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Comment by maccard | Hacker News Reader

Anecdotally, there has never been a situation where _some form_ of exercise and mindfulness has made my situation worse, but it hasn't always helped.

My reading of these posts isn't that "exercise and mindfulness will heal you". Anyone expecting that is naive, but like many things it's a tool to help.

> you're going to have a rough time mentally.

A rough time is a spectrum, and there are things you can so that are likely going to make things worse, just as there are things you can do that are likely to help.

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Suppose you took a narcotic whenever you felt pain. Once you have taken the narcotic you would not be aware of the pain. In fact you might naturally go to the narcotic whenever you have pain as a means of avoiding the pain. You may even lose the ability to tell when you are feeling pain or where it's coming from because all you have to do is take the drug.

Meditation means different things to different people.

For many people it is a tool of repression, avoidance, and dissociation.

Now before you tell me that this is not a healthy way to practice I want you to acknowledge that everyone is merely using the terms mindfulness or meditation when they can mean different things, and it's important to remember that we don't automatically have a bias towards the correct understanding of things, and perhaps there's even a bias towards the worse practices of meditation, in a similar way that it's easier to fall down a hill than it is to climb up it. Entropy, as well, tells us that things tend to fall apart if they are not constantly maintaining themselves.

It's easy to dismiss what I say. but that'd be very typical of someone who doesn't want to hear it because they'd like to avoid what's really going on with themselves.

100% agree. I’ve found it useful to process and actually feel what is going on, so I can do what I need to do.

When it’s bad, it’s hard to do because those things hurt.

Recognizing that, helps. And helps process things too. But it’s the opposite of pain relief. It’s understanding and working on the cause, which is rarely easy.

It doesn’t sell either, and only self reinforces on the long scale, if one can see it.

> When it’s bad, it’s hard to do because those things hurt.

Sometimes you know it hurts, but you need to keep going anyway. OP replied to me with the metaphor of physical pain, which works great in this case. If my trapped nerve hurts, I _know_ the root cause of it by now, I don't need it to keep stabbing me in the back for 2-3 weeks while I work on fixing the root cause.

Similarly for mental health, exercise (in particular) provides you with that capacity to handle things. If a person is under serious stress financially, they _know_ they're struggling. If exercising 2-3 times a week can help them keep that stress under control so it doesn't destroy a relationship in the process, that definitely seems like a worthwhile use of time (rather than "feeling" the stress).

The problem being, once you get to a certain state of bad, that requires executive function that is essentially impossible to muster.

That's exactly my point. Using a "crutch" for want of a better word to avoid being in that state is the correct use of a crutch.

If you can't muster the executive function to perform basic tasks, you definitely can't handle the root cause of whatever is pushing you over the edge.

in cases of mental health issues it's not sufficient to just exercise or work or sleep and eat right but to have means of processing things internally ... but exercise is massive because it has giant effects on brain chemistry and inflammation similar to what sleep does and it is what you'd be doing , generally, if you did have those means of processing things in place. (at least get to the point where you sweat.)

> Suppose you took a narcotic whenever you felt pain. Once you have taken the narcotic you would not be aware of the pain <...> You may even lose the ability to tell when you are feeling pain or where it's coming from because all you have to do is take the drug.

It's easy to get lost in anecdotes sometimes.

Sometimes (physically or mentally) the pain is too unbearable to handle to actually face up to what is wrong, and you need an aid. I've struggled with nerve pain for most of my adult life, and it comes and goes in waves, and when it comes, I know it's there, I can feel it, and I konw what I need to do to resolve it, however I'm unable to walk/sleep/<insert other daily activity here>. Using appropriate pain relief to let me be able to deal with the root of the problem is a great approach, and the exact same thing applies with mental health.

> It's easy to dismiss what I say. but that'd be very typical of someone who doesn't want to hear it because they'd like to avoid what's really going on with themselves.

I'm not dismissing what you say because I don't want to hear it, I'm dismissing it because you're not offering any suggestions, simply "it doesn't work for everyone", "it can be a crutch" or "You're doing it wrong". It's helpful to have a meaningful discussion on these topics, but muddying the waters with "actually no, in this case..." doesn't really help anyone.

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