[dezeiner]

Agreed on mind and body as one. I'm working to address physical health, but it often feels my brain has been irreparably damaged over the course of 2 decades to where no amount of physical health will rewire the necessary circuits to achieve normal function.

[d_watt]

That's hard, I'm sorry you have that struggle. I am about as far away from an expert on the brain as it gets, so I don't want to pretend to have wisdom there. The only thing I can say for myself is around Duḥkha, or that life is suffering.

Navigating the balance between self improvement, and being okay with the idea you may never improve to the point you want is hard. I know as much as I wish I could run a 5 minute mile, I was incredibly sedentary in my teens and 20's. It bothers me that I may never become "elite" in fitness because of my past, and that's just a fundamental barrier for me now.

My current thought is trying to find my personal worth in the journey of attempting self improvement, and not having an absolute goal of "I must be this smart" or "I must be this fit" to consider myself valuable. That mindset is easier said than done, though.

[fairity]

> That mindset is easier said than done, though.

Yep, I've found that accepting a new value framework at an intellectual level is far easier than getting your emotional brain to accept it. I've found that having deep conversations with people where you talk about your new value system helps. There's something about the process of sharing your new value system with your friends & acquaintances that hastens the re-wiring of your emotional brain.

[FFRefresh]

This is not meant as a criticism, hopefully more of an inquiry if you so choose. Is it possible that your 'feeling' of your brain being irreparably damaged is actually factually incorrect? And that your assumptions/model of the plasticity of the brain may be wrong and skew a bit negative?

Is it possible that these negative thought patterns are holding you back? Awhile back, I became aware of some irrational negative thought patterns I had myself, and worked on reframing them, and it helped immensely w/ confidence.

Here's a random link on the general idea (can't vouch for all the content, but it captures the idea of this pattern): https://positivepsychology.com/cbt-cognitive-restructuring-c...

[dezeiner]

This is what therapists have told me, but when my mind totally blanks when asked a question in a meeting, or when I can't vocalize a coherent thought without stumbling over myself, or when I have to read a paragraph 20 times over for the information to stick, I have a hard time believing it's just a negative self-perception.

[FFRefresh]

On examining the negative thought patterns, I think there's at least a couple parts to it:

1. If you very much believe no amount of physical health interventions will have any cognitive effects, then it seems like the probability of you sticking with any sort of health/fitness routine is very low. If in fact, health/diet/fitness DOES have positive cognitive effects (it's been proven scientifically and there are tons of anecdotes), you may end up depriving yourself of a really great thing for improving quality of life and cognition. So examining the possibility that your cognition is not doomed and immune to physical health interventions could greatly increase the odds of improvement.

2. In 2 of your examples, they were social situations. In my experience, negative thought patterns can definitely impact that. I'm saying this somewhat loosely, as I'm not an expert, but have done research in the past on this: Thoughts can trigger bio/physiological responses in the body/brain that can definitely impact cognition.