I need to escape my head big time, but more then just now, I need to get out permanently. I am one of those girls that overthinks everything and I wish I could just relax. But I think the overthinking thing comes from a lack of confidence in myself. I know that people get stuck in their heads all the times, and that I am one of those that gets stuck in my head more often then normal, to the point where I no longer spend my time pondering life and being inquisitive about myself because most my thoughts are not upbeat. When my mind is in wandering mode my thoughts are often about what I said what they said or what could be said, I spend hours, making up fake conversations that I could have and should have, knowing I will never have them. Often the conversations are part of a depressing reality where my life is so much worse then it really is, this brings me down big time, because it is often centred around the real world, and always around being disliked and why someone did what they did and always I am really really wrong.
This happens when my mind doesn't have anything in particular to focus on, thus my brain is in default mode; worrying. It is important to get out of my head and back to the present day although how isn't the easy part. For me I have found some key ways to do this.
* Get ready: When you get in touch with your internal thoughts and feeling and actually process the stress you can move on from it. Although harder said then done, when it is often believed it is better to hide those feeling then deal with them, something I have found to be incredibly self destructive as it means your thoughts never get processed, they merely sit there for all of eternity. You best idea is to talk to someone, as you best get to know yourself in dialogue with others.
* Be a story teller not a ruminator: That said, there is a danger of introspecting too much, turning it into a full blown rumination. The endless cycle that is self examination is unproductive and goes no where, instead I would benefit from looking at this as a narrative storytelling perspective where you fit ideas into a general frame, compared with pouring over every individual detail. Don't look at each little bit of your life individually as nothing productive can be solved from this, look at it as a whole and how the pieces fit together, much like a story.
Rumination: is compulsively focused attention on symptoms of the distress, as well as its possible causes and consequences instead of the solutions.
* Be slightly inappropriate: Yes that's right, a solution to getting out of your head and dealing with the issues is to stop thinking about social conformity and what is expected.
An example of such inappropriate nature is this; when someone asks you a question considered a little too personal, after answering it you feel better because it opens up the closed conversation on another level. We all have a secret desire to open up and connect to people but due to society we are more conserved, so to not offend anyone and over share we often close ourselves off from opening up and connecting.
A good rule... enquiring too much doesn't put people off it brings them closer together. Learn from this what I have, talking to people isn't going to make them dislike me, its going to bring us closer together, and more importantly its going to help me open up and get those annoying thoughts out of my head.
*Talk to a stranger: Goes hand in hand with my last point, its opening things up and building connections, talking to a stranger is seen to boost your mood as well as that of the stranger, and it gets you out of your own head. This because you are building connections, basically the deepest desire of all humans, even those that try to grow above it, you still want to be loved, you still want to find the one, because humans aren't meant to be alone all the time. Humans are best when surrounded by those they care about.
*Meditation: This is something I found on my own, and something that has worked wonders for me. Has the most research behind it. Meditation trains the brain to function as well as its structure. It quietens this area of your brain, and when you have trained it enough it is actually shown that the prefrontal cortex becomes on the look out for these thoughts and is ready to bring you back into reality at a moments notice.
* Mindfullness: The fundamental question is how do you deal with the negative and undesired thoughts. In other words when me and my brain are alone together how do I get it to quit attacking me. Mindfulness is so much harder, although you have thought it, doesn't mean it needs to be believed. Acknowledging the ridiculous and negative thoughts by laughing to yourself about them, allows you to release them. So not easy, its actually incredibly challenging to bring attention away from negative chatter in you head especially when you won't be successful at first, and this can leave you strung out and literally weeping at the ineffectuality of the practice. This can lead you to fall down the hole saying, 'it does work its too hard and its making things worse.' Because it isn't easy retraining the brain how to think more literally. The major reason we keep self talking, is because we self perpetuate due to the sickly reward, that one in a hundred times, you realise something worth while. 'Focusing on ourselves' is something we have been doing literally our entire lives and is a self-propogating cycle, that does more harm them good.
Realise what bullshit some of our thoughts are, the thoughts inside your head can often be quite exhausting and painful. The important thing is to become disenchanted with it, realising they're unpleasant. You need to remind yourself that they're is something better to be thinking about. So you need to have something you can think about when your mind starts wandering, whether that be something as simple as meditation to begin. You need to understand that these thoughts are negative thoughts and you need a frame of reference to compare it to. When a negative thought enters your mind, Do not push it away, think, 'woah where did this come from and what does my body feel like when I have this thought'.
The first thing you should do is go and find something that draws your interest in, for me its the human body and art, especially art, I love to look at how everyday objects look, because if I was going to do any art it would be realistic art, certainly not abstract. So find something naturally interesting to you and makes you curious. This will take time, it is essentially getting you mind back into a curious and playful state, we need to find the fascination again and this will take time, but eventually it will take the place of the negative chatter, don't just do this when you get stressed, take the time to think about things normally, so that you get curious again about everything.
Mindfullness is all about finding fascination again, actually getting inspired by really ordinary things, thinking about why they look like that, the colour the texture, the pattern how it works, where it comes from ect. finding your curiosity and is very good at pulling you out of your usual thought processes. It's like a muscle it has to be built up and then eventually it can be applied to situations. Go with the curiosity instead of tearing your thoughts down, find your curiosity again so that, you can get curious about your own thoughts, and work out where the negativity is coming from, so you can actually deal with it. This is not about killing your thoughts its about learning to investigate them and eventually they will stop coming on their own.
Nothing is easy, the harder you work of something the more rewarding it is, and this is something that is rewarding, because this would allow me the freedom of my own thoughts, allow me to be more relaxed and more free. Its something that would actually increase my life worth because it would mean that I get to be in a better place, where the negative thoughts don't have control over me, I have control over them.
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