
Launch HN: Quirk (YC S19) – Open-Source Cognitive Behavioral Therapy - flaque
Hey HN, I&#x27;m Evan. We make Quirk, an open-source Cognitive Behavioral Therapy app. (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;flaque&#x2F;quirk" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;flaque&#x2F;quirk</a>)<p>If you&#x27;ve never seen a cognitive-behavioral therapist before, it&#x27;s easiest to understand by analogy with physical therapy. Like a physical therapist, a cognitive-therapist gives you goals and exercises to do, only they&#x27;re mental rather than physical. Similarly, Quirk gives you exercises where you record and challenge negative thoughts.<p>I work on Quirk with my brother, Koby, a former founder and marketer in both consumer products and the mortgage industry. He&#x27;s really good at simplifying, branding, and explaining complicated topics to the average consumer. Personally, I&#x27;m just an engineer who used to work on Segment&#x27;s developer platform.<p>Quirk started as a command line tool (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;flaque&#x2F;freak" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;flaque&#x2F;freak</a>) that I used to track my panic attacks. I&#x27;ve had severe attacks for as long as I can remember, some lasting several hours. I always used to down-play them, saying &quot;they&#x27;re a once-in-a-blue-moon thing.&quot; But that wasn&#x27;t really true and they started happening more and more. At a certain point they got so bad that I felt hopeless; I always assumed at some point in my life they&#x27;d just stop. But they didn&#x27;t. So I picked up a book on depression, which turned out to be the CBT bible, &quot;Feeling Good&quot; by David Burns. I started working through the exercises and saw a dramatic drop in panic attacks. (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;P29BSRC.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;P29BSRC.jpg</a>)<p>I started turning the CLI into a little app so I could use it wherever. But since I was having so few panic attacks and was constantly recording thoughts all the time, the project became a CBT app. And the more thoughts I recorded, the better I felt; I went from having multiple attacks a week to having two in a six month period.<p>I gave Quirk to folks with a &quot;this-software-will-probably-break-if-you-look-at-it-funny&quot; guarantee and open sourced it. But after a bit, it became pretty hard to ignore how many folks were relying on it. That was surprising; it&#x27;s small and it doesn&#x27;t really do much from a technical perspective. Its main claim-to-fame is that it works pretty well. Everyday we wake up to folks writing in saying that &quot;for the first time in 30 years I feel peaceful,&quot; or that they&#x27;re &quot;happier, healthier and feel so much better about everything,&quot; or that they feel like Quirk is &quot;their secret weapon.” We’re recommended by quite a few therapists but we’re also used by folks who aren’t currently seeing one and had never planned to before trying Quirk.<p>That&#x27;s fantastic, but that&#x27;s not really surprising: CBT has 40 years of evidence saying that it works really well, even in &quot;bibliotherapy&quot; where someone isn&#x27;t necessarily seeing a therapist. Quirk doesn&#x27;t do every part of CBT, but it does the most general, applicable-to-everyone part. So what Quirk is really doing is fixing CBT&#x27;s branding and consistency problems. Most people don&#x27;t know what CBT is, or if they do, they don&#x27;t realize just how effective it is and how much evidence is behind it. And when they &quot;try&quot; it, they often don&#x27;t really do it consistently enough to see the value. Quirk&#x27;s current feature set is just the thought-recording exercise with some cute illustrations, evidence building to prove to you that it works, and some silly skinner-box tricks to remind you to use it.<p>A lot of companies solve these massive technical or structural problems. We make a little toy app that helps you feel better. 
But given just how approachable we could make CBT, we think we can help around 100 million people world-wide in the future. We&#x27;re translated into 14 languages (kinda, it&#x27;s a bit broken right now) and have quite an amazing and supportive community.<p>We charge a small subscription for Quirk, currently $4, though the price might change as we figure stuff out. Unlike a lot of other apps, we&#x27;re quite privacy conscious; we store your thoughts only on the device and don&#x27;t have any email or phone collection.<p>We want your feedback, questions, and ideas. If you&#x27;re comfortable sharing, we really want to hear about your experiences. But mainly, we want you to know that CBT exists and that this is really something that could help you if you haven&#x27;t been doing so hot lately.
======
danenania
Nice work! This is a great idea and something I've thought should exist since
getting interested in CBT a few months back. Before even trying the app, here
are some thoughts.

