{"Disclaimer---I'm-not-an-expert-on-mental-health-stuff-I'm-just-documenting-some-things-I'm-learning-here.-For-actual-advice-definitely-talk-to-a-professional":{"slug":"Disclaimer---I'm-not-an-expert-on-mental-health-stuff-I'm-just-documenting-some-things-I'm-learning-here.-For-actual-advice-definitely-talk-to-a-professional","filePath":"Disclaimer - I'm not an expert on mental health stuff I'm just documenting some things I'm learning here. For actual advice definitely talk to a professional.md","title":"Disclaimer - I'm not an expert on mental health stuff I'm just documenting some things I'm learning here. For actual advice definitely talk to a professional","links":["Therapy-and-Therapy-Adjacent-Stuff/Getting-Started-With-Therapy"],"tags":["wiki_explorer_exclude"],"content":"If you’d like to try and find a professional but don’t know where to start, feel free to check out Getting Started With Therapy!\nAlso obviously if you’re in an emergency call 988 which is the Crisis lifeline or 911."},"Dr.-K":{"slug":"Dr.-K","filePath":"Dr. K.md","title":"Dr. K","links":[],"tags":["wiki_explorer_exclude"],"content":"In case you’re curious who this info is coming from, he’s a psychiatrist that did his residency at Harvard and now does streams on Twitch/YouTube oriented at explaining mental health stuff to online communities.\nMore info here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alok_Kanojia"},"Tech-Interview-Prep/General-Behavioral-Interview-Prep":{"slug":"Tech-Interview-Prep/General-Behavioral-Interview-Prep","filePath":"Tech Interview Prep/General Behavioral Interview Prep.md","title":"General Behavioral Interview Prep","links":["Cracking-the-Coding-Interview---Gayle-Laakmaan","Behavioral-Interview-Prep"],"tags":[],"content":"Process:\n\nI personally like the prep process described for behavioral interviews in Cracking the Coding Interview - Gayle Laakmaan, so I would recommend finding a copy of that and reading through it (in particular do the prep grid and then practice having someone ask you a random behavioral question and tying that to one of your grid entries on the spot)\n\nIf you don’t want to read the book (although I would recommend you do), this can serve as a starting point\n\n\n\nRandom General Thoughts on Behavioral Interviews (these are accumulated from random people/experiences and will almost certainly have changed by the time you read this, but keeping these around just in case they’re helpful to anyone):\n\nThe interviewer just wants someone they can confidently say yes to because they want the interview process to be over as much as you do. Your job is to make it as easy for them to say yes as possible. That means don’t leave things implied, just say them outright (e.g. “…and I think this story shows one of my strengths which is that I’m detail oriented”)\nYou want to create a narrative that you’re perfect for the job\n\nE.g. the job is for a company that really values robust coding practices, then figure out how to answer questions with stories that highlight how detail-oriented you are/etc. Of course, you want to keep a look out for what jobs you’ll actually like as well, but for just getting the job\n^It’s best to set that up by looking through your 3 projects that you can use to answer every question (as I did in Behavioral Interview Prep and is described in Cracking the Coding Interview - Gayle Laakmaan), and then tie each of those to your narrative\n\n\nEvery single question is an opportunity to hammer home your narrative and make it easier for them to say yes to you, there are no free questions (e.g. “what’s your biggest weakness” isn’t a question that you just have to survive, it’s a chance for you to turn it into a strength like “my passion for a project really influences how effective I am at working, so for projects I’m not aligned with I don’t do as well. But, as a result of this I’ve learned I thrive in places I can take an active role in shaping product direction, and when I feel like I have a say in where things are going and I’m confident in product direction I excel.“)\n\nThat example answer is also a good example of how you should be interviewing companies even as they interview you. If you actually think about your biggest weaknesses/etc, what job/company/work do you imagine will play to your strengths and buffer against your weaknesses? During your interviews you should see if the company/role you’re interviewing for actually fits well with who you are and what you want.\n\n\n"},"Tech-Interview-Prep/Public-System-Design-Interview-Prep":{"slug":"Tech-Interview-Prep/Public-System-Design-Interview-Prep","filePath":"Tech Interview Prep/Public System Design Interview Prep.md","title":"Public System Design Interview Prep","links":[],"tags":[],"content":"I personally really like System Design in a Hurry. I think the best approach is to:\n\nRead the guide (the first section is “How to Use This Guide” which will let you know what to do based on how much time you have)\nDo a couple practice interviews with friends\n\nThe difference between someone who’s done a practice interview and who hasn’t is night and day. You’ll catch and fix an insane amount of mistakes/issues in your first practice interview, absolutely do not skip this step.