Sounds like a form of therapy in and of itself.
Sharing your enjoyment with others. Work you can take pride in. Preserving history. Sounds pretty great for mental health.
And probably cheaper.
I can guarantee it’s not cheaper
Depends on if you’re in America, or a real first world country.
One won’t be cheaper, the other has a high likelihood of being cheaper.
Also depends on your insurance. I pay $25 per visit, and even over a year when I went every week, I doubt it was more expensive than restoring a train lol.
And how much do you pay just to have that insurance? How much lower is your paycheck because your company provides insurance?
I am an American, and I pay zero dollars for my and my kid’s therapy. But it’s okay, you just wanted the low-hanging fruit by taking a shot at America.
Am American. The fruit is low hanging for a fucking reason.
Yeah, restorations aren’t cheap, and the bigger the parts get, the more expensive they get. And it’s not like you can hit up ye olde fireboxes-r-us anymore.
steam equipment is definitely not cheaper than therapy, you get a cracked cylinder? Better hope you have literal tons of iron/steel sitting around, and or something/someone to pay for it, as well as someone to machine it, because none of that exists anymore.
Yeah, I was gonna say that these men DID go to therapy.
That was my thought.
Men got themselves a hobby they enjoy, and gets to share with others. Two amazing things for someones overall mental health. Sounds like someone living the dream.
Yeah, most people today meed therapy because they feel isolated from their work, unappreciated, and are stressed about finances. A hobby where you work towards a common goal with no real world consequences is what most people need in their life right now. ~~~~
Honestly, if you think about it, therapy did kind of replace the support structures formed in tight knit communities…
OR, they’ve already been through therapy and found some decent medication, and are keenly aware that personally enjoyable hobbies are an essential part of self care.
Not that I know anything about that.
- throws food into back yard koi pond *
I want a koi pond to use their poop to fertilize my gardens, any tips or resources for a newbie?
I have no information to offer. I just want to say that koi ponds are beautiful, and I wish you the best of luck.
Oh boy, where to start. I’d say first, read up on the nitrogen cycle because that’s the most important part of filtration. Read up on KH (carbonate hardness too).
Then make sure you’re going to have more filtration than you need.
When designing the pond, keep predators in mind. I’m a fan of making the sides go straight down, and having the whole pond be deep. No places to walk into the water.
Plus, that kind of design means more water volume. More water volume means either more fish, or more stable water parameters and more room to grow. And along the same lines, build it to be as big as will fit! It’s a big cliche in the hobby that it’s never big enough, and here I am this year upgrading my ~3000 gal pond that’s 30” deep, to 6000+ gallons and about 5 feet deep.
If you install a bottom drain in the pond (recommended) gravity fed to a settling tank before it gets to the pump, you could vacuum all the fish poop out of that and get the majority of it very easily.
For the pond liner, you want 45 mil EPDM rubber. It is kind of expensive, but it is the standard for a reason.
And that’s not all the information obviously, but I think I’ve run out of steam, lol. I enjoy spreading the love with this hobby though, so please message me with future questions.
Edit to add: look up photos of bogs for ponds. They can be part of your filtration, but you can also plant a bunch of plants in it and the ones that can handle the wet roots will grow like crazy, eating nitrates and other nutrients directly from the water.
Why would someone assume these people needed therapy in the first place?
because men are bad, and women are good.
and the only way for men to get good is to spend $1000s of dollars talking to therapists, who are predominantly women.
or maybe… the apparatus of therapy is woman-biased and therefore it negates and legitimatizes men’s emotions and their expression. and the positive things men do in the world with their emotions must be shame and ridicule because they should submit to our belief that talk-therapy is the only legitimate form of emotional outlet…
You can flip that around and suggest that it’s normal and accepted for men to put effort into a hobby as a mental release, and this should be perfectly fine for women as well, but sometimes it’s not amd they are in the past seen as weird, abnormal, or hysterical for having interests.
