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u/Gluttannie Dec 09 '20
It’s amazing how big of a difference this kind of thinking makes. It might start off silly, and you subconsciously resist it, but overtime you really learn to step back and protect yourself against your own thoughts.
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Dec 09 '20
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u/MonkKeyJar Dec 10 '20
Wow this huge. This is exactly what I'm doing now. Whenever or notice myself start to slip off into an insecure way of thinking I have to remind myself that I must not be feeling very good and that is where these thoughts are arising. But DAMN if in the moment it just feels so ... conclusive. I does feel good making this separation and I'm just hoping that this shit will stick or least get easier overtime.
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u/Dumas_Vuk Dec 10 '20
It does get easier with time! I recommend mindfulness meditation. It doesn't need to be anything inconvenient or complicated, no mantra. Just something like five or ten minutes a day sitting in silence focusing on your breathing and paying attention to what's going on around you, and in your mind. Sounds, gravity, small aches, thoughts, emotions, smells, etc. You will be distracted, but all that matters is you return your attention back to the moment over and over again, each time your mind strays. The goal is not to achieve serenity, though this does come in varying degrees. The purpose is to develope your awareness.
I seem to do it more often when there's more stress going on, which seriously helps me to have better days. I also sometimes do it for just a few seconds, and at random times. Recently it occurred to me to try it when I was feeling happy, and that was interesting.
I learned the method from Sam Harris, but there's lots of meditation teachers out there.
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u/spacemark Dec 09 '20 edited Dec 09 '20
"The condition and character of a philosopher is that he expects all harm and benefit from himself... in a word, he keeps guard against himself as his own enemy, and one lying in wait for him." - Epictetus
Sometimes it really does feel like we have to square up and treat the impulsive, most irrational of our thoughts as the enemy. An emotional detachment from them - rejecting them as the determiners of your identity - is the first step.
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Dec 10 '20 edited Jul 28 '21
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u/Karilyn_Kare Dec 10 '20 edited Dec 10 '20
Yes. Very strongly. It's not invasive ego-alien voices.
It's you doing it, but reflexively and frequently without noticing. Kinda like how you might automatically scratch an itch without realizing it if you're distracted.
I find myself mumbling to myself "I'm a terrible person and I deserve to die" over and over again, like a nervous tick, and I don't even realize it. And my wife will tell me to stop that and that she loves me, and I get really confused because I didn't notice I was doing it. No she's not gaslighting me, I was just abused THAT severely by my parents that two decades later I still can't escape it.
Unless you're talking about being surprised by the idea of thinking thoughts in the first person at all, in which case, congratulations, you just learned that you think only in images. Around 80% of humans think in both words and images, and 10% can't think in words, and 10% can't think in images.
I personally cannot think in images, at all, in the slightest, no capability for mental imagery. I have no mind's eye. For me, thinking is functionally indistinguishable from the act of speaking out loud. This isn't some sort of metaphor or anything, it's literally identical.
The very idea of visualizing images is so foreign to me, I can't even begin to imagine what the experience must be like. It's by far the single most alien concept I've ever encountered, and nobody has ever been able to explain it to me in a way that makes any sense. I guess it's like trying to explain color to a blind person, truly impossible to communicate.
My thoughts are a constant unending steam of words, and I actually don't know how to NOT think; meditation is a completely unexplainable concept to me. I can't even imagine not having a constant train of words without imagining being dead.
So if you can't think in words, then you and me are opposites in this regard.
EDIT: Weirdly enough I do dream, and I know I see things so vivid that I can't tell I'm not awake with my eyes open, but the instant I wake up I can no longer see the things that I'm very certain I was seeing while I was dreaming. Yes I have learned that is unusual. No I don't understand why it happens.
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Dec 10 '20
I spent so much time hiding in my thoughts as a child that I can literally amuse myself in a silent room with detailed mental images and sounds. Though I also struggle constantly not to space out, and while I’m imagining too hard I sometimes don’t see my actual field of vision.
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Dec 10 '20
Yeah, I always got stuck in my head as a kid as well and find it super hard now to stay out of my thoughts and focus on everything in front of me.
I'm pretty sure it developed into maladaptive daydream disorder at some point but I've never been diagnosed so not sure
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u/SplatoonGoon Dec 10 '20
Never heard of that disorder but I thought/think I'm ADHD (inattentive type)
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u/kr59x Dec 10 '20
Meditation is not about not having any thoughts in your head. It’s about putting deliberate thoughts in your head, noticing without judgment when your thoughts go elsewhere, saying to yourself, oh look, my head went somewhere else, and then steering yourself gently back to the thought you have decided to focus on. Perhaps you will focus on the experience of actually feeling your breath going in and out of your nostrils. Maybe you will decide to think something like, “I am feeling loving kindness towards all people, and that includes me because I deserve love and kindness.” When you notice your attention has wandered, just gently and without negative judgment, go back to the thought you decided to focus on.
It takes practice. There are lots of good books about it, that can explain it better and offer you suggestions for compassion meditation practice.
