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My spinning mind

Hello fellow-lookers ;-)

This is my first post, so i'm a bit in doubt of what to write...

Probably best to start with te first thing that comes to mind, also referring to the topic-title; my question is about my twirling, spinning, hyperactive mind.

Short-said; it drives me crazy many times a day.

It starts after a minute i wake up, and ends (if i'm lucky, sometimes it goes on in my dreams too ;-) when i finally fall asleep. And if it were all good and helping thoughts, everything would be OK. But they vary from 'inspiring and happy' to 'putting myself down and anxiety and fear'.

It seems like i'm at the mercy of my brain and therefore have nearly any control over it.

And because of those thoughts, my feelings change also. One minute i trust in myself and in life, and the next moment there comes a thought which puts me down almost instantly.

I'm desperately searching for a tool to get control over this, it's driving me crazy en takes a lot of energy.

Is this recognizable to anyone? And if so, how do/did you cope with it? And most important; will the Looking bring some relief to this? I often worry that it's my personality that is broken and can never be fixed anymore.

This is one of the biggest day-to-day fears i'm having for the last year (after reading a lot about personality-disorders online which scared the **** out of me).

Well, this is it for now, hopefully it's all a bit clear (english is not my native language) and i wish you all the best and good luck with Looking smily

Susanne

Relief is the result

Susanne

Hello fellow-lookers ;-)

Is this recognizable to anyone? And if so, how do/did you cope with it? And most important; will the Looking bring some relief to this? I often worry that it's my personality that is broken and can never be fixed anymore.

This is one of the biggest day-to-day fears i'm having for the last year (after reading a lot about personality-disorders online which scared the **** out of me).

Well, this is it for now, hopefully it's all a bit clear (english is not my native language) and i wish you all the best and good luck with Looking smily

Susanne

I think it is recognizable to almost every thinking adult actually, in different grades of intensity. anyhow, that doesn't matter.

my understanding is as follows, and i assure you i write from my own understanding. i will try to be honest about what i really feel i have "grokked" and what i have not...

- whats important to see that your discomfort is not from the spinning thoughts themselves, but your relationship with them

- this relationship is not something you are doing (so you are not being stupid and thinking in circles, for example), but merely a reflex (ultra powerful deeply ingrained ones, probably at the deepest levels of the biology even). also it is driven by a truly hidden cause, which can only be expressed or felt in the form of a working hypothesis: it can be termed as an often unacknowledged assumption that you carry with you that your life is to be feared. the first half might be important to acknowledge , in the sense that hidden means that you don't know it directly or that it might not be in your conscious awareness. the second half is a useful way of looking at the problem so that you can talk about it to other people (this latter half is John's insight or his way of seeing the issue).

- putting the two together, the only thing that can be done is to move your attention away from the whirlpool. in a way the neurotic relationship is the feeding of attention to things that dont need attending (im sure it has parallels to addiction). nothing to worry about. its probably part of being human, like getting a cold or something like that. i bet you already know that moving attention away is the most intelligent thing to do. our previous assumption puts us in a place that our being enamored or captivated by spinning thoughts is a reflex that's driven by the hidden cause. so whenever you are paying attention to the spirals, it only serves to put more energy there. so skillfully move attention away. its like seeking shelter from the rain. thats usually an intelligent thing to do.

- knowing the difference of what to attend to is the skill that you will gain. in a mind that's off kilter, pulling attention away might be experienced as a tug of war. but when the looking happens, somehow over time the same movement turns into the most important thing. that's all you will ever learn from this. nothing more nothing less. but this turns out to be enough.

also it helps to not beat yourself up if your attention doesn't move away so easily or you have to try a lot.

all of the above i write from my personal understanding. now for the hard part for which i cannot use my own words because i don't process fully enough.

