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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   1880 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for December 6, 2023

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:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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).

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But the frustrating thing, the most frustrating thing is that here is the advice I've been getting: (1) it usually resolves in 3-4 days. (2) Treatment involves lifestyle changes. Call me crazy, but these two things are not compatible. Someone is not being honest.

They are compatible! Or, at least, they can be resolved coherently for many conditions. The symptoms could be a result of two different conditions, Condition A that is 85% of cases with those symptoms and resolves in a few days, or Condition B that is 15% of cases and that requires long-term treatment and intervention. If the symptoms always meant the same condition, it would be pretty surprising to find that conflict in resolution, but if the symptoms can equally be caused by different things, it's not surprising. For example, if someone told you they had back pain following a workout, you might first tell them to rest it for a couple days because it'll probably go away, but if it doesn't then you'll need to seek treatment.

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