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Looking for hobby ideas that you can immediately do for intense frustration/duress/anger that DON'T involve exercise? Looking for something like physical movement combined with mental engagement. (lemmy.world)

submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by dingus@lemmy.world to c/mentalhealth@lemmy.world

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Hi all. One of my biggest issues is emotional dysregulation.

I have noticed that a big thing is that I don't have any activities that I can do for a prolonged period of time when frustrated. These "calming techniques" like breathing and the 5-4-3-2-1 thing only work for for a minute or so and then I'm back to flipping out. I need it to be both physical AND mental though. Only tackling physical leaves too much time for rumination...and only tackling mental doesn't get out the high energy.

So I think I need something to bridge the gap here between the techniques to immediately and temporarily calm you and when I eventually feel better again.

Here are ideas I DON'T want:

Exercise - I find that exercise has never been mentally engaging enough to make me feel better. It actually will often do the opposite of what people say it does. It gives me more time to think and ruminate. Exercise for me will magnify my current emotions, which is beneficial if I am already happy, but absolutely terrible for me if I am already frustrated. Plus if I'm frustrated at like 3am, going outside to exercise is dangerous for me lol.
Writing down your feelings - Again, I feel like I'm missing something here. Doing that doesn't make me feel better...it makes me ruminate and focus on the problem more, making me even more upset. And then I'm more inclined to send the thing I wrote to others which can damage relationships or be self destructive.

Positive ideas

Canvas painting - I absolutely have NO idea how to do anything artistic...but my thought is that you can angrily let your feelings out and splatter things onto a canvas...and then as you get more calm to morph it into something productive??? Dunno. But I have a screened in patio so I feel like I have the space to both be messy back there and to be able to do it in the middle of the night. I'm wondering if it would be too complicated with all the supplies needed or something though.
Video games - Actually seem to work to take my mind off of things, BUT there is no physical aspect to them. When I am physically calmer, they help me to not ruminate...but again I feel like I have a gap period between where I need more physical activity.

Thanks all I know it's long lol.

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[–] solrize@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

"Let me tell you a secret: chess is the most violent of all sports. I’m a pretty good soccer player and a long-distance swimmer, and recently, I’ve taken up tennis, but I can tell you that there’s no sport as competitive – yes, I’ll say as rough – as chess. The only goal in chess is to prove your superiority over the other guy, and the most important superiority, the most total one, is the superiority of the mind. And there’s no luck involved, no picture card coming up at the right time, no roll of the dice that saves you. It all has to come out of your head. You whip him or he whips you. It’s as simple as that. Or as complicated as that."

--Garry Kasparov, former world chess champion

So make a lichess.org account and wreak some havoc over the chessboard :).

[–] dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 days ago

It's also extremely good at making you feel like the stupidest moron on the planet regardless of your ELO. I don't think I would recommend it for distressing, personally.