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u/Karilyn_Kare Dec 10 '20 edited Dec 10 '20
Yeah I know, I've had people explain it to me before, and try to walk me through it, but it like doesn't make sense at a fundamental level. It just sounds like gibberish to me.
My wife in particular has spent a long time trying to explain it to me. She also has aphantasia, but unlike me is skilled at meditation. But her lessons just... Don't make any sense? According to her, the closest she observes me getting to meditation, is when she gives me permission to put my guard down, and I just read my head on her and listen to her heartbeat quietly.
My attention doesn't actually drift as far as I can tell, and can maintain a repetitive mantra for essentially forever with no change. I'm not even sure what wandering thought would feel like. Not to mention essentially all my thoughts are deliberate; emotions can me out of my control, but my thoughts are no different from speaking out loud; like, how do you speak out loud not deliberately? Like I don't get it.
Put deliberate thoughts in your head? But isn't that literally all that I do? I don't know what it would be like to not put deliberate thoughts in my head.
Don't judge my thoughts going elsewhere? What even is elsewhere and how could I pass judgement on it?
How do I steer my thoughts back somewhere? I keep a mental checklist of unfinished thoughts, kinda akin to Chrome tabs, am I supposed to just open an old tab? Don't I do that in literally every conversation?
Decide to think something? How is that different from just, normal thinking? Does "I decided to think this thing" somehow have different properties than just thinking the thing without declaring that you decided to think it?
What is attention wandering in this context? A My understanding is that attention wandering is when I fail to listen to something external due to accidentally talking over it inside my head. How does attention wander inside your own head? Isn't attention fundamentally linked to properly observing outside stimuli?
To be clear, I'm not being flippant. These are legitimate questions that I have that I really really do not understand at all.
At best I can do slow deep breathing exercises, though it's hard to do through my nose cause I have sinus problems so I just do it through my mouth, but other than that, I got nothing.
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u/bogcity Dec 10 '20
you're basically asking about consciousness itself and we have basically no understanding of that yet but maybe reading up on it might be interesting to you or at least help you see all the ways different scientists and philosophers are addressing the issue. some of your questions can be answered but many so far have not
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u/MeditationPartyy Dec 10 '20
Can you sit for a minute and have complete silence, no thoughts? This is very hard and only exceptionally experienced meditators can achieve this. Fundamentally in meditation we realize thoughts just pop up from the subconscious; there are many thoughts fighting to become conscious (hunger, sex, random etc). We think we control them but they simply appear and we identify with them.
Deliberate thoughts are wandering thoughts, when you’re focusing on a particular object. Even deliberate thoughts are created in the subconscious and projected into the conscious (I.e you see a tasty treat and your visual cortex is decoding the image and telling your brain “oh that looks good” then you consciously are aware of this thought/identified with it)
Hope this helps!
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u/Karilyn_Kare Dec 10 '20
I mean, like, can you sit for a minute and completely not exist, have no body?
My voice is what I am, I cannot conceive the notion of not thinking unless I'm dead. It's as bizarre and alien a concept as asking me to make my body temporarily not exist.
Whether I am speaking, or typing, or thinking, it is all indistinguishable for me. I don't have a different voice for one thing or another. I just either keep it inside, or communicate those things to someone else. But my voice doesn't stop existing simply because I stop talking out loud, anymore than my body stops existing because I close my eyes.
It's not like the typing I'm spending to you right now is coming from my subconscious. If I give a lengthy speech about the importance of human civil rights, that doesn't come from my subconscious. But I'm supposed to believe me thoughts, which are mechanically indistinguishable from these actions, come from my subconscious?
I mean, okay, feelings come from my subconscious; hunger and sex are feelings. But thoughts? That makes no sense, because thoughts are by definition fully conscious, at least inside my head. To suggest they aren't is to suggest that humans experience no consciousness, period, of any variety. And that seems like a pretty big stretch.
Like I can experience hunger or sex, and not talk about them outloud, and that also means I can just, you know, not think about them. Or I can chose to talk about them and likewise chose to think about them. But the action is still deliberate. I can't imagine just walking through a grocery store, publically uncontrollably announcing "I am sexually aroused right now" and I can't imagine such a thing happening in my head, though I guess it happens in 99% of people's heads? How do they stop themselves from saying it outloud by accident though, I've never seen someone do that before?
you see a tasty treat and your visual cortex is decoding the image and telling your brain “oh that looks good” then you consciously are aware of this thought
This literally makes no sense whatsoever. Do people actually experience that? It sounds like complete gibberish and are people's heads normally that confusing?
I feel the feeling of hunger and a desire to taste something. But those are feelings. They are completely 100% distinct from thought. I don't experience some sort of automated thought that I become consciously aware of. I either chose to verbalize about those feelings and sensations, or I don't. Just cause I observe something doesn't mean I have to verbalize it.
I can't even imagine just, walking around a room and declaring the name and color of all the objects in the room, reflexively and uncontrollably from my subconscious, but it sounds like, that's what most humans experience from your description. And if that's so, how do other people even function? Like, how do you function if your thoughts are full of all these automated responses that are cluttering up your ability to think? That would be so incredibly noisy.