\n\n\n"},"Tech-Interview-Prep/Technical-Interview-Prep---Leetcode":{"slug":"Tech-Interview-Prep/Technical-Interview-Prep---Leetcode","filePath":"Tech Interview Prep/Technical Interview Prep - Leetcode.md","title":"Technical Interview Prep - Leetcode","links":["Cracking-the-Coding-Interview---Gayle-Laakmaan"],"tags":[],"content":"This is only a guide for Leetcoding, make sure to read a resource like Cracking the Coding Interview - Gayle Laakmaan or similar to get a feel for the general approach to a technical interview. Also make sure to do a couple practice technical interviews with people, it doesn’t matter if you can Leetcode perfectly if you’re not communicating your thoughts clearly during the interview and you need practice to do that well.\nThings to do in order of how much time you have:\n\nBuy Leetcode Premium and grind through the top questions for the companies you’re interviewing with. The questions might not be exactly the same, but they’re likely going to be the exact same concepts, definitely by far the highest signal thing you can do\n\nI personally let my interviewers know if I’ve seen a question before and then say I’m still happy to work through it if they’d like. I think it earns you some bonus honesty points and I think it’s unnecessary extra stress to try and “fake” coming up with an answer, especially in an age where interviewers are looking out for stuff like that because of AI cheating.\n\n\nI then like these problems as a high level overview of all of the concepts you may need to know : jeremyaguilon.me/blog/ranking_interview_questions_by_cram_score\n\nNote: Meta doesn’t do DP as of 2024-09, so check if your companies have anything they’re not covering anymore\n\n\nThen if you have more time, if you can do a decent number of these you’re gonna be completely set and you don’t have to worry about anything. Blind 75: leetcode.com/problem-list/xi4ci4ig/\n\nThere is also a Neetcode version that’s a little bit worse built but is free: neetcode.io/practice But like I said you should already have leetcode premium for the top company questions anyway.\n\n\n\nIn general as an answer to “when is enough enough” for leetcode, I think I’d recommend doing the top 20 commonly seen problems from Leetcode premium for your companies, then go through the blog questions. At that point you’re already in a pretty solid spot, but if you want to do more then split the rest of your time between more common questions and the Blind 75."},"Therapy-and-Therapy-Adjacent-Stuff/Anxiety-Journaling-Action-Plan":{"slug":"Therapy-and-Therapy-Adjacent-Stuff/Anxiety-Journaling-Action-Plan","filePath":"Therapy and Therapy Adjacent Stuff/Anxiety Journaling Action Plan.md","title":"Anxiety Journaling Action Plan","links":[],"tags":[],"content":"These are the steps I’ve been told about (and then edited a bit to fit how my brain works better) to go through when feeling anxious.\n\nGo through the feelings wheel and write down which feelings you identify with, and then allow yourself to feel those feelings. feelingswheel.com/ (see below)\nWhat triggered this? Identify the event/thought/etc triggers for the emotion(s).\nWhat cognitive distortions are happening? Write down if possible. www.therapistaid.com/worksheets/cognitive-distortions (see below)\nCope in any ways that decrease painful emotions for you. Meditate, step away and intentionally “avoid” for a short time if you have to, do something you enjoy, etc.\nAfter decreasing the intensity of negative emotions through coping, address and challenge negative thoughts/cognitive distortions identified previously. See “Challenging Negative Thoughts” below\nGive yourself permission to shift gears into things you want to engage in (could be something entirely separate, or maybe could be shifting back to experiencing the thing that you were initially anxious about).\n\nYou may need to repeat these steps for the same thought/emotion(s) however many or few times. By breaking the Cycle of Avoidance, you’re forming a new cycle utilizing muscles you’re not used to using, so be patient and kind to yourself!\n\n\n"},"Therapy-and-Therapy-Adjacent-Stuff/Burnout-and-Feeling-Numb":{"slug":"Therapy-and-Therapy-Adjacent-Stuff/Burnout-and-Feeling-Numb","filePath":"Therapy and Therapy Adjacent Stuff/Burnout and Feeling Numb.md","title":"Burnout and Feeling Numb","links":["Video-Notes/You-Are-Burned-Out-and-Don't-Even-Know-It---Dr.-K","Video-Notes/I-Get-Burned-Out-When-I-Try-to-Achieve-My-Goals---Dr.-K"],"tags":[],"content":"\nNotes on videos from a therapist:\n\nStart with this one: You Are Burned Out and Don’t Even Know It - Dr. K\nThis one is interesting too: I Get Burned Out When I Try to Achieve My Goals - Dr. K\n\n\nAlso very obvious note but worth explicitly mentioning: you may just need to take a break. Not a fake half break where you’re still online checking work, a real break where everyone knows you’ll be fully offline and YOU know you’re fully offline so it isn’t in the back of your head all the time\n"},"Therapy-and-Therapy-Adjacent-Stuff/Getting-Started-With-Therapy":{"slug":"Therapy-and-Therapy-Adjacent-Stuff/Getting-Started-With-Therapy","filePath":"Therapy and Therapy Adjacent Stuff/Getting Started With Therapy.md","title":"Getting Started With Therapy","links":["Disclaimer---I'm-not-an-expert-on-mental-health-stuff-I'm-just-documenting-some-things-I'm-learning-here.-For-actual-advice-definitely-talk-to-a-professional","Questions-For-Therapy"],"tags":[],"content":"TL;DR: It’s only a few steps, it’s super doable!!\n\nFind a goal for therapy you can use to motivate yourself (Pre-Thought)\nSend out consultation requests via the link+email template in Sending Out Consultation Request Emails\nFigure out how well you vibe with different therapists while Doing the Consultations\nChoose Your Favorite Therapist\nRead Doing Therapy before your first session.\n\nAlso even though I can’t imagine it’s necessary, Disclaimer - I’m not an expert on mental health stuff I’m just documenting some things I’m learning here. For actual advice definitely talk to a professional.