Nachimir

I don't mean to be down on professional therapy; it's helped people I've known. Likewise for anti-depressants; so while I've avoided them myself I wouldn't advise anyone against taking them. Conversely, both have failed for people I've known too. Problem, symptoms, attitude, treatment and the kind of professional help available are a very complex set of interactions and I wouldn't claim for one second to have all of the answers. There are a lot of various therapies I've read about (Including CBT), but one book I'd really recommend is "Self-Analysis" by Karen Horney. She was a relatively early psychoanalyst who advocated patients taking charge of their own problems alongside therapy. It's directly stated self help from the 1930s without the patronising fluff you'd get in recent toss. It's also relatively independent of any psychoanalytic dogma from the time. As a rule, if someone is really unstable then of course they need outside help. Mostly though, even troubled people tend to keep themselves out of danger: if possible, we tend to avoid trauma we can't cope with, and I think that's what Scrobbs is getting at. I didn't mean to come over all "BE A MAN" about problems. They take time. TP, you pick a good example with grieving. It's an innate process, one I've read a lot on and am very curious about. I seem to recall you've also read some of John Bowlby's work on it? People seem to have their own speeds when it comes to it, and mine is fast. If you hadn't picked it up yet, I'm pretty brutal when it comes to my own feelings. The last time I fell in love with someone who wasn't interested, but was a friend, I asked her to look me in the eye and tell me she wasn't and never would be interested in me that way. Hurt like hell, but meant I didn't waste a second on hope and got on with acceptance. I wouldn't say grief should always be left alone, but the grief itself is not something you can attack. The hope that keeps it hanging around is well worth having a dig at though if it will help you to reach acceptance. As I said initially, it's about removing structures that support (and perpetuate) negative states. Attacking a feeling itself is like striking a flame with a dry stick... I don't want to come over as confrontational in any way so I'd just like to say that: that's very true. Armchair, well pointed out on stigma and medical models. I think the DSM IV falls pretty far short of a comprehensive view of mental illness, and the inverse of its definitions isn't a picture of mental health. It's better than it was, but I think we have a long way to go. I didn't mean to lay responsibility solely at the door of medicine; stigma is a much wider cultural problem of course.

Thanks very much It sounds like we've gone through something similar in terms of efficiency: the more I've uprooted and destroyed, the more efficient I've become. Writing about internal stuff used to be a daily thing about a decade ago, now it's once every few months at most and tends to direct me straight back out to things to do, people to talk to, and external stuff to get out of my life. Edit: Often it's just a thought process now and I can spot problems a lot more quickly than I used to be able to. I think there's definitely a point where the process switches from uprooting and destroying shit things to creating much better ones to replace them, and that's quite a tough problem in itself.