\- On pricing: $4/mo seems like a difficult price point to build a business
around, and it doesn't reflect the value you're offering. People pay
hundreds/thousands per month to therapists to improve their mental health. If
outcomes from using your app compare favorably to a therapist, shouldn't your
pricing reflect that? $4/mo makes me think 'toy', not serious therapeutic
tool. For people to be willing to pay _anything_ for an app like this, they
have to be convinced it can really work. But if they _are_ convinced, they'll
pay a whole lot more than $4/mo. I would consider freemium (so people can try
it out and see the value) and then a much higher price point (maybe
$50-100/mo?). You might get undercut by competing apps, but if you're clearly
the best one, I think many people will want the best option and won't be very
price-sensitive if they believe it can really help.

\- On branding: while it's important to mention that the app is based on CBT
so you can piggyback on the awareness people already have about CBT, I think
referring to it as a "Cognitive Behavioral Therapy app" severely restricts
your market to people who already know what that means, which I'd guess is a
very small slice of the people who could benefit. I would try to lead with the
benefits--feel better quickly; easier, cheaper, more effective than a
therapist; evidence-based; etc.--and save the more technical/jargony stuff
about CBT for supporting info.

\- On stigma: I would also try to avoid positioning this as something mainly
for people experiencing a 'mental illness' like clinical depression/anxiety,
but rather something that _everyone_ can benefit from and use to feel better
and improve their lives, regardless of how they currently feel. I think many
people who don't consider themselves to have a serious problem still engage in
cognitive distortions and could see major benefits from using CBT techniques,
so I would try to include these people in your messaging as well. While going
from bad mood to good mood is obviously valuable and desirable, so is going
from good mood to great mood. But if you make it seem like using the app is
effectively self-identifying as 'mentally ill' or even just 'feeling bad',
many folks in the latter camp will be turned off, so that's something to be
careful about.

~~~
zdrummond
Offhand, I feel your advice is contrary.

You suggest increasing the price because "If outcomes from using your app
compare favorably to a therapist, shouldn't your pricing reflect that?", but
then the next two points on brand and stigma suggest opening it up to all
people who want to feel great.

I think you need to choose one. You are either a niche therapy
compliment/competitor (price insensitive) or a mental wellbeing tool for a
broad audience (super price sensitive).

I personally hope you keep to the lower price point. I think overall you will
do more Good and reach more people. Even if you don't make a unicorn, $4/month
from 5% of your market, is still $20M/month.

Also, final note, many people suffering from mental illness can not afford
therapy. Even $4 would be hard, $50 is impossible.

~~~
danenania
I wouldn't call therapy a niche market. Therapy _apps_ might be currently, but
if they can disrupt the current therapy model to a meaningful extent, they
won't be niche for long.

While I don't have time to look for better data on this, a quick google turns
up this 2004 survey via
[https://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug04/survey](https://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug04/survey):

'A similar poll released in May, "Therapy in America 2004," and co-sponsored
by Psychology Today magazine and PacifiCare Behavioral Health, found that an
estimated 59 million people have received mental health treatment in the past
two years...'

59 million people (in just the US... in 2004) is not a niche market! And these
people are paying a _lot_.

The problem with trying to be a "mental wellbeing tool for a broad audience"
isn't just the market being super price sensitive, it's the market being
unwilling pay anything whatsoever, which leads to ads and selling personal
data (yuck).

"Even if you don't make a unicorn, $4/month from 5% of your market, is still
$20M/month."

Right, but how will you reach 5% of your market? I don't see much virality
here, and $4/mo gives you no room for customer acquisition costs.

"Also, final note, many people suffering from mental illness can not afford
therapy. Even $4 would be hard, $50 is impossible."

I agree, but an unsustainable business can't help anyone at all in the long
run.

~~~
flaque
> I agree, but an unsustainable business can't help anyone at all.

10000%. This has basically been my learning experience (Koby's much more
knowledgeable than I am). It's amazing how many people you can help if don't
die.

Also 100% agree with all of your points! Though, you'd be surprised about how
viral it currently is and also how cheap the customer acquisition costs are.
(That said, I don't expect those trends to continue as we grow, they tend to
get harder.)

------
danr4
I recommended Quirk to my girlfriend a few months ago. Still haven't tried it
myself.

You seem to know what you're doing so my only advice is to not take VC money
or you'll probably be pushed into making this app a general health app that is
a bit useful for everyone instead of very useful to a lot of people, for the
sake of money.

~~~
asdfman123
Does the app store any data in their servers? I'm hardly obsessed with data
privacy but I would never, ever, ever want my mental health data out there for
some data scientist to play around with and manipulate.

