This resonated strongly with me; I read this just after finishing a commute during which I was listening to an audiobook that I had hurriedly downloaded for the explicit reason that my brain was currently an unbearable place to be and I needed to occupy it with something else.
Which brings up the important point that this can actually be a really helpful and important strategy, sometimes. If my thoughts are stuck in a rumination loop that’s not going to lead anywhere useful (and will, if left unchecked, keep ratcheting up my anxiety); if things feel intensely, painfully pointless; if a task I need to do feels impossibly boring and I absolutely cannot summon the motivation for it—then shutting off that misery for a time with music or a podcast or a book can be the best choice.
(I read HPMOR (and did next to nothing else) during a week when I was intensely depressed and my train of thought, if left uninterrupted, was full of self-hate and despair and hopelessness. I was really grateful that the writing was engaging and addictive enough to draw me in enough to distract me from my thoughts, and that the book was long enough to last me all week.)
I agree with you, though, that not being able to tolerate one’s thoughts is pretty bad even if you manage to shut your thoughts up most of the time, first because it limits your ability to do things that don’t shut up your thoughts (which can cause e.g. akrasia and procrastination spirals), and also because it limits your ability to pay attention to your preferences (other than “shut up my thoughts”) and change your life to better fulfill them.
It seems like you were able to jump headfirst into your thoughts once you noticed you were shutting them up. I think this strategy might not be available to everyone and may not always be wise, if the thoughts are just Too Much. I’m currently taking a gentler, two-pronged approach:
(1) practice tolerating your thoughts in controlled, constructive ways. For example: meditate; designate certain blocks of time to be in “being mode” (a mindfulness concept, in opposition to “doing mode”) - that is, not expecting anything of yourself and not trying to direct your thoughts and attention in any particular direction; sometimes practice radical acceptance and opposite action (DBT concepts I’ve found very useful); make a commitment to go to therapy and actually talk about your feelings; regularly engage with your bothersome thoughts/feelings in a constructive way (for me this can be writing, thinking aloud, or playing piano; thinking quietly usually leads to unconstructive rumination and makes things worse); sometimes give yourself days when you can do whatever you want, but pay close attention to what it is that you want.
(2) try making your cognitive/emotional environment more hospitable with physiological interventions like sleeping enough, improving sleep quality, exercising, eating nutritious food, taking meds. (this is sort of a “pushing sideways” solution—if you’re avoiding your thoughts because they’re painful, making them less painful is likely to make it easier to engage with them.)
I guess I can’t yet claim that this definitely works well, since I clearly still often need to distract myself from my thoughts. However, I definitely have been discovering feelings and preferences I didn’t know I had, as well as developing the ability to acknowledge some unpleasant feelings and go on with my plans (instead of feeling like I have to immediately escape into a distraction). I’m hopeful that I’m gonna keep getting mileage out of this :)
This resonated strongly with me; I read this just after finishing a commute during which I was listening to an audiobook that I had hurriedly downloaded for the explicit reason that my brain was currently an unbearable place to be and I needed to occupy it with something else.
Which brings up the important point that this can actually be a really helpful and important strategy, sometimes. If my thoughts are stuck in a rumination loop that’s not going to lead anywhere useful (and will, if left unchecked, keep ratcheting up my anxiety); if things feel intensely, painfully pointless; if a task I need to do feels impossibly boring and I absolutely cannot summon the motivation for it—then shutting off that misery for a time with music or a podcast or a book can be the best choice.
(I read HPMOR (and did next to nothing else) during a week when I was intensely depressed and my train of thought, if left uninterrupted, was full of self-hate and despair and hopelessness. I was really grateful that the writing was engaging and addictive enough to draw me in enough to distract me from my thoughts, and that the book was long enough to last me all week.)
I agree with you, though, that not being able to tolerate one’s thoughts is pretty bad even if you manage to shut your thoughts up most of the time, first because it limits your ability to do things that don’t shut up your thoughts (which can cause e.g. akrasia and procrastination spirals), and also because it limits your ability to pay attention to your preferences (other than “shut up my thoughts”) and change your life to better fulfill them.
It seems like you were able to jump headfirst into your thoughts once you noticed you were shutting them up. I think this strategy might not be available to everyone and may not always be wise, if the thoughts are just Too Much. I’m currently taking a gentler, two-pronged approach:
(1) practice tolerating your thoughts in controlled, constructive ways. For example: meditate; designate certain blocks of time to be in “being mode” (a mindfulness concept, in opposition to “doing mode”) - that is, not expecting anything of yourself and not trying to direct your thoughts and attention in any particular direction; sometimes practice radical acceptance and opposite action (DBT concepts I’ve found very useful); make a commitment to go to therapy and actually talk about your feelings; regularly engage with your bothersome thoughts/feelings in a constructive way (for me this can be writing, thinking aloud, or playing piano; thinking quietly usually leads to unconstructive rumination and makes things worse); sometimes give yourself days when you can do whatever you want, but pay close attention to what it is that you want.
(2) try making your cognitive/emotional environment more hospitable with physiological interventions like sleeping enough, improving sleep quality, exercising, eating nutritious food, taking meds. (this is sort of a “pushing sideways” solution—if you’re avoiding your thoughts because they’re painful, making them less painful is likely to make it easier to engage with them.)
I guess I can’t yet claim that this definitely works well, since I clearly still often need to distract myself from my thoughts. However, I definitely have been discovering feelings and preferences I didn’t know I had, as well as developing the ability to acknowledge some unpleasant feelings and go on with my plans (instead of feeling like I have to immediately escape into a distraction). I’m hopeful that I’m gonna keep getting mileage out of this :)