cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/17394234
Meditation
The last thing I need is to be left alone with just my thoughts.
As other people are saying, that’s the point of meditation.
I just started a book, The Art of Living, by Thich Nhat Hahn and he claims that most people don’t choose to think their thoughts, thoughts just appear, just like the wind on a rainy day. You can’t stop the wind from blowing and you can’t stop thoughts from appearing.
The point of meditation is to learn not to ‘think’ the thoughts that appear.
By tue way I did try this for a year and while i do get the point of it I did not succeed yet.
I hope you’re well though!
Appreciate the offer, but I’m all good. It’s more that my thoughts just race and leap from one subject to the next, and it gets extremely tiring to deal with if I don’t have something to distract me.
No need for help. My thoughts just race 24/7 leaping from one subject to the next unless I have something to distract me from something.
That wont stop by ignoring them. But with practice, over time like building a muscle, meditation will quiet the mind.
Forget 90 minute sessions, you can meditate 1 minute, 2 minutes. No special setting or place required, anywhere comfortable and quiet. You can do this a few times a day, youll notice slight improvements in aa little as a week or so.
Meditation wasn’t super helpful for me, guided meditation required too much sustained focus and was cognitively fatiguing to stay on track. I have dysphantasia so that doesn’t help when you’re told to picture things or imagine things as part of meditation, because imagining something requires me to talk to myself in my head, which doesn’t feel meditative, it feels too similar to ruminative thought patterns. Doing the “quite wandering mind” style of meditation was risky because I already experience maladaptive daydreaming.
But I discovered “somatic regulation”, which is something I kind of already did instinctively when I was getting really stressed or overwhelmed.
When stressed I’d tap my teeth together in a pattern, drum on my chest, hum, wiggle or do fidgety little things, often not even consciously.
Now that I understand what this does for my emotional regulation, I set time aside every day to consciously and mindfully do things that look and feel absolutely ridiculous. Like lying on my stomach and rhythmically slapping the tiled floor, focusing on the sensations rather than trying to clear my mind, or guide my mind.
I started mid last year, and it’s been the only form of mental health self care that I’ve been able to remain consistent in, and I’ve noticed a drastic decrease in how often I feel overwhelmed, stressed and anxious. I’m also able to identity when I’m starting to get stressed much earlier than I used to, and more quickly identify a way to reduce it. I’ve always struggled to identify emotions in the moment, but I feel like now my mind-body connection is stronger. It’s easier to tell when my headache is because I’m hungry/thirsty vs stressed or tense. Before I used to just guess, try everything and hope something worked, then look back with hindsight thinking “guess that was a hunger headache because relaxing didn’t help but carrot sticks did”. Now I’m more likely to know what I need.
Edit: just realised this post was in the Autism community, lol, I need to learn to read things more thoroughly, I was talking about stimming without saying the word “stimming” because I’m so used to getting flak for that in the NT subs I post in.
Yeah, that’s meditation. There are so many types of meditation, there’s almost certainly something that will work for everyone. As long as you’re focusing inward, not really trying to be cognizant of the things running through your head, it achieves the goal.
Personally, I like fixed point gazing, which is exactly how it sounds. Find something, stare at it. Resist urges to blink or look away. Eventually your eyes will water, you’ll start to get bored… Keep going until you just feel like stopping.
I’ve heard of some meditation for people with ADHD, where their mind is always trying to run. Go, sit in a crowded place like a food court, and try to listen to every individual sound. Not like, conversations and their meanings or anything, just the sounds of the words. Eventually their overactive mind will just start to wear itself out.
My point is, there’s no one “meditation” - as long as you’re setting the time aside to focus on self reflection, you’re doing it right.
Honestly it’s a necessity at times. Though I found certain activities elicit the same “thoughtlessness” that I get when I meditatw such as motorcycling. No time to think about anything else but the road and the bike, making it ironically one of the most relaxing activities I do.
Sometimes when i feel overwhelmed by sadness (or some other paintful fealing, I ride my bycycle the next night instead of sleeping (at night to avoid daytime sounds, light and people). So I can process my feelings in peace. People I mention this to usually accuse me of being intentionaly weird.
Have tried it several times, but like most things it works for a few days then just becomes an “upkeep cost” which doesn’t benefit me anymore, and I drop it.
I actually meditate basically all the time. At one point I thought, why not have the clear crystal ball all the time, instead of “just” when I make time to sit down and meditate?
Pretty much the same here. I meditate when I get stressed, I do yoga moves every day. It helped me tremendously getting my life back together so I keep at it.
For any onlookers: this is a process so start at any point, no minimum requirement to be valid. :)
With all the time I actually mean all the time, dunno if you mean the same thing. Like I don’t do any actual yoga exercises or meditation sessions, I simply meditate while making myself some food, for example.
But yes, it’s definitely a process that you can do ass little or as much of as you’d like :)