\nAlso this doc is only based on my own experiences/thoughts so your mileage may vary, but therapy has been the highest ROI thing I’ve ever done so I highly recommend trying it out! Most people conceptualize the benefits of therapy as big breakthrough sessions where you cry and work your past out and that’s true, but there’s also other really important benefits:\n\nHaving time allocated once a week to reflect and take stock of your mental/emotional/general wellbeing is a complete game changer. Everyone knows consistent reflection is good (for mental/emotional stuff but also literally any goal you have in your life), but it’s a lot of effort/hard to do without a forcing function and therapy serves as an excellent one.\nI have a big document called Questions For Therapy where I put stuff throughout the week that I think of but can’t deconstruct at that moment. I think most people have a feeling that they have thoughts/problems that can slip through the cracks (especially when life gets busy), and knowing you have therapy X days later lets you note down those thoughts without having to figure them out fully because you know you’ll get to them later.\n\nThe document also ends up serving as a really cool tracker of how your thoughts/problems/feelings have evolved over time!\n\n\n\nPre-Thought\n\nI’ve found therapy to be most successful when you go into it with at least one goal/thing you want to work on. It doesn’t have to be super well thought out, but even something as general as “I feel like I’m constantly messing up at X and I haven’t been able to fix it, so I want to understand why I’m doing this and then make progress toward being/feeling better” works\nThis is mainly for two reasons:\n\nTo give you something that will motivate you to keep trying to find a good therapist even if it gets a little tough\nTo give you something to track your progress on once you get into therapy. Your mileage may vary, but I found that you can make some relatively quick progress on goals that you’ve been stuck on for a while once you get into therapy and that can be very encouraging!\n\n\nAlso therapy is expensive, so check out your insurance and hopefully that’ll cover some of the cost (we’ll talk about making sure a therapist is under your insurance in the next section)! I will say, my insurance doesn’t cover anything (till I hit a massive deductible) and therapy is still the highest ROI thing I’ve ever done, so if you think you can afford it I really do think it’s worth it even at a high price tag.\n\nTangent: Tech nerds (guilty as charged)/grindset type people always talk about the compounding returns of working hard early in your career which I think is true, but imo people really discount the compounding effects of understanding yourself earlier in life because that leads to you choosing career paths/jobs, friends, and romantic partners that all align better with who you are/want to be (and I’d argue the aggregate impact of making those choices better is more important than almost anything else). I will admit on average it probably leads to you being less “productive” because part of what you figure out will almost certainly be that you don’t want to work 16 hours a day, but (my hope at least) is that that “productivity” is exchanged for happiness/self-actualization which I think is a lovely trade. For me therapy seems to be the right path to get that self-understanding for now, but I believe this idea of compounding returns is true regardless of your mechanism for understanding yourself!\n\n\n\nSending Out Consultation Request Emails\n\nGo to: www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/, you can filter by your insurance (HUGE) and also by the issues you’re dealing with+their types of therapy\nThen just find like 20 people that seem interesting and spam out the email below (that is literally the email I sent out for myself, but make sure to edit it to fit your situation/goals/etc as needed) and wait on responses!\n\nKeep in mind that in these consultations you are (even if only superficially) opening up about your problems and that can be draining, so try not to overwhelm yourself with like 8 consultations in a week lol. You can always spread your consultations out by scheduling for a couple weeks in the future!\n\n\n\nHello!\n\nMy name is Suchir, and I'm a recently graduated student looking for therapy. In case it helps you tell if I have coverage/if you take my insurance, I have [YOUR INSURANCE PLAN HERE]. With regard to why I'm seeking therapy, I don't have any immediate mental illness or emergency situations [IF YOU HAVE AN EMERGENCY LOOK UP IMMEDIATE HELPLINES], but [YOUR SITUATION HERE]. If you're free and it's offered, I'd love to schedule a quick free consultation to get an understanding of your methods as well as to assess our compatibility. I'm free any weekday (or even weekend) after 1pm ET if that happens to work for you anytime soon!\n\nLooking forward to hearing back from you!\n\nThank you for your time,\nSuchir\n\nDoing the Consultations\nFor me the main things I want to figure out in a consultation are: do they do in person, what are their specialties (both for issues they deal with and therapy methods), and how well we vibe\n\nIn person - Certainly not necessary and different people have different preferences, but I personally have found it useful to have a separate physical space to be doing therapy from (rather than zooming in from my bedroom lol) so if you’re open to it it’s definitely worth keeping an eye out for!