Facebook knowing all the dumb crap I do on their platform really pales in
comparison to the data privacy issues of an app. If I get a whiff of anything
negative, I'm not using it. I'm suspicious already.

~~~
flaque
No, it doesn't store you mental health thoughts on any servers. They're all
stored only on your device.

The caveats are below:

We collect anonymous, aggregate (as in "user-213sdfewfefwa") events. This is
stuff like: > "user-awefawewa21312aef" opened the app > "user-
efaoiwejf21321few" started a free trial

These are used for aggregate stats like "how many people use Quirk" or "do
people read the articles?" This is recorded by the phone stores anyway, but we
do this both so we can get some more Quirk-specific stuff and so we can
combine Android and iOS data.

We also collect some base information on your phone. For example, what type of
phone you have or what language you're using. This is basically a requirement
to debug stuff; since there's a lot of bugs that crop up only on certain
OS/Phone/languages.

If your phone crashes or there's an error thrown, we use Sentry to report it.
This lib will collect some basic info like phone types, IPs, and then the
stack trace of course.

In the future, we may provide a way for you to share a thought with a trusted
friend or therapist. This has been a highly requested feature, especially by
folks who would otherwise huddle around their phone during an appointment. To
do this, our plan to use an expiring, private link. That means your thoughts
will be stored in raw form in a DB and then get deleted within X days. This
would only happen with your explicit consent and it's only for a thought you
share rather than your whole list of thoughts. It's a button you have to press
EVERY time, not an "automatic share my thoughts" sort of thing.

We'll also be adding a cloud-sync feature at some point so you never have to
lose your thoughts when you switch phones. When we do this, all the thoughts
will be end-to-end encrypted; so no Quirk employee will ever be able to see
your raw thoughts.

Because we're a paid product, we have little incentive to read your thoughts
or strip-mine your data. We're in the business of making you feel better;
we're not reading your deepest darkest secrets to figure out how to sell you
shoes or something. We don't want to know your thoughts. Unless someone
explicitly tells us otherwise, we treat them like passwords.

~~~
mattdeboard
> Because we're a paid product, we have little incentive to read your thoughts
> or strip-mine your data. We're in the business of making you feel better;
> we're not reading your deepest darkest secrets to figure out how to sell you
> shoes or something. We don't want to know your thoughts. Unless someone
> explicitly tells us otherwise, we treat them like passwords.

I trust you when you say this, and I trust that you are being sincere. I do
not trust the incentive structures of Silicon Valley to permit you to adhere
to this principle.

~~~
flaque
> I do not trust the incentive structures of Silicon Valley to permit you to
> adhere to this principle.

Neither do I! My point is more so that we try to take steps not just to say
"hey we don't read your thoughts" but also to align the incentive systems so
that 10 years down the line we're at least pointed in the right direction.

~~~
joshspankit
Why not switch to a Patreon model and give people simple “export all data as
markdown/json” inside every version of the app? In that way there’s less
incentive for the business to become potentially untrustworthy, but _if_ it
does, people’s emotional investments are still protected by being firmly in
their own hands.

------
nestorherre
Got discouraged by the fact that I have to introduce my credit card details to
try the app. This is a no no for me and I'm sure that it will be a no no for a
lot others.

~~~
funwithjustin
Literally their first sentence is bolded and calls out the subscription fee.

------
adar
I wasn't able to make it to WaffleJS yesterday but I hope your talk went well!
As someone who's dealing with anxiety about the job hunt/interviewing for my
first tech job right now, I can definitely see myself using Quirk.

Best of luck.

~~~
flaque
Thank you! Good luck in the job hunt/interviewing. It took me a LONG time and
a lot of tries before I stopped freezing up in interviews.

CBT (with or without Quirk) is definitely something that can help you here and
definitely recommend giving it a shot!

------
awfml
I never post here but I'm a huge fan of this and what you're doing. I am going
to share this around with folks I know will benefit from this.

------
dvt
Awesome product and idea, I can definitely see this solution (or similar ones)
be a crucial "culture-boost" for companies. And, of course, +1 for open
sourcing it.

With that said, any reason you guys decided to GPL it? I actively try to avoid
both contributing as well as using GPL-licensed software (e.g. non-permissive
libraries). All my stuff, for example, is MIT'd.

~~~
flaque
To be honest, I just kind of picked it and went with it. I think at the time I
had been talking a lot with my dad (an old copy-left enthusiast). I never
really thought it would really be a thing.

