Can She Bake or Not? (Emma The Ex Friend – How Honest Is She?)

Can She Bake or Not? (Emma The Ex Friend – How Honest Is She?)

All names and identifying information have been changed in the post below, so as to keep people anonymous.

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Emma – the ex friend of mine who (Link): got into a spat with me in October 2021, asked me to defriend her on social media (which I did) – told me once a few years ago that she cannot bake.

She told me she cannot use an oven.

By the way, I’ve since discovered that this Emma person has blocked me on at least one social media platform, not sure about the other.

She had no reason to block me, as I have not tried to contact her at either account, nor have I “tagged” her. (I can still see her content to her account if I log out to view it.)

I did visit one of her social media accounts a few times up to late December 2021.

Emma found me years ago via my Twitter account and this blog, where she saw posts I had already made about problems I had with friends and family of mine, and my ex fiance.

Emma approached me wanting to know if she could be friends with me (not vice versa).
She spent several months asking me if she could know me better, asking if I would friend her on Facebook, but I was very reluctant to do that but finally gave in after months and months of her asking me.

“Emma” (not her real name), last I checked in December 2021, is still posting a lot of politically argumentative type content on her social media, but I noticed that she had an exchange with a lady about a recipe at that time, as well.

Let’s say the recipe was for home-made muffins (it was not, it was for something else. I am changing details or omitting them in this post so as to keep Emma anonymous).

Some lady posted a photo of some new muffin recipe she had tried, and Emma gushed to her about how delicious it looked, and she wished she had the recipe.

So, the lady responded by linking her to the muffin recipe.

I clicked on the muffin recipe, and in at least two of the several steps, it mentions pre-heating an oven, putting the muffins in the oven, then taking the muffins out of the oven briefly to pour in more ingredients, then putting the muffins back into the oven to let them finish cooking.

Emma then informed this woman she was looking forward to trying this recipe herself – so I take it that Emma will be baking these muffins in an oven?

I find this very odd, because a few years ago (this was probably around 2017 or 2018), when Emma told me her depression had gotten really bad, I wrote back, told her I was sorry to hear that, and I told her, you know, when I had clinical depression for over 30 years, and especially in the years after my mother died, I found that baking cookies lessened my depression at least for a little while.

Emma wrote me back years ago at that time and told me, “Oh, I can’t bake like you do! I can’t use an oven! It’s due to my hand injuries.”

Well, first of all, when I told her that I had tried baking (and jogging, bike riding, and other techniques) to manage my depression, I was not necessarily suggesting that she herself try baking, bike riding, and so on, but I knew even back then that she was apparently not doing enough to manage her depression.

Emma chooses (yes, it’s a choice she’s making) to spend a lot of time in passive activities, such as being on social media and watching television.

And spending a lot of time in front of screens will make depression worse, if a person has depression.

If you have depression, it is vital you take breaks from screens.

Get out of the house, go on a walk, play frisbee with your pet dog, meet a friend in person for a cup of coffee – that sort of thing.

Acceptance (vs. Denial, Anger, or Should-ing) – Helps in Healing and Getting Through Painful Events and Dealing With Things You Cannot Change

Acceptance (vs. Denial, Anger, or Should-ing) – Helps in Healing and Getting Through Painful Events and Dealing With Things You Cannot Change

Disclaimer: All names have been changed in the post below to keep people’s identities anonymous.

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One of the things I’ve noticed in the last few years is that when I’ve accepted a situation, whether something current or something from years ago that once bothered me a lot, is that it speeds up the recovery process.

I used to hold on tightly to people or dreams or hopes. In the last few years, I’ve gotten better at Letting Go.

(I’ve not arrived at perfection at this, but I have improved a lot in the last couple of years.)

Instead of constantly regretting, feeling sad or angry about a past incident, or that my life is not where I want it to be now, I’ve learned to accept my past and present, and that has definitely been good for my mental health – and I’m more able to enjoy each day as it is, instead of sitting around angry or upset that things aren’t how I had hoped or planned.

I don’t get as upset by set backs as I once did.

