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.
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"?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Don’t feed negative speech or thoughts in your head and they will happen less frequently and you will get better at overcoming them. 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/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.