Sorry for the long post, but I have a very hefty 2 cents on solving unconscious conflict and negative emotional states: Persistence is *the* thing that will help you fight them, and that's not a matter of grinding them down with opposing feelings, but of letting negative emotions repeatedly take their course, and as they do observing and gradually removing the mental structures that support them. The unconscious can be very self-defeating, and at worst self-destructive. When we build automatic behavioural defenses against the things we fear, they're designed to not be easy to root out. Or look at it this way: if defense mechanisms were easy to find and destroy, they'd be pretty shitty defenses. If the conscious mind could go into the unconscious at will and monkey around with stuff, then a lot of very efficient things we can do on autopilot would suddenly become prone to being much less efficient and more erratic. The conscious mind is constantly focusing on one thing (or at least that's what it does best), processing and altering information, jumping from thing to thing in a generally linear way. The unconscious contains all of our experience, and the best way (IMO) we've come to see it is as a gestalt; a non-linear mess of everything. Any data written into the unconscious is meant to be persistent, as well built habits give us survivability and efficiency. Unfortunately, it also means we can develop persistent problems that seem impossible to get to the root of. We do a lot on autopilot, freeing up our conscious to do more important things (i.e. not having to think in detail about how to step off a kerb every time frees the mind to look for traffic). Often though, basic emotional responses to uncomfortable events will create defenses without us even realising. They aren't particularly thought out, just designed to impel us towards or away from things, and that can have long term consequences including baffling spates of negative moods. Your emotional states likely have specific triggers, but getting to see them even after they've happened and you're in a funk or angry is difficult. Getting to the point where you see them coming in advance is very hard indeed. The defense mechanism is not something you unconsciously want to see, and the emotions caused by it are a confusing whirlwind that tends to relate to many present and past things in your life as well as fears for the future. It often stays that confusing if the only thing you do is think (or not think) about it. Largely, forms of therapy are formalised, more refined ways of doing things people already tend to do when they're troubled: Talking to others or expressing it in some way. There are a number of reasons people don't pursue therapy: As well as the potential expense and opportunity cost, applying a medical model to mental illness has created a great deal of stigma, including what people assume to be the severity of it. I think an idea in which we get the equivalent of mental colds would be more useful (i.e. if someone really hacks me off for a few days to the extent my thoughts dwell on it and my emotions are generally negative, I see that as the equivalent of a minor illness). Self therapy can work wonders. I highly recommend keeping some kind of diary, but then writing is what works for me. Any form of externally directed thought will do it (what ever it is for you: painting, drawing, talking, poetry, etc.), as it will help you to unravel that clamour of thoughts and gradually dismantle it. Solving any persistent problem that has put me into random negative moods has followed the same progression: 1. I get seriously fucked off by things and start to wonder why. 2. I gradually work out the trigger event(s), by recognising the moods. 3. That recognition time gradually contracts through more exposure, but recognition still occurs *after* the trigger event. 4. As the recognition time contracts and I get more experience with the problem, it eventually flips, so rather than seeing after the event what my unconscious would hide from me if left to itself, I see the trigger event coming before it happens. 5. This time period gradually expands. In the case of a really serious problem, it may be that it expands by mere seconds over the course of months of work, but eventually it accelerates into minutes or at least ample time for me to see an emotionally negative situation arising. 6. I work on ways of handling the trigger event that generate a better emotional result. By the time the process is finished, the original defense mechanism is almost completely destroyed (Severe cases of the event may still provoke remants of it, and also your general mood can affect how much of a grip those remnants have on you at different times. Keep overwriting the old with the better new responses and any relapses will become less intense. Bear in mind it's perfectly possible for your old habits to be rewritten over time if you slip into old forms of behaviour/become a recluse, etc.). Exposure is the difficult thing. If it's a rare event, you need to seek more of it out to gain experience, but your defenses are likely to impel you away from that. Example: The weird religion I was raised with completely fucked with my sexuality. In general, it's a religion that's shown a tendency to create either fetishes or alcoholics by being extremely sex-negative and pro-marriage. In my own case, I didn't go to either of those typical pathologies (not that I see fetishes as harmful or something to be "cured", but several people I know with them are ambivalent: they *really* enjoy sex of kind n, but say they know the reason they enjoy what they do is that something fucked them up a bit at some point), but instead developed a really major shyness of women. It was so extreme that I ended up getting myself a job in a nightclub to accelerate exposure (pun intended ), and that worked pretty well. It still took several years to actually carve through the problem and all associated feelings to the point where I felt it was no longer fucking with me. Winning a fight with your unconscious is just like winning a street fight. There are a few tiny bits of advice you will get from anyone who actually teaches to fight rather than teaching people to compete in a sport: Go all out, and never give up. No amount of generic advice on stance, footwork or technique is particularly useful when someone is kicking you in the nuts or pulling your hair. That really cool move you learned is useless too. In real fights, the primary reason people get beaten up is that they take one good hit or even a good hard slap, start going into a foetal position automatically, then get knocked off their feet and get the shit kicked out of them while they're on the floor. This can include people with very fancy training. People are the same when they get bitchslapped by their own emotions. One short sharp shock and BAM, they're in front of the TV with a duvet and some comfort food while the problem sets to work fucking their unconscious with knives. Your unconscious mind is not a civilised place. It does not respond to being fought with rules or gentlemanly conduct, it will just work around them. Do not go foetal when something sucker punches you in the heart, treat it as a (painful) opportunity to root out every last bit of data you can on the problem. Your first instinct will be to dull your mind with something that takes it off the problem, whether that is a drug or form of entertainment. Do the opposite. Go and find your problems, don't leave them alone. Become relentless and emotionally tough with yourself. The biggest problem in starting any form of self-therapy is fear. I got lucky: I hated myself and was pushed to a point where I had to leave behind every single human being I knew, bar four. As a result, there wasn't much of a comfortable life or identity to lose once I'd made that jump. Several troubled friends have asked me about starting some kind of self-therapy, and all have refrained from it because they "Obviously need to do it, but are too afraid of what they might find". The unconscious is a scary place, and puts up major defenses at the merest suggestion of changing or losing your identity. I strongly recommend sucking it up, you will shit yourself in fear at times but it's a part of the process, and you stand to gain a lot of happiness out of it. If you leave your unconsciously held problems alone, they will only get bigger and lead to more fucked up moods and pathologies (If they don't you are phenomenally lucky). Destroy them instead. Put it this way: Would you like to be doomed to a repeating cycle, or pulling yourself gradually into a diminishing one? Do you really value the bits of your identity that put you into these emotional states, or would you rather detach them and toss them into an incinerator? Our bodies and minds are amazing, but at the same time they partially suck because they're the best, quickest, jury rigged solutions that genetics could come up with for the problems we've faced for millions of years. Hence, we have bad backs, sweet teeth, become alcoholics, get seemingly randomly fucked off all the time, love hurts, etc. As tool users we've done what we can about that stuff, but we've done an especially bad job on figuring out how to be happy. I've practised self therapy for years and my default emotional state has gone from depressed to content (I still consider myself as having work to do though). It wasn't done with or according to any specific external agenda; there are a lot of people that will hard sell you stuff to solve problems, with a lot of other promises attached to it too, but I think they tend to boil down to something like the process above. I'm generally interested but agnostic and non-committal when it comes to named forms of therapy. In summary: Just fucking do it or years will pass