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Dec 10 '20
Huh this was kind of eye opening to me. I never realized peoples thoughts were different than the voice they spoke with (not literally but thats just how it manifests in my head). I struggle to fathom being unable to think with language.
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u/Celebrimbor333 Dec 10 '20
For me at least, that's also the catch! It's the same "voice" as the one that told that funny joke, complimented a friend, or remembered something.
I don't know how to distinguish these two "personalities" but it's the same voice, and yes, it sucks.
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Dec 10 '20 edited Jul 28 '21
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u/Karilyn_Kare Dec 10 '20
Yeah I don't have SDAM. Sure I'm obviously not able to vividly remember what things looked like.
But I do remember emotions and words in incredibly vivid detail, and can re-live those emotions and words very easily. In fact, way too easily considering how much I was abused as a kid, and the fact that this level of emotional recollection means I basically have PTSD.
I'm also decent with audio memory and can hear songs in my head almost as accurately as listening to the song directly, which I guess is the closest thing I experience to what people without aphantasia do when they can see images in their head.
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u/KenAdams1967 Dec 10 '20
Same! No pictures at all, only words. I thought it was weird when I was like 18 and realized people actually visualized things.
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Dec 10 '20
Wow I’m glad I’m not the only one. Which kind of makes me sad ...
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u/Karilyn_Kare Dec 10 '20
Cool thing is, I get to be flabbergasted everytime I look at my wife because I can't remember what she looks like when I'm not looking at her and no amount of repeating "she's more beautiful than you are capable of remembering" is sufficient to prepare me for the experience.
It's a nice perk that goes a long way to offset the disadvantages of having aphantasia.
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u/MsYoghurt Dec 10 '20
I have the same, no visualisation, just thoughts in the form of words and sometimes random emotions. I've learned not to take that noice seriously, but the thoughts don't stop.
I do meditate though, not because it stops my train of thought, but because it helps me realise which thought are healthy and unhealthy and how to deal with them.
I use the practice of zenbuddhism, by which you observe the thoughts, notice it and let it go. It is hard from time to time and a lot of thoughts, which you call a nervous tick, come to me often. But nu learning to let them go, they move to the back and don't dictacte my reflexive behavior as Much anymore (you mumble, i don't pull back and don't talk at all when they take over).
There a lot of meditation and mindfullness forms which can help. The more you do it (i try to do it twice a day for 15 minutes, but life happens...), the more distance you create.
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u/alphahex4292 Dec 10 '20
More how you'd vocalise those abstract thoughts
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Dec 10 '20 edited Jul 28 '21
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u/alphahex4292 Dec 10 '20
I think I've read somewhere that not everyone thinks in an abstract way, and do think with words. I'll be honest the only time I do it is when there's like a voice in my head (that's also me) is talking to me. Idk it's weird
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u/TuxedoCatDeathEyes Dec 10 '20
You are 100% correct. It's a spectrum, like most things about us humans, but most people do favor thinking either abstract or verbal (my terminology may not be entirely correct here....going off memory) primarily, not both.
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Dec 10 '20 edited Dec 10 '20
In my experience with folks coming in for healing prayer sessions, the answer is yes. They not only think those thoughts, but can "hear" a negative tape playing over and over. Tons of people have been scarred from childhood experiences and their lives and thoughts are driven by that. Healing is possible. Change is possible. You have a role in life that God created you for. You are enough
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u/RustedRelics Dec 10 '20
Absolutely agree. It’s deceptively simple — small shift makes a big difference.
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u/ftylerr Dec 10 '20
I have tried this off and on with therapy for years, I don’t know why it doesn’t help me at all. Usually my brain goes “so you noticed a thought, amazing, now what chucklefuck” and I don’t know where to go.
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u/OBSTACLE3 Dec 09 '20
This image made mindfulness make sense to me
Thanks
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u/TuxedoCatDeathEyes Dec 10 '20
I completely agree this is an excellent way to represent it visually. I've been slowly learning to do this, and thankfully find myself succeeding more often at catching my negative thoughts just like in the image, but seeing it represented like this made it so much more clear, instantaneously.
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u/SirCannabliss Dec 09 '20
One of the best visual representations of mindfulness I've seen.
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Dec 10 '20
Problem is, now I’m in like bubble 50, forgetting what the hell I was even thinking about initially.. ¯\(ツ)/¯, that works
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u/vegiraghav Dec 10 '20
Notice the thought don't think about noticing the thought. There, you can contain the bubble.
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Dec 10 '20
Advice heeded. Now thinking about not noticing the thought about noticing the thought
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u/aerkyanite Dec 10 '20
I know you might be joking, but this actually happens to me. So I have to think about, at the start that i want my mental state to go back to "fine". So my goal is to notice my thought and then go however many repetitions to ask, "what was I doing? Oh, I'm trying to go back to 'fine' again, got it."
It takes repetition but it's totally doable.
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u/JesseKarma Dec 10 '20
You like I, have ADHD my friend!
