I include the thoughts that I do not want to have as parts of my self, parts that I do not fully understand or control. I observe these thoughts, and I take care not to act on them, but I do not reject them from my definition of self.
I think something like “I want to be a person who does not think or feel X on a regular basis, but right now I am a person who is experiencing X.” I put it in more neutral terms than rejection. I do not think of it as an imposition by something separate, although sometimes I get frustrated by continuing to have thoughts that I do not wish to have, and that seem to be a malfunction of some kind. But I don’t stop there. I attempt to diagnose the malfunction. It can get tricky, since the source of the problem, the place where it most noticeably manifests, and the remedy can be all in different places, tenuously connected. Sometimes I do get fixated on “But I don’t understand why, and I want to,” when it might be more practical to dismiss the thought without understanding where it comes from.
I am also not comfortable blaming the whole thing on my brain. Consciousness is not well understood by science yet, and from what I do know, which seems to me to be a very rudimentary understanding of a complex topic (though I am often unimpressed by people who claim greater certainty on these topics) I have reasons to think that the brain might not be the only relevant thing at work. For example, the intestines have almost their own nervous system and can produce significant quantities of neurotransmitters, which can then affect the brain. Or so I’ve read. I do think that physical biological processes can influence emotions and thoughts more than most people in our culture realize.
I do not have the highs or the lows smoothed out. I sometimes do not feel as much distance as I want to feel, but I do not feel distance that I do not want to feel.
Writing that, I just realized that’s not entirely true. On some brief occasions, when I was in a lot of pain, then I did start to tune out and feel numb, and pleasure was deadened, and then I had to concentrate on feeling the pain, so I could feel other things too.
Often, over time, I do eventually come to understand better what is going on with parts of myself that I previously did not understand, and many times I am able to make changes. The ones that are left, that I have not yet been able to change, I do not take at face value. They seem to be expressing something that I haven’t figured out yet, or flowing from some process that is not legible to me yet. I can mostly, though not entirely, keep them from affecting my behaviour, but they can be frequent and intense and frustrating even so.
I draw the lines differently.
I include the thoughts that I do not want to have as parts of my self, parts that I do not fully understand or control. I observe these thoughts, and I take care not to act on them, but I do not reject them from my definition of self.
I think something like “I want to be a person who does not think or feel X on a regular basis, but right now I am a person who is experiencing X.” I put it in more neutral terms than rejection. I do not think of it as an imposition by something separate, although sometimes I get frustrated by continuing to have thoughts that I do not wish to have, and that seem to be a malfunction of some kind. But I don’t stop there. I attempt to diagnose the malfunction. It can get tricky, since the source of the problem, the place where it most noticeably manifests, and the remedy can be all in different places, tenuously connected. Sometimes I do get fixated on “But I don’t understand why, and I want to,” when it might be more practical to dismiss the thought without understanding where it comes from.
I am also not comfortable blaming the whole thing on my brain. Consciousness is not well understood by science yet, and from what I do know, which seems to me to be a very rudimentary understanding of a complex topic (though I am often unimpressed by people who claim greater certainty on these topics) I have reasons to think that the brain might not be the only relevant thing at work. For example, the intestines have almost their own nervous system and can produce significant quantities of neurotransmitters, which can then affect the brain. Or so I’ve read. I do think that physical biological processes can influence emotions and thoughts more than most people in our culture realize.
I do not have the highs or the lows smoothed out. I sometimes do not feel as much distance as I want to feel, but I do not feel distance that I do not want to feel.
Writing that, I just realized that’s not entirely true. On some brief occasions, when I was in a lot of pain, then I did start to tune out and feel numb, and pleasure was deadened, and then I had to concentrate on feeling the pain, so I could feel other things too.
Often, over time, I do eventually come to understand better what is going on with parts of myself that I previously did not understand, and many times I am able to make changes. The ones that are left, that I have not yet been able to change, I do not take at face value. They seem to be expressing something that I haven’t figured out yet, or flowing from some process that is not legible to me yet. I can mostly, though not entirely, keep them from affecting my behaviour, but they can be frequent and intense and frustrating even so.