In a remote and quiet place, Vikman says, she discovers thoughts and feelings that aren’t audible in her busy daily life. “If you want to know yourself you have to be with yourself, and discuss with yourself, be able to talk with yourself.”
I was a homemaker for years. A lot of housework is fairly mindless, allowing for uninterrupted deep thought because most folks will not bother you while you are doing laundry. They don't want to be asked to help.
I have spent years cultivating a relatively quiet life by American standards. Since my ex moved out, I mostly have not had a TV. I gave up my car years ago, giving up its built in radio along with it. In my household, it is a common courtesy to announce "I am starting up a video (or game) with voices." so as to not startle anyone.
People complain a lot about the stress of our 24/7 always on lives in the US. They often lay the blame on computers, smart phones, email notifications and social media. I have a smart phone and computers. I don't feel harried and interrupted and like I can't get a break.
My life was quiet before sleeping in a tent for nearly 6 years, but doing that deepened the quiet. I am prone to ear infections. I can't wear headphones because of it. My days were spent in a library. My nights were spent trying to be quiet enough to go unnoticed and not have the cops called on me. Games were often played with the sound off.
Peace and quiet is necessary to be able to hear yourself think. I think the degree to which constant noise interferes with deep contemplation and self reflection goes largely unrecognized.
A lot of people could probably skip therapy entirely if they could just arrange to hear themselves think. But I think many people are intentionally avoiding that because the constant flak of noise obscuring their thoughts and feelings is critical to their ability to stay in a relationship that doesn't work or at a job they actually hate.
Hearing their own opinions about their own lives would likely compel many of them to make hard decisions and big changes and they would rather not know. That's scary. It's overwhelming. The noise that enables remaining stuck is like an anaesthetic.
> A lot of people could probably skip therapy entirely if they could just arrange to hear themselves think.
I'm sure you aren't completely implying this but as someone who went through therapy and attended group classes where I encountered dozens of people with significantly worse forms of anxiety, there are a lot of people whose problem IS their thoughts.
Negative thoughts are capable of preventing people from doing even basic things like talking to a friendly stranger, washing dishes, or even getting out of bed to do a routine. It akin to having poor eye sight and being forced to wear a broken pair of glasses. Those thoughts completely change the perspective of the world, sap energy, and foster incredibly awful feelings. And I think without guidance, it's easy to get into a loop where thoughts can pull a person into a deeper darkness.
I personally find it much easier to be with my thoughts now that a lot of my life has changed for the better, but there's no way I think I could've done it without my therapist. I needed someone to be my champion, to be a voice that could counter my inner critic, to build my confidence before I had the capacity to challenge the beliefs that constantly prevented me from doing things that brought fulfillment.
I've been in that situation, and meditation/silence actually helped me in a big way. I hiked out to a remote campsite and lived there for a couple days, alone. No technology except an emergency GPS beacon.
In daily life we're bombarded by things that can trigger negative thinking... in meditation/silence, my only anxiety was how other people would think doing that was weird. Instead of getting pulled apart by a myriad of negativity, I could finally focus on battling one thing. I've never had a chance to do that before: completely focus on one anxiety for hours without interruption. Embracing it destroyed it, like some form of semantic satiation.
Could you explain a bit more about your negative thought problems and how therapy helped? I'm in a similar situation and am looking at options to help myself. Thanks.
Woebot is a project out of Stanford which teaches you how to recognize and correct unhealthy thinking. It is also an interesting example of a chatbot based service. https://woebot.io/
I'm quite disturbed by efforts like this.
Perhaps because I cannot fathom how a chatbot can help replace human compassion and emotion from just simple human characteristics like facial expressions.
A major part of the solution will be to get together and try to understand each other. Not to delegate this to a bot that'll spit out some random LSTM generated "words".
Our bots can help solve some problems in our communication, and can help us communicate when we cannot physically do so. Hawking will testify to this perhaps.
They should not communicate instead of us being able to do so.
For example, here is an article about Ellie, a South-Carolina University virtual therapist used in the treatment of PTSD. It notes some explicit advantages which at least complement humans:
“One advantage of using Ellie to gather behaviour evidences is that people seem to open up quite easily to Ellie, given that she is a computer and is not designed to judge the person”, Morency explains to news.com.au
...
