By Her View From Home 
One woman’s response to a question on Quora is going viral after she shared the simple but life-changing advice her therapist gave her when she was at a low point in her mental health.
In response to the prompt, “Has a therapist ever told you something completely unexpected?” contributor Kate Scott wrote that during a weekly session with her therapist, she was asked what she was struggling with. Scott, who at the time was at a low point in her life mentally and “had no energy or motivation and was barely getting by,” explained she was initially hesitant to answer since it seemed so trivial in comparison to issues others were facing.
“Honestly? The dishes. It’s stupid, I know, but the more I look at them the more I CAN’T do them because I’ll have to scrub them before I put them in the dishwasher, because the dishwasher sucks, and I just can’t stand and scrub the dishes,” she admitted.
Scott said rather than judge or dismiss her, her therapist nodded in understanding and imparted this simple, yet perfect advice:
“Run the dishwasher twice.”
“That day, I went home and tossed my smelly dishes haphazardly into the dishwasher and ran it three times. I felt like I had conquered a dragon,” Scott wrote.
Scott wrote that a few days later she also took a shower lying down, then folded her laundry and put it wherever.
“There were no longer arbitrary rules I had to follow, and it gave me the freedom to make accomplishments again,” she explained.
Scott said she is in a better mental place today and is back to rinsing her dishes before putting them in the dishwasher. But the lesson she learned from her therapist stuck, and has quickly spread across the internet, with several prominent accounts on social media sharing it and garnering thousands of shares and comments in solidarity.
One Facebook user confided, “This is so me. I can make it to Group Therapy, but I can’t do anything else. My house is a mess and my life is a mess.”
As another user summed it up, “The point is, let’s live our life without unnecessary rules that make us miserable. Focus on our mental health and happiness in small things.”
Scott’s story is a perfect reminder that when life feels overwhelming, it’s okay to focus on the things you need to do to survive and not worry so much about the rest.
So remember: there are no rules! Run the dishwasher twice.
by Brea Schmidt 
by Whitney Herrmann 
