Subliminal Talk

Gonna start working harder on reframing my beliefs. I've been at this for a while and I've come to realize that fully feeling the emotion, contrary to what a lot of people say with mindfulness, doesn't relieve the problem. I used to think that you had to dive into an emotion and experience the pain of it and all that stuff, but now I'm starting to think the source really is the beliefs and it's better to work directly on those as they generate the emotions. Maybe one of my problems is actually not using that critical part of my mind enough to question the validity of the emotions and beliefs I tell myself. So instead of accepting the feeling of not feeling good enough, I should question why I feel that way instead of being a slave to the feeling. Big duh obviously, but my mind can be a bit of a broken record player at times and have me dwelling on things inside of my head for way too long.

A good counselor I once had told me that "emotions are information". They don't mean anything, but they do indicate things.

So I've started meditating again and it's been great. I've learned I've been putting so much stress on myself trying to let go of emotions and doing all this self help work right. Sitting there with my thoughts and just observing them has taught me again how thoughts are just thoughts and it's only the meaning I attach to them that causes my problems. I reach these moments of inner peace, but it's like I get a tug from another part of my mind that says I shouldn't feel that way. I'm unemployed and pretty much lost in life, but that shouldn't be an excuse not to feel at peace.

It just got me thinking about status in society, placing self worth in achievements, all that stuff. It's just that conditioning so many people are subjected to. I never really realized how much it still influenced me until I started watching my thoughts more. So much of my anxiety is comparing myself to other people and my place in this world. When I let go of that I feel so much more free.

It's definitely still a work in progress, but the past few days I've really been living in the present more and I've realized that's all there really is. Thinking ahead to the future does no good unless it's for productive planning.