Morency stresses she is not a substitute for a human therapist. Rather, she is used in tandem with a doctor as a data-gatherer, able to break down walls which may exist due to a patient’s unwillingness to disclose sensitive information to a human.
As Morency explains, “The behavioural indicators that Ellie identifies will be summarised to the doctor, who will integrate it as part of the treatment or therapy. Our vision is that Ellie will be a decision support tool that will help human doctors and clinicians during treatment and therapy.”
Overcoming it is a long process, and I'd be lying if I said if I'm over it. There are still some aspects that I am very sensitive to which can throw me overboard for several days, so I don't want to pretend as if I'm fully different. But I'll try my best to talk through some of the things that helped.
For me, negative thoughts are triggered by certain situations, namely inter-personal relationships and the fear of rejection. In scenarios like dating someone I'm really interested in or befriending a stranger whose respect I want to earn, I immediately assume the worst: that they think lowly of me, they dislike me, they are having a terrible time, etc. Internally, I'm going haywire and panicking. And unless I get an explicit sign of approval, I ended up with a lot of self-loathing.
This made it really hard for me to make new friends, to socialize, to go to parties... I'd over-analyze unfamiliar social situations which would cause me to not want to socialize, which would only make me feel more lonely with a lack of self-confidence. I didn't want to smile at someone like a stranger and experience what its like for someone not to smile at me back. I didn't want to be honest with a woman unless I knew with 100% certainty that they were interested in me because rejection was soul crushing.
The tipping point for me was when I went on a friendly outing with a woman who I liked. I felt like I couldn't be myself and was internally frantic throughout the entire day we spent together. I cared too much for her approval that I ended up about as interesting as a blank piece of paper.
From that moment, I knew something wasn't right and that I needed to get professional help. I knew that there were things I wanted in life, like more friends, a significant other, and more comfort in my own skin, yet I wasn't anywhere close to it. Thinking about things only made me more depressed.
There's two major things that helped me.
The first was I ended up going to a Psychotherapist as she said she could teach CBT. But she didn't really explicitly teach it, so much as talked me through my thoughts and we came up with ways to incrementally challenge me. Things that she helped me discover through talking were:
- She reveal to me that I an abnormally strong inner critic which prevents me from taking risks in order to prevent me from potentially getting emotionally hurt. He keeps me safe, but also prevents me from growing.
- She taught me the importance of meditation and mindfulness, so as to be more aware of my current state and to recognize I don't have to be carried away into the flow of emotions if I am aware that its there and/or what triggers them.
- She constantly challenged me to try uncomfortable situations socially
- She revealed to me my inner child who has certain vulnerabilities. If I could learn how to take care of him by imagining myself with him, I could learn how to deal with certain problematic situations such as social rejection. I was honestly skeptical at first and felt this was overly new-agey, but I have found it helpful to think about what I'd say to my younger self to assure them when I experience something that I know would hurt them.
My therapist ended up becoming a figment of my mind, where if I'm in a situation, I consider what she would say to me and act accordingly to it.
The second important thing was that I needed to not rely on others to bring me happiness, but I had to be able to generate on my own. For some, it's their religious faith, a certain hobby, physical activity, their work... for me, it was learning. Via HN in early 2017, I took Learning how to Learn which opened up my eyes to the process of learning. And then from there, I just haven't been able to stop learning things that continue to amaze me. Suddenly, I could find things that interested me and happily engage my brain instead of passively relying on some entity to bring happiness to me in the form of games, social media attention, etc.
When I finally had both therapy and self-generated happiness, everything clicked. I recognize it isn't a mind-blowing fact: without a purpose, life can feel tough and lackluster.
In summary, my psychotherapist revealed unique things about me that I'm more aware of that I wouldn't have recognized without a third-party perspective, and gave me the mental and physical tools to deal with triggering situations. But that was only half the equation, the other half was finding something purposeful in my life that brought me excitement and a sense of accomplishment, something that no one could take away from me.
Yes! That course really gave me a stronger understanding of how to learn, and gave me a lot more confidence that our minds are more malleable than we might believe.
