[ SECRET POST #3056 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3056 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 062 secrets from Secret Submission Post #437.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

sorry sorry sorry

[(Anonymous)]

but what the hell is a mindfulness exercise?

Re: sorry sorry sorry

[(Anonymous)]

A type of mental health exercise. I did it when I was doing a CBT group.

Re: sorry sorry sorry

[(Anonymous)]

What is a CBT group?

Re: sorry sorry sorry

[vethica]

Probably cognitive behavioral therapy. Could also be cock and ball torture.

Re: sorry sorry sorry

[(Anonymous)]

The latter should certainly inspire mindfulness.

Re: sorry sorry sorry

[(Anonymous)]

Oh man I wish. Would have livened up those meetings.

AYRT

[(Anonymous)]

Okay I just looked it up, it's for anxiety apparently?

In the context of the secret I honestly thought it was some sort of SJW thing because of how often I've heard someone on tumblr complain about how sarcasm is hurtful.

Re: AYRT

[(Anonymous)]

It's for a lot of things, I believe. In my group it was incorporated into building coping mechanisms for depression.

Re: sorry sorry sorry

[(Anonymous)]

It's a meditative exercise derived from Buddhist practices. The gist of it is that you focus your awareness onto your present experience in the moment (in the form of your breathing mostly, but you can also do it via any tactile sense) and to practice simply feeling those experiences without judging them.

So if an anxious thought comes into your head while you're practicing, you just notice it's there and don't beat yourself up about it. The idea is that with time, you learn to do this automatically any time you have anxious thoughts and by doing so you reduce the impact they have on you.

Re: sorry sorry sorry

[(Anonymous)]

Like instead of tuning OUT your itchy bra strap, you tune into it and get the whole experience. Or NOT trying to ignore the whiny brats on the long bus ride. Or truly reflect on the deeper meaning of what your mother in law is saying to you, or...

Depression, here I come!

Re: sorry sorry sorry

[(Anonymous)]

Partly, but in your examples you're still feeling a response to those things. You're still annoyed by the itchy strap, or the whining brats.

The point of mindfulness is to experience those things, acknowledge that they're there but not let them get to you by not attributing any judgemental feeling to them whatsoever. It's the complete antithesis to depression.

Re: sorry sorry sorry

[(Anonymous)]

So you focus until you go numb? Isn't it easier to just ignore annoying stuff in the first place?

Re: sorry sorry sorry

[(Anonymous)]

DA

Don't do this man. Seriously, what do you get out of this? Pick your trolly battles.

Re: sorry sorry sorry

[(Anonymous)]

I wasn't trolling on purpose. I should perhaps have phrased it more politely, but I genuinely don't get the point of this exercise. It might be me of course, but if someone could explain it in a more logical way I'd appreciate it.

Re: sorry sorry sorry

[(Anonymous)]

Keep it up, you'll master it eventually.

Re: sorry sorry sorry

[(Anonymous)]

You don't focus at all, that's the whole point. You notice. You acknowledge. You don't dwell, and you don't judge.

When you have anxious, obsessive, intrusive thoughts etc., then one of the problems with them is that once you get that thought you fixate on it, drag it out and extrapolate and make everything worse. You do that because you don't just see it as a thought, you add in value judgements about yourself as a person for having the thought.

Ignoring is counterproductive, because by telling your mind not to think about something you're placing all its focus onto that thing. Even if you've never suffered from any kind of mental health issue, I'm sure there have been times when you've tried not to think about something only to then notice it, or tangential references to it, absolutely everywhere. Notice the thought, don't fuel it, and it'll drift away to be replaced by something else -- as thoughts do, naturally, when you don't have issues that disrupt that pattern -- without escalating the anxiety.

I'm sorry if that's not logical enough for you.

Re: sorry sorry sorry

[feotakahari]

I'm speaking from a place of ignorance here, but is that as "nuclear option" as it sounds? It sounds like how my immune system wants to kill me, so I take medicine that makes it overall less effective. (I know my nightmares and negative thoughts happen most frequently when there's a problem that I urgently need to deal with.)

Re: sorry sorry sorry

[(Anonymous)]

Not sure what you mean by "nuclear option"? It's not about sitting there stewing in your panic, if that's what you mean? It's not usually practiced at times of great anxiety or panic in the first place; you practice the habit in as calm and relaxed circumstances as you can, with the idea that with time (and for some people that's a lot of time, even if it works for them at all) you'll be able to apply the same tactic in situations where you're not.

It's not about enduring; enduring just keeps you embedded in the thoughts and feelings you want to just let drfit, the way thoughts usually do. It's about retraining the way we think so that the anxious or obtrusive thoughts we do have don't affect us as deeply. In your example it'd mean you look at that problem you need to deal with, maybe break it down into components or steps, and work through what you need to do for each one. During these steps, chances are a lot of negative or anxious thoughts and feelings will come into your head ("What am I even doing? Am I doing it right? Will it work out? Will it not working out mean I'm a failure?"). The point of mindfulness is that you don't recoil from those thoughts but you don't give them any extra attention either. You notice they're there, you acknowledge they're there, and you gently turn your attention back onto whatever you need to be doing instead of letting the thoughts snowball into panic. At a very basic level, it's grounding yourself so you don't let your thoughts run away with you.

By focusing on just experiencing here and now, on acknowledging any thought that comes to you without judging it or yourself, you're teaching your thought processes not to be as trigger-happy as they can be when you're anxious.

Re: sorry sorry sorry

[feotakahari]

I just meant that it sounds extreme. Like trying to deal with chronic pain by making it so that you have less of a response to pain in general, or trying to prevent sensory input overload by dulling your senses. I feel like if I stopped being so scared of failing, I'd let myself fail a lot more often, just like I'd keep staring at screens during headaches if I dulled my sense of pain.

Re: sorry sorry sorry

[(Anonymous)]

I genuinely don't know how you managed to get that out of anything I've said.

Re: sorry sorry sorry

[feotakahari]

Hey, if I don't get it, I don't get it. I was just trying to interpret what you meant by "reducing the impact every time you have anxious thoughts." (I'm apparently pretty terrible at interpreting things, given how often anons on FS have told me I completely misunderstood everything.)

Re: sorry sorry sorry

[(Anonymous)]

So with the headache thing, if you have a really bad headache, do you never take anything for it? If you broke your leg, would you insist on not having it in a cast because that would make you, I don't know, try to walk on it sooner? I don't even understand your thought process here.

But look, mindfulness is about this, pure and simple: learning to let go of intrusive thoughts so you're not obsessing over them. It's fine to feel anxious, angry, sad, yadda yadda, and the point isn't to make yourself stop feeling all of it. The point is to make it so that, when you have a negative emotion, it doesn't take you over to the point where you can't function. Like, it sounds like you're arguing that it's actually BETTER to not be able to function, because otherwise you'll, I dunno, keep touching the stove or some shit, and that just doesn't make sense.

Re: sorry sorry sorry

[tree_and_leaf]

Exactly! It's definitely not about trying to achieve Kholinar /gratuitous Star Trek reference.

Re: sorry sorry sorry

[feotakahari]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what's meant by anxiety. If you only mean that this mindfulness thing kicks in during full-blown panic attacks, then I'm not going to really 100% understand because I don't have those. I thought you meant that it lessens "anxiety" in general. (To continue the painkiller metaphor, I'd take painkillers if I broke my leg, but not if I stubbed my toe.)

Re: sorry sorry sorry

[(Anonymous)]

DA

Here's a link that might help you understand more:

http://www.mindfulnessmeditationinstitute.org/