That moment when you use WaniKani for therapy

WaniKani
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This is going to sound weird but WaniKani has been an absolute MVP for me since I started it, but the reason is not actually about Japanese skill.

It’s the timely repetition of reviews (that and the satisfaction of levelling up). Mental health in the trash? Spirally thoughts going everywhere? It’s okay. I open up WaniKani and do 100 reviews to distract myself. The rapid cycling of words makes me forget what my anxious brain was having conniptions about as I do them, and the reward of doing something so good for my language skills soothes me about “losing time” to my mental symptoms.

At the end I’m not fixed, but I feel a little better, and can start to focus on other things that need attention.

So I guess what I’m saying is, for this weird reason, I’m really thankful that WaniKani exists. For me it’s as soothing as it is occasionally stressful.

Probably once I finish, once I get to that coveted level of having every item burned, I will reset my account to zero and learn all the alternative meanings I missed.

Thank you for getting me through.

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Hard relate! I find doing reviews to be incredibly calming and focusing at the same time. So, basically similar to doing jigsaw puzzles, sudoku or crossword puzzles etc. :slight_smile:

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Babies waking you up many times in the middle of the night? It’s okay, do your reviews as soon as they show up and level up faster :muscle:

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Yeah there’s something meditative about learning languages in general. People look at me like I’m a freak when I mention it, but big relate.

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I got back into wanikani as a form of therapy. So I can relate as well. Good luck on your learning and take care.

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Me too, Japanese is my productive escape hatch. It’s nice to have a happy place I can take anywhere.

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Totally relatable!
WaniKani created such a structured bubble (now that is a surreal image) that really helped put all the other things I need to do into place. And I really needed it. So I’m grateful as well. Structure is the bane of my existence.

Also, that distraction from anxiety, is an actual tool in therapy, so yeah. But there’s another way to look at anxiety, a more compassionate way perhaps. It’s the human brain constantly looking for better solutions for problems, cause that’s what it’s there for, in a way, our consciousness - to help us survive. The problem is it keeps on solving imaginary problems/ worst case scenarios as in things that doesn’t happen in the present but might happen in the future (because they happened in the past or we can imagine them happening).
Sometimes giving it something else to solve, an intriguing riddle like learning a language, is enough to divert that need into something practical and useful and even enjoyable instead of a freeze state. I’m starting to suspect I was an ice tea in my former life…

So yeah totally totally relateable!

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I started seriously learning Japanese (and doing Wanikani) after an incident broke apart my friend group, so I get that feeling.

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