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Post new topic   Reply to topic Pleasureful vs. Masterful
Chu
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 PostPosted: Sat Jun 08, 2013 11:33 am Reply with quote        
(No, this isn't buildup for a sex joke.)

My therapist suggested that I try to do pleasureful activities and masterful activities in order to feel better. I've been thinking about it a lot, and it's actually pretty hard for me to think of things to add to the lists. It's even harder to divide them between pleasureful and masterful, since we usually enjoy things that we're good at. Here's what I have so far:


Masterful:
Writing
Sewing/crochet
Analysis of literature
Chart reading for astrology

The way that I determined these things was by looking at things that come easily to me, but that I don't typically do without some sort of push. I figure if I don't feel compelled to do them regularly, they're not necessarily "pleasureful" even if I do enjoy them.


Pleasureful:
Video games
TV/movies
Exercise
Chatting online

I picked things that don't require much skill, if any. I'm alright in most games, but gaming certainly isn't a masterful activity.


Try creating lists of your own and see if those activities make you feel better when you're feeling down. What typically makes you feel better: pleasureful or masterful activities?

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 PostPosted: Sat Jun 08, 2013 11:55 am Reply with quote        
Masterful tasks are generally the ones that make me feel better. Doing something that I can do well and spent effort working on versus passively enjoying.
For me these things are like my:
Editing
Working on graphic design stuff
Working on SEO/Metadata on videos
Researching anything related to what I'm working on.

I, personally, generally have to already be in a pretty good mood to enjoy/benefit from pleasureful activities.
For me these would be:
Exercise
Gaming
Eating
TV/Movies
Watching Videos
etc.

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Chu
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 PostPosted: Sat Jun 08, 2013 11:57 am Reply with quote        
Ah, yes, I forgot watching videos and eating. xP Although I kinda include videos in the TV/movies one.

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Sharm



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 PostPosted: Sun Jun 09, 2013 12:16 pm Reply with quote        
I've noticed that if I don't get the right balance between the two I'll get depressed. Reading a good book, playing a video game, watching a show, listening to music, are all things that can help me break out of a depressive thought process, but if I do it all day and don't mix it up with something productive like making art, crochet, writing or something of the sort then I'll feel guilty, useless and restless. On the other hand if I spend all day doing those productive things and don't play I get frustrated, worn out, and oddly enough really lonely. Both of those also need to be mixed in with stuff I'd consider pure work like cleaning the house, taking care of the yard, exercising, the stuff I never want to do but needs doing anyway. As much as I hate those things, if I don't have them mixed in with the other two I actually have less of an ability to do them effectively and I start feeling like a really pathetic person. If I work too much I start hating everything, feeling trapped and limited and just overall unhappy.
ecco



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 PostPosted: Sun Jun 09, 2013 12:25 pm Reply with quote        
Sharm, i think you just nailed the biggest problem i have in my life. I'm terrible at trying to find this balance. Often i find i have "masterful" tasks i need to complete (or could be considered pure work, as you said :P) that I don't want to do, because i have no motivation, or because i'm a perfectionist and its a task i don't think i can do well (therefore wanting to avoid it all together). So I avoid doing it, but at the same time, the guilt holds me back from taking part in any "pleasureful" activity, so i literally sit and do nothing, and that never ends well as you just get more frustrated, upset, bored, negative thoughts about yourself etc... i could go on, but i'm sure you get what i'm saying Duh

in any case, there's a lot of pleasureful things i enjoy and very few masterful (largely due to the perfectionism, most likely. i feel bad about myself when i'm not good at something) which is probably part of why i'm so bad at finding that balance... *ponders*

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Chu
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 PostPosted: Sun Jun 09, 2013 1:02 pm Reply with quote        
Heh, I struggle with finding balance in things too. ^^;

I like how you phrased that, Sharm. It's very insightful.