The ‘Paralyzed in a Wheelchair’ Analogy – Regarding: Clinical Depression – Also: The Cynical or Victimhood Filter

The ‘Paralyzed in a Wheelchair’ Analogy – Regarding: Clinical Depression – Also: The Cynical or Victimhood Filter

How accurate is it for the clinically depressed, or those who think they are allies to them, to use the “paralyzed and in a wheel chair” comparison to explain how supposedly helpless and incapable the depressed are? I will discuss this topic as this post goes on.

I was diagnosed with clinical depression at a young age by a psychiatrist, and proceeded to see three more psychiatrists until my early 30s.

(I had to move often, which is why I had to change psychiatrists – as to my next- to- last psychiatrist, I dropped her for a new one, because she was terse and grouchy, which I did not like.)

During those years, and even now, I do see a lot of people who have never had depression and who don’t understand what it is.

A lot of mentally healthy people think that clinical depression is the same as regular sadness, and they believe most people can “snap out of” every day, regular sadness within hours or days – which I’d say is probably true.

When people have clinical depression, however, they can’t just “snap out of it” in days or weeks.

Depression doesn’t just dissipate on its own over time, and depression is not always triggered by a single, identifiable event.

If you’d like more background about clinical depression, what it is, how it can be treated, and some information about  its symptoms, I invite you to visit this page about it at the Mayo Clinic:

(Link, from Mayo Clinic): What does the term “clinical depression” mean?

As for me, clinical depression (as well as suicidal impulses) run on both sides of my family, and anxiety is on the maternal side, so I take it that it’s genetic in my case, and not purely situational or due to personal shortcomings, sin, etc.

I lived with clinical depression for 35+ years.

I saw psychiatrists and took doctor prescribed anti-depressant medications for it, which never helped.

During the years I was a devout Christian (I’m not altogether sure what my spiritual beliefs are now), I prayed, read the Bible, had faith God would heal me of the depression and anxiety, but God never did.

Doing good deeds for others, attending church, etc, and so on, never did take the depression or anxiety away.

Grace Spence Green: The Medical Student Who Was Paralyzed by a Falling Man, is Now In A Wheelchair – and Found New Purpose

Grace Spence Green: The Medical Student Who Was Paralyzed by a Falling Man, is Now In A Wheelchair – and Found New Purpose

Grace Spence Green became paralyzed and must use a wheelchair now because a man who threw himself off a building (and survived) landed on her, causing spinal damage to her. (I am guessing  the man was trying to commit suicide, though the article doesn’t really state this clearly.)

Rather than indulge in endless anger, bitterness, fury, or self pity (that she at first felt when she realized she’d never walk again), Green went on with life, she chose to move on, and says she’s happy.

Interestingly, Green says she’s run into people who are angry with her for being happy in spite of what happened to her. They apparently want or need for her to be angry, upset, still (emotionally) hurt and bitter, or to believe that she is angry or bitter.

(Link): Grace Spence Green: The Medical Student Who Was Paralyzed by a Falling Man – and Found New Purpose

Excerpts:

Her life changed instantly when she was crushed at a shopping centre. But through radical acceptance she gained friends, greater empathy and a passion for changing people’s perspectives

by Emine Saner
May 26, 2021

‘I still think it really shocks people that I can be happy’ … Grace Spence Green. Photograph: Dolly Clew

It helps to think of it as the day she saved someone else’s life. That it has brought Grace Spence Green many other positives – increased empathy, good friends, a new perspective – is what she thinks about often, even if she also describes it as “the most traumatic day of my life”.

On an October afternoon in 2018, she was walking through Westfield shopping centre in east London at the precise moment a man three floors up decided to jump. He landed on Spence Green, breaking her back, injuring her spinal cord and fracturing her neck. It was surreal, she says, to wake up “when I didn’t think I was asleep”.

…There was the denial: “You never think you’re going to be the one that gets this sort of injury. I just felt like: ‘Well, no, this isn’t me, I’m not meant to be in a wheelchair,’” she says.

….She sparkles [during the interview from her apartment] with a kind of calm but intense energy, even when remembering what she describes as her lowest point, when doctors told her she would not be able to walk again.
“I remember getting out of that meeting and just crying, folded up on my lap. I went outside, because I wanted to breathe, and it was pouring down with rain.”

Her family went home and she remained in hospital, dealing with this news and contemplating a future that felt extremely bleak – because this was what she thought life as a wheelchair user would be.