~~~
dvt
Fair enough, I don't think it's a huge deal, it just makes it very
inconvenient to use any cool parts of your code commercially or in other
projects. Sometimes I'll work on a project without knowing if I'll ever
commercialize it, and I try to err on the side of using MIT (or Apache)
libraries/code as opposed to (L)GPL.

~~~
flaque
True, it makes sense for software packages, but less so for real products. If
we build out any packages for public use in the future, they'll likely be MIT
not GPL.

------
unsined
The potential for this kind of application is great; it allows people who
would otherwise decline, postpone, or forget to get this kind of therapy. All
while delivering it through a much more cost effective medium.

------
supercall
Just wanna say that "Feeling Good" by David Burns changed my life.

Best of luck to you :)

~~~
flaque
Mine too! Thank you!

------
jvagner
1) How will migration to new iOS devices work if the thoughts are only stored
locally?

2) I popped the app open when I found it, but haven't used it yet. One thought
I had then, I'll share here: if it doesn't have a mode similar to the Lotus
Bud app, it might be nice to have something like that. Basically, you can set
up the Lotus Bud app to check in randomly during the day (window of time, and
frequency are both configurable) and invite you to "clear" for a moment. Quirk
could ask if there's a thought stream you'l like to address.

~~~
flaque
1 - At the moment, we don't. :( One of the next things we'll be working on is
an end-to-end encrypted cloud sync. So we won't storing the "raw" thoughts,
but you'll still be able to get access to them.

2 - Ah, our reminder notifications kind of work like that, but we'll probably
try to make that more configurable as the days go on.

~~~
joshspankit
1 - DayOne (and to a lesser extent 1Password) had problems from this. Both
supported Dropbox initially which was great for privacy-conscious users as it
was user-controlled sync, and easier on the company as they didn’t have a
server infrastructure (or much of the accountability). They’re both now
pushing for sync to their own cloud (helps drive the subscription model) and
it’s starting to show if you look at the behaviour of those same privacy-
conscious folks. I think it may be a mistake to move to “trust our black box”
cloud sync in your case as you’re asking trust of the very people who in some
cases have feared trust backfiring for their whole lives.

------
juanbyrge
If anyone is facing mental health problems my advice would be to minimize
screen time and avoid using the internet unless absolutely necessary. More
often than not screen time contributes to the problem.

------
jackietreehorn
I downloaded it yesterday and plan to try it out this weekend. I think this is
great because this seems to be an empowering way for someone to do some CBT
with a low barrier to entry and very accessible.

~~~
flaque
Thank you! Please let us know how it goes for you. It definitely takes a bit
of practice; it took me a bit to get it at least.

Our biggest challenge at the moment is helping folks through that "initial"
barrier.

------
faitswulff
Hi Evan! It's Brian - I helped out on the internationalization issue. Just
here to say I'm glad to see this showhn and good luck on everything!

~~~
flaque
Thanks Brian! :D

------
verttii
I've actually been building something similar myself. Although mine is mostly
just for tracking stuff in your life and forming statistical analysis from the
data. And I do nearly everything server-side.

I think you guys should set up a website to explain and promote this a bit
better. Basically how you introduced it here but just on a website.

~~~
kobyconrad
Check it out! :) www.quirk.fyi

~~~
skinnymuch
Any reason there seem to be two domains? One is quirkapp or something. Then
there’s the one you listed.

------
gone35
_I started working through the exercises and saw a dramatic drop in panic
attacks._ ([https://i.imgur.com/P29BSRC.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/P29BSRC.jpg))

That's an impressive, likely clinically significant effect, congratulations!
May I ask what is the _x_ axis in the graph?

~~~
flaque
The x axis is a labeling bug. I THINK it was weeks? But the code that
generated this was a small python script that was on a laptop that I wiped.

I wouldn't assign any clinical significance though to it (or to Quirk quite
yet), especially since it's an N=1. But even if it's buggy, that graph shows
one of the most important things that's every happened to me.

------
valgaze
If curious about the history of this type of treatment, check out a very
interesting character named Albert Ellis:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Ellis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Ellis)

------
afro88
Great app and execution!

I have been considering an open source + subscription model for an app I'm
working on. Do you have any concerns about "piracy" (someone forking it and
removing the subscription stuff)? Any lessons learned along the way?