He's like a wind up toy litigator! Was playing Edge earlier today; hopefully it being back on the app store will give EA something extra to throw at him. I'm still quite incredulous that people were defending him being on the board of IGDA, or at least, saying it was "not the issue"

Ouch >.< Glad your PC seems to be okay. Couriers are indeed shit. DHL don't let you know about customs charges, pay them, deliver your goods, then drop a surprise invoice through your door a month later. Last time I had something delivered by them, there was a "mistake" that inflated the charges to roughly 2/3 the value of the goods. DPD are an excellent courier firm though. Their tracking works well, updates nearly instantly, and on mornings there's going to be a delivery, you get a text with "reply '1' to rearrange for tomorrow, '2' for the next day" etc.

I finished Tomb Raider Underworld last week. It was the first time I'd played a Tomb Raider since the very first in 1996, and it seemed like a pretty nice evolution of it. Mainly, in that I didn't get bored and drift away during the last few levels, as with the first. I also liked that the closest things it had to boss battles weren't necessarily paced in the same way and were far more about climbing and the environment than major enemies, even when they were present. It was kind of like watching a bad film: Acceptable once I'd suspended my disbelief, and enough that I don't want to experience another for a long time.

I like the comics and find them amusing. Certainly not aspirational though. Also, the final volume is released just before the film; noone (bar the creators) knows how it ends yet.

Dug up because of idiotpassenger's post in the new people thread: kHIegpSmIyw I thought this was especially hilarious as I have a close relative with a "disease" who was "miraculously cured" by woo woo.