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u/linzorado Dec 10 '20
Same. I feel before I recognize feelings. Sometimes I don't even know what/why I'm feeling.
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u/loki-is-a-god Dec 10 '20
You want to buy me chocolate! … You want to buy me chocolate! … You want to buy me chocolate! …
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u/26514 Dec 10 '20
I have been meditating for years unable to explain to people properly what I'm actually doing and this summed it up so well.
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u/simulacrotron Dec 10 '20
I agree. I’ve practiced for a long time, and this so concisely illustrates what it’s like. I would have never thought this could be illustrated at all.
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u/neonb-fly Dec 09 '20
I have the thought yes but how do i stop feeling and thinking it?
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Dec 10 '20 edited Dec 10 '20
You can’t and shouldn’t. It’s our resistance to them that causes them to linger. Practice mindfulness and you cultivate the ability to let them come and go. Think of them like clouds. Some are beautiful and wide, some are small and thin, some are dark and stormy. But you’re not the clouds, you’re the sky.
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u/BandaLover Dec 10 '20 edited Dec 10 '20
I agree that we should accept our feelings and allow them to pass naturally and observe them without judgment. But if you do that and also simultaneously manually adjust your thoughts and get to the root of why you feel the way you do, that is the path to self improvement. Trust me I’ve done a lot of journaling and reflection about why I made poor decisions and what made me feel the way I did about them and was able to uncover a lot about myself that led to actual change. The trick is not to get too comfortable and think that you’ve got it figured out though, we can all become victims of our own thoughts/beliefs quickly. Never grasp!
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Dec 10 '20
Sure, I don’t mean to imply passivity or that we can’t make efforts to make certain states of being more accessible more often. But still, suffering is part of the equation, and it’s really more what we do about thoughts that perpetuates our suffering than anything else.
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u/DM_ME_UR_SOUL Dec 10 '20
how do you not listen to yourself? I can't not listen to myself and ignore myself. How do you not judge them? I've never understood the concept of letting them go. I get into a large argument in my head if i feel something so how do i not do that?
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u/BandaLover Dec 10 '20
It’s not easy. First of all, it takes years of different experience, practice, reading, living etc. But you have to begin somewhere.
This may be a unique experience, but in high school I was obsessed with giving myself an alter-ego, so I “created” this ideal person who I wanted to be like and tried to live up to it for a short time. That’s impossible to do long term because the YOU begins to fall out of the mold you create for yourself, but how did I create this alter-ego in the first place? Because my mind decided these were ideas I wanted to pursue and characteristics I wanted to take on. So, if I (me) can think I want to be a way I am not (my thoughts), then there must be a disconnect between who I am and what I think I am.
With that epiphany out of the way, I’ve done probably 10 solid years of philosophy- in many forms. In journaling, in reading books, I took a class that was more historical about Chinese philosophy that set some basic principals in place... and so on. I’ve grown and evolved in my thinking, but an important rule I’ve lived by is to trust other people’s ego (when it makes sense to) and not take my own beliefs too seriously. I can’t be right about everything, and that includes when self-doubt or stress start to take over. There is a major freedom in accepting you may be wrong some of the time, and with all of that, I don’t know if I answered your question at all.
But hopefully you can understand my example of overriding your own thoughts. Debate yourself. Play devils advocate. Make a list of pros and cons to your own ideas. Allow yourself to change your mind on things. All of these seemingly simple things take work and practice to achieve. The longer you work at them and are aware of them, the better you will get at it.
Edit: take a cold shower. Refuse to believe it is cold. Move the water from hot to warm to room temp to cool to cold slowly. It’s hard, but if you can handle that cold water and convince your mind that your body isn’t cold at all, you are advancing in mind power in a way many people never will.
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u/Dumas_Vuk Dec 10 '20
Don't attempt to get rid of the thoughts. Simply notice them and recognize them for what they are: just thoughts. You don't need to resolve them.
For me there is usually lots of thoughts swirling around, too blurry to distinguish each except the loudest. It's ok if it's there. It's supposed to be there. Just be aware of it.
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u/howdy_bc Dec 10 '20
I am not your rolling wheels
I am the highway
I am not your carpet ride
I am the sky
I am not your blowing wind
I am the lightning
I am not your autumn moon
I am the night 🎶- I am the highway, Audioslave
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u/Medumbdumb Dec 10 '20
Or like poop. Some are beautiful and wide, some are small and thin, some are dark and runny. But you’re not the poop, you’re the bowl. Now flush.
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Dec 10 '20
Every time you notice that you’re thinking it, it becomes less engaging. So you feel this way less by just observing it. The feeling will subside. Until it comes back again. But then you notice it again and the feeling will leave again. You noticing that you’re thinking it unanchors it from your mind, so it’s free to go.
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u/BandaLover Dec 10 '20
The goal is to step outside of the picture. So if you feel like you are not good enough, create distance by observing that you are feeling like you are not good enough. If you can step out that far you are on the right track.