\nSpecialties - They’ll always say client-focused/I work with the client to figure out what’s best, so you basically just have to push them a bit harder and be like: yes totally makes sense we’ll work together to figure out what works for me, but what in particular are your specialties? That being said, no need to push super hard on this because ideally you’ll mostly know from their profile and the last section is what you should spend the majority of your time on anyway.\nHow Well You Vibe - This is by far the most important part and generally means how comfortable you are with them. Therapy is all about being able to open up to this person and accept thoughts from them on the deepest/most vulnerable/most insecure parts of yourself, so don’t settle for “eh good enough” on your vibe/comfort with them.\n\nTo test this, I usually just spend the last 5-10 minutes of the consultation being like yeah so this is my current issue/goal, how would you approach talking me through that/understanding what’s going on?\n\nThey might give vague details about things they’d do, if they do that that’s understandable and let them know you don’t need them to give you therapy on the spot, but you just want to get a feel for some concrete examples of questions they’d ask to get a feel for how they’d speak to you and then - if it’s interesting to you - their high-level approach of how they’d try to drill down on your issue.\n\n\nThis test pretty quickly revealed things to me like some therapists’ approaches feeling condescending or accusatory to me/not making sense to me/etc. You can tell pretty quickly if you don’t vibe, just trust your gut!\n\n\n\nChoose Your Favorite Therapist\n\nThis is all up to you! The main thing I’d say again is 100% trust your gut. If it sounds like a person is smart and deals with the issues you care about (aka they’re “good on paper”) but for whatever reason you feel a little off about them, then trust your gut and look for someone who’s a better fit!\n\nI eventually did like 12 consultations (got a ton of info about different things I liked and didn’t like) which tired me out and took a couple months, so I was like alright I’m taking the next person I like a lot even if they’re not absolutely perfect. Then I took the next person I clicked with and that’s how I met my therapist who I really love!\nSo it’s not about finding the perfect person, it’s just about getting enough consultations in that you see the range of different types of therapists (which helps set a standard in your mind+see what you like and don’t like) and how you vibe with them so that you can make the most informed decision about who you want to go with.\nAlso don’t feel bad about being open that you’re consulting with other therapists, they’ll understand (and if they don’t you probably don’t want them as your therapist lol), and it’s always completely feasible to be like “hey I’m gonna explore other options just to make sure, but I do like you and I may decide to go with you I just need a few weeks/etc.”\n\n\n\nDoing Therapy\n\nYour therapist will have much better thoughts on how to do things than I do. The only thing I personally would recommend is, similar to how you came up with a goal in the Pre-Thought, try and have a goal for what you want to talk about/accomplish in any given session (the first session will just be you talking through your life story most likely, so don’t worry about it for the first session)\n\nI also try to spend like 30 minutes before each session thinking through my goals/thoughts/situations and journaling about all of my superficial/first-order thoughts, that way my sessions are only the deeper hard hitting stuff vs me fumbling around collecting my thoughts for half the session. It can be pretty hard work though so it’s okay if you don’t want to do that, but for time periods/sessions where you know you want/need to get something out of it this pre-therapy thinking is extremely rewarding in my experience.\n\n\nI also personally really like hand-writing notes on sessions (and then I save pictures of the pages too) because otherwise I’d forget everything over time (and it’s extremely interesting to look back on a few months later), but you don’t have to if you don’t want to and it’s not very common from what I understand!\nBe honest and open, especially for the hard stuff! I had some things I had never talked with anybody about before therapy, but I talked about all of it in my first session and it was wild how big of a difference it made to even just say the stuff once. The more honest you are the better they’ll be able to help you and the more you’ll feel like the thoughts they’re giving you are fully informed and thus useful.\n\nThis one is an especially tough lesson to learn, but I’ve found the things we struggle with the most are also - sometimes - things we have trouble being fully honest about which is completely intuitive and something I struggle with too. That being said, in my opinion lying/telling half-truths to your therapist is like walking into a doctor’s office because you have pain in your knee, telling them your shoulder hurts, and then being unhappy they didn’t fix your knee problem. They can only work with what you tell them, so do your best to make a habit of only telling the truth.\n\n\nI had a bit of trouble with this, but keep in mind that this is a business transaction so you can walk away if it’s not working. Your therapist will be someone you confide in about very vulnerable things, but if you feel like your connection with your therapist isn’t as strong as you’d like/don’t feel like therapy is working you can be open about that, and if things don’t change in a session or two you can always look for another therapist! They won’t take it personally because this is just their job, they’re not relying on you for friendship, and they’ll be happy you’re finding someone else who will be able to help you.