But it isn’t normal and accepted for men to put effort into a hobby? It is common and clichéd to mock men endlessly for their interests? Like in this very post?
amd they are in the past seen as weird, abnormal, or hysterical for having interests.
I don’t think it’s ever been considered more weird, abnormal, or hysterical to crotchet as a gal than it has been to build bottle ships for guys. That is, sure, there’s been lots of BS around the type of hobby, it not being “gender-adequate”, but women not allowed to have hobbies? At all? What? Being too poor to have hobbies, sure, but that again is not a gendered thing.
don’t let reality get the way of the ‘man = bad woman = good’ narrative.
women have always had hobbies and been hobbiest, at least among the upper classes. just as men have.
and the poor women had to work to the bone, just like the poor men.
Ok buddy, I think you pushed it a bit too far…
Would’ve been more productive to keep it at “male depression and anxiety is underdiagnosed”, maybe also say “because therapists only learn about female-pattern symptoms”, YMMV on that being pushing a bit too far.
I will not comment on comments talking about men’s mental health getting downvoted in a post about men’s mental health and, should a definite pattern emerge, let that speak for itself.
You realize you can just get a male therapist right?
They do exist and a lot of them will relate to male emotional expression where it isn’t just outright toxic.
The vast, vast majority of men (in the US, can’t speak to other cultures) need therapy. Just getting over internalized phobias is something the entire culture needs. Really, everyone needs therapy at some point and very few have a chance to get it, and fewer take it.
But in regards to this meme: men tend to need therapy more. The patriarchy (what society pushes as male “culture”) heavily represses emotional expressions and few men have an outlet to talk to their friends or family about their feelings. This leads to a lot of repressed emotions, lashing out, etc.
These guys are not lashing out, though. There is no discernable connection between somebody taking an interest in trains and avoiding therapy lol
I think they’re lashing out. Coal is very harmful to the environment and to other people. They should pick a less violent hobby.
I’m just gonna assume you are making a bad joke rather than saying the couple hundred functioning steam locomotives have anything more than a negligible impact on the environment
Coal is going to stick around for certain applications for pretty much forever. What’d be interesting to see is charcoal refined to anthracite-levels of performance so applications needing that kind of grade can become carbon-neutral.
And it’s not even always railway enthusiasts operating the remaining steam locomotives btw in Poland they’re still in regular service. They phased out steam very late because of various economic reasons and once they did steam was already a nostalgic thing so they kept a depot and associated lines open. Contrast e.g. Germany where you don’t see steam in regular service but on various isolated narrow gauge sections.
There are very practical reasons for heritage rail to convert to oil burning rather than coal, including less abrasive grit flung all over the exposed running gear to not throwing burning embers all over the nation.
The grit isn’t much of a factor considering running gear gets dirt up in it anyways but there are plenty of railroads who convert their locomotives to oil over logistics and fire issues yeah
But in areas where coal is available and wildfires aren’t so easy to start can you really blame the museums for keeping their artifacts historically accurate?
I’m largely pulling from a video that Hyce published recently on the topic, that that there are several pros, cons and factors involved. Keeping a historically coal burning engine as original is definitely something a museum would like to do, but apparently as the world’s coal power plants are shutting down, so are the mines. Modern coal plants burn coal that is ground fairly finely, steam locomotives prefer large chunks, so that’s still a bit of a special order. Meanwhile it’s fairly easy to find bunker C or used motor oil or even used cooking oil.
Firing a coal-powered engine is a back breaking exercise because the fireman IS the fuel pump, shoveling literal tons of coal from the tender into the firebox, but given the mass of the fire it is fairly automatic when responding to changes in throttle from the engine. Oil fired engines are a matter of turning valves, but without the mass of the coal bed a change in demand from the engine requires fairly swift action from the fireman.
Shutdown of an oil steamer is a lot easier, when you’re done you close a valve, the fire goes out and she’ll spend the next week cooling down to room temperature. With a coal burner you’ve got to extinguish or dump the fire, fuck around with ash, etc.
