The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
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The Whale, the most important men’s health movie you haven’t seen yet
The Whale is a 2022 drama film written by Samuel D. Hunter, based on his play of the same title, and directed by Darren Aronofsky. The story follows Charlie (Brendan Fraser), a reclusive writing teacher attempting to reconnect with his daughter Ellie.
I bought a ticket to The Whale last night because I want Fraser’s career to flourish. He had some rough years there because of sexual assault by a powerful man in Hollywood. He’s doing better emotionally, and has starred in a three-season remake of Six Days of the Condor and four seasons of DC’s Doom Patrol.
This film is, quite simply, powerful. The characters are all fully fleshed out by the ending, the relationships are realistically dramatic and fraught, and the situations are terrifyingly common.
But why am I posting this here instead of the CW thread (for the missionary character) or the Friday Fun thread (for being a film recommendation)? It’s the best damn movie about codependency ever.
Fraser’s Charlie is a morbidly obese food addict awash with guilt, despair, and self-delusion. His life is one of the most pathetic ever put to film, chronicled in excruciatingly ugly detail. Everyone in his orbit is affected by his immobility and his sorrow for his lost lover. They are in his life because everyone in this film is codependent, unable to form relationships in which neither person is trying to save the other.
At first it feels exploitative, because you know people actually live like this: growing so fat they can never leave their home without assistance, compulsively eating, slowly dying of heart problems, while those who love them wish somehow something could be different but don’t know how to change anything. It becomes moving, but just when you get sympathy for one of the characters, they do something ugly.
I watched this the very day I bought a YMCA gym membership, and it hasn’t been out of my mind for more than a few minutes.
I too have gained more weight than I wanted, because of what I can now call food addiction. I’ve been in recovery from codependency for ten years this March, and I’m grateful I can say I’m healthier than I’ve ever been emotionally. I’ve attended a couple of overeaters meetings and applied the lessons I learned from the codependency group; at this last one, something changed deeply, and I feel free, finally, of what drove me to food, in addition to what drove me to make bad friends.
The name codependency comes from a common pattern of behavior: when one person in a relationship is an addict, the other tries to rescue them, to save them from themselves. The addict is substance dependent; the partner is co-dependent.
Over the years, the definition has been expanded to include compulsive behavior and thought patterns of low self-esteem, control/manipulation, avoidance, denial of reality, and abnormal compliance. Co-Dependents Anonymous, a twelve-step goup, has compiled a four-page list of codependent tendencies and choices (PDF link) that everyone owes it to themselves to read at least once.
The lesson I get out of the film is that I can’t save anyone from themselves, I can’t save anyone who isn’t pulling their own weight in seeking help, and I can’t save people while getting something from the relationship.
And I can’t keep eating like I have or bad things will happen to me. Getting a genuine plan is my only sane option.
Looked up the plot synopsis. I can't help but think these sort of misery-porn movies backfire, if the goal is to get people healthier. You'll notice PSAs about drugs, drinking, and smoking stopped showing the worst consequences of those addictions in the past ten years, instead focusing on whimsical downsides like "If you smoke, your skin will look older!" or "If you get caught drinking and driving, you'll live at mom's for longer and will be embarrassed in front of your hot date!"
When you tell people they will SUFFER and DIE ALONE in HORRIBLE PAIN they inevitably seek comfort.... which for addicts means going on a binge.
I dunno. There's lots of advice out there for losing weight, but the common aspect of the successful strategies is that they teach adherants to (a) be mindful (b) treat their diet, body, and cravings like a science experiment, not a moral struggle to be "good" at all times.
Yeah, that's the rub, ain't it. Everyone want to live out Good Will Hunting but people only change on their own, when they're good and ready.
I wouldn’t call it misery porn, any more than I’d call 2016’s Hacksaw Ridge war porn. They’re both deeply disturbing films, and I don’t expect to watch either one again, but I’m better for having seen them.
The eating scenes and the binge scene are more akin to a horror film in which the victim is also the masked killer.
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