\n\nCongrats on reading through this, and good luck!! <3\n"},"Video-Notes/I-Get-Burned-Out-When-I-Try-to-Achieve-My-Goals---Dr.-K":{"slug":"Video-Notes/I-Get-Burned-Out-When-I-Try-to-Achieve-My-Goals---Dr.-K","filePath":"Video Notes/I Get Burned Out When I Try to Achieve My Goals - Dr. K.md","title":"I Get Burned Out When I Try to Achieve My Goals - Dr. K","links":["Dr.-K"],"tags":[],"content":"This document is just my notes on this video: www.youtube.com/watch If you’re interested, feel free to watch the original video instead of reading my interpretation of it because this is documenting a conversation and there’s a lot of emotion/nuance communicated via the video that’s hard to get across in these text-based notes.\nThis is a call between Dr. K and a guy name Nithin.\nIntro to Nithin’s situation:\n\nNithin tries to achieve his goals, but every time he tries he can do it for a few weeks and then stops because he gets paralyzed\n\nHe finds generally more success if he tells other people about his goals/gets external validation, but if he doesn’t get any external validation he stops within a few days\n\n\nHe had a sad incident where he was in a robotics team with his friends but then they all of a sudden started a new team without him and he felt guilty but he didn’t know what he did wrong\n\nWhy Does Nithin Want These Things So Bad?\n\nIn particular why is he so anxious about meeting his goals of playing the piano and exercising?\nDr. K - Imagine yourself after 3 years of playing the piano and going to the gym (i.e. achieving your goals), what is that person like? How does your mind view that person/how would it feel to be that person?\n\nNithin clearly gets very happy and is smiling and is like wow I’d be confident and it feels so joyful (and a little embarrassing to be so vulnerable)\n\n\nDr. K - And now how does it feel to not be that person?\n\nFeels bad, feels like he doesn’t fit anywhere\n\n\n\nDigging into the Problem:\n\nMind is the enemy, if you give it time to think it will paralyze itself\nGuilt is a strong motivator\nNithin has decided he doesn’t like himself and so he needs to change. No more not getting invited to robotics team loser Nithin, now he wants to be chad ripped good at piano Nithin lol\nBut now he’s noticed that loser Nithin’s mind isn’t useful, it gets in the way and stops him from making progress. So he found a way to trick it which is guilt (he felt so guilty when he got kicked out of robotics team, and told himself never again, so guilt is his best motivator)\nSo now he creates artificial guilt by telling people about his goals (e.g. I’m going to the gym) so that he’ll feel guilty if he doesn’t do it which tricks his mind into getting him to the gym\nYour mind is a horse and your guilt is a whip saying “you better move”\nCreating a sabotaging but effective cycle\n\nWhy it’s sabotaging gets explained at the end\n\n\nWeirdly enough, you don’t have to abandon that strategy immediately. It’s unhealthy long term, but every day you go to the gym is a win\nThe long term strategy is to think about where these goals come from, and realizing that you don’t like who you are and you believe doing some external action will give you confidence/pride/esteem in yourself\n\nE.g. I don’t like myself, let me go get a fancy car and then the world will love me\nBut why do you need the world to love you? You need the world to love you because you don’t love yourself\n\n\nSo all of your goals are coming from a non genuine place, they’re coming from a hatred/dislike of yourself rather than a deep inspiration/passion\nThink about when you stopped being proud of yourself (Nithin says for him it was right after he stopped being a “gifted child” in high school)\nThink about what’s a single thing you can be proud of for yourself, not about impressing other people, do it for you\nNithin says helping other people makes me happy, Dr. K responds you have to pay attention to whether you’re happy because of how they thanked you or because you made the world a better place? He says he’s happy he made the world a better place but still feels like shit\nThen a hypothetical, would he choose being chad ripped Nithin who can play the keyboard who has a great job his parents can brag about, or mediocre Nithin who parents say his job is okay but he gets to help make one person’s life better every day\n\nHe says he’d choose chad Nithin\nGood exercise to play around with what he cares about/why\n\n\nDr. K gives Nithin a task which is practice helping a person and then even if you feel like shit/no better of a person, accept yourself and how you are as okay\nAs you learn to accept yourself as you are (not as who you will be when you achieve xyz), that’s what gives you confidence in yourself\n\nChad Nithin will still be striving for xyz other goal, and he still won’t be happy with himself\n“You must forsake the path of the Chad to become the Chad” lol\n\n\nNithin says this is gonna be really hard\n\nDr. K says yes because you’ve always taken the easy way via guilt\n“Guilt hurts don’t get me wrong, but don’t tell me it isn’t easy. It’s so easy to go to the gym when you’ve told everyone you’re going”\n\n\n\nAfter Call\n\nNegative emotions are bad but they are very powerful, so we trick ourselves into harnessing them\n\nAnd that’s not necessarily bad because it works in the short-term, but in the long-term you’re tying your success/motivation to suffering\nBut there is another way which is self-acceptance/self-understanding, but we rarely bother to explore it because the negative emotions path works well enough\n\n\n"},"Video-Notes/Willingness-Aka-How-to-Feel-Your-Feelings-and-Emotions---Therapy-in-a-Nutshell":{"slug":"Video-Notes/Willingness-Aka-How-to-Feel-Your-Feelings-and-Emotions---Therapy-in-a-Nutshell","filePath":"Video Notes/Willingness Aka How to Feel Your Feelings and Emotions - Therapy in a Nutshell.md","title":"Willingness Aka How to Feel Your Feelings and Emotions - Therapy in a Nutshell","links":["How-To-Move-On---Dr.