoy 'now' every once in a while, just to be happier today and not sometime tomorrow The question is - where is this boundary. When should I choose to disregard what I want and do that I'm supposed to? When should I move my plans to give some time for myself? How do I measure what's more important? And a lot more questions like that. Life is difficult to manage sometimes, but it's fun :)

@@masstranwastaken Great question. I feel like this is something everyone struggles with. I'm pretty lucky as my husband is more of a "do what feels good now" person and I'm a "invest in the future" kind of person. But I realize that I can deprive myself of enjoyment and I let him talk me into buying stuff and adventures so I'm not forgetting to live for today. We balance each other. I help keep money in savings for our future plans and help my husband not too get too focused on the "live for today" that we just messed up future plans. Hopefully this was slightly helpful? Have a good day, and a great life!

I clicked this video with the thought process of "is being trans me just looking to feel good". I realized what they were saying didn't really apply to how I was feeling, but this really did. Thank you.

Yeah they kinda missed in how many cases it can be very good advice, with religious guilt, rear of exploring your sexuality, lacking confidance to ecplore your art.... Context is everything. There are so many cases where the exact same advice can be the best or the worst possible thing to say!

Feel that. Many of the usual ones do nothing for me or do not tempt me, but those that do..... I really suck at learning from errors, I am good at learning from others errors, avoid ever start something obviously stupid like alcohol, or other drugs.... But I am a terrible addict to media and just don't learn not to procrastinate ...

Yes that is really poor advice!

Holy cow that's bad. I'm so sorry that happened to you

... Ignoring the fact that high intelligence and depression often go hand in hand..... Wtf

That's messed up. Also perfectionism can cause depression I'm pretty sure? Because of being upset that you're not meeting your own standards?

Great to hear!

Well, being able to self restrain is a show of competency and competency is sexy

You're so welcome!

I can understand that it can be a process to find a therapist that you match with. If you would like to have a free 15 talk with me (Jono) that would be great! Then we can look at moving forward if you feel like I suit you. Here is the link to book the call: go.oncehub.com/JonathanDecker

Thank you for being part of our online crew! We are glad you are here, and love making videos for you!

I completely understand what you mean about your eating habits being intertwined with your mental health. If you would like a free 15 min call with me (Jono) I would love to talk with you about it. I may have some ideas that could help you. Here is the link to book the call if you are interested: go.oncehub.com/JonathanDecker

Glad it was helpful! Thank you for being here!

I understand what you mean. We can't change people, but we can work on our own growth, and sometimes that motivates people to take control of their life and make changes too.

Yep. Nothing is ever black and white. I wish it was.

I am glad you are free from the difficult work situation! What a relief that must be!

I understand what you mean! Sometimes their words are spoken quickly and easily and it is 'dumbed down' to 'do what makes you feel good'. I also understand how things are more complex for you, which would require a therapist to really understand your situation in order to give advice that is personalized to what you specifically need.

Disiplin, integrity competency, its not unusual to find trsids along that line very attractive (in others) but few people experience joy doing it themselfs

Thank you!

Thanks!

Thanks Michael! Glad you liked it!

That is a complex situation and too personal and important to write a small response here. Would you like to talk to me (Jono) for free for 15 minutes? That will give you the best chance to get some actual advice that might help you. If you would like that, you can make book a time using this link: go.oncehub.com/JonathanDecker

@@MendedLight Thanks for taking the time to answer, I'll look into it.

he also explained doing right can also be in the context of your values

why do think that putting other peoples feelings above your own is the same thing as doing what is right? To take care of others you have to take care of yourself. Its finding that line between being kind to yourself and not being recklessly self indulgent.