I think it

I'm not an avid listener of Shift Run Stop, but put this one with Adam Curtis on while I was biking back from work last night. He's an interesting man with some quite negative things to say about games, but it came over to me as not so much an ideologically anti-games passion as interest in things even if they're perceived as negative.

We moved offices recently and found a small bundle of these pin badges: I've been asked to give them to anyone who'd want them, so, anyone here want one? If so PM me. I've got 14 of them and will post them anywhere on a first come, first serve basis.

Nope. All of this motion control is so aimed at being super-extra double user friendly. Can you imagine doing something as arbitrarily punishing as that or Zork with it?

I want to see a Kinect game as punitive as HHGTTG

I think Molyneux was saying recently that Kinect will lead to entirely new genres. I look forward to them replacing the many fitness games that have just been announced. Heh: Cynicism aside, there are things I'm seriously having to bite my tongue on, and I'm actually fairly optimistic about Kinect. It's an interesting thing and has been worked on by some excellent people. I'm mostly looking forward to the minority report type interaction with the UI, though if you know it very well it might become a chore compared to flipping through it fast with a pad.

I'm afraid I'm probably out for the duration of the world cup. Not that I'm into it, but housemates are mental for it and tend to work late.

Haha James. There could be a similar but much more extensive study done of birthday messages on Facebook You're all most welcome to the badges; glad they found homes instead of sitting in a drawer for more years

In the boardgame rules, the part on ending in a tie actually says "The players must rejoice in their shared victory"

Miffy, that's frikkin' awesome, congratulations. Again to you too Armchair Sombre, it does seem like a shitty situation, but it's not as if you're gaining from her loss, or like you bilked her out of a load of money. It's disappointing, but there are worse things, and as people have said friends understand. Shame about your deposit : ( -- I have had an interesting day. A company I sometimes do work for had been invited to do a games workshop in Frankfurt. None of the directors were available, so they asked me to go. I got up at half past four this morning, flew there, co-ran the workshop, then flew back. Nice things that happened: The captain of the plane out there forgot to switch the intercom off, and started singing softly to himself in German. The cabin crew pissed themselves laughing at him My flight back was delayed by over an hour, everyone got really angry as they started boarding 15 minutes late then left us in a bus on the tarmac without any information. After that flight and one train ride, in Birmingham New Street station I bumped into someone I care about a lot but don't often see. I don't believe at all in signs, fate, destiny, that sort of bollocks, etc., but it was lovely (and weird) that so many delays and tiny decisions that were almost different led so directly to such a nice moment.

:tup: Ooh, good one. That's a regular at the game shop boardgame nights I go to, and it's getting harder to get hold of too. Typically, the only copies I can find are around £16 on ebay. No suppliers seem to have it. Edit: Boardgame Geek! Of course!

Fuck yes! Vigorous handshakes, congratulations, hat doffs and well done Armchair

Hehe, me too. said it right in my ear just as I was calling someone the other day. 'blix and I built the biggest city I've ever seen (48pts) the other day. It was shared and we were each trying to get full control of it, so it kept expanding, and we ended up with two guys each in it:

YOU'RE DOING EXACTLY WHAT STEVE JOBS WANTS. IT'S A TRAP. I'm lucky in that I have an iphone through work and an android phone of my own. Which I prefer depends on what mood and circumstances I'm in. If I'm in the mood to tinker with stuff, the iPhone feels like a toy and Android wins hands down. If I'm rushed and want to find something out, for instance when I'm negotiating lots of public transport in strange cities, then the iPhone UI definitely has it. It all depends on the user. There's no moral righteousness in jailbreaking/rooting, or not. (Edit. Thompson, question on your UI idea: Why do the blades in the centre rotate? Isn't it more efficient to just jab an icon once? Not criticising, just asking because I don't understand)

They've done a bang up job on it. I'm still slightly incredulous that it's the work of four guys.

There's a solitaire mode for single player, in which you have to build a 2 segment city and road, then three segments, then four, etc. It's okay. You can also, I think, play with random strangers. (Cut from the general iThing thread)