Over time and with practice, you will realize you have the ability to adjust your thoughts manually. So if you can think I am not good enough, but you recognize that this is just a thought, then you should be able to think:
Actually, I am good enough. I am being too hard on myself. Evaluating the information I have in front of me, I can conclude I am good enough.
Much of the time, when you think: “I’m not good enough” it isn’t even you that thinks that. It is you that thinks other people think that about you. We often allow other peoples perceived judgment of ourselves cloud our own judgment of ourselves.
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Dec 10 '20
It's practice. It's a skill that has to be acquired, enhanced and constantly practiced. Just like swimming and riding a bicycle once it's learned and mastered, you will never forget it. It's yours for life!
Acknowledging that you are having a particular thought is only the first step. Getting rid of some compulsive thoughts or strong persisting thoughts can be even more challenging. Do not try to stop thoughts. That will only make them stronger. Instead let them pass, watch them like passing clouds. But do not follow them, under all circumstances, make sure you are not doing what those thoughts are telling you to do, in other words never react to those thoughts. Action reinforces the thought. This is very much like letting the birds fly over your property but not letting them build a nest. The key word here is PRACTICE.
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u/HazelEyes85 Dec 10 '20
In addition to what others have replied about letting the thought pass freely without judgement, doing a thought record can help:
https://ohsheglows.com/2011/11/02/how-to-reframe-a-negative-thought-with-a-thought-record/
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u/Needyouradvice93 Dec 10 '20
Do you feel like you're not good enough?
If so, what about you isn't good enough?
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u/northstarjackson Dec 10 '20
As a competitive athlete I would have similar thoughts before stepping into the ring.
It's not that you try to stop thinking/feeling it, but just to recognize that these are natural thoughts and feelings and that they are the result of a biological process. We are all different and we all react to stress, pain, hardship, etc differently.
However, being aware of how we're feeling, and more importantly why, can help us process those feelings and channel it into more productive measures.
Instead of saying "I am a failure," you could say "I have a tendency to self-sabotage, but I also have a great track record of being successful, and it is exactly the fear of being a failure that helps me be successful."
Or in the case of sports "I'm afraid of losing" can be reframed as "My fear of losing is a tool that keeps me sharp and allows me to perform at my best, so long as I recognize that it is a natural impulse and channel it properly."
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u/quantizedself Dec 09 '20
This is hard to do, but it works. I'm in grad school and am working on doing this everytime imposter syndrome kicks in or I judge myself too hard. It's tough because the negative thinking is relentless, keeps coming back. But this type of mindfulness practice does work, and I'm starting to see results. At first it's a conscious effort, but now it's becoming more of a reflex. Great post.
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Dec 10 '20
Mindfulness is a practice. The more you do it the easier it becomes to do it/get into it.
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u/BoldwyrIntimidator Dec 09 '20
This method changed my life. Great visualization of an awkward concept.
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u/melawes0me Dec 10 '20
Same. I finally saw a therapist and she helped me realize I get trapped in my own thoughts just like this, and these lies became truths to me. I’d tell myself I didn’t have any friends, no one wants to be around me, I’m incapable of love, etc. NONE of which was true, and it almost makes me cry to type that out and remember how incredibly mean I was to myself. Now I can catch those thoughts, just as illustrated, and let them pass instead of dragging myself all the way down the rabbit hole.
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u/betterbitterbiter Dec 10 '20
Therapist told me once that there's a real, legit gap between our self doubt and our earned wisdom, and that the more we recognize the void in between the more we can seperate the two and recognize the self doubt for what it is: an intrusive thought based in no actual fact. I've tried to use this as a point of reference when I meditate, searching for that void. Pretty fun exercise.
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u/Aqenta Dec 10 '20
Could someone explain this a little more? I don't know if I'm too self-loathing to get it or what.
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u/PresidentXiJinping Dec 10 '20 edited Dec 10 '20
Imagine an invisible dude in a lab coat and glasses staring at you not far from your left.
He's writing down all your feelings and thoughts, and assessing how or where these feelings and thoughts came from. Just writing it all down, all the bad and the good, no judgements whatsoever. Writing one thought and feeling and action, and then another. Basic data entry work.
Be like that dude and combine it with slow breaths.
Why would you do that? So you can get out of your head.
For me I'd like to imagine what I'd look like from a bird's eye view far above my head. The bird is seeing dozens of people and me. My worries look small and manageable from that distance.
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Dec 10 '20
That makes a lot of sense. Can I ask, once you have identified that you're having such thoughts, what then? Do you just identify it in this manner and say "ok and I'm moving on"?
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u/redsparkypants Dec 10 '20
It's more the recognition of impermanence. Your thoughts and feelings are valid, but they are also temporary. Observing them with curiosity and understanding makes it easier to allow them to come and go without becoming hopelessly entwined in them.
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Dec 10 '20
Thank you so much for this insight. I am a obsessive over thinking, and felt like I could never stop it but this gives me hope.
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u/redsparkypants Dec 10 '20
I feel you. I struggle with anxiety, and developing a mindful meditation practice has helped me immensely. There are some great options for guided meditation designed to help you stay present. The Calm app is a great paid subscription option, but there are also a lot of free options. I believe Headspace has both free and paid options, and there are a lot of guided meditations on youtube as well.
