For as long as I can remember, this is how I thought it went down: I think about something and then feelings form in response to those thoughts. That’s how it always seemed. Usually the thoughts were made up of worries, and then I’d feel anxious, stressed or impatient. It always seemed to be at it’s worst when I woke up in the morning. I’d immediately begin thinking of all the things I had to do, the people and problems I had to face (I didn’t actually have that many problems). I’d keep on thinking about my worries, leading to a downward spiral that could set the tone for the rest of the day. I’d wake up, worry, feel anxious about my worries, repeat. I now think I had it wrong. Despite it being not quite right, it was still a functioning, misdirected loop that ended up just making me feel worse.
After another beautiful day of vacation, I was sitting down to eat dinner and watch an episode of the Office when I was struck by a feeling of anxiousness. I began to search my mind for the reason for this feeling and before I settled on the answer, I recognized what was happening. I felt a feeling, and then I looked for a thought to attach to that feeling, a thought that would justify why I felt anxious. It could have been anxiety over the eventual job search I’ll have to do, or anxiety over my lack of clear direction for the future. No matter what was going on though, I’m sure I could’ve come up with a reason. I’ve always been able to. But this time I recognized there was no thought, no reason, preceding this feeling. The feeling arose on its own, and now I was trying to support the unpleasant feeling by coming up with a justification for it.
I’ve been meditating for a few years now. I’ve read books and listened to podcasts that deal with meditation, mindfulness, presence, compassion, and gratitude. A lot of these sources are repetitive and ultimately say the same thing, but I continue to go back to them. It helps me remain in that mindset, to be present and grateful, interested in life around me, right in this moment. It’s frustratingly easy to lose this connection if you don’t keep it up. The other reason I continue to revisit these topics is because I’ve learned that all it takes is one subtle shift, the right metaphor, or one moment of clear recognition in real time, to drastically change my understanding of how the whole thing “works”. In this case, it clicked for me in a moment of awareness and then recognition, feeling something and then catching myself reaching out for a thought. In this moment I was able to see clearly something I’d read plenty of times: feelings and thoughts, for the most part, arise randomly and constantly. And you don’t need to prop them up. Most of the time you can just feel the feeling, or recognize the thought, and let it go. Of course that’s easier said than done.
I’d heard and read this time and again, in scientific and spiritual terms, that thoughts and feelings are, for the most part, out of our control. They arise from our unconscious. But it took all that repetition, all the different ways of hearing the same thing, before I was able to fully grasp it. I read Tara Brach’s Radical Acceptance before I left, and I listened to an incredible podcast with Jack Kornfield while here, and both talk a lot about this. Strangers to Ourselves is a book all about the unconscious mind. I touched on some of these ideas in a recent piece. But even when I thought I knew it, there was a deeper moment of understanding to come (and I’m sure many more still to come).
Strangers to Ourselves really hammered home some uncomfortable but mind-blowing facts about our brains, of our lack of awareness and control. Feelings can come from our environment, or or our own thoughts, but just as easily they appear randomly. We’re just used to supplying a reason for it, something that makes sense to us, because we like to feel in control. Scientific studies show that our brain unconsciously makes a decision, and milliseconds later, our conscious self feels as if it has come up with it on it’s own, with some reason to point to, even though the decision was already made.
So I had an understanding that our feelings don’t always need to be thought more of, to be analyzed and processed. But even after all that, it took a moment of anxiety washing over me to finally catch the actual process unfolding. The process that I had become so used to that I was now blind to it. It seemed to me that constantly thinking about future events made me worry, and I’d ruminate on that worry, increasing it the more I thought about it. And that is certainly a part of it. But the more I learned and reflected, even just after this most recent realization, I recognize how I could have gotten the cause and effect wrong. I thought I woke up, thought about problems, and then felt anxious. But more likely, I woke up, felt anxious, and latched onto minor stressors or even just bits of routine life, and made them the reason I felt worried. In hindsight it makes much more sense that drinking every weekend and having a poor diet predisposed me to feeling anxious upon waking. Through that one moment of recognition the other day, I’ve been able to connect these dots, from the past, present, and hopefully future, and better understand part of the deeper processes going on inside myself.
I love when interests of mine collide from unexpected places. After beginning this piece, I watched a video of Chris Evans (aka Captain America) talking about how he deals with his own anxiety. His process rests on the same principles. When anxiety and overthinking come, he says to his mind ‘Shhhh’.
“It’s been a big thing for me, ‘Shhhh.’ It’s so funny how noisy my brain is. Everyone’s brain is noisy, it makes thoughts. The problem is, in most of our lives, the root of suffering is following that brain noise and listening to that brain noise and actually identifying with it as if it’s who you are. That’s just the noise your brain makes, and more often than not, it probably doesn’t have much to say…The moments I’ve felt my best is when I can pull that plug and say Chris, shhh. It’s rising above the thought, operating on a separate plane.”
Feelings and thoughts are fleeting; we can feel happy and then sad and we can usually point to some series of events that prompt this. Our natural inclination is to provide a thought that justifies how we feel. Finally internalizing this, and recognizing it in the moment, produced a complete paradigm shift. In that moment of recognition, I stopped myself from searching for a thought to attach to the feeling. Instead, I just felt the feeling. And then it was gone, as quickly as it came, and I got to enjoy my dinner and laugh at Michael Scott. A few days later, I woke up and felt those familiar feelings of morning anxiety. But instead of searching for a reason, I just took some deep breaths and cleared my mind before it could gain that usual momentum. And then, again, the feelings dissipated. I realized I had been the one fueling it in the first place.
It’s such a slight shift and hard to notice in the first place, but when I did, it felt like a massive change in perspective. And that’s how most of what I’ve learned from the books and podcasts and the practice itself has been: it comes slowly, subtly, and then upon realizing it, and feeling it, it’s there all at once and clicks into place, as if I solved a complex math equation (I wouldn’t know for sure, I stink at math).
It’s a small, simple yet powerful tweak in how I see things. Inherent in it is recognizing that this doesn’t banish unpleasant feelings. On the contrary, it’s accepting of them, recognizing them when they come, and feeling them fully, in part so they can go through you and out the other side that much quicker.
Part of this hard work is recognizing which thoughts have merit and should be explored, which should be outright ignored, and maybe the toughest of all, which need to be looked at as a loving witness, with compassion. Jack Kornfield explains that many of these negative thoughts, reactions or habits we seem to be plagued by once served a purpose. They were once necessary to get us through a tough experience. We needed to think or behave in this way, to escape suffering as a kid, to survive abuse, to survive the thoughts in our own head. But now, we recognize we no longer need them. Being a loving witness, we thank it for helping us get through that tough time, and then we tell it we no longer need it in our lives. That might sound simple or childish, but I think it’s supremely powerful and beneficial.
If it feels like I’m writing about the same things over and over again, it might be because I am. I feel like I’m learning the same things over and over again, except one subtle level deeper each time. That’s what the whole process of meditation and mindfulness is. It’s what learning is in general, but with even more subtlety and repetition. It is a practice, something you need to repeat and repeat, even when it doesn’t feel like you’re making any headway. Because eventually, seemingly out of nowhere, it connects and you truly feel the change.
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Here’s a list of resources that I’ve learned from:
Jack Kornfield on the Tim Ferriss Podcast
Tara Brach on the Tim Ferriss Podcast
Sharon Salzberg on the Tim Ferriss Podcast
Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach
Strangers to Ourselves by Timothy D. Wilson
Training in Compassion: Zen Teachings on the Practice of Lojong by Norman Fischer
The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking by Oliver Burkeman