In the two and a half years since, Spence Green has had to unpick a lifetime of negative messages about disabled people. Now, as one of the hosts of the podcast This Is Spinal Crap – all about people living with spinal injuries – she is focused on showing that the very fact of her “existing – living a happy, normal life – is activism in itself”.

If Nothing Can Be Done to Lessen or Heal Depression, Why Do I Keep Seeing Articles Like This One? ‘Feeling anxious and depressed? Sit less and move more, study says’

If Nothing Can Be Done to Lessen or Heal Depression, Why Do I Keep Seeing Articles Like This One? ‘Feeling anxious and depressed? Sit less and move more, study says’

Some people have informed me (including (Link): a crank who stopped by this blog about a month ago), that there is really nothing that can be done to lessen or heal a person of depression – my (Link): ex friend who said she had depression claimed the same thing.

Which is peculiar, because every so often, I see editorials where psychologists and other mental health professionals are quoted where they give tips on how people can decrease their levels of depression, or find a ‘cure’ from it.

If there’s nothing anyone with clinical depression can do to lift the depression, not even a smidge, why on earth do these types of articles keep appearing – they would be utterly pointless.

Yep. Just as I was saying previously… there ARE steps someone with even clinical depression (which I had myself for over three decades) can take to lessen depression.

And if you have depression, and sit around all day, and/or engage only in passive activities that involve a screen (watching television, goofing around on social media all day, etc), your depression will not budge.

Other than seeing a psychologist or taking anti-depressants, you either need to be around non-depressed people face to face more often, and/or find hobbies that don’t involve watching a screen and/or engage in physical activity.

This article, and the studies it cites in the article, says nothing about lessening depression solely (or even primarily) from someone giving you on-going emotional support.

It’s going to take more than empathy to lessen depression, and nobody else can do it for you – it will involve you (if you’re the depressed person) getting up off the sofa, putting down your cell phone, lap top, or iPad. That’s a choice you have to make – and having depression doesn’t render you incapable of making it.

By the way, there are many videos on You Tube (many by licensed therapists and psychologists) that offer tips on how to decrease depression. If decreasing depression were not possible, those videos would not exist.

I’ll list a few of those below this link and long excerpt:

(Link): Feeling anxious and depressed? Sit less and move more, study says

Excerpts:

Haven’t gotten up from your desk in the last hour? You’re not the only one

by Daryl Austin

…A recent study published in the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry tracked the moods and behaviors of 2,327 participants across all 50 states over eight weeks to measure the consequences of suddenly becoming more sedentary and found that sitting for significant amounts of time and more often was associated with higher symptoms of depression and anxiety.

“Our key finding was that high sitting time across the eight weeks was associated with a worse improvement in depressive symptoms over time,” said Jacob Meyer, an assistant professor of kinesiology at the college of Human Sciences, Iowa State University and the study’s lead author.

 Meyer explained that as the pandemic began, it was clear that behaviors were likely to change as a result of lockdown measures and a dramatic increase in remote learning/working, so his team of researchers sought “to record these large population-level changes in response to this unprecedented societal event” in real time.

They found that in addition to people sitting for longer periods of time and more often and feeling more anxious and depressed as a result, the kinds of activities people engaged in while sitting changed as well.

Meyer explained that different sedentary behaviors have different effects on mental health.

“Passive sedentary behaviors such as browsing social media or watching television are most detrimental for mental health and were most influenced by the pandemic,” he said.

Choosing Sadness: The Irony of Depression – article from APS

Choosing Sadness: The Irony of Depression – article from APS – by Wray Herbert

(Link): Choosing Sadness: The Irony of Depression – article from APS

Excerpts:

April 2015
by Wray Herbert

I knew a man some years ago who suffered from serious and chronic depression.

He also lived what seemed to me a melancholy life, listening to sad, sentimental music, reading dreary existential novels, and rarely venturing out of his dark and gloomy house.

I cared for this man, and I was perplexed by this. I knew that he suffered from a debilitating disease, but he also didn’t seem to be taking simple steps that might lift his mood.

It was almost like he was choosing sadness.

This seems like an ungenerous thought, I know, but it turns out there may be some truth to it.