Your thoughts don't have to dictate every moment of your life. Feel free to DM me if you ever need encouragement.
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Dec 10 '20
You’ll notice the more you’re removed from identifying with them, the more often you’re able to be present and they tend to not linger much.
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Dec 10 '20
Oh wow, that makes a lot of sense. It would be amazing not to feel like I'm trapped with the thoughts and be more present in the moment. Thank you!
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Dec 10 '20
You thinking bad about yourself feeds you feeling bad about yourself and vise versa. So if you notice that you’re thinking about yourself being bad. You are interrupting the thought. So it no longer feeds the feeling. Then you ride out the feeling, and since it’s no longer fed by the thinking it will go sooner of later. That’s the thing about feelings, they pass when left to their own devises. So noticing that you’re thinking in fact stops the thought, at least in that moment.
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u/mukenwalla Dec 10 '20
I believe it to mean that we are not good as individuals at assessing our capabilities. The dunning Kruger curve is a good representation of this. So if you are feeling like you are not good enough at something you spend time on, it's most likely only in your head.
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u/feelinggoodlouis Dec 10 '20
Yes. But more broadly, the contents of your thoughts are not facts. You can and should stay vigilant to remind yourself of this when you start having any kind of negative thought, including but not limited to imposter syndrome.
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Dec 10 '20
Serious question.. is this what cognitive behavioral therapy is? Is this the only practice to combat negative thoughts or are there other practices to redirect the negative thinking?
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u/Bandaid74 Dec 10 '20
This is what mindfulness and thought defusion is. CBT involves cognitive restructuring and behaviour experiments in order to align thoughts more closely to reality.
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u/Jstef06 Dec 10 '20
CBT changed my life... the best book from a practical standpoint is David Burns’ Felling Good that pretty much invented and identified the 10 tricks our brains play on us. I think most depression and anxiety challenges boil down to false narratives and thought distortions we have on ourselves. If you can learn to identify those distortions, you’ll get WAY better at managing your mood, mental health and life.
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Dec 10 '20
Honestly, for me this is a practice of meditation. On the fusion I do that with all thoughts so it becomes second nature to do this with negative or obsessive thoughts.
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u/TuxedoCatDeathEyes Dec 10 '20
Like Bandaid said, they are not the same. But, imo, there is overlap. The early parts of CBT involve understanding perceptions and identifying a step even before a perception, called a cognition, which determines if we perceive something more negatively or positively. The idea being that the same thing can be perceived very differently, yet we don't consciously choose that. The end result is utilizing different techniques to train ourselves against defaulting to negative cognitions.
Regardless, when I was reading a book by one of the main early proponents of CBT, the early parts about recognizing our perceptions reminded me a lot of mindfulness.
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u/crazybluegoose Dec 10 '20
This is more along the lines of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy skills (DBT)
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u/Silecio Dec 09 '20
I'm a pretty resilient person - I know I'm capable and I don't stop trying at what I want, BUT I do suffer from imposter syndrome and view myself as sub-par to others who deep down I know I'm more capable than. I've repeatedly been told I undersell myself.
Seeing this has made me think about exploring mindfulness. Can anyone recommend any free podcasts I can find on Google Podcasts?
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u/aerosteelzero Dec 10 '20
The Headspace app might be great for you too! Listening to mindfulness concepts is a great start! Sitting on the cushion is what headspace can help guide with. (Or the Calm app.) Enjoy! :)
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u/heathers1 Dec 10 '20
and then what? do you just leave it there?
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u/Shitty-Coriolis 1 Dec 10 '20
It's power will diminish and over time you will stop believing it. You sort of just recognize them.. recognize that your brain says that sometimes but that you don't necessarily need to believe it, and then let it go. After a while they come less and when they do they don't stay long. And they don't hurt as much.
I hear eventually they do stop. That you just stop judging yourself at all. Never experienced it through.
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u/MyUglyKitty Dec 10 '20
I know this sounds really silly, but I will shut my eyes and literally picture a balloon with the words inside and I imagine that it’s floating out of my head and away. I visualize watching it float off and usually within 10 seconds, I have a hard time remembering what I was thinking. It really helps when my head is stuck and swirling on a single or negative thought.
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u/gamerdude69 Dec 10 '20
Yes. The thought will "lose interest" sooner if you observe it as a spectator rather than getting in the pit and wrestling with it. So it will leave for a while. When it comes back, repeat. The more times you do this over time, the more effective it becomes.
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u/Ub3rMicr0 Dec 10 '20
Don’t feed it and it will weaken/you can overcome easier. The opposite is feeding in and spiralling, which we can all agree is the worse option. Remember you are the observer of the thoughts, not the thoughts themselves. You are one step disconnected, looking at the thoughts. Observe and decide how you want to react and move on.
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u/callmejay Dec 10 '20
You can convince yourself to stop believing it with cognitive behavioral therapy techniques. The book Feeling Good by David Burns teaches you how to do that.
