You've heard good and bad mental health advice, but what about funny advice regarding anxiety, depression, and general mental health? Probably not. I found this guy, @danhentschel , on TikTok who makes satire videos giving advice on how to do "xyz". He covers multiple topics, but I stuck to the general/social anxiety videos he does. What's really fun about this advice is that many times the 1st part of the video will be true and then he will give you the most impractical and absurd advice on how to deal with negative thoughts, overcome social anxiety, trick your brain into being confident, etc. This is a fun one!
Eliminate your social anxiety by doing this. Hi, could you hold this real quick? Raking a water bottle to spill when the other person grabs it ensures they start the interaction embarrassed, and they'll be too busy thinking about their embarrassment to have any idea. If you do something embarrassing, I know what you're thinking.
What did he just say? Is he being for real? This is Dan Hensel and he's pretty big on TikTok. And to answer your question, no, he's not being for real. His whole account is complete satire. He gives ridiculous and outlandish advice on pretty much every topic from how to figure out your partner is cheating on you.
To how to win an argument to mental health advice, which is what I'm gonna be focusing on today. Yeah. We're gonna have a purely fun, what I love about this guy, besides his complete ridiculousness, is that some of what he actually says is right, but the advice he gives is so impractical, like the dropping the water bottle bit.
Sure. You could drop the water bottle and the focus would go on the other. Person, the embarrassment will go in the other person, but this isn't actual a practical piece of advice that you could use to control and rid your anxiety. Here's another one. People with social anxiety really want to build their confidence.
Here's a really unreasonable way to do that. Here's how I tricked my brain into being more confident. I don't need these glasses to see when I wear them. I actually see worse. They're just cheap reading glasses, but this means I can't see people's facial expressions. What we perceive from people's facial expressions governs everything about how we socially interact with the world.
By making my vision worse, I stopped caring what people think about me because I couldn't see it. Everyone becomes an amorphous. Blob and I see them for who they really are inside. You see what I'm saying? Some of these videos have some truth in it. It's just the advice is just really impractical. If we didn't see facial expressions like he's saying, I think that might actually help out maybe just a little bit.
We do so much kind of micro analyzing. Subconsciously in our brains where if we didn't see people's faces, we wouldn't think that we are mindreading them and know what people are thinking and saying about us. So if we remove facial expressions, would we stop thinking about what others are thinking about us?
Well, I don't know. But it's funny. On a scale of one to 10, one being not realistic and 10 being super realistic, how realistic is it to rid your anxiety like this? It is possible to train yourself to build a tolerance to anxiety using my anxiety training podcast.
Each episode is an hour of complete silence except for a handful of loud noises. It's designed so you can forget it's even playing, and it trains your anxiety every day like a muscle.
Yeah, I'm gonna go with a want. I may regret saying this, but I don't think this is the worst advice on how to start a conversation. How do you join a conversation with people you don't know? For this, you're gonna need a duffle bag. Cut a hole on the bottom, turn it inside out, tape the hole from the inside.
Fill it with conversation starters. I'm from Maryland. I'm hygienic. I'm artsy. Have I B s. Mentally ill healthy into the macab. This covers a bunch of 'em. Coins attract attention. Walk up. You're looking for something in the bag. Now you are the conversation and as everybody helps you clean up, they discover everything about you.
Oh yeah, it's a little over the top, but I think it would maybe work not super authentic and planning a conversation. This hardcore is borderline mess. Stuff, but I think it would work. Some of the others I'm about to show you, not so much. Making eye contact with other people when you have social anxiety is a really common problem, but not any longer.
Well, maybe that's not entirely ch Well just watch the video. Hi. Could I get a uh, uh, pastrami hot pastrami on? Sourdough with macaroni salad to practice making good eye contact in real life. Every time you have to make a phone call, pull up YouTube videos of people staring at you. I miss you so much, baby.
No, this obviously wouldn't work, but it is funny also, why are there videos on YouTube of people just staring in the camera? Are these really for practicing eye contact? Holy crap, this one has 6.9 million. Views. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this does help you with eye contact. Maybe this is something that I never took advantage of.
It just seems so absurd, but maybe it actually helps. So if this is something that you struggle with, try it out. Let me know what you think.
So what else does Dan Hinshaw have for us? Today, the next time you're in a social situation and it seems like you're the only one who wants to leave, sit your phone down on the table and play a high frequency sound. This will make people physically compelled to leave the space they're in and they may never know there was a sound at all.
Does this one work? Like, has anyone ever tried this? I feel like it has the possibility to work. It's a better option to just say, Hey, I'm heading out. But if you are hosting people at your house, and we've all done this before, where people are kind of lingering and they aren't getting the hint that, you know, it's kind of getting late, they kind of need to go.
How do you get them outta your house with just out being like, Hey, I need you to leave. I think this would be an okay time to try this out. Let's transition from some of his anxiety advice to some of his more overall mental health advice. So how can we deal with negative thoughts? How to deal with negative thoughts every time you have a negative thought.
Put it on a piece of paper and hang it up. If you take the thought and turn it into a physical object, your brain can see. It's not a threat, it's just words on a piece of paper. I have this one in my bathroom mirror and it's got a little grammar mistake there, but that allowed me to turn it into a new thought and correct the mistake.
I have one in my fridge door, so when I close it, I can see it. I didn't realize what I printed it, it was gonna print on two pieces of paper. This is just something embarrassing that I said once, and I, it doesn't really make sense outside of the context. In which I said it, but to me it's the most embarrassing memory I have.
But it's not scary. It's just a piece of paper. Ah, you got a paper cut? You may think this is absurd, but I I, I feel great right now.
What about depression? What great advice does Dan have for depression? Well, I'm glad you asked.
Okay, buy the video. This is how I cured my depression. I got a baby doll and I put my own face on it. We all have kind of a primal instinct to take care of babies, your bottle, and if the baby's you, it makes you feel like you're nurturing yourself when you need it the most. I find that this works out great.
Oh, it's okay, sweetie. I love you. I mean, I love me.
This simple trick cured my depression. Human beings were never supposed to be able to look at themselves in the mirror. Our brains evolved before they were invented, and most other animals don't even know what they are. So when we look at our own face in one, we know logically that it's supposed to be us, but emotionally, we have no idea how to interpret that information.
Okay, so far. Do you think this is true? Because I think it makes sense to me. When I covered my mirror with the faces of other people, my brain became much more comfortable and my self-esteem issues vanished because I was tricking my brain into undoing the emotional damage. Looking in a mirror had caused me my entire life.
And then he filmed a TikTok on his film and screwed it all up. First half. Believable information. It made sense, right? Second half, really un practical advice, which is pretty much the content that this guy makes. So I shouldn't be surprised by that. Yeah. All right, last one. How to stop panic attacks. We get anxious because our brains still haven't evolved since we were hunter gatherers.
And we go into fight or flight mode thinking there's a natural danger present. We either have to fight or run away for all true statements. If you play the sounds of predators, we might have encountered in days all meet, your brain will think you just fought and killed the source of the day. There we go.
No more panic attacks. Thank you all for watching. I know this is a little bit different of more video than I usually do today. I know you usually come here, you're looking for stuff to help yourself get better, but I think it's also helpful to have comedic relief. That's why I like to make my videos a little bit entertaining and I think this was really fun and.
May be helpful in, in some ways too. Don't ask me to describe how, but I think it may have been helpful. So let me know if you really enjoyed this, liked it. Uh, I don't know if I could find content like this again to do another video. Similar, but I don't know. Maybe I can. Thanks for watching everybody. I'll see you all next week.
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