the bully mind ---> more of the same

[Guest guest]

Hello again, my brave companions, and thank you for your replies to my last post

about experiential avoidance. Kathy: Your post resonated well with me. Thank

you.

The last few days I have been fighting the mind bullies. It's hilarious what

they are capable of, and how brutal they can be. In my last post I wrote about

how I was planning on going back to school after this summer, and now I don't

know. When my mind is attacking me, I can't think of anything else. I get

paralyzed. I saw someone using the term analysis paralysis in another post, and

I think that is quite fitting. My concentration drops, and I start ruminating

and of course avoiding other activities to ruminate. My sense of humour

evaporates.

And when in the grips of my mind, I don't really know if I want to study geology

anyway. Right now my answer is no. Had anyone asked me half a year ago, the

answer would have been yes. I get very confused. There was a passage in " Get out

of your mind.. " about experiential/emotional avoiders, and how they are able to

hold their " mental hand " over the flame until it burns, meaning (I think) that

they ignore their emotions until they reach a point where they break. He talked

about knowing your feelings, so you don't get into an unhealthy relationship, or

get a job that is too stressful for you (paraphrasing here).

This confuses me, because I am not sure how to draw the line between " knowing

what is good for me " and " experiential avoidance " . So I feel like I am falling

deeper into not knowing what is good for me, because I have a hard time finding

anything else than anxiety and catastrophic thoughts inside my head. Sometimes I

can get back to the here and now, and see myself eating breakfast or something,

and then it's back to big fear. The " big fear " seems at the same time very large

and very elusive, like a poison gas.

There is work to be done, I think. I often get the urge to call people for

comfort, and one friend of mine says it isn't worth doing school if I don't have

a special job in mind. I know that different people will have different replies

to this question.

I am at work and I have to do some of it now. Maybe I'll post another later,

seeing that this is not very clearly formulated. But if you know something about

this, or have felt the same, could any of you maybe tell me where I could start

working? Or give me a suggestion?

Haakon