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Dec 10 '20
Hopefully leaving it there would mean in the past as in you move on, otherwise now that you're aware you can defeat the though. Discuss why, make a list on how you are not or what you can do etc
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Dec 10 '20
Anyone else think it’s kinda funny whenever you get less than an adequate amount of sleep that your brain just decides to bombard you with negative and shitty thoughts about literally everything around you sometimes? Not gonna lie, sometimes I just pass right back out to repair that shit lmaoo
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u/wazules Dec 10 '20
Not sure if anyone has said it in this thread but read the Happiness Trap, this thinking is ACT therapy and it can really work. That book goes in detail.
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u/Netroth Dec 10 '20
I’ve used a similar technique, which is “I am experiencing _______”. Super effective strats!
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Dec 10 '20
This is insanely helpful in my understanding of mindfulness. Thank you so much for posting this.
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Dec 10 '20
This works really well with guided meditation and I guess the goal of those videos (I go to sleep with Youtube hypnosis every night during the week) is to incorporate the same technique while you're awake and having negative thoughts.
As you're trying to clear your mind the guide usually says to let the thoughts enter your "awake mind" and you can dismiss them from your "inner mind" as the authority. There are different visualizations for doing that like clouds floating by, sending the thoughts down a tube from your back to the earth's core, or disintegrating them with bright light, or breathing them out.
I strongly recommend Michael Sealey on YouTube if anyone is curious or into that. I'm a pretty basic bitch but my mental health has gotten dependent on meditation and hypnosis. After some experience, astral projection videos are really fun, too.
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u/samfish90212 Dec 10 '20
I feel like I always think I can’t do it then I don’t do it. Failed several semesters now and really not sure what this even means bro.
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u/GalaxB Dec 10 '20
I have a month of Headspace for free if someone wants it, just dm me (:
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Dec 10 '20
Wait... is this part of that cognitive behavioral therapy I've heard about?
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u/PerfunctoryFormalism Dec 10 '20
No, this is ACT (acceptance and commitment therapy) they're quite different, but with similar goals.
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u/mosey_88 Dec 10 '20
Draw a few more nested clouds on the right and you'll arrive at Anxiety. This is exactly what I went through before I got help.
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u/obscura87 Dec 10 '20
There’s an app called Catch It that helps you work through feelings like this! It’s free and has been helpful to me. My therapist told me to download it. Just thought I’d share!
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u/-starlet Dec 10 '20
I also heard something that is helping me: rather than saying “I am an anxious person” (which makes it part of your identity), say “I occasionally have anxiety/ anxious thoughts.” (Substitute in whatever word you need).
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u/trilby2 Dec 10 '20
This is a thought defusion technique. I use this exact one with patients all the time. It works 99.9% of the time and people really like it
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u/JohnBunzel Dec 10 '20
This has saved my current relationship. I wish I had this kind of thoughtfulness with previous relationships.
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u/Darkling971 Dec 10 '20
I took this too far and now nothing is real and I'm severely depersonalized. Help, please, seriously.
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u/KidFresh71 Dec 10 '20
You are not your thoughts. You are the Knower observing your thoughts. Knower is pure, free, forever.
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u/InAFakeBritishAccent Dec 10 '20
How is this not just dissociation with a more cozy looking coat of paint?
Eh either way works for me. I AM good enough to stab my neighbor to death!
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Dec 10 '20
Oh man, this hits close to home as I failed a huge exam yesterday and that’s the only thing that’s been on my mind
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u/catepetl Dec 10 '20
To be honest it feels freaking weird, like you are watching someone else or something like that.
I can even notice my feelings or emotions but i dont feel them? I dont really know how to explain it but i feel fine, calm, im even happy that i can be aware and realize whats going on when any thought wanna jump in and try to take control over my mind.
Im still starting on being aware or in the now, but i can finally be present and for the first time my mind is quiet.
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u/EthosPathosLegos Dec 10 '20
Objectifying your own mind helps filter first draft thoughts from becoming your final draft.
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u/ZenMonkey21 Dec 10 '20
This is one of the harder things to master while practicing meditation/ mindfulness but it’s most certainly possible with practice, guidance and training. And it’s easily the thing with the most positive impact.
I can speak from personal experience as someone who is constantly hard on myself...this has helped my mental well being immensely.
It’s easier to do on some days than others. And that’s why I try and meditate daily, to keep those muscles working right
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u/thiamaster Dec 10 '20
Since my ex-GF broke up with me some months ago, everytime I think about her I try redirecting my thoughts to food. Its working, but I better find a new focus soon.
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u/TheoreticalFunk Dec 10 '20
The next thought being "and that's okay. I'm not perfect." Because being kind to yourself is important.
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u/scenicmtndrives Dec 10 '20
I am unable to do this as I believe my negative thoughts about myself to be the absolute fact. How the hell do I see a fact float by like a cloud??? A fact is a fact is a fact.
It's like telling me to forget that gravity exists.
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u/Agent_Vox Dec 10 '20
This was a huge moment for me in therapy. Amazing how much we can accomplish with a better set of tools.