-K","My-Experience-with-Willingness-to-Feel"],"tags":[],"content":"This document is my notes from the following YouTube video, so you’re welcome to watch that to get the info directly from the source if you’d like! www.youtube.com/watch\nSteps:\n\nDescribe what you’re feeling instead of judging\n\nAll core emotions serve a purpose, instead of saying good/bad say pleasant, unpleasant, cold, hot, heavy, light\nWillingness is not saying I want to feel pain, it’s saying this is what I’m feeling right now so I might as well tune in and experience it. And this is the process that’s most likely to free you from intense painful experiences\n\n\nBe curious, practice exploring a healthy relationship to your emotions and sensations\n\nCuriosity is the antidote to worry, so if you explore with curiosity the worry should slowly melt away\n“Oh hi anxiety, do you have anything to say before we move on?”\nFigure out what the emotion feels like in your body, where is it located?\n\nDoes it have a color?\nDoes it have a sound?\nDoes it change over time?\n\n\nThis isn’t about figuring out the why with some childhood explanation (overanalyzing is a form of avoidance), it’s about the willingness to stay in the present moment and experience\nInstead of holding the brick of emotions far away (hard to do, arm gets tired), be curious and pull it in close and feel it (easier to hold in your lap)\nStop struggling against the emotion and instead put your energy toward embracing it\n\n\nBe present\n\nIt’s natural to worry about how long will this last, what if this lasts forever, etc. But instead just think “it is what it is right now” and then get back in your body, be curious, name and describe\n\n\nGet back in your body\n\nSometimes it helps to put your hand where you’re feeling the emotion and breathe space into it, imagine lightness flowing into your emotions\nNotice muscle tension, expand awareness into other parts of your body/other sensations\nExperiment with inviting your emotions to get worse, “bring it on anxiety, do your worst. You can be uncomfortable, but you can’t damage me.” This is called boiling the kettle. When you realize the emotions can’t actually hurt you they lose their power over you\n\n\nBe compassionate\n\n“How am I treating my body and my anxiety, am I being kind?”\nThe emotions may not feel good, but being mean to them will make it worse\nSo say to your emotions “take as much time as you need”\nLean in and be gentle and empathetic and fully accepting with your emotions, like hugging a loved one when they’re hurt\n\n\nWatch out for your “stories”\n\nAll humans have these: what’s wrong with me, is this emotions telling me something, etc, etc.\nIt’s okay to explore that and ask if your emotions are asking you to change something/etc. As the thoughts come up just acknowledge them and move on, don’t dwell on them or overthink them\nOverthinking can be a form of avoidance, so shift attention away from stories and back to your body\nWhat you’re feeling right now is unpleasant but it doesn’t make it bad. Feeling an unpleasant emotion doesn’t hurt you, struggling against it does\nYou are the CEO of your brain, you aren’t in control of what thoughts/sensations come up, but you get to choose what you focus on, and when you focus on something it gets louder. So the key is to acknowledge the unpleasant emotions as they pop up, and then choose what to focus on (sometimes it’ll be the unpleasant emotion because you want to process it, sometimes it will be something else)\n\nWhen you constantly scan yourself for “how’s my anxiety today” and put importance on that all the time you tell your brain that’s the most important thing and your brain will put more energy toward it\n\n\n\n\nShift your focus to something that’s more important to you\n\nWhether that’s peace or calm or being a kind person or something else, once you’ve acknowledged the painful sensation deliberately focus your energy back toward something you care about. This isn’t avoidance or distraction, it’s deliberately putting your mental energy toward something you care about once you’ve acknowledge the unpleasant emotion\n\n\n\nCan practice willingness by doing an uncomfortable thing and monitoring your emotions (like holding an ice cube or doing a wall sit)\nThis worked in some pretty major ways for me, especially when combined with deliberate idle time aka not listening to music/podcasts re: How To Move On - Dr. K\nMy Experience with Willingness to Feel"},"Video-Notes/You-Are-Burned-Out-and-Don't-Even-Know-It---Dr.-K":{"slug":"Video-Notes/You-Are-Burned-Out-and-Don't-Even-Know-It---Dr.-K","filePath":"Video Notes/You Are Burned Out and Don't Even Know It - Dr. K.md","title":"You Are Burned Out and Don't Even Know It - Dr. K","links":["Dr.-K"],"tags":[],"content":"This document is my notes on this video: www.youtube.com/watch If you’re interested feel free to watch the video instead of my notes because a lot gets lost in the conversion from video to text!