Hmmm, I think ‘healthy’ is saying too much. This is one particular way of being psychologically healthy, but in my model you can be psychologically healthy and suffer more than 5 minutes per week and experience inner conflict some of the time. I think this is implicitly making the target too narrow for people that care about getting there and might consider this a reference point.
Also, I’m curious if the depression comment also refers to adaptive depression, like when someone very close to you dies and you need to adapt? (I’m not making a case that prolonged grief is good but I would make the case that grieving for 6 months or so is not psychologically unhealthy).
I didn’t pick the title, but I definitely consider it inclusive rather than exclusive or normative :)
More specifically, I think there are peaks and valleys in psychological health, and I don’t think the space I occupy is necessarily one of the highest peaks. But I would say that, regarding suffering or prolonged internal conflict, these measures feel pretty useful for determining two of the axes that point directionally at “health,” unless there’s a convincing argument that there are points in which more suffering or more internal conflict can be better, which I have yet to find convincing (and I suspect people who believe that would operationalize them differently than I would).
And yes, the reason I described the depressive episode the way I did was to indicate that I’ve only felt anything close to that due to life circumstances where the feelings were fairly legible and understandable! Six months of grief (or more) after someone dies is definitely not a sign of mental unhealth.
I think this is implicitly making the target too narrow for people that care about getting there and might consider this a reference point.
Does a narrow, hardly achievable target actually have a negative effect? It would be interesting to see some research, in particular as it’d imply sequence “Challenging the Difficult” makes things worse for part of people.
I’ve heard that, for sleep in particular, some people have Received Wisdom that everyone needs 8 hours of sleep per day, and if they’re not getting it, that’s a problem, and this has led some people who naturally sleep 7 hours to worry and stress about it, causing insomnia and whatnot.
Of course, ideally such people would have better ability to manage such worries (and better “I should do some more googling before stressing about it too hard” reflexes), but in practice many do not.
Hmmm, I think ‘healthy’ is saying too much. This is one particular way of being psychologically healthy, but in my model you can be psychologically healthy and suffer more than 5 minutes per week and experience inner conflict some of the time. I think this is implicitly making the target too narrow for people that care about getting there and might consider this a reference point.
Also, I’m curious if the depression comment also refers to adaptive depression, like when someone very close to you dies and you need to adapt? (I’m not making a case that prolonged grief is good but I would make the case that grieving for 6 months or so is not psychologically unhealthy).
All the other points seem fine to me ❤️
I didn’t pick the title, but I definitely consider it inclusive rather than exclusive or normative :)
More specifically, I think there are peaks and valleys in psychological health, and I don’t think the space I occupy is necessarily one of the highest peaks. But I would say that, regarding suffering or prolonged internal conflict, these measures feel pretty useful for determining two of the axes that point directionally at “health,” unless there’s a convincing argument that there are points in which more suffering or more internal conflict can be better, which I have yet to find convincing (and I suspect people who believe that would operationalize them differently than I would).
And yes, the reason I described the depressive episode the way I did was to indicate that I’ve only felt anything close to that due to life circumstances where the feelings were fairly legible and understandable! Six months of grief (or more) after someone dies is definitely not a sign of mental unhealth.
Does a narrow, hardly achievable target actually have a negative effect? It would be interesting to see some research, in particular as it’d imply sequence “Challenging the Difficult” makes things worse for part of people.
I’ve heard that, for sleep in particular, some people have Received Wisdom that everyone needs 8 hours of sleep per day, and if they’re not getting it, that’s a problem, and this has led some people who naturally sleep 7 hours to worry and stress about it, causing insomnia and whatnot.
Of course, ideally such people would have better ability to manage such worries (and better “I should do some more googling before stressing about it too hard” reflexes), but in practice many do not.