annotation: The Science of Stuck
May. 22nd, 2025 12:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
matsushima posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
pineislandMy cult radar was right(
), so I dropped How to Meet Your Self: An Inspirational Self-Help Workbook before I got very far into it. I am still in the mood for self-help, though, so I browsed my public libaries' Libby (Libbies?) and found The Science of Stuck: Breaking Through to Find Your Path Forward and, honestly, it's refreshing after the potentially dangerous pseudoscience of Self Help and How to Meet Your Self!
Right off the bat, author Britt Frank, MSW, LSCSW, SEP, writes,
Frank is also very responsible about advising readers to seek medical advice if they are experiencing physical symptoms, like, just because anxiety can cause a chest pain, don't assume your chest pain is caused by anxiety - rule out physical causes first. She seems kind of skeptical of mental illness as such but balances that with saying that medication can help, do not go off your meds without medical supervision, and that diagnoses can be helpful for accessing medical care, SSDI, etc.
I won't quibble with every little thing I find that rubs me the wrong way in this book; a lot of it is very good! This in particular was very useful for me:
💡 I have ME/CFS and survived a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad crash/burnout in 2019-2020. I am very protective of my energy envelope now that it's big enough for me to function in society again but I wonder if I'm being a little too fearful of pushing it?
I won't type up all of the quotes I've highlighted, but I will share a couple of the workbook-y activities Frank suggests:
All of the good stuff makes it even weirder when she cites The Five Love Languages and Marianne Williamson. What was I just saying about dangerous pseudoscience?
There's also some stuff I want to think about re: trauma -
), so I dropped How to Meet Your Self: An Inspirational Self-Help Workbook before I got very far into it. I am still in the mood for self-help, though, so I browsed my public libaries' Libby (Libbies?) and found The Science of Stuck: Breaking Through to Find Your Path Forward and, honestly, it's refreshing after the potentially dangerous pseudoscience of Self Help and How to Meet Your Self!Right off the bat, author Britt Frank, MSW, LSCSW, SEP, writes,
Any practices that encourage you to examine your self-talk or "change your mind to change your mood" have the potential to be toxic and victim-blaming. … "managing your thoughts" works only if you are in a safe environment where choices are available.(Emphasis in original.)
Frank is also very responsible about advising readers to seek medical advice if they are experiencing physical symptoms, like, just because anxiety can cause a chest pain, don't assume your chest pain is caused by anxiety - rule out physical causes first. She seems kind of skeptical of mental illness as such but balances that with saying that medication can help, do not go off your meds without medical supervision, and that diagnoses can be helpful for accessing medical care, SSDI, etc.
I won't quibble with every little thing I find that rubs me the wrong way in this book; a lot of it is very good! This in particular was very useful for me:
When you say "I struggle with motivation," what you really mean is "My brain thinks it needs to conserve energy to keep me alive."
💡 I have ME/CFS and survived a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad crash/burnout in 2019-2020. I am very protective of my energy envelope now that it's big enough for me to function in society again but I wonder if I'm being a little too fearful of pushing it?
Trauma responses- and that big crash was traumatizing! -
can look like… too little energy (depression/fatigue/procrastination). [big jump] If you're stuck on hour five of a Twitter scroll-a-thon, it's not because you lack motivation — it's because your brain thinks you need to conserve energy.It makes total sense to me that my brain has a hypervigilant threat response to "overdoing it" even a little bit to the point that I'm not expending enough energy and avoiding doing things, especially during the week, leading to my feeling that all I do is work and sleep.
I won't type up all of the quotes I've highlighted, but I will share a couple of the workbook-y activities Frank suggests:
Fears/Needs/Resources list. Make a list of your three biggest fears, your three biggest needs, and the three biggest resources you have available to help you.and
A powerful antidote to trauma is making a choice. Think of ten small choices you can make in the next five minutes. This can be as simple as what to wear… [etc]
All of the good stuff makes it even weirder when she cites The Five Love Languages and Marianne Williamson. What was I just saying about dangerous pseudoscience?
There's also some stuff I want to think about re: trauma -
Trauma is an internal process — not an external event. … Trauma is your brain's in ability to process and metabolize information.- and autistic "bottom-up" processing but I have work to do, so I'll leave this here for now.