And, fires are a thing. Early in her heritage career, UP’s Challenger just about burned down all of Utah. The state wasn’t going to let them run it again without converting to oil. They had to do the same with the Big Boy for the same reason. Other heritage railways are making the move to oil firing because it’s making more and more sense for 21st century steam traction.
the disconnection is that they are spending money on trains, not on therapists.
That is a hilariously bad reading of what this meme is about.
fuck ya hobby i guess.
It’s impossible to tell. But my statement that pretty much everyone needs therapy, especially men, still stands.
That and it’s a joke meme not a personal attack. Because often men do engage in distractions instead of dealing with their feelings. Everyone does, but men have less-encouraged avenues to pursue dealing with it. This is meant to convey that many men are disadvantaged at dealing with issues, know the solution, but still refuse to try to fix it. It’s a common enough occurrence that this is a meme.
Edit: lol. Lemmy is really full of insecure men.
I’m a man. I’ve been to therapy. I went back to university and got my degree in my 30’s. Now I’m happy with who I am as a person. My hobbies are gardening, coffee, video games, and electronics. I volunteer as a tutor twice a week helping high school kids with their home work. Are you saying I should give all that stuff up and go back to therapy?
… You went to therapy. This isn’t about you.
But if you’re this defensive about a meme? Lol yeah probably bud.
I’m not defensive about a meme. I’m challenging the assertion that everyone needs therapy. Therapy is what you need when you don’t know how to make yourself happy. If you don’t have a problem with that then you don’t need therapy. Telling people they need therapy when you don’t know anything about them is what offends me.
This is a generalized meme. It’s not really about anyone in particular. But tell me why this really engaged you and makes you feel like you need to challenge it. Perhaps you feel it fits closer than you’d like to believe? Does it remind you of something your parents said?
But my statement that pretty much everyone needs therapy, especially men, still stands.
i don’t disagree per se, but i also don’t agree either, therapy doesn’t solve problems, unless they’re maladaptations, in which case it can be used to rectify them, otherwise it’s providing functional coping mechanisms to people who need them for things that they simply cannot function around.
But there is also a discussion to be had around whether certain maladapted behaviors are even a problem to begin with. Because arguably there is a larger societal problem with how we treat individuals, which leads to what are classified and defined as problems, but in reality, might just be someone trying to engage in something that they can’t engage in via healthy means. Alcohol and gamling aren’t a thing for everybody for a reason, but apparently society is a thing for everyone all the time, and anything other than that is “bad”
Oh and also we need enough therapists, to be able to therapy everyone, currently we have significantly less than we need, and college turn out rates are lower as of recent, than just about anything else. So uh, good luck recommending what is probably a distant future solution? Because we certainly don’t have enough people in the field now, and we definitely don’t seem to have many people wanting to go into the field themselves.
men doing shit is them dealing with their feelings. it’s not distraction.
men are not women. talk therapy doesn’t work for them
Insane take. Just weirdly pushing a double standard for no reason.
Exactly, just like the meme posted above
men are not women. talk therapy doesn’t work for them
Uhhhhhhhhhhhh, no.
It probably does in many cases, but it’s not the only way nor is it universal.
Really, everyone needs therapy at some point
What we need is a society and environment that aligns with human nature.
Yes, I’m in therapy and I take meds. But I sure as fuck didn’t need any therapy and meds during the 6 months I worked as a hiking and horseback riding guide in a Provincial Park in British Columbia.Agreed. Most of us need therapy because we are in an aggressively hostile society. In a humane society, we’d only rarely need therapy when traumatic and rare events occurred, or similar instances.
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i think it’s less that men need therapy, though older men, particularly those above 30 probably do, the problem with young men right now is not therapy, it’s a lack of societal engagement from them, presumably because society doesn’t really know what to do with them, or doesn’t really understand how to deal with shifting tides.
the problem isn’t engagement, it’s the lack of the fulfillment of the social contract.
what is the point in engaging for them if they aren’t going to be rewarded with good jobs, homes, families, and a sense of progress and security? there isn’t any. so they give up. at least the bottom half do. For the top quartile of men, those things are still on offer.
maybe?
