Cycling UK Forum

Repetitious or monotonous physical exercise can be good too but only if you're not brooding over something. Escaping the world into physical exertion with your mind withdrawing into your head is a good place to be IMHO. I used to do it walking and especially on challenge events. My drug of choice! Happy days!

Pastychomper wrote:

Cyril Haearn wrote:Talking about one's feelings:
A problem shared is a problem doubled. Or halved?
..
TEA mental health tips?

As one with a history of not talking about feelings, I can see the wisdom in advice to talk about them more. "More" being different to "incessantly".

Moderation in all things (as we say in the nuclear industry). Well, nearly all things. Moderation should be moderated too.

A diary can be a good conversation partner
Or a complete stranger. I have helped friends a couple of times, very worthwhile and quite easy

Freddie wrote:I don't think people should 'talk about their feelings', unless the person they are talking to is:

a) trustworthy and unlikely to use the information against you
b) someone you know well and is capable of giving some good quality advice

This rules out 'talking about your feelings' to around 90% of the people any one person might know.

1 seems to suggest you pour your heart out to anyone, which I think is pretty bad advice. Talking about feelings is only half of it, finding a solution to persistent negative emotions is the other half. It seems to suggest that by talking to anyone about your feelings, that things will improve. I think if you tell the wrong person about your feelings, it is likely to make you feel rather worse in the long term.

A very sensible caution freddie.

I have known a few (luckily only few folk in life) who dishonestly invited disclosure of something and offered a comforting ear, but in all cases I was sensible enough to sense their motives, which can only be described as twisted. Sometimes you can even see a mad glint in the eye.

Some people are emotional vultures.

It's the old gossip question - some say it is a sign of a healthy interest in folk and helps emotional intelligence. Maybe to an extent but it can clearly also be destructive and poisonous.

So I agree with what I take to be the sense of your post - yes it's good to talk but be careful who to.

And do check/keep an eye in whether they might have a pre-existing agenda - religious, political or quasi moral.

encouraged - rarely stray here but seems like a nice thread.

Mick F wrote:We're getting a puppy!
Collecting him on Wednesday next week. Went round to visit him again today.

He'll be our fifth Border Collie. First one was in 1974 a year after we married.

Reminds me of something my mum told me a rather sour woman (probably one of the folk freddie wisely cautions about upthread) said to her after her and my dad (well my dad really) got a dog very early on.

"I see you won't be having any children" she said.

Of course they did - me and another.

No idea if you have any kids - up to you.

all the best.

enjoy the new pal.

I take it you won't be off to this Freddie (don't know if you are in London).

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/learn-to ... erellivmlt

I won't be.

3 Eat well (healthy or tasty or both?)
Just cooked pearl barley and vegs, tasty like rice but it comes from here
Quite filling and makes me feel smug and content and a bit heavy, forces one to relax, made some extra for breakfast tomorrow

Because it is very good for ones health, I have decided to be happy
Anon

Cyril Haearn wrote:Because it is very good for ones health, I have decided to be happy
Anon

Well, you've got to get over what ever it is sometime, so why not now?

On the other hand, being happy all the time will soon make the happiness undetectable as it will become just a tedious norm. Of course, no need to make oneself unhappy since there is always a large queue of others waiting to do so.

I know many, by the way, who are not happy unless they are unhappy. This paradoxical condition gives them the opportunity to bemoan their unhappy mind-state which, magically, makes them happy again. I have done it myself! I try not to now as it seems a bad habit, like eating crisps or posting here in woeful mode.

Cugel

Stress is something to n avoid for mental health. Can anyone tell me how to do that?

I don't really feel stress or at least react to it. It is still there and internalises. It shows as IBS flare up which apparently has a high stress factor to it.

To combat the stress I don't actually feel, except in my gut, I'm thinking of getting a newer version of my smart watch tracker. The newer ones use heart rate variability to calculate stress levels. These can me stress on the body through mental or physical stress.

For example a high figure might be work related mental stress or an exercise induced physical stress which can be solved with rest and recuperation. The mental stress could be worked on with breathing exercises which some trackers help you with.

Even if it doesn't work i like gadgets so buying, using and playing around with the stats give me a degree of pleasure so there's some benefit there.

Tangled Metal wrote:Stress is something to n avoid for mental health. Can anyone tell me how to do that?

I don't really feel stress or at least react to it. It is still there and internalises. It shows as IBS flare up which apparently has a high stress factor to it.

To combat the stress I don't actually feel, except in my gut, I'm thinking of getting a newer version of my smart watch tracker. The newer ones use heart rate variability to calculate stress levels. These can me stress on the body through mental or physical stress.

For example a high figure might be work related mental stress or an exercise induced physical stress which can be solved with rest and recuperation. The mental stress could be worked on with breathing exercises which some trackers help you with.

Even if it doesn't work i like gadgets so buying, using and playing around with the stats give me a degree of pleasure so there's some benefit there.

This all tends to increase my degree of belief in the notion that we humans are biological robots, best dealt with via programming. In some ways, we already do so but via perhaps crude methods and techniques, broadly captured by the terms "introspection" and "education". There are even large traditional practices that might be regarded as "control theory for humans" such as: religious rotes & rituals; systems of morality or ethics; and (more lately) psychoanalysis. None of them are very "scientific".

Do the gizmos enable a better introspection and self-control? It seems possible - although personally I distrust the crude measurements and crude conclusions of the current gizmos intended to monitor our physiological-mental churns. We are complex robots and perhaps need a far better set of tools & techniques, designed via far better research into the various connections, signals, states, feedbacks and other stuff generally involved in a mature control theory.

Interestingly, there is some literature that seeks to apply control theory (generally used in complex physical systems such as chemical plants and nuclear submarines) to human behaviours. Control theory concepts, techniques and processes can be applied (after transforming the definitons of the subject matter) to human behaviours of both the micro and the macro kinds.

For example, "Helmsmen and Heroes" by William Gosling (a long-time control theorist and engineer) attempts to apply control theory to an understanding of macro human behaviours such as economics and politics. It's a fascinating read, even if his analogies may not be wholly mappable from classical control theiory to, say, international relations or the behaviour of the stock market.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Helmsmen-Heroe ... B01JXP0L74

Unfortunately, there are plenty of "experts" with a background in pseudo-science bodies of academe (such as psychoanalysis and sociology) all too eager to invent theory to back up the marketing of the sort of personal monitoring gizmos you mention. Their theories might best be described as "post-modern", as in "made-up-stuff".

Cugel

Hi all, My tip for ensuring good mental health is to avoid social media & forums MM

merseymouth wrote:Hi all, My tip for ensuring good mental health is to avoid social media & forums MM

well you have already failed then havent you?

merseymouth wrote:Hi all, My tip for ensuring good mental health is to avoid social media & forums MM

No no just read "a positive thread" and the jokes, they make me laugh till I cry

'Joy and sorrow share a twin room'
Anon/Cyril Haearn

mercalia wrote:

merseymouth wrote:Hi all, My tip for ensuring good mental health is to avoid social media & forums MM

well you have already failed then havent you?

I have found that scallywags enjoy being a bit mad as it enhances their already exotic lifestyles. Just ask The Mercury! (Or observe their antic).

Cugel

I am fairly old and a bit wise
If a young person asked me for a tip, I might suggest 'make a plan', or rather several plans and alternatives
And ask old wise people for advice
Mind, some great things happened to me unexpectedly and unplanned, made a couple of good decisions and several bad ones

Tarzan Heseltine nearly got it right, he planned his life on the back of a used envelope
..
Get rich
Go into politics
..
Be elected pm
Didn't quite achieve that, he could have been an awesome pm