I recommend a 10-day vipassana meditation retreat (https://www.dhamma.org). There are no charges for the courses - not even to cover the cost of food and accommodation. It is non-sectarian, with no hidden agenda. You basically meditate for 12 hours a day - no reading, writing, talking, or listening to music, etc..
I had problems with panic attacks that would sometime keep me awake all night. I tried medication and therapy without much success. What I learned at these retreats was invaluable and has helped me to manage the panic attacks and anxiety.
You may wish to read and try out some of these.
An extract from [4]:
>>> A man lost his right hand in a freak accident. He quit his job and became really negative and bitter. Unable to put up with his attitude, his girlfriend broke up with him. This young man went into deep depression and shunned everyone. For months, he didn’t meet or talk to any of his friends. Just when his wounds were starting to heal, he went online to see what his ex was up to. He was shocked to find out that she had already married someone else.
He saw her pics. She was happy, laughing, partying in every one of them. He went and visited Facebook pages of his other friends. Someone had got a promotion, someone else had a child. Everyone seemed to be having fun.
“My life sucks,” he thought. “I’ve lost my right hand, my job, my love and my friends. No one wants me, no one needs me and no one is even bothered.” Negative thoughts began overpowering his mind so much that he decided to end his life.
He went on the top of his high rise building and looked down with the intention to jump. Just then he saw the most amazing scene.
There he was, a pedestrian on the sidewalk dancing most joyously, as if no one was watching him. Not only that, he had no hands, not even arms and yet he was merrily dancing.
Giving up the idea of suicide, he rushed downstairs to know the secret of the pedestrian’s happiness.
“Sir,” the man said humbly, “I’m so inspired and touched by your positive outlook. I see you have no arms and yet you are dancing. What’s the secret of your happiness?”
“Happiness? Dancing?” he replied somewhat awkwardly, without stopping his dance. “Man, I’m just trying to scratch my bottom. It’s not easy I tell you.”
Now you know the secret of people’s happiness when you see them dancing or partying. Just itchy bums.
Happiness is your personal state, a private matter (though the more you spread it, the more you get to keep). When you fail to see the good in your life (and everyone has abundance of goodness if you choose the right perspective), there’ll be nothing good left to feel. Be simple, be grateful. An ostentatious or flamboyant lifestyle can bring you attention but not happiness. You are entitled to have your comforts, but extravagance is a disease.
Socrates lived a frugal life and he believed that only a wise person understands the beauty of frugality, of simplicity. It is said that he would not even wear shoes and yet every so often he spent hours and hours in the marketplace looking at various goods on display.
“Why do you waste your time in the market,” his friend asked him once, “when you never buy anything?”
“Because,” Socrates replied, “When I go to the market, I discover how many things I am perfectly happy without.”
I don’t think there’s anymore to happiness than noble actions, gratitude and contentment. No doubt, happiness is not merely an emotion but a state of being. Above all though, happiness is an attitude. When you make it a point to live your life positively, to appreciate the goodness of your own life without measuring it against the lives of itchy bums, your world will light up with the radiance of a thousand suns.
“What do you think the weather’s gonna be like today?” Mulla Nasrudin’s friend asked him.
“Just the kind I like,” he foretold patting his donkey.
“How can you be so sure?”
“Knowing that I can’t always get what I like, I’ve learned to always like what I get,” Mulla said. “So, I’m certain we’re going to have awesome weather today.”
I have a slightly different perspective on thoughts. To me, they are by-products of what’s going on in the very vast sub conscious mind, and an indicator of what is going on down there. They are information, but not a means to an end. It’s like listening to noises at night - it can be beautiful at times, but at some time I just want to concentrate on other things that matter to me. I find them too volatile to provide deep self reflection on their own (so just listening to thoughts is not of much use), and it’s hard to have an inner dialogue because auditive memory is not available, so you get stuck debating with yourself in circles. (Might be just me, of course)
When I work, or talk to other people, I don’t hear any thoughts, and I think this is because the speech-building parts of the brain are preoccupied with the task at hand.
And if I talk to people, I often hear myself saying things I had not thought of before. I’m not in therapy, but I’m sure it would work way better for me than just thinking. Real talk definitely beats thoughts by a wide margin in clarity and expressiveness.