~~~
flaque
So far no one has done it. Quirk's got a closed source api that it interacts
with, which makes it a bit trickier to straight rip off. Plus, we own the
brand, which is a pretty big reason why people try Quirk in the first place.

------
akeck
How are you handling operating in states which require a license for
conducting therapy?

~~~
RickS
Not a lawyer, but my guess is that since people are self-reporting into a text
capture tool, quirk is no more liable than Microsoft would be if users were to
do this into Word.

~~~
flaque
Mostly this yeah. We're not talk therapy, we don't claim to connect you with a
therapist, and we don't take health insurance.

------
amelius
How do you guarantee privacy?

I know it's open source, but I can't see how I can check that the app store
version is an exact copy of the OSS version.

Obviously, I really would not like to see my most intimate thoughts end up for
sale at some information broker.

~~~
davidhyde
This is a great question. Is there a technical way to prove that an iOS or
Android app is built from a specific git commit revision? And what about a web
app? I know that these apps are signed but can a signed app be tagged with a
transparent revision number which cannot be tampered with. Kind of like a sha2
hash that can be reproduced by building the same source code.

~~~
shostack
This is something I've wished for for a while. There are many developers out
there whom I'm sure would love people to trust them and that are trustworthy.
But I feel we now live in an age of "trust, but verify" and there's no great
way to verify privacy claims even if we really want to believe something is
benign.

In some cases it may even be unintentional leaks if someone isn't aware of an
issue.

~~~
amelius
Unfortunately, there is little incentive for Apple, Google to fix this
situation because the majority of people simply don't care.

------
RickS
The little circle guys are hilarious. I really like how instructional the
landing page is, with a sort of old-world informational ad copy style instead
of just a bunch of flashy screenshots.

Taking it for a spin, and wishing you the best!

~~~
flaque
Thank you! It probably needs a refresher at some point, but I'd like to keep
the explanation focused style.

Plus, we'd really like to make the site have lots of free explanations about
CBT and it's concepts. That's why we picked the "fyi" domain originally.

------
ourarash
Your app charges for subscription but it is also available as open source.
Does that mean somebody else can potentially publish it on App store and offer
it for free?

~~~
flaque
They could but a lot of features would break. The app communicates with a
closed source API. Plus, we still own the name and the brand and would likely
send a take down if someone didn't remove them.

------
ktrinh
I LOVE that the app is so approachable and easy to use. Great job!!

------
vincentmarle
Cool idea, but what advantage does open sourcing the app give you?

~~~
flaque
I know folks are supposed to have reasons for open sourcing things and I might
a bit naive here, but the best answer I can give you is: ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

I like open source. I couldn't find any strong reasons why it couldn't be open
source.

But what I think happens to a lot of open source consumer products is that
they're primary feature is being open source. Outside of Hacker News, we don't
tell advertise that we're open source. It's not important.

For most people, we're a really good CBT app, not an open source CBT app. Our
competitive advantage to the average person is that we're good, not that we're
open source.

That said, I think there's advantages for customers. You can be reasonably
certain we're protecting your data well. If you don't like something, you can
suggest a change. If you want to use Quirk in your research, we're, in
general, the most open about things.

To be clear, we're not 100% open source, there's a small closed-source API
that quirk uses to do some of it's features.

------
spazzy81
This is so cool! I love how simple the UI is.

------
seanwilson
What's to stop someone making a free clone from the open source version if the
paid version really takes off?

~~~
mettamage
Purely my opinion:

Like many hip big startups today, one of their strongest competitive advantage
is having users. Most users come because product A offers a better UX than
product B.

At least I feel that most big FAANG companies are mostly UX plays. In some
cases you have to get very technical and innovative to give a good UX
(Google), but in other cases not (Facebook).

------
ychandler
This looks amazing, thank you

------
naurupatel
I was dissapointed to open the app again - I had been using it frequently when
I switched to paper thought-records. When I reopened it I was greeted with a
paywall.

Alternatives on iOS exist such as Thought Record that are free. Until there is
an obvious value proposition that differs from free alternatives, I see no
need to pay merely for a 'quirkier' interface.

~~~
flaque
This is due to a bug where some folks didn't get caught up as "free forever."