- the hidden cause of such neurotic relationship with life can be ended by the first attempt of looking at yourself. this one look ends the fear and whatever follows is now an automatic rebuilding of reflexes, but based on an experience or foundation of security. since your personality is essentially a set of reflexes, what emerges will be saner and at peace with life. thats the promise anyway that the root is tackled with the looking. (though this might be John's deepest insight, I confess I don't understand it fully. it might be too abstract for me. however, the importance of the day to day experience of the looking is not the looking at oneself but the skillful movement of attention that follows, and becomes the main tool).

hope i was clear. good luck.

fellow posters, thank you for pouring your life out onto these pages.

Practice makes perfect

Thnx for your answer, it took me a few times to fully understand what you are saying, but in the end i truly understand where you're coming from smily

These last few days i've been noticing some changes in my reactions and thougths. Very subtile but still...something seems to be going on uncounsiously. I seem to be a little bit more able to move my attention away from the thoughts, thanks to your reply.

When thinking more about the past months, i suddenly realised that i had done the Looking at the beginning of this year, yet without knowing about it. I even wrote a few lines about it, which was very emotional/moving for me.

Also i've shown it to a few of my close ones and they also had tears in their eyes when reading.

Turns out that was my beginning with the Looking.

So i guess i went into the recovery period back then, it also explains why in that period i had the most awful feelings which i've never felt before. An enormous, overwhelming fear and anxiety came over me, which lasted a couple of months. I couldn't eat or sleep anymore and thought i was going insane.

After a while it became less intense and since a few months it's hardly there anymore.

It's kind of difficult for me to express myself in english, so my reply to you isn't very large, although i want to say so much more, also to other Lookers.

This isn't about not wanting to or lack of interest, but just about the words which are hard to translate. I speak english pretty well, but this Looking-stuff needs other words than just the standard ones.

I will try to find the words i look for, so i can reply to others too.

In the meanwhile, thank you again for your posting, it helped me a little further on my way and gave me interesting insights.

Susanne.

I can relate to a having a crazy mind out of control. Feeling odd and like i can't be fixed, that something is deeply wrong with me, compared to other people. But i think most people have issues. Although some people don't worry as much and seems quite happy. Just because you are happy doesn't mean you're not crazy. The mind is just doing it's job, trying to protect you, help you, based on the assumption that you're at stake and that life is to be feared. I believe most so called personality disorders is just minds that is reacting effectively to a threat that is false. Psychotherapy and medicine only targets the symptoms that is the crazy mind and emotions, not the cause.

Local conversations

Thank you both for a very confirming conversation.

I think it contains all that this work is all about; Suffering, Inward looking, Recovery, New skills with our attention and honest and real conversations. A new natural life.

Thank you rvrags for your honesty and clarity!

Susanne: English is not my language either, and I know it can be really frustrating to find words both in your own language and in English. But I promise you it is not so hard as you may think. The words get a new and more powerful meaning but it takes some time. Something really helpful is to talk to someone in your own language, someone that has some experience of this process. Do you have that possibility? I have thought a lot lately on the possibility for people from the same countries, that are involved in this work, to get in contact and share experiences. For me that was the real breakthrough in my recovery. To talk of my experiences in Swedish made my process very real. As we know, the recovery process goes on no mater what, but I think "local conversations" clear things up more quickly. And I think, getting together locally would serve the purpose of us seeing, even more, the importance of this community.

I am sorry that I stole your thread to talk about this, but it has coming back to me more and more lately. So I take this opportunity to say that:

I speak Swedish, Danish, Norwegian. And if you Susanne (I don't know what language is yours) or someone else would be interesting in starting this project up with me it would be great. I am here, and who ever feels interested in this idea, please contact me by answering me in this thread. If we start maybe others from other countries can do the same. And remember, this is not something big. Just us talking in our own languages. Please join this conversation with me and we find out together how to do it technically. I have some things that I think is important when we do this. But we talk of everything about this as we go...

I look forward to hearing from you!

Thank you both again for your inspiring conversation.

Niklas

Hello Inward.

I did not see your posting when I posted mine, I just wanted you to know that.

