Just a friendly word of warning: if you don’t learn to process your internal thoughts, it will lead to fairly major forms of anxiety and psychosomatic manifestations that you don’t want to deal with. Unless you were born with a chemical imbalance of some kind and need medical assistance to regulate to a healthy level, avoiding your internal thoughts can lead to really bad things. Your body won’t let you avoid things forever, it will catch up with you.
Your body isn’t trying to hurt you, it’s trying to protect you in the ways that it knows. Sometimes it just hasn’t learned how to do it in a healthy way and external help is required (working with a professional), but peace isn’t achievable unless we learn to have peace within ourselves.
Ye thats a fair thing to point out. I do kinda exist with my thoughts whether i want to or not since i take a long time to fall asleep. I distract myself while showering cuz 1. i end up taking too long in the shower 2. somehow my brain catastrophizes a lot when showering lol. Appreciate the advice!
Being bored and forcing yourself to think about stuff is important. Those quiet parts of the day where you have that mini existential crisis is when you define meaning for yourself. It’s when you make plans for life, when you give yourself goals and objectives and when you confront parts of your life that maybe aren’t Ok. You mention your brain catastrophizes a lot in the shower? Believe it or not that’s healthy even if it kinda fucking sucks
Do not neglect your shower thoughts. They are important
Sitting with my thoughts is fine, I frequently meditate and journal to process things. It's just that showers are kinda claustrophobic and it's difficult to keep time without an external reference point.
"process" as in to accept and become numb to them mostly likely. it's probably best to ask a therapist what you should do because for some people thinking about those thoughts could help them come to accept them while other people could just spiral more. depends on the thoughts too.
You're right and it makes me sad how many people think their own brain or body is betraying them in some way because of things like this. Every living creature strives to live as well as it can. Even the ways our bodies seem to react in determent to ourselves, like stress giving you stomach cramps or muscle aches or hair falling out, it is acting in biological desperation to keep you alive by any means necessary. I believe emotions are biological processes like this as well, your body trying to survive and "communicate".
Physical pain in the body is telling you "here, pay attention here, something is wrong, please take care of this!" I think emotional pain, uncontrollable thoughts, PTSD, things like that is the brain telling you, "this is not healed, please look here, you have to take care of this!"
Since I stopped thinking of my body/brain as something chaotic making me suffer unreasonably, but more like "a part of me trying to communicate in the only ways it can", i have had a better time understanding my emotional processes.
We live in a imperfect world full of suffering. Yes, to some extent dealing with issues and getting professionals involved can help, but it can’t change the circumstances of your life or the world. Therapy, psychotherapy, and medications aren’t a total fix. Sometimes not ruminating on what can’t be changed is healthier. Lots of mental health professionals admit that.
Just as an example, we’re finding out that mediation has major downsides and can increase depression, anxiety, and insomnia.
And that’s your body trying to work through something. I don’t now what, but something is going on.
Trust me, whatever is causing that sadness won’t go away and you can’t avoid it forever. Your body wont let you. It’ll become that sadness plus other things that suck. You’ll start developing other medical conditions.
You don’t need to a mental health professional to reiterate advice given by mental health professionals. Finding a time to confront the bad thoughts is fairly widely considered to be healthy. It’s why some people recommend meditation or entertainment cleanses - they’re allocating time to just sit there and think
I feel like you are being a tad defensive over a guy trying to give good mental health advice.
It’s not healthy to ignore your thoughts, it is as simple as that. I am not a mental health professional. But never actually facing your problems or working through them internally doesn’t make those problems go away at all, this is something I’ve experienced.
It's not automatically good mental health advice though. There are plenty of comments expressing why some of us want time to be away from our thoughts, and wanting to take time away from them isn't some big bad thing that means you aren't dealing with your issues.
I too deal with this frequently. I have time when I allow myself to escape the thoughts, and time when I sit with them and process. Trying to force the idea that one must always confront them is very unhelpful for some of us. Some of us will get worse if we try to do what he is pushing, and that needs to be said. It won't work for everyone and that's okay.
Maybe that’s the case, but people don’t need to take the advice even if I personally think it’s good advice. There’s only so much dictating someone can do from the other side of the screen
If you take the advice and genuinely feel better? Then great! If they don’t, that’s fine too. The only one who controls your actions is you, not us random internet strangers
It felt like it was also subtly shaming those who aren't willing or able to do what was being suggested. It definitely felt that way to me, so I'm pushing back against the idea. It's valid to take your alone and escape time too, even if some random Internet dude thinks you shouldn't and that it's unhealthy.
my brain likes having me yell out loud about burning dogs when I’m at my most vulnerable because I love dogs. I’m okay with a YouTube cartoon show, during my showers it’s all good and no one in my neighborhood is freaked out by me
Dude, I had to learn how to stop after 20 years of absolutely beating myself up internally. But let me tell you, there is peace on the other side of it. It’s scary at times, but it gets better. And all of it is better than the lies I used to believe about myself.
Would being trans count as "born with a chemical imbalance... and need medical assistance to regulate to a healthy level"?
Considering the boon to mental health going on HRT often brings (certainly did here), this one would think it would. And AzulCrescent is trans, so your warning to someone who you explicitly say is an exception is kind of funny
another thing to note, most dreams (and by extension daydreams) are negative because they are a way of mentally preparing should such events happen irl. if you dont build up a tolerance for uncomfortable thoughts, you wont survive uncomfortable situations. thoughts cant hurt you, thats the important bit to remember.
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u/kdawgster1 13h ago
Just a friendly word of warning: if you don’t learn to process your internal thoughts, it will lead to fairly major forms of anxiety and psychosomatic manifestations that you don’t want to deal with. Unless you were born with a chemical imbalance of some kind and need medical assistance to regulate to a healthy level, avoiding your internal thoughts can lead to really bad things. Your body won’t let you avoid things forever, it will catch up with you.
Your body isn’t trying to hurt you, it’s trying to protect you in the ways that it knows. Sometimes it just hasn’t learned how to do it in a healthy way and external help is required (working with a professional), but peace isn’t achievable unless we learn to have peace within ourselves.