An Alarming Trend in Psychotherapy by Christine Sefein – (Woke Therapists Want You To Stay In a Victim Mindset and Miserable)

An Alarming Trend in Psychotherapy by Christine Sefein – (Woke Therapists Want You To Stay In a Victim Mindset and Miserable)

Below: embedded video, “Christine Sefein: An Alarming Trend in Psychotherapy”

This video is largely addressing woke, Neo-Marxist, identity politics influences in the mental health profession and its damaging ramifications upon groups of people (such as women, people of color, and so on).

However, much of what is mentioned is identical as what I said in previous posts in regards to psychologists or therapists (or friends) enabling people with mental health problems, by merely echoing back and validating the negative thoughts and worldviews of those persons.

There is a time and place for non-judgmental emotional support, but if a friend, family, or mental health professional merely validates the person’s distorted (negative) beliefs, and does so for months to years on end, and does not challenge or encourage the person to change their behavior (when and where it can be changed) and/or change how they view their situation or themselves, the person will remain in a state of Learned Helplessness.

Therefore, the person’s anxiety, depression, or whatever issue they are facing, will not diminish or cease.

Giving someone with depression (or certain other conditions) nothing but validation and on-going emotional support – as the therapist in the video below explains – will actually keep the person in a depressive state, or possibly worsen her mental health.
(This is exactly what I was saying in other, older blog posts and other media, but got chewed out over it by others.)

While the far left in the mental health field love to tell people that they are experiencing depression or some other problem because of the identity group they are a part of (whether they are black, homosexual, a woman, what have you), on the individual level, some people are buying into this toxic thinking because they have a Victim Mentality (see this previous post for more about Victim Mentality).

If a friend of yours, or a mental health professional, is simply sitting around agreeing with your negative views – that you are a victim in life, and you always have life oh-so-hard, and isn’t life horrible and unfair, and there’s nothing any of us can do about it – they are aiding you in keeping  you trapped in your anxiety and depression.

If this person was actually competent and compassionate, they’d be trying to help you to find steps to take TO CHANGE, to improve in some way.

Offering empathy or emotional support is only one part of the pie, it should not be the entire pie – and that emotional support is useless and garbage if it’s being mis-used to keep someone “stuck” in some disorder or harmful mindset they have.

If you continue to think of yourself as a victim, your situation or condition will never improve.

If you continue to believe that your life and all its problems – or obtaining happiness or peace – is not in your control at all, that it remains outside of your control and due to external factors, you will continue being depressed and feeling hopeless.

I spent over 30 years with clinical depression – I was diagnosed by psychiatrists with it – and I spent years trying to figure a way out of depression, when the sessions with psychiatrists didn’t help me, and the prescribed anti-depressants didn’t help me, either.

I finally figured my way out of depression (on my own), and I can tell you that the “woke” approach to “treatment” will absolutely keep you trapped in depression.

Getting primarily, or only, emotional support from a therapist, friends or family, when you’re dealing with depression (or most other problems in life), and thinking of yourself as a victim in life, isn’t going to help you rebound and heal in the long run.

As I said in a previous post, receiving emotional support for a problem initially is fine, but at the end of the day, if you want to solve a problem and make it go away, emotional support only won’t cut it – you will have to change something about your life, your usual routine, or how you think about yourself or your life or your problem if you hope to break free.

(Link): FAIR News: An Alarming Trend in Psychotherapy

For our latest video, FAIR’s Christine Sefein explains how her field of psychotherapy has been taken over by what she describes as a “divisive and regressive ideology” that led her to resign from her position as a professor of clinical psychology at Antioch University in Los Angeles.

This ideology teaches people to see themselves as part of an oppressed group and to blame their hardships on oppressor groups. And sometimes that’s true! But most often this way of thinking, which encourages hypersensitivity, is harmful to people who are seeking help from mental illness conditions.

Sefein worries that her field, which is designed to help people overcome their mental illnesses, will actually exacerbate patients’ symptoms by causing them to view themselves as having no control over improving their situation.

Instead, people are acquiring an attitude called “learned hopelessness,” which locks them into a feedback loop of pessimism and despair.