Send me an email and I'll fix this for you and give you the app for free:
ejc@quirk.fyi

Hopefully you'll like the new version as well!

~~~
skinnymuch
Thanks so much for this offer! I ran into the problem too on my iPad.

And Quirk is great for such a new product!

------
mettamage
I've used a couple of principles regarding CBT to become more social and to
get a better dating life. The first book I read was Michael Hall's Mindlines,
which was an NLP book (a nonsense pseudoscience acronym). A couple of years
later I learned about CBT and saw it has a lot in common with NLP. The biggest
difference: CBT has scientific research into it and NLP doesn't, a couple of
people simply made it up. When I tackled these problems I was 16, around 18 I
was a lot more scientific about this.

The key insights regarding CBT for me were the following:

1\. Start with small goals and celebrate them.

2\. Log the following questions:

A. To what extent do I think event foo or thought bar will happen? E.g. to
what extent do I think I'll get ridiculed while introducing myself to this new
group of people?

B. (after it happened) what actually happened and to what extent was this in
line with my expectations? After doing it for 10 times, 5 groups were cold and
generally non-responsive, 1 ridiculed me and 4 were very friendly and happy to
have met me (from experience this would be a particularly worst case realistic
example for me).

3\. I've used this so many times: if you feel terrible, ask yourself whether
you're having the right perspective. If you feel like you do, then ask
yourself it's the only right perspective. If you feel you do, see if you can
find other perspectives anyway and ask yourself whether those perspectives
gave you new information. This did wonders on how I viewed my physical
attractiveness. My opinion used to be: I'm ugly. My opinion now is quite
nuanced and grouped into segments by age and personality type. Conclusion: the
people I like either don't care (too much) or they find me attractive. It took
me a long time to this conclusion. For a long time I had another one which
was: I'm not that good looking but looks don't matter too much in dating, or
at least not when people meet me.

Those 3 insights really helped.

It's funny, I also studied psychology but that never really helped as much in
this area as CBT before it.

\---

If you guys feel up for it, then send me an email (see my profile) to reach
out to brainstorm on things regarding CBT/psychology, dev or UX. I thought
this was completely solved but apparently it isn't.

I wish there were more positive psychology[1]/tech companies on the
whoishiring thread, if I weren't applying for McKinsey right now, I'd have
publicly asked to see whether I could help you guys out.

[1] While CBT isn't part of positive psychology, I feel they're quite close to
the spirit of it which is why I include it.

~~~
flaque
1000% this: > if you feel terrible, ask yourself whether you're having the
right perspective.

One of the most common bits of "debugging" we do with folks is that they know
they feel like crap, but they're not sure if there's a thought associated with
it. Almost every time, the thought that they should be challenging IS "I feel
like crap."

~~~
mettamage
I find it one of the most intriguing parts about CBT, because I don't know of
any research on one of the fundamental assumptions it has (from my
interpretation), which is: your feeling/emotion is caused in a big part by a
thought you have.

For me this seems to be at least mostly true, which is why I can use the
assumption. It was then that I realized that I'm a believer of the appraisal
theory [1]. But I still didn't find any convincing paper on it to what extent
this is true.

The danger this can have is that it may be that some feelings/emotions are not
caused by your thoughts, but because of something else, but yet you try to CBT
it away. One example is: you simply have a chemical imbalance. The first
question I asked in this case is: do I exercise? If not, then let's hit up
that dopamine button first in a healthy way. If I do exercise, the next
question is: am I eating healthy? I also put social contact in as a 3rd
possible factor. Whenever I went to meditation retreats (they double as a
silent retreat), I noticed that my thoughts went in loops and other people
break you out of your thought loops. It was then how I viscerally experienced
how one might become crazy when they are left alone. I also found ways to
battle it (e.g. try to do math in your head and come to newfound knowledge).

My full (mental) checklist is:

1\. Am I exercising? If not then there might be a dopamine issue.

2\. Am I eating/drinking in a healthy way? If not then your body might not be
working properly.

3\. Did I sleep in a healthy way? If not then the same as point 2.

4\. Am I experiencing constant stress for more than 2 weeks? If so, then
cortisol might be screwing up my HPA axis [2]. I should check for
burnout/depression symptoms to verify.

5\. Have I been a hermit for more than 2 weeks? If so, have I been focused or
mind wandering? If I have been mind wandering mostly, then it's time to visit
some friends.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appraisal_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appraisal_theory)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothalamic%E2%80%93pituitary...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothalamic%E2%80%93pituitary%E2%80%93adrenal_axis)

------
tomquirk
Are you hiring? :joy:

~~~
flaque
Probably not for a bit; but shoot me an email with your info! ejc@quirk.fyi

~~~
tomquirk
Awesome! Sorry, I was only semi-serious, because my last name is Quirk and it
seemed like a good fit :D

