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jvanderbot | on: Prioritize mental health, and why communication is so important
If you recognize yourself in that post, then what you recognize is called negative self talk. The only advice I have for you is to learn to recognize how this pattern makes things worse and to learn (or be taught) how to stop that pattern. The blog post is a textbook self-flagellation and I have no doubt author returns to it to feel worse about themselves in some twisted attempt to motivate positive change.
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9dev | parent | next
Hah. I feel very much seen by both of these comments, much more than I’m confident to admit.

Something I have been struggling with all my life is deciding whether I am flawed in some way, or the other party/the environment is - because my immediate reaction is always to feel responsible and inadequate, and it takes a lot of energy of confidently feeling superior or right about something. Like, is it a pattern, or am I reflecting to avoid being ignorant?

nradov | root | parent | next
It's both. All humans and all environments are flawed. You can change yourself and control your reactions to your environment if you want to. You can probably also either improve your environment to some extent, or move to a better environment (not always possible for everyone but HN users usually have that option).

There's no need to feel superior: that's not particularly helpful and will tend to give you a distorted perception of reality. Most likely you're just average.

jvanderbot | root | parent
You'll never have an objective measure of good/bad. You only have your feelings on the matter.

One way is to define what you view as good (or better: define what you view as "better") and just be that as much as you can. Because "trying to actually be better" puts you above the median person immediately, IMHO

m1aw | parent | next
Okay, this is a genuine question because I was trying to avoid negative self talk.

Why did you read the message and think of negative self talk? I'm just trying to learn more about your point of view.

I was just pointing out things where I struggle.

flatline | root | parent | next
Yeah I didn’t read it that way at all. I think that addressing mental health issues requires some frankness with yourself first and foremost. I know some people object to identifying with labels such as ADHD, autism, depressive disorder, etc., but I do not know if that is what the parent intended.
ambicapter | root | parent
Probably because the entire article is the author describing themselves in a negative way.