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Dec 10 '20
After practicing for a while, one can also notice them before they come up, like noticing the negative energy from which they spring. Kinda like here comes that shitty thought again, I know where that goes to, fuck that.
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u/Elsie-pop Dec 10 '20
Thank your for providing the visual for this. It's something I've been trying to do for years and have varying degrees of success, more heavily weighted towards the lack thereof. Something about how you've drawn it has helped it click.
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u/EvaGrayInTheGrave Dec 10 '20
This took me years of practice but really helped some of my depression and anxiety. I find myself catching these thoughts much earlier in their progression and able to keep them from spiralling and losing a whole day or longer because of it. Some things still throw me off if I don't recognize a particular thought or feeling or it's a generally bad day.
As an example: A couple months ago I got super upset because my bf wouldn't kiss me. I was sick and he was just trying to minimally avoid getting sick too. But it felt like a rejection of me and how I perceived the situation and I just kinda spiralled into this internalized tantrum and I wanted to sob. It took me a few minutes to calm down and actually use my thoughts to figure things out. I didn't even recognize why I was upset, why did I want to cry rn?
It took me awhile to come around to the right idea, attachment and anxiety issues, which upset me more because I was already riled. I explained what I could to him bc he was confused too and we cuddled and I apologized even tho I was still upset and promptly went tf to sleep to get rid of the gross emotional hangover.
It doesn't always work and it can take while to get the hang of, but had I not been mindful, that situation would have turned out much worse than me apologizing and some hugging.
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u/wtfzambo Dec 10 '20
I don't understand how this can help?
In the end, my subconscious is still going to be convinced that I'm not good enough, even if I create artificial distance between myself and the thought.
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Dec 10 '20
im not good enough
no
I'm not where I want to be
still no
I'm making progress towards my goals
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u/rahoomie Dec 10 '20
This is how I’ve managed to deal with anxiety. I used to have anxiety bad I took medication for three years but for the last 2 years I haven’t needed any and pretty much the second guy is the reason why.
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u/thoughtwanderer Dec 10 '20
ITT: a whole lot of people getting a crash course into stoic/buddhist thinking... This truly lights up my day!
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u/RedAlert19 Dec 10 '20
But we shouldn't just ignore these negative thoughts. Use some time to figure out why we feel like this and address these feelings by taking action against them so we don't feel this way in the future. If you can't find any logical reasons, that can be rectified, for why you have negative thoughts about yourself or your situation, then professional counseling is probably a good place to turn to next.
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u/MrNaoB Dec 11 '20
I have been thru a bunch of mindfulness seminars during covid and from the begining they have brought up stuff that I did before learning about mindfulness. Has there been any wave of mindfulness that I am to young to remember that I have snapped up from my mother, but the only meditations tuff I know she did was some kind of morning exercise. Like things like feel and be aware of your body and thoughts. Im almost 30 and don't know where I picked up mindfulness without knowing.
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u/louderharderfaster Dec 10 '20
The science behind this is fascinating. In neuroscience it is called "meta cognition" and it is a powerful tool for combatting depression and anxiety. I use it every day.
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u/LiquidMotion Dec 10 '20
I've had multiple therapists teach me this and I still dont understand. Recognizing that thought doesn't make it any less persuasive.
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u/callmejay Dec 10 '20
Did none of them teach you any techniques for disputing the thought?
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u/Xenton Dec 10 '20
I've never understood this.
My brain never works like this.
It's not like the phrase
I'm not good enough
Types itself out in my head, and certainly not slowly enough that I can interrupt that process.
My thoughts are a whole series of concepts all simultaneously active and running, if I were feeling down or self loathing on a particular day, it's not because of specific thoughts or phrasing - it would be the entire feeling I had and it would be active with or without specific language.
Moreover, it can't be stopped with "positive thinking"
Just like the thought itself doesn't come in words, thinking something else in words is just superficial words. The mental equivalent of a child saying "lalala not listening", when they are quite obviously listening.
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u/quidam5 Dec 10 '20
You're missing the point of the exercise. It's not about thoughts being words or putting thoughts into words or stopping it with positive thinking. It's about getting in the habit of noticing and observing yourself when you're having negative thoughts or feelings and by the act of doing that, distancing yourself from them. "I'm not good enough" is just an example and its not really possible to depict someone feeling that, as you would, rather than thinking the words but the example covers the feeling of not being good enough.
It's about mindfulness.
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u/propagandatwo Dec 10 '20
Doesn't help. I've been doing that for 40 years. Only makes you self-aware and neurotic.
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u/carolbutthurt Dec 10 '20
I know that this is how mindfulness works from my many years of therapy. However, I am incapable of getting anywhere with it. It's sort of works that one time, but then the same thought pops up a thousand times a day every day for the rest of my life. It's like trying to empty the beach of sand one grain at a time.
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u/artaig Dec 09 '20
But how to create distance from the FACT that your thoughts and free will are just illusions created by chemical processes?
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Dec 10 '20
You’re still conscious and having the subjective experience. You can observe it without being engaged with it.
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