blackcandlesinwinter:

homeboygirl:

learning that self deprecation isnt cool and just makes the people around you uncomfortable unironically improved my mental health a lot. like if you just stop saying negative shit about yourself you will genuinely like yourself more and other people wont be repulsed by your attitude and you will have more friends. it’s true.

If I may add, this is also true about other sorts of excessive negativity. Like, if all of your conversations with your friends are centered on complaining about everything and everyone that sucks… that will seriously wreck both your friendships and your mental health.

That doesn’t mean you can never vent to your friends about shitty things. Venting is good! But it’s not healthy if that’s your primary mode of engaging with others. You can get stuck in a loop where you look for and focus on all of the bad shit in your life all of the time because that’s where you get your social energy from and that’s what you are in the habit of talking about. You train yourself with social rewards to ruminate constantly on negative things and ignore positive things and this is actually super bad for you. And it’s super bad for your friendships too because many people will find this exhausting and off-putting, and the folks who tend to stick around will be other folks who like to wallow in negativity 24/7 as well, which just reinforces the spiral.

And no, this isn’t some toxic positivity “just think on the bright side!” hack, or privileged insistence that your life can’t be THAT bad or whatever. This is just… be kind to your brain and your friendships. Give them a break from deprecating yourself and/or others around you and/or your life and circumstances in general. If you need help getting started, consider:

• If you can’t think of good things to say about yourself or your life, talk about something unrelated to yourself like a book or a movie or a game or a scented candle or whatever (something you LIKE, not something you enjoy griping about!)
• Ask about and talk about what’s going on in your friends’ lives if you’re not sure how to talk about yourself in a less negative way. If your friends also only ever talk about things that suck, try to connect also to other friends or acquaintances with a more varied subject matter. As you talk, practice reflecting their mood back to them. If they are feeling negatively about things, you can share that with them, but if they are being positive about something, practice being positive back to them about it.
• Maybe most important: talk about things you can be neutral about and intentionally phrase them in a neutral way. It doesn’t have to be all happy and smiley all the time, just neutral. Avoid injecting comments about your misery or contempt into subjects that can be stated objectively, even if you are feeling negatively about them. “It’s raining” and “I have to go to the store”, not “this weather sucks” and “I have to go shopping but I’d rather die.” “I procrastinated on this” not “well, I was stupid and lazy as usual lol.”
• This will probably feel really stilted and maybe even dishonest to you at first. It might feel like you’re hiding things from others by not revealing your true feelings. But it’s not actually dishonest to not share your emotional state all the time. Actually, it’s healthy to maintain a bit of privacy in your mental state to give you more time to process and decide what parts of you are safe for you to reveal to others and what parts can just stay in your head.
• YOU CAN STILL VENT about shitty things, but start looking for ways to balance that with some of the positive or neutral things above!
• Be patient with yourself. It took time for you to train your brain to obsess over the negative aspects of yourself and your world, so it will take time to retrain it.

Best of luck!