for a while now i’ve been learning that some people kind of choose to hate themselves like you can give them tools and resources and advice and they’ll even follow some of it and go “i still hate myself” and i feel strongly at that point they’re kind of choosing to stay in that mindset because it’s comfortable and familiar or something but some people are truly [gotye voice] addicted to a certain kind of sadness and hooked on feeling low
you really do have to trick and teach your brain to stop catastrophizing and seeking out negative bias and like trust me i know how it sounds but if you wake up in the morning and say “it’s so shitty out i don’t wanna get up or do anything” your brain will Believe that and make it so. for months i had to force myself to follow up self-defeating thoughts with reasons why it’s still going to be a good day and what’s going good for me so i could teach my brain to work in the opposite direction and it works. takes a while and feels fake the whole time but you wake up one day and realize you actually really love yourself and there’s so much going for you and you can do everything you always wanted
My therapist told me if you've experienced many bad things in life your brain is pretty much wired to seek out negative experiences because they are familiar, comforting and the brain is used to do so. This can show up in different ways, such as doom scrolling, watching a youtube video you actually kinda hate, hanging out with people you don't like or aren't good for you and so on.
We established this phrase that this specific part of my brain is the highway (easily accessible, broad and paved road) while what I personally would like to seek out is the less travelled gravel road through the countryside.
This mental image helped a ton because now I can catch myself driving on the highway when I don't want to (takes practice, like you said, Lucie!) and start changing to drive on the country road aka figure out what makes me feel good and pursue that instead.