\nThis is Dr. K reviewing what he currently thinks about burnout as a condition. It’s important to note he doesn’t give a magic bullet that’ll solve it immediately (especially because he works with a lot of people doing intense executive/finance jobs, and sometimes the job is the problem and no amount of introspective work can fix it the way that quitting can). With that said, he does offer a pretty deep understanding of what burnout is and what causes it, and this definitely does give a lot of tools that can help you chip away at the problem.\nSetup\n\nBurnout is increasing, a lot of people are burnt out and don’t even know it\nPeople don’t understand what burnout looks/feels like, and we invalidate it a lot\nBurned out people will generally be like “oh my life is objectively good” and then use that as a way to say if they have stuff to be grateful for then they can’t be burnt out\nGenerally have a routine like wake up, go to work, come home, exercise, video games, sleep, and rinse and repeat for forever\n\nNo overt signs of mental illness like the stereotypical overworked alcoholic detective, so people just assume they aren’t burnt out\n\n\n\nWhat Burnout Looks Like\n\nFirst experience: lack of energy despite the ability to do work/generally function\n\nPeople feel like they have low energy and they think it’s about other things (e.g. I need to meditate more, drink more water, do yoga, etc)\nYou can get out of bed and go to work and have fun and etc, but life feels a little flat in general\n\n\nSecond phase of burnout: lack of empathy, stop caring about other people (this stage can even come before lack of energy)\n\nV much “short fuse” type of vibe, not even necessarily that you’re exploding anger on people, but just getting annoyed/irritated more easily than you normally would too\nManifests as a ton of cynicism (e.g. about their job, the world, etc)\nMost extreme is: “Everything is gonna go to shit no matter what I do”\nBut even way smaller stuff like when colleague drops the ball, you have no energy to be empathetic for them\n\n\nThird phase of burnout: lack of enjoyment/fulfillment with activities (esp with job)\n\nPeople tend to devalue by being like “well at least I have a job bc some people don’t have a job that’s as easy as mine” (again, very easy to invalidate burnout)\nOn paper they like their life/job/etc, but not deriving much/any actual enjoyment from it\nLosing sight of the people involved/what actually matters\n\n\n\nBurnout Is Not Depression\n\nDepression = something that you carry with you, can be triggered by external circumstances but you continue to feel it even as circumstances change (e.g. breakup triggers sadness, but then even after you get into a new relationship you’re still sad, could be depression)\nBurnout Syndrome - Generally tied to work/occupation, but not necessarily bc there is an individual component as well\nLevel of stress hormones in depressed person are elevated, but low/normal in burnout\n\nImplies things are less disturbed physiologically in a burnout state compared to depression\n\n\nSome people still believe burnout is under the umbrella of depression (e.g. occupational depression), still very much debated\nDr. K believes they’re more discrete things even though there is probably overlap\nAnhedonia - Unable to find pleasure in things they would normally find pleasure in\n\nMedically specific to depression (e.g. really indicates depression)\n\n\nBurnout generally hasn’t reached anhedonia. The example being if you can get yourself to go to a party or play a video game it will bring you some joy, burnout just makes it really hard to find the motivation to do those things in the first place\nGlobally, most common cause of burnout is someone who wants to work/enjoys working, but somehow can’t do it or runs into obstacles that keeps them from doing it (e.g. Dr. K likes working with patients but he has to do a million pieces of administrative work first)\n\nAn individual that tries really hard against a system that doesn’t want your efforts to be seen (corporate red tape, office politics, etc.)\n\n\nWorking really hard, but huge gap between effort being put in and the yield you’re getting, and that gap is burnout\n\nSo it’s not being lazy, you’re trying hard and just not getting the yield\n\n\n\nBurnout generally also exists because of simultaneous external pressure being put on you (workplace/boss) and an internal pressure that you put on yourself (from certain emotional drives)\n\nThe workload example below is illustrative\n\n\n\nSix Factors that Lead to Burnout - (when there’s discrepancies between you and the workplace in these things)\n\nWorkload\n\nThere is a workplace contribution (workplace wanting you to work more bc of understaffing/etc)\nBut there’s also an individual contribution at work (how much you’re taking on at work) and how much you’re taking on at home/etc\nThere can be individual emotional drives that make you self-increase workload (e.g. you’re a people pleaser and need boss to love you, you’re conflict avoidant and can’t say no, you really want a promotion, etc) even though you’re already working too hard.