Niklas

Mindset

Inward

I can relate to a having a crazy mind out of control. Feeling odd and like i can't be fixed, that something is deeply wrong with me, compared to other people. But i think most people have issues. Although some people don't worry as much and seems quite happy. Just because you are happy doesn't mean you're not crazy. The mind is just doing it's job, trying to protect you, help you, based on the assumption that you're at stake and that life is to be feared. I believe most so called personality disorders is just minds that is reacting effectively to a threat that is false. Psychotherapy and medicine only targets the symptoms that is the crazy mind and emotions, not the cause.

Hello Inward,

Thnx for your response, and i'm sorry that you feel this way too. I agree with what you are saying, but do you mean that when the fear of life is gone and you keep looking, the mind will automaticly re-program and the reactions will change?

I sure hope so, i would like to change my reactions and start to love myself, instead of being insecure and focussing on what's wrong with me. Also i wish it for you to happen too!

Language

Niklas

Thank you both for a very confirming conversation.

I think it contains all that this work is all about; Suffering, Inward looking, Recovery, New skills with our attention and honest and real conversations. A new natural life.

Thank you rvrags for your honesty and clarity!

Susanne: English is not my language either, and I know it can be really frustrating to find words both in your own language and in English. But I promise you it is not so hard as you may think. The words get a new and more powerful meaning but it takes some time. Something really helpful is to talk to someone in your own language, someone that has some experience of this process. Do you have that possibility? I have thought a lot lately on the possibility for people from the same countries, that are involved in this work, to get in contact and share experiences. For me that was the real breakthrough in my recovery. To talk of my experiences in Swedish made my process very real. As we know, the recovery process goes on no mater what, but I think "local conversations" clear things up more quickly. And I think, getting together locally would serve the purpose of us seeing, even more, the importance of this community.

I am sorry that I stole your thread to talk about this, but it has coming back to me more and more lately. So I take this opportunity to say that:

I speak Swedish, Danish, Norwegian. And if you Susanne (I don't know what language is yours) or someone else would be interesting in starting this project up with me it would be great. I am here, and who ever feels interested in this idea, please contact me by answering me in this thread. If we start maybe others from other countries can do the same. And remember, this is not something big. Just us talking in our own languages. Please join this conversation with me and we find out together how to do it technically. I have some things that I think is important when we do this. But we talk of everything about this as we go...

I look forward to hearing from you!

Thank you both again for your inspiring conversation.

Niklas

Hello Niklas,

It's a great idea of you to bring people together who speak the same language!

The opportunity to talk to someone in Dutch (my native language) would be very helpful i think. It's easier to say what you want to say if you don't have to search for words to use.

So i'm sorry that we don't speak the same language, but maybe we can start a thread or something to find people who do and connect them. Your idea sounds very good, so i'm in! smily

Me and my mind

Hello Inward.

I think you are absolutely right. Thank you for pointing to that. The psychotherapy and the medicine is really not for us. It is for our minds doing there best to protect us. I have for example been diagnosed with an antisocial personality disorder with phobia and severe anxiety problem. I actually think that the diagnosis they gave me is right on the spot. I trust the experts in these matters. I have never opposed their diagnosis of my mind. They gave me a knife sharp analysis of my problems and reactions.

But they had nothing to say about any solution. I have a crazy mind...fine...and then what? And having been shown in detail, by experts, the problem but not any solution, have made the act of inward looking very powerful for me. I still have, more or less, these reactions in my mind. But they have no longer anything to defend or fight for, so it is getting better and better all the time.

The experience of my self with my attention has shown me that it is not anything wrong with me. I maybe have a crazy mind at times, but I am fine.

This act beats everything out there...

Niklas

Hi Susanne

Thanks for your interest in my idea of local conversations. I am sure that, when the time is right, this opportunity will be available. I think we give it a little more time before we start a thread about it. When the need for it gets bigger it will come to us automatically.

And while we give that some time we can focus on what we already have in this forum.

It has been really nice to come in contact with you and I am looking forward to learn about this process with you and everyone else here.

All the best,

Niklas

Hello Niklas,

You are right about giving it some time...my lack of patience took over ;-)

It's been very nice to meet you too, we'll stay in touch and let's see what happens over time.

Grtz, Susanne

 

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