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Sharm



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 PostPosted: Sun Jun 09, 2013 1:03 pm Reply with quote        
I sit an try to figure myself out a lot. It's cheaper than therapy, more effective than medication and since I'm disabled I totally have the time.

I've found that sometimes it helps my motivation to figure out exactly what I hope to get out of the activity. Do I want the result, do I want the attention I'd get from other people enjoying the result, is the action fun in and of itself, does it help me become who I expect myself to be, is it just something other people want from me that I see no value in? Once I know that I can look at the task with my priorities and goals in mind. For example I could tell myself "I don't want to write today, but I want to be the sort of person who writes every day because then I can get more stories told and have a higher chance of being good enough to be published and that is more important to me right now than making that cute thing I saw on Pinterest, which is what's currently distracting me from writing. I don't even want the cute thing, it just seems more fun right now than writing." Often times when I do this I find I've been giving a lot of attention to things that I don't need or even want to do and then getting angry at myself for not having time and energy for the stuff I really care about. Sometimes doing that I can find the part of the activity that I really want to be doing and use that as a reward for doing the part I don't like. Sometimes I find that I don't actually want the result, but it's the action that I find enjoyable, and putting a required result on the activity is zapping away all the fun and limiting my ability to experiment and explore. Sometimes I need a result to make the activity fun and find that I've forgotten to make a goal for the activity and need one to want to do it. Of course sometimes when you feel unmotivated you just have to do the thing you don't want to do until you like it again. I hate it when that happens, it takes a lot of mental energy to push past that.

Getting back on topic, figuring out why you want or like something can be a good way to help you come up with new things on the list too. Figuring out that I enjoy making things from scratch helped me get the nerve up to try building furniture. It's exhausting and I'll probably only do it for myself, but I'm loving doing it and I love having the results of my hard work. It's also helped me understand why I don't like some activities that I thought I needed to enjoy to call myself an artist.
Chu
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 PostPosted: Sun Jun 09, 2013 1:26 pm Reply with quote        
It seems like it would be really interesting to spend a day in your head, Sharm.


I'm very self-aware, but depression saps so much of my energy that it can be hard to spend sufficient time figuring myself out. I think the biggest thing that I need right now is physical exercise. Bike riding and walking are about all I have though, so I think I want to find out more ways to be active.

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 PostPosted: Sun Jun 09, 2013 2:31 pm Reply with quote        
i feel like i really learnt something from that post, Sharm. o.o i mean it. that was a very helpful post for me.

Like Chu, i also consider myself very self-aware. I spend a lot of time reflecting on myself; who am i, what do i want, why do i have certain thought patterns or desires etc. My own counsellor even said that i am very self-aware (as well as very disillusioned, which is a causal factor of my own depression imo)

slight tangent i suppose, but your post also made me realise why i have such an issue with certain college assignments. some of our assignments are to produce "posters" about this that or the other. But they always expect it to not only look good, but somehow also have an insane amount of information on it. That's a hard balance to get right. Then when you consider how much research you have to put in, to then only write out a fraction of it again and get a single poster as the result of hours of hard work... that's a very frustrating feeling. especially when what you've had to research for it is multiple pieces of legislation (god i hate reading that stuff. i find it so difficult to understand things written that way. just tell me the rules in plain english, ya know?)

anyway. tangents.

a pleasureful activity i have learned to love again in the last year or so is reading. I read all the time when i was young and had a "reading age" much higher than my actual age. When i was a teenager my depression got very bad and i pretty much stopped reading all together. since i started up college again, though, i've taken to reading on the train Smile i've re-read my favourite series and begun on some new non-fiction books. I'm debating what to read next. and overall i'm just extremely happy that i've learned to love reading again. I missed it, truth be told.

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Sharm



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 PostPosted: Sun Jun 09, 2013 2:31 pm Reply with quote        
I never thought of my mind as an interesting place, I guess it could be. I spend a lot of time being bored and trying to use my head to get rid of that boredom.