Carl Lentz’s Wife Says She Suffered from Depression, PTSD After Cheating Scandal

Carl Lentz’s Wife Says She Suffered from Depression, PTSD After Cheating Scandal

I hope this lady improves soon. This is yet another news item dispelling a lot of the Christian mythos built up around marriage.

So many Christian books, sermons, etc, create this view of marriage that once married, a person will be complete and the married sex will be great and regular.

But then we sometimes see these stories where the wife of a well known pastor admit that her spouse was committing adultery.

I think it goes to show that marriage and married sex are not all that a lot of marriage-promoters in the faith make it out to be (not that I am opposed to marriage, only the very unrealistic depictions of it in the church).

(Link): Carl Lentz’s Wife Says She Suffered from Depression, PTSD After Cheating Scandal

Excerpts:

By Anugrah Kumar, Christian Post Contributor

Laura Lentz, the wife of former Hillsong NYC Pastor Carl Lentz, has opened up about how she suffered from worsening depression and PTSD after her husband was fired from the global megachurch due to alleged moral failures and infidelity last November.

…Lentz and her husband were the focus of many headlines following his cheating confession last November and termination by the Australia-based international church network.

Donna Hazel Cannot Quit This Blog

Donna Hazel Cannot Quit This Blog

I see there’s a comment from blog visitor “Donna Hazel” in the blog’s “Trash” area recently (since I have her blocked).

I feel like John Lennon to Donna Hazel’s Mark David Chapman, or Ronald Reagan to Donna Hazel’s John Hinckley Jr.

I just know Donna Hazel is reading this post, because it has her name in the title! *hello, Donna Hazel*

(I’d like to be wrong about that, but I suspect it’s going to be true once I hit the “publish” button for this… and if I check the “trash” can page, I bet she will leave me another nasty gram, one replying to THIS post, telling me how fascinated I must be with her. 🙄 Projection, much?)

I mean, this Donna person found my blog – I did not seek HER out, never met her before – and one of my posts ticked her off, and she keeps returning to patronizingly lecture me.

(edit: And I did not notify this “Donna Hazel” person of my last post, which mentioned her in passing,  and her name was not in the blog post’s title, which means, she is obviously coming back to this blog to visit it, and to read even posts that do not have her name in the heading.
Who is twisting your arm, Donna, to force you to visit this blog?)

At this point, this is no longer really about my ex friend, Emma. I’m not even sure this is really about me? This is about Donna Hazel and her peculiar hang ups.

Donna Hazel said:

Anyone would think you were after *more* attention from “DH”. Can’t let it go, can you?
Why’s that?

…Astonishingly you complain *I* have no recognition or compassion for what you’ve gone through? You’ve mentioned it several times. You needed that from a stranger? Someone you espouse to despise? Me? That’s interesting…very much so.
— end quote —

I don’t need or want more attention from you, no, and you never showed me any “compassion” in the first place, nor am I seeking any from you. I blocked you.

You can feel free to go away any time now.

You can feel free to stop reading this blog, visiting the blog, or leaving comments on this blog (which get sent straight to the trash folder).

Addendum – Mental Health and Treatment and the Goals of Mental Health Professionals

Addendum – Mental Health and Treatment and the Goals of Mental Health Professionals

I wanted to clarify issues brought up in a previous post or two on this blog.

The poster who calls herself Donna Hazel, if I am recalling and understanding correctly, was mistakenly assuming that I was absolutely demanding and insisting that if CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) or BA (Behavioral Activation) therapy helped me personally with depression (and my on-going anxiety) that it would and could also help an online friend of mine who has depression.

That is not so much what I was declaring, no.

I do not think it would hurt this now ex friend of mine, whom I referred to as “Emma,” to at least take a look at and consider some of the CBT and BA related links I sent her (some were articles, some were videos by therapists or psychologists on You Tube). (I will write more on this below.)

To her own detriment, I don’t think “Emma” even  bothered to view any of the videos or articles I linked her to; I think she just glanced at their headlines and was infuriated I was sending her something other than non-judgmental emotional support for a change.

Some mental health professionals are very sensitive to critiques of their field. I’ve seen this before on other sites where I write.

Some mental health professionals take criticisms of their profession in stride, while others take it as a personal affront, and they will leave cranky replies to your article.

