Game in the Brain

One of the takeaways of mindfulness lecture is a very different set of coping mechanisms. I notice that many of my coping mechanisms are distractions or aversion to the pain or discomfort.
From multi-tasking with audiobooks, keeping busy with studying, and never being bored as long as I have writing material. I’m so hard wired to distract myself.

The techniques discussed are a very, very big break from my conditioned responses.

Particularly painful is trying to stop myself from compulsively writing. The amount of fear of making a mistake, and forgetting something important is corrected by the self-soothing writing gives me.

Asking me to try to stop myself from writing when my memory is such a traitor is a huge challenge of acceptance. Every time my memory or imagination betrayed me causes me to pause and flashback to the feelings of betrayal, humiliation, frustration, sadness, etc.

I cannot just stop distrusting my mind. I cannot make myself trust my mind. The tiny part of me that can sometimes sort reality from my thoughts need the writing to extract sense and reason out of a jumble of feelings and concepts in my head.

Even if I try not to judge, without the soothing effects of having written down what I should do, I get trapped in a mental loop of forgetting my next action.

But the mindfulness technique is about not attaching myself to my thoughts. To find that self that can see the stream of thoughts pass by like watching clouds on a clear, unimpeded horizon day.

That piece of self that exists but is tiny and unpracticed. That sometimes gets a voice a few times a year. That self that has left clues of its existence in my writing needs to break free from what tethers it to its small confines.

I read back my writing, and it’s a totally different person and voice from what is in my head. It’s that piece of self that is talking to me through my shattered attention.