I know what you mean with not being able to think through depression. I do a lot of this type of thinking when I'm on the edge of getting really depressed as a way to keep me out of it and I also do it after I come out of a bad spell to try and make sure I don't trigger it like that again. My depression and anxiety once got very, very bad and now that I'm doing better I put a lot of effort into never going back. I guess I see my mental issues as a problem that has a solution, and since I'm the one who wants it fixed, I have to be the one to solve it.

I enjoy workout games like wii fit and if I could do it anymore I'd dance. In the summer I like going hiking. If you're looking for was to feel more healthy I would suggest making very sure your eating the right things and staying hydrated. Getting my vitamin levels to the right place and drinking enough water made a huge difference with me. Vitamin D specifically, being low makes you ache, makes your muscles tire faster and it makes it very hard to think. It's also pretty common for people who are depressed to get deficient in because they don't go outside in the sun as much.
Sharm



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 PostPosted: Sun Jun 09, 2013 3:04 pm Reply with quote        
I'm really glad I have something interesting to contribute. I give a lot of advice IRL and I worry that it's intrusive and useless. The point of advice should be to give new information or alternate point of view so that the person with the problem can solve it themselves.

I think I have a tendency to think unfairly of myself as well. I try to remember that I'm working from a single point of view in isolation and that if I don't want my information to become corrupted I have to fact check with others who's opinions I value. Wow, that sounds way more clinical than it did in my head. Anyway, my point is that I think that anyone but God's view of me is going to be incomplete and that we're all a group of blind people trying to figure out an elephant when we can only touch one part. (Does anyone else know that anecdote?)

I love to read too, I'm so glad you're enjoying it again. I'd be happy to recommend some stuff to you, what would you like to read?
Whimsy



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 PostPosted: Sun Jun 09, 2013 9:47 pm Reply with quote        
Wow, Sharm you're so insightful. You've defintely hit the nail right on the head. That's exactly how I feel.

Sometimes I hit a slump after doing nothing productive for so long. I tend to start feeling apathetic and restless, and nothing keeps my attention.

On the flipside, once I'm doing something productive I have a tendency to keep going. I had a really bad itch a few weeks ago where I had to keep my hands busy or else I was really restless. I got desperate enough to refold and organize almost all my clothes in my dresser. (it's gone right back into being a hopeless mess as I type this. :U)

Back on topic: Masterful activities right now for me would be finishing up school I guess, doing some graphic edits, and to a certain extent, writing.

Pleasureful activities would be reading, writing, gaming and watching tv/movies. Lately (read yesterday) I've started biking again. Wow, am I out of shape. :U

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 PostPosted: Mon Jun 10, 2013 10:16 pm Reply with quote        
For my, my masterful activities usually include writing/story related issues, working on my comics, singing, etc. They do tend to help (especially if I do a comic diary), but it can vary.

Some pleasure-based activities help a lot more for me, such as video games, eating (unfortunately), sleeping, and anime. Sometimes what I need is a fun, mindless distraction, like a silly TV show. But other times, I need a distraction that makes me think a lot, like working on a story.

Oh, and doing dishes always helps if I'm angry. o.o;
Chu
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 PostPosted: Tue Jun 11, 2013 12:42 pm Reply with quote        
I'm probably going to work on my Guild Wars fan fiction again soon, haha. It was a lot of fun to write something more action-based than what I'm used to. I also love the Sylvari lore, so I want to expand on it. I need to get started on sewing again, too. If only I could find my stuff... I think I left it at my grandma's.

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 PostPosted: Fri Jun 14, 2013 5:20 pm Reply with quote        
This is an interesting concept. I think my list would probably be something like:

Pleasureful:
Avatar sites (Ernya, Midorea, etc.)
Video games
Movies
Youtube/Listening to Music
Reading

Masterful:
Writing
Writing
Writing...
er, Social interactions?

There's also dancing, but I'm honestly not sure which category that falls under. :/

Typically writing makes me feel best, but my pleasureful list would work better at cheering me up...

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