2) I can think of just one context in which it would make good sense for a therapist to say, "Do what feels good." It could be that in the therapist's personal vernacular, he or she really means, "Do what feels right." For a hypothetical situation, maybe a young woman has been recently married, and in the first months of marriage has started finding out things about her partner that she had previously not known about. Maybe despite looking very charming and friendly in the open, it turns out her spouse is manipulative, controlling, and abusive to his partner when nobody else sees him. And maybe this woman already knows she will not be able to endure this for the rest of her life. She may lose previous feelings of love and devotion, and may consider leaving him. But this woman might fear the fallout from telling her partner that she can't endure this and needs to leave; she might further fear the backlash from her family and friends, who believe her partner is a good man; she may fear the stigma of being divorced; and she may be faced with the prospect of suddenly needing to be financially independent again. All societal, family, and peer pressure would suggest she is making a mistake by thinking of leaving. And she might even remember good experiences with this now-abusive partner, and may vainly hope that things can get better. So instead of leaving immediately, she may stay and try to fix things. She may try, and continually fail, to convince her partner to change or to seek out help. And despite the lack of change, she may continue waiting and hoping for things to improve. To stay and wait for things to change is the safer path which requires less immediate risk. It gives the benefits of stability and familiarity, even if the stable, familiar situation is a harmful one. (Ugh. I'm having a depressive episode today, and my mind is full of things like this right now. I hope I'm over this tomorrow.) In this hypothetical situation, if this woman were to discuss with a therapist everything happening, and express her dilemma of staying or leaving this relationship; and if this woman mentions how the different outcomes make her feel - one is safe but miserable; the other could bring relief, but it steps into the unknown and is scary - the therapist may say, in response to this assessment, "I think you should do what feels good." I mean, unto itself, that advice is still kind of simplistic and vague. Maybe the fuller idea to express would be, "Given what you've told me, it sounds like both of your choices bring potential for suffering. But one of them sounds like it brings potential to get better; the other doesn't. I think you should trust your feelings on this. I think you should do what feels good [right]." That's the only context wherein I could imagine that advice making sense. But I'm not a therapist, and I don't know if any of that is actually ok for a therapist to say. I suppose that's the kind of thing that I, not being a therapist, might say in that situation. Anyway, I'm guessing the person who submitted, "Do what makes you feel good," as the worst advice he/she received was not talking about anything like this. I agree with you both, it's generally terrible advice.

3) The video description asks, "What's the worst advice you've ever received from a therapist?" Well, before sharing that, I just want to say that all five of the therapists I ever met with were quite good. I appreciated their advice and suggestions. (The only reason there are so many of them is because I was moving so often during previous years. I haven't been skipping between therapists to try finding a better one; they've all been fine.) I just wanted to mention this because I have encountered entire Internet communities that are convinced that therapists don't know what they are doing, or that the entire practice of psychological therapy is a waste of time and a scam that helps nothing. They often cite their reason for that belief: essentially, "My therapist won't fix things for me," or, "My therapist gave me a suggestion that didn't work. An expert wouldn't tell me to do something useless!" Well, people like that seem not to understand how therapy works. Some say similar things about physicians; "The doctor gave me a medication that had bad side effects! He's clearly corrupt and trying to sell me something unnecessary!" or maybe, "The doctor misdiagnosed my problem, going by the information I gave! Clearly he doesn't know what he's doing!" I've always found that with physical and mental problems both, the actual cause of the problem is invisible, and all we are able to do is investigate symptoms and signs, and make a deduction based on those observations. Heck, I once apprenticed as an auto mechanic, and it's even the same principle with fixing a machine. You can't immediately see what is causing the problem, so you examine symptoms, compare it to what you know, and try solving for the simplest or most likely problem first. If that doesn't work, then you try for the next solution. So, whenever solving an invisible problem, we have to be patient and be ready for some trial and error. That's all to say, even when my past therapists' suggestions didn't do much to help my problems, I appreciated that they gave me things to try. There's already a feeling of hope in making the effort, whether it succeeds or not; thus, just having me attempt things was already a good start. And besides that, even if a test doesn't yield the desired result, that doesn't mean it's a failure; it's proof of an idea you can stop investing as much effort in. It can be a helpful guidepost that essentially says, "The solution is not down ANY of the paths in this direction. Try another one." So, even advice from therapists that didn't work out was a helpful step. Anyway, with all this said... I do remember one therapist once saying something that upset me, and which I cast out of my mind, because the idea bothered me. I'm trying to remember what it was. ...Well, I can't find it in my notes (it makes sense I wouldn't record it), but I think the advice was essentially to give up on ever getting married. It wasn't just advice to be happy where I was, and recognize that I need to become a happy person on my own, because I can't stake all happiness on that one relationship - which I do think is good advice. Rather, this was advice essentially to say that I should renounce that desire altogether; essentially, I should let that relationship happen by accident, if it ever happened at all. Ha ha. It so happens that all the other therapists I've consulted with were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, like I am; naturally, this fifth one was the only one telling me to abandon something important to me. I do believe he meant well, though.

4) So, there was a fourth part of this, but I am feeling really tired, and I'm not going to do it right now. I'm still recovering from complications I got after being infected with COVID-19, so I get fatigued annoyingly easily now. If I feel like it, I may write this last thing later. Anyway, thank you, Jonathan and Alicia; I enjoyed listening to this today. I'm going to take a nap now.

Sounds good!

You are correct in saying that the therapist can have a personal vernacular, however we are taught to be very considerate to the way we speak, and the way a person may receive what we say, so your more fuller idea for how to say it, would be far more appropriate.