Underrated mental health resources
Summary of Resources
Feeling Good
UCLA meditation class
Huberman Lab ep. 28
How to Change Your Mind
Man’s Search For Meaning
People with anhedonia typically have depression, bipolar disorder, PTSD, or schizophrenia. Here are some underrated resources that can help those who are struggling with these issues.
1. Feeling Good by David Burns
This is an excellent book about cognitive behavioral therapy.
Not too long ago, psychology and psychiatry were in their pre-scientific Dark Age. Psychologists used Freud’s flawed theories, and difficult to treat patients would sometimes be lobotomized.
Then came science-backed treatments that worked. One of these treatments is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
Ultimately the goal is for the patient to manage their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors by themselves without the aid of a therapist. CBT gives patients the tools to do just that.
2. UCLA Meditation Class
Do thoughts spin in your mind at night keeping you awake? Is it hard to let go of strong feelings? Do you want to control what captures your attention? If so, take this class.
Vipassana mediation is a practice that creates a healthy relationship with your thoughts, feelings, and attitudes.
If you have an allergy to spiritual practices like kundalini yoga, this is the class for you. This is a class for skeptical Westerners—you will not find anything woo woo here.
https://www.uclahealth.org/programs/marc/classes-events/maps-classes
You could start by trying the UCLA Mindful app. Another option is the Waking Up meditation app.
3. The Huberman Lab podcast episode 28
The Huberman Lab podcast is about science-based tools that change your brain and body. Episode 28 is a good sampler platter of his tips.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXvDEmo6uS4
Also check out episode 99, where Huberman interviews a Harvard psychiatrist who cured his schizophrenic and depressed patients with the ketogenic diet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjEFo3a1AnI
4. How to Change Your Mind on Netflix
Recently, hundreds of studies have shown that psychedelic drugs are better at curing mental illnesses than some drugs currently on the market, like Prozac. In this series, Michael Pollan gives you a tour of these drugs. The new science of psychedelics should give hope to people with untreatable mental illnesses.
5. Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl
An anhedonic life can feel utterly meaningless. It can feel like a prison.
How can one imprisoned in an anhedonic life find meaning and make life worthwhile? To answer this question, one should read Viktor Frankl’s book, which is his meditation on finding meaning and saying yes to life in Nazi prison camps.
Frankl says, “life holds a potential meaning under any conditions, even the most miserable ones… if the point were demonstrated in a situation as extreme as a prison camp, my book would gain a hearing.”
Bonus Tip: Female Weightlifting
Most people with clinical depression and anxiety are women. Women sometimes have poison bottled up in their psyche, and they usually neglect to use a powerful tool to release this—weightlifting. (Don’t worry, unless women eat a special diet, it’s difficult for them to get big, bulky muscles when lifting weights.)