Not Overdoing It & Questioning Thinking Processes

Posted by Stephan on February 27, 2010 under Me Thinking, My Personal Therapy |

I must pay attention. I start to write again and all this stuff keeps popping up. I could write about this and that and hey that would be fun too. And then I’m overhelmed again and end up doing nothing at all. Specially when I get stressed out. But no. When I’m stressed out I am doing something, it’s just nothing productive or helpful or positive. And it is not “just” being stressed out either. It’s called an anxiety attack. That’s some levels above being “just” stressed out. And I know about anxiety attacks. I had them in many many many variations. Not nice. But I manage to cope with them rather well by now. It takes less distraction time before I manage to do something productive again. But since I have at least smaller ones about every day there is still not that much time for positive stuff to happen.

But back to topic. Overdoing stuff. Babysteps. That’s the key. One small, very very small step at a time. Less chance of tripping over and having to waste a lot of energy to troublesome getting up again for the next step. Always hoping that I am actually walking forwards.

On the other hand if I am not excited about doing cool new stuff I wont get anywhere neither. Well there is a cause that the happy medium is a very important part of buddhism. In my case it is a balancing act above a pit filled with spikes with a blindfold no safety net and someone sitting on my shoulders. Not easy but doable.

One of my theories about my whole situation is that I want or need all that stuff or it would just be too easy. What would be the challenge if I could just eat what I want without any big consequences? Or thinking without pain and without anxiety attacks all the time? In a way it is a rather nice training for the mind. Since I am a “crazy person” (I loved the question Evey asked V in V for Vendetta after his introduction “Are you like a crazy person?”) everything I think might be afflicted by unresolved issues, so I have to question my thoughts all the time. It is not as overdramatized as it might sound. I don’t do it all the time, it is more like having some kind of watchman inside of me that that stays alert and when in doubt, then I start reflecting about what I was thinking.

But often the things you take for granted are the things that should be questioned. What helps to spot these things is when there are strong emotions involved. They wont be there all the time, and only show up when they are triggered by something, but that is the moment for me to say stop and start questioning. Of course that’s not always possible, because emotions reduce the thinking capabilities, but in those cases I try to do it when the emotions have ebbed down again. There are several technics I use to do so, like using different explanatory models for the same thing or getting (more) dissociated (than usual). But I don’t want to go into detail about them right now.

That’s it.