(And by the way, no, you don’t need to have a college degree in some field to criticize it and to notice flaws with it or with some of its practitioners or their approaches.)

Yet other mental health professionals love to argue over which and what therapies they think “are best.”

Some psychologists and psychotherapists may dislike or disagree with BA or CBT – which is all fine and dandy.

GOALS OF TREATMENT

One of the goals in American psychology is to get a patient functioning.

I have learned that from college level psychology courses I took, and one can find this information online now, as well.

Clinical Depression Doesn’t Make People Incapable of Making Choices or Changes

Clinical Depression Doesn’t Make People Incapable of Making Choices or Changes 

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Follow-Up Posts:

(Link): Addendum – Mental Health and Treatment and the Goals of Mental Health Professionals

(Link): An Alarming Trend in Psychotherapy by Christine Sefein – (Woke Therapists Want You To Stay In a Victim Mindset and Miserable)

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I don’t frequently feature mental health related topics on this blog, but a friend of mine recently became very angry and “blew her top” at me and basically said she wants nothing more to do with me, and this topic pertains to the reason why.

(I will be doing another blog post or two later about this friend biting my head off this past couple of weeks.
And I will repeat this in the future, but:
The irony is that this now ex friend is someone who spent about a year and a half or two years asking me on Twitter if I could befriend her on other sites and share more about myself with her.
I was hesitant to do that but eventually took a chance. She and I have never met in person – but she initially wanted to befriend me further, not vice versa!)

Despite the fact I informed this (now ex) friend a few times over the last two or three year period that I was diagnosed with clinical depression when I was around age 11 by a psychiatrist,
and that this diagnosis was verified as I got older (into my 30s) by about three other psychiatrists (in a total of three different states),
this ex friend, who I shall call “Emma” (not her real name) continued to insist that there is no way I ever could have had clinical depression.

I can’t begin to describe how insensitive and obnoxious I found that.

Side note:

I was appreciative of the times this ex-friend listened to me describe my anxiety-laced concerns with her, as she did many times, and I made sure to thank her for that several times in the last few years.

I even asked this ex friend, “Emma,” a time or two that if she found my anxiety produced ruminations on the same topics crazy-making that I could back off, but she said it was okay.

But as I told her, I was fighting my anxiety to make changes in my life. I’ve not seen her fight her depression to make changes in her life.

I also told her I realize it’s not good to stay angry at people, which is why I’ve been trying to move past anger at family members of mine. I don’t think she’s willing to let go of some of her issues to move forward, though.

At any rate…

I finally politely yet directly told Emma this past week, when she once more insisted there’s no way I ever had depression, that it was not okay for her to keep denying my medical diagnosis like that.

And she has never apologized for it, and she told me this about three times over a 3 or 4 year period!

But she kept acting angry and incredulous that rather than offer her non-judgmental emotional support recently (which I had done for a few years now), that I dared to change strategy and offer her a few suggestions.

On Not Filtering Every Choice Through the Bible

On Not Filtering Every Choice Through the Bible

This is one of those topics I’m working my way through right now. Maybe a year from now, my opinion will flip on it. But here is where I am now.

I was first made aware of this post from John Piper’s “Desiring God” web site via someone posting to SCCL Facebook group.

Here it is:

(Link):  How to Drink Orange Juice to the Glory of God by John Piper

Excerpts:

• I said that one of my reasons for believing this comes from 1 Corinthians 10:31. “Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” I asked, “Is it sin to disobey this Biblical commandment?” Yes.
• …Some of you then asked the practical question: Well, how do you “eat and drink” to the glory of God? Say, orange juice for breakfast?
• ….Orange juice was “created to be received with thanksgiving by those whobelieve the truth.” Therefore, unbelievers cannot use orange juice for the purpose God intended—namely, as an occasion for heartfelt gratitude to God from a truth heart of faith.
• But believers can, and this is how they glorify God. Their drinking orange juice is “sanctified by means of the word of God and prayer.”

Yes, it’s an entire post explaining why and how Christians may drink Orange Juice to the glory of God.

This is a part of Christianity that I am glad to leave behind. In my faith crisis of the last few years, there have been some advantages to ceasing turning to the Bible as an authority in decision-making in life in every area.