But can you switch off?
Being able to stop planning, obsessing, sorting, calculating, staying informed, on top of things, and just general non stop thinking, is really Damaging to your health & wellbeing.
First you have to be aware that all of the above that you do with utter normality as does everyone else, is a little like driving a car and …. Never stopping! The car or you just collapses in a steaming helpless heap. Not so good I hear you scream.
But, I ask, do you know that your doing it. This no stop dialogue is usually such a long term thing that it goes on without your knowledge. So first a good thing to do…..providing you want to know what your head is up to, …is to sit. Without radio, music, TV, books, magazines …just sit.
And pay attention to what thinking and feeling is going on. Later you can start to list these thought actions. Like the time the thought happened, it’s theme [running for a bus?], and any triggers that might have caused these thought actions to pop up.
After all this, you’ll have an idea of just how busy your brain is and maybe even why, although that comes usually as insight.
There are relaxations that can help stop the life time habit of the endless loop of internal drama. The best thing about getting to switch offness is peace and clarity and there are other surprises too.
Some people like guided stuff, others will do it themselves. I didn’t find meditation helpful in switching off, although the peace is incredible while doing the meditation. But I still needed to know what my head wasn’t telling me.
Sometimes a level of hyperness, sensitivity, being freaked out and general anxiety, if not outright paranoia, is partially because these kinds of thinking processes just keep on winding you up, and you think it’s all normal.
I think of myself as a sensitive person prone to anxiety, but on closer examination, my thoughts provide heaps of continuous inner generated scary experiences, that keep me wound up. And it all makes me believe it’s just me and the world I live in.
It’s not. It’s me creating endless scenarios of nerve rackingness.
So step one is to examine what kind of person you really are and what habits you got into over time, and then make the little changes.
Step three is to wait and see if by switching off at will, you are touched by life and feel the peace, an underrated feeling in our modern age.
Paul