I definitely need silence for downtime though, I love staying up late alone for that reason.
Sounds a lot like Thich Nhat Hanh's approach (Miracle of Mindfulness) :)
While washing the dishes one should only be washing the dishes, which means that while washing the dishes one should be completely aware of the fact that one is washing the dishes. At first glance this might seem a little silly: why put so much stress on a simple thing? But that's precisely the point. The fact that I am standing there and washing these bowls is a wondrous reality. I'm being completely myself, following my breath, conscious of my presence, and conscious of my thoughts and actions. There's no way I can be tossed around mindlessly like a bottle slapped here and there on the waves.
I read a great story, about him or one of those Tibetan Buddhist mindfulness teachers, wish I could remember who. He was teaching a mindfulness course at Esalen, on doing one thing at a time and really being there. One morning his students caught him in the act reading the paper while having breakfast. "Aha!" they said. "Yes," he said, "and when reading the newspaper and eating breakfast, read the newspaper and eat breakfast."
> The noise that enables remaining stuck is like an anaesthetic.
Thanks for this comment. I almost always listen to music while working, or to online noise generators. Your statement hits the nail on the head – it's an addiction to distract yourself into a pleasant dullness, and I've been blissfully ignoring it as such.
> A lot of people could probably skip therapy entirely if they could just arrange to hear themselves think.
I tend to agree, but it may take time to see therapeutic effects. That initial period of quieting, at least for me, through meditation, was more chaotic than the noise. It turned everything upside down, everything I thought I’d known about myself was pretty much wrong. I’d just been telling myself stories for years and when I stopped listening and believing they were the truth - wow. I don’t think you necessarily need to have anything external change in your life for it to be a big adjustment.
It's great being able to get outside in the relative quiet. Maybe a walk at the beach, or in a forest, or on a hike in the hills. Maybe even a drive if you enjoy drives out of the city. Etc.
There isn't anything quite like it. But unfortunately many people seem to forget that we are able to do this.
I live in a house by a road. A particularly busy road. Every time I go outside, whenever I sit inside, any time I'm digging the garden, all I can hear is traffic.
Those few occasions that I'm outside and hear nothing, not even distant traffic only birds, are almost a religious experience for me. It's just so calming, and almost everything in my life seems better for just that short time.
(Off-topic: why did you change your HN account? Both your profiles link to your websites that feature the same name (so if it was for a privacy reason, you might do well to clean out your old profile), and you didn't take time off between your last post on your previous account and your first post on your new account. I only noticed because you are a frequent and recognizable commenter here on HN.)
I was a homemaker for years. A lot of housework is fairly mindless, allowing for uninterrupted deep thought because most folks will not bother you while you are doing laundry. They don't want to be asked to help.
I have spent years cultivating a relatively quiet life by American standards. Since my ex moved out, I mostly have not had a TV. I gave up my car years ago, giving up its built in radio along with it. In my household, it is a common courtesy to announce "I am starting up a video (or game) with voices." so as to not startle anyone.
People complain a lot about the stress of our 24/7 always on lives in the US. They often lay the blame on computers, smart phones, email notifications and social media. I have a smart phone and computers. I don't feel harried and interrupted and like I can't get a break.
My life was quiet before sleeping in a tent for nearly 6 years, but doing that deepened the quiet. I am prone to ear infections. I can't wear headphones because of it. My days were spent in a library. My nights were spent trying to be quiet enough to go unnoticed and not have the cops called on me. Games were often played with the sound off.
Peace and quiet is necessary to be able to hear yourself think. I think the degree to which constant noise interferes with deep contemplation and self reflection goes largely unrecognized.
A lot of people could probably skip therapy entirely if they could just arrange to hear themselves think. But I think many people are intentionally avoiding that because the constant flak of noise obscuring their thoughts and feelings is critical to their ability to stay in a relationship that doesn't work or at a job they actually hate.
Hearing their own opinions about their own lives would likely compel many of them to make hard decisions and big changes and they would rather not know. That's scary. It's overwhelming. The noise that enables remaining stuck is like an anaesthetic.