\nRectifications - Boundary setting, understanding and fixing your individual emotional drives that are causing you to act against your own best interest\n\n\nControl\n\nCan have a boss that’s naturally just a micromanager that gives you no control\nOr you’re just in a position where your job gives you no control, you’re just a cog in a big machine\nYou could also be a control freak, you’re looking for way more control than is reasonable/appropriate in the role and what needs to be rectified can actually be on your end\nAgain, can be a combination of internal and external things\n\n\nReward\n\nHourly+overtime gives you extra comp for working long hours, salary doesn’t\nYou may actually be underpaid\nOr sometimes it’s internal and people care about it purely relatively (e.g. you don’t care how much you get, you just want to get more than your coworkers/the “most”)\n\n\nCommunity\n\nCommunity is critical, isolation leads to burnout and it’s possible your job isolates you in some ways\nOn an individual level could be social anxiety, comparisons, avoiding social situations (e.g. “I don’t want to go to happy hour, how will I talk to people there”)\nJoining things like professional groups can also help alleviate\n\n\nFairness\n\nIf someone feels like they’re being treated unfairly, burnout spikes\nReal fairness doesn’t matter, perceptions of unfairness are what’s actually critical\nUsually manifests as feeling like you’re being taken advantage of, favoritsm, office politics, nepotism\nBut this might actually be individual, you may perceive unfairness where there isn’t any\n\nWhen you do your roommate’s dishes it registers 1000% but when they do yours it doesn’t register at all\n\n\nOr if you’re particularly egotistical/narcissistic you may spike perception of unfairness more than normal\nOr you may be willing to be a doormat/conflict avoidant so you are being treated unfairly but you’re not pointing it out and so it continues\nAgain understanding what’s external and what’s internal is useful, and working out the internal stuff can help\n\n\nValues\n\nArguably the most important thing\nPeople want to be challenged and valued, people generally want to work and make an impact in the world\nWhen people are challenged and succeed and someone appreciates/recognizes it, that makes you feel fulfilled\nDiscrepancy example, doctor cares about helping patients while hospital cares about billing\n\nDr. K would say yes after a 24 hour shift to staying an hour to help someone who just had a suicide attempt because that connects to his sense of purpose/desire to be a doctor, he wouldn’t say yes to staying an hour to call insurance companies and figure out billing\n\n\nThe discrepancy between what the company wants and why you show up causes burnout\nVery hard to internally/individually fix this, generally fixed via switching jobs (internally in the org or externally)\n\n\n\nMedical Perspective\n\nSo this is why it’s so hard to fix, it’s likely a combination of what’s going on on the company side and the individual side\n\nLinkedIn influencers always blame the individual, reddit always blames the corporation, usually it’s a little of both\n\n\nExamine your situation/the 6 factors and which are your issues\n\nE.g. you may feel overworked, and then look a little deeper and see why. Is the boss forcing you to work those hours or are you just unable to say no when you already have enough on your plate because you really want your boss to like you (or both)\nThis can help you fix issues on your own individual end, and longer term can help you be deliberate with why/when to leave your current job and making sure your next job is more aligned\n\n\n\nQuestions\n\nCan burnout last really long?\n\nBurnout implies permanence while in reality it can obviously be repaired. But burnout isn’t a binary yes or no, there can be residual burnout that you’re feeling even when the problem is fixed that can last a while. But at the same time if the “residual” burnout is lasting forever maybe that means the source of the burnout hasn’t actually been addressed\n\n\nCan you be burnt out from life?\n\nYes, you can have cynicism, lack of empathy, and lack of fulfilment in life. Burnout definitely fits\nFixing this (especially lack of fulfilment in life) requires you to look inward and figure out what you want from life and then intentionally crafting your life around those things\n\nWithout deliberate thought in this you’re just living your life at the whims of randomness\n\n\n\n\n"},"Why-You-Should-Get-Obsidian":{"slug":"Why-You-Should-Get-Obsidian","filePath":"Why You Should Get Obsidian.md","title":"Why You Should Get Obsidian","links":[],"tags":[],"content":"obsidian.md/\nI’ll make a more fully-featured pitch at some point, but the core is: my brain works best by connecting random different ideas together (I’m sure everyone’s does to some extent) and Obsidian lets you do that super easily. There’s also a second thing that’s almost as important which is there’s a billion community-made plugins so ANYTHING you wish Obsidian could do, someone has already built out a plugin for and all you have to do is click install (in fact this wiki is built off of obsidian too)!\nThis guy is a hardcore tech guy, but he also has a great video pitch for Obsidian: www.youtube.com/watch"},"index":{"slug":"index","filePath":"index.md","title":"Wiki Home","links":["Therapy-and-Therapy-Adjacent-Stuff/Getting-Started-With-Therapy","Why-You-Should-Get-Obsidian"],"tags":[],"content":"Thanks for coming in here! 🥳 Feel free to check out the page that was my inspiration for making this wiki in the first place: Getting Started With Therapy.\nI’m building this wiki and the hosting/deployment/nerdy computer science part of it from scratch rather than via Medium/other solutions because I think it’s a fun learning experience and also it feels dope to be able to update things in my personal Obsidian vault and see it automatically update on my public wiki. Also if you haven’t checked out Obsidian yet please do, it’s SO DOPE Why You Should Get Obsidian"}}