I don’t really like the traditional interpretation of social contract theory, it’s very Pavlovian, which works, but seems rather dystopian. Works well for conceptualizing society, but doesn’t build a productive one i think. Like you said, we need to give men something to do, something to work for, and something to enjoy. And outside of that, they need a place in society that they can exist, without limitation. Because currently, there isn’t really a space for them. Arguably there isn’t one for women either, so addressing both of those would be beneficial.
They weren’t faulting the men. They were saying society itself has largely disengaged from young men.
As a mental health worker, if a client got involved with something like this, I’d be thrilled. This sounds like it provides purpose and community to all involved. Good for them!
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I actually agree with you in many aspects. Something new that is being taught in therapy training is that we have to be aware of systemic issues that are contributing to someone’s mental health.
Example: someone is suicidal and feeling hopeless. Do they have clinical major depressive disorder? Maybe, but if we ask “how are your finances doing?” And they say they work full time at Walmart and get paid $10 per hour and have 3 kids… Yeah it makes sense why they feel helpless and suicidal.
For this reason, therapists and mental health workers have a duty to advocate for progressive social policies.
It would be like if were constantly maiming and injuring people and saying the problem was not enough people going to physical therapy.
In that I kind of agree with you. Many problems can be traced back to societal issues. Hell is other people. That’s why we need to do better.
Sending those, damaged by society, to therapy is necessary, but we wouldn’t be there if several root causes wouldn’t exist.Like if we just took blackrock’s real estate and put homeless people in it the mental health crisis would just be like 80% solved. I’m not even kidding.
Oversimplification, imo. But this is surely a contributing factor.
In one of my psych courses the professor noted a study (not sure of the source, this was closing in on twenty years ago now) that while psychotherapy had pretty good efficacy for certain things, it was equivalent with “talk openly with your friends about it” in most metrics. A therapist is great for providing specific strategies to address particular challenges (for issues like PTSD, for example, a therapist can help to manage an exposure therapy approach) but after a point you’re kinda just paying through the nose for somebody to professionally emulate you having a healthy friendship with a well-adjusted person.
That is therapy
Doing something you enjoy ✅
Doing something with a community ✅
Doing something different to your normal routine ✅
therapy is anything you want it to be. there are 100s of styles, varieties, and etc.
therapy is whatever makes life worth living, in a broad sense, in a more narrow sense it’s whatever improves your being day to day.
and according to some folks in this thread the only thing making life worth living is seeing a therapist… and you can’t possibly be well adjusted if you don’t.
that is what we call ‘projection’.
this is what we call the “therapist industrial complex”
im kidding, but no seriously.
I’ve witnessed these old boys hanging out tinkering and chatting. The best kind of therapy.
No offense to you, but I definitely don’t think this will address quite a few things that therapy can.
If all you are suffering from is a lack of direction in life, then this absolutely will help. You could even see improvements in social anxiety and social aptitude.
Anger problems, though? Alexithymia? Chronic episodes of mental dissociation? I don’t think working on the train crew’s gonna help
At the same time, It’s definitely been conjected that therapy is mostly woman-focused and isn’t as effective for men for various reasons. That kind of lines up with a few of my previous therapists, who felt like worthless experiences for me. I have heard of some new therapy styles implemented in certain places, though, that do sound to be genuinely helpful to dudes.
Edit: “social anxiety and social anxiety” woops
You make a decent point and illustrate by your “woman-focused” that there is a decided lack of professional therapists geared to male issues. This is why we have learned to find inner peace through creative activities. It lets us focus on the task instead of stewing on things over which we have little if any effect or control
I think most men have not learned to find inner peace and still suffer from closeted issues. The rate of suicide amongst men is still so high. There’s definitely a bias we dudes who find hobby communities, where we assume that most dudes have found these spaces. I’d argue most dudes in the US are still suffering from isolation.
