I had a similar issue, although I think it was just a product of OCD. I used to have insane, tear-your-hair out arguments online with idiots which I could never ever not respond to, no matter how petty. It just bounced around in my brain until I had to vomit out a response to stop myself from going nuts.
I’d like to see a competent cognitive-behavioral therapist, as Eliezer recommended, but I don’t believe that competent mental health professionals actually exist. Better to do your own research, and find your own solution.
It just bounced around in my brain until I had to vomit out a response to stop myself from going nuts.
Just an idea: How about you write a response… but in a text file that you just save on your disk and never publish?
Here is a more complicated solution, if you are a programmer. Once when I was irritated by idiots on some website, I created a GreaseMonkey script for a browser that has highlighted the comments of the idiots with yellow color. Their usernames were hardcoded in the script. This trivial change had a huge psychological impact. When I saw their next comment and it was highlighted, I was like “oh, that’s just some known idiot, no need to take this seriously, just laught about it”, and it didn’t hurt me at all. And when I found a new hopeless idiot, I added the new username into my code, and refreshed the page; so I had my revenge. It was incredibly calming, and no one else knew about it.
I don’t believe that competent mental health professionals actually exist.
I think they do, especially if you select for the best evidence-based method that will attract evidence-based people, but you may have to try more than one professional, and many people’s financial or insurance situations don’t permit that.
I don’t believe that competent mental health professionals actually exist
Ouch shots fired. How the success rate of CBT looks like depends heavily what exactly the mental health problem is. “Curing” or rather alleviating many kinds of phobias via cognitive behavior therapy has a really excellent success rate for example.
I had a similar issue, although I think it was just a product of OCD. I used to have insane, tear-your-hair out arguments online with idiots which I could never ever not respond to, no matter how petty. It just bounced around in my brain until I had to vomit out a response to stop myself from going nuts.
I’d like to see a competent cognitive-behavioral therapist, as Eliezer recommended, but I don’t believe that competent mental health professionals actually exist. Better to do your own research, and find your own solution.
Just an idea: How about you write a response… but in a text file that you just save on your disk and never publish?
Here is a more complicated solution, if you are a programmer. Once when I was irritated by idiots on some website, I created a GreaseMonkey script for a browser that has highlighted the comments of the idiots with yellow color. Their usernames were hardcoded in the script. This trivial change had a huge psychological impact. When I saw their next comment and it was highlighted, I was like “oh, that’s just some known idiot, no need to take this seriously, just laught about it”, and it didn’t hurt me at all. And when I found a new hopeless idiot, I added the new username into my code, and refreshed the page; so I had my revenge. It was incredibly calming, and no one else knew about it.
I think they do, especially if you select for the best evidence-based method that will attract evidence-based people, but you may have to try more than one professional, and many people’s financial or insurance situations don’t permit that.
Ouch shots fired. How the success rate of CBT looks like depends heavily what exactly the mental health problem is. “Curing” or rather alleviating many kinds of phobias via cognitive behavior therapy has a really excellent success rate for example.