I typically only replace my phones when they’re significantly worse than what a new, more modern phone would get me. So, that usually means when there are a bunch of new hardware features on the newer models or when the battery in my current phone is so old that it holds significantly less charge than it did when it was new.

That was a lie propagated by parrots.

I’ve heard of the polar bear club and I totally get it (although they’re a little too extreme for me). The cold shock of relatively cool water when you’ve just come out of hot water is an exhilarating shock, almost like an adrenaline kick.

Absolutely not. I take cold showers in the summer all the time. I mean, they’re not super-cold, if that’s what you mean, but they’re relatively cool and designed to cool me off rather than warm me up (like the hot showers I take in the Winter months).

Passion and Reason, by Richard and Bernice Lazarus. It’s a very accessible book about the connections between thoughts and emotions. Understanding what’s covered in it would save a lot of people a ton of confusion and social hardship in life.

Yes. But I’m a therapist, so….

🎵The internet is for porn.🎶

This is an impossible question to answer with certainty for pretty much everyone. Maybe the extremely suicidal or the terminally ill, but likely not anyone else.

Death (and our perceived relationship to it) changes with our proximity to it. So, being existentially and emotionally prepared for death when you’re young is very different from when you’re old, and from when death is pretty much imminent. I would wager even people who report a high degree of confidence that they are prepared for their eventual death are less so (and likely much less so) when they are facing imminent death. I imagine the number of people who don’t experience fear when their death is imminent is actually quite low.

I have considered myself prepared for death for much of my adult life, but since sometime in my 30’s I have also accepted that I can’t predict my preparedness in the months-to-moments before I die. The existential threat of your existence ending is simply too dependent on its immediacy to be predicted with certainty ahead of time.

If either my girlfriend/wife or my mother asked me that question, I would refuse to answer and instead ask them why they were asking it. I’d explain that that’s a very nasty question to ask because it’s a loyalty test, even if they don’t mean it as one, and it puts me in a very awkward position—why would they want to do that? I’d ask them to consider how they’d feel if either their mother or spouse asked them that.

And if they didn’t immediately see my point, that would slightly lower my opinion of them, to be honest.

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I have improved the lives of many people in small ways via my job as a therapist. The best part is that I know this for a fact by seeing the improvement over time. Therapy is, in some respects, about re-parenting people; the damage you help heal is intimate and permanent. You help people grow, literally. Very rewarding, again, in the long run.

Very much, yes. It’s so disrespectful to other people.

Long-term, sustained weight loss is about lifestyle change. Don’t set a goal and implement dietary and/or exercise changes you have to force yourself to stick to; instead, you have to find a lower-calorie diet and exercise routine that you actually like. Some “dealing with hunger” may be necessary in the beginning if you’re used to frequent eating or large portions, but your body/brain should acclimate to your new diet in a few weeks. If you can, the best eating schedule is actually one with no meals, but around six healthy snacks throughout the day. This is because the frequent eating keeps your metabolism up throughout the day, which burns calories faster. You want to aim for no more than 2,000 calories a day if you’re counting them. I would also recommend taking a multivitamin (most people should be taking one anyway).

No. Alternate identities in people with DID (dissociative identity disorder) are not literally other people; they’re different identity complexes within the same person. Such a person would need a good therapist/psychiatrist, not a hostage negotiator.

I don’t think social mores factor into it all for him. When he said he finds the position of trans people genuinely funny, I think he was being honest. I do think he went too far with his jokes about them, simply in terms of sheer number; it was a social faux pas that strained the credulity of his stated position, but I personally believe him when he says he just finds the whole situation very funny.

I think he doesn’t care what other people think of his comedy at this point, and I don’t really have an opinion on that. I suppose I sort of respect it, but I also think he’s definitely passed into the realm of bad taste at this point. I don’t think he means anything bad by it though. Maybe he is insensitive, but comedians aren’t known for their sensitivity. I understand the criticism against him for it and think it’s valid.

I’m not defending the offensiveness of his jokes, just stating that I think they’re just jokes to him, and he doesn’t actually mean them in a mean-spirited light. If I were to talk to him about it, I would probably ask him how he feels about White comedians that make jokes about Black people, who also claim they’re not advocating anti-Black views, and just find the humor in their situations. I imagine he might reveal himself to be quite the hypocrite under that line of questioning. Most of us are hypocrites.

You have to remember, a lot of American Christians are descended from European Christians who were so extreme and weird that no one wanted them around, so they fled to the Americas to escape “persecution.” So, these Christian persecution complexes go way back. They’re a part of our history. Well, not all of ours, but some.

I don’t think he’s actually anti-trans, he just likes making jokes about them and refused to be cowed by people telling him to stop. Just my sense of it though.

The Christmas morning I got my SNES, and spent a very bright, snowy day playing Super Mario World for hours upon hours.

Same.

What do you mean by “marriage benefits?” Are talking about strictly legal issues or just the general benefits of being married? Because people can get pretty much all of the general, non-legal benefits of marriage just by being in a close, long-term, living-together relationship.

Most of the men I’ve heard talking about how marriage isn’t worth it are referring to the potential of divorce and the financial fallout they’re likely to experience if that happens. It depends on where you live, but a lot of divorce laws are still pretty old and force breadwinners to largely finance their divorcee’s lifestyles after separation. I can understand why some men would feel that marriage is thus a “bad deal” in that respect.