I don’t think the fact that many therapists are ‘woman-focused’ is a reason to avoid therapy. You can still find a therapist that really helps. It may just take several tries. As I also mentioned, there are efforts to create methods that are more effective for men, and you can seek out those groups as well.
There is also still a strong stigma against seeking therapy, and I definitely see that argument about therapy being ‘woman-focused’ being thrown out as an excuse not to try therapy at all.
That is a hobby. A lovely one, but still a hobby. That is not therapy.
I’m not saying you can’t gain insights into yourself or situations while doing that. It can most definitely help and be therapeutic. But therapy it is not
SO FUCKING WHAT?!?!? DO I NEED TO ASK PERMISSION TO HAVE A FUCKING HOBBY, YOUR MAJESTY??? JESUS CHRIST!!! (smashing noises and incoherent yelling from garage)
Sounds like somebody needs to go restore a train…
Men will literally pay someone to have a conversation about their feelings instead of restoring a train.
yeah what the fuck, go restore a train, it’s preservation and gives something for your local community to enjoy!
Thank you for your wise words, o slayer of the ages.
my words are not wise my friend, they are simply the cultural glue that holds society together.
Without the past we wouldn’t exist today, the moment you stop caring about history, everything goes bad.
People will bitch about anything someone else does that is therapeutic for them.
Learning to not do this was an important part of my mental health journey. I’ve come to realize I was raised by some very negative people. Very nice people that I see regularly, but always looking for something to complain about rather than something to appreciate.
I understand this to some extent. I however wasn’t raised by nice people. When I cut contact with them I got better and discovered I didn’t have to like something someone else did for it to be good for them.
I don’t know dude. Hobbies are quite different from therapy. If you were looking at something like alcohol versus therapy, that would be a more realistic comparison.
fuck you, coal fired steam boilers, and steam engines are one of the coolest, and most technologically impressive things we have ever done throughout history. Only topped by the deep space probes currently hurtling to the middle of nowhere spaceland.
IDK, you hear about sliced bread? It’s pretty nice.
Presliced bread goes bad quicker and I also prefer a different slice thickness than what is usually offered. I don’t understand why it’s seen as such an achievement.
slice bread is also pretty good. But that’s nothing compared to what a steam engine can do given a bread slicer.
Nope. Good bread basically never comes in slices, and definitely not in the country that invented pre-sliced bread. You can get passable sliced bread in Germany but the good stuff definitely stays loaves at least until you buy it. I mean it’s fine to slice it then and there if you have enough mouths to feed to have it finished by tomorrow.
Have You heard about portable outhouses? God’s gift to humanity!
I used to bring up that Diane Feinstein was older than sliced bread to point out her age… but now it’s hard to say she is older. Need a new politician to rag on.
that and hit or miss engines
idk man, i hate combustion based engines. They’re cringe and unfunny.
Having a hobby and being part of a community is a very constructive, helpful, and effective way of beating back the isolation and despair that is killing so many young people.
Sorry, they can’t hear you over all the CHOOO CHOOOO MOTHERFUCKEEEEEERRRR!!!
CRANKIN STEAMY HOGS WITH THE PACK
Who says instead? Seems like people with their heads on right
I think that’s pretty cool, seems like a net positive for everyone, guy loves trains…guy fixes train…shares passion with community…more people love train. He wins, train wins, community wins.
No one wants to work, which is clearly a human trait despite the fact we do work like this constantly, across the board, for fun
Yeah, if I didn’t have to spend time on a job, I’d spend some of that free time volunteering with habitat for humanity to build houses. I love doing that kind of shit.
What a weird fuckin take
Yeah, like you could say the exact same thing about gardening or painting or knitting. Taking up a hobby and learning how to do something can be really relaxing and beneficial to your mental health. Gender has nothing to do with it.
