Felipe Tavares' Avatar

Therapy with Self

January 26, '20

Sometimes, you have to get the words out. It is not that they are meaningful words - or particularly important: it’s just part of a therapeutic process.

This is one of those times. I don’t even know what I am thinking about, and this is a way of sorting what is in my head and making myself aware of my self.

On Ideas

That may sound strange, but if you really think about it, ideas are not fully formed when they are in your head. An idea is created when you speak it.

That is probably the main reason for the saying that goes “implementation matters”. The idea in your mind is not really an idea. It’ just the seed, and apparently we don’t have (or at least, I don’t have) the ability to differentiate between seeds and ideas.

On Life

Life is a complex thing. A really big and noisy problem, with a multitude of ever-changing variables. When you think you have got a grasp on one of them, it has already changed into something else. Every thought is less relevant when you finish it than it was when you started thinking.

Another issue with the problems of life is that you don’t really get great feedback. That was what I meant when I said it’s a noisy problem. We never really know if we are getting it right, or wrong. This is because we don’t even know what is right and what is wrong.

But so what? What is the point of understanding life as such?

Well, I do not know the answer. But I do know a bit more about the question.

We only ask ourselves those kind of questions when we are unsatisfied with our current state in life. This is interesting because it must mean that it’s important to not be unsatisfied.

Since our natural problem solving abilities are somehow invoked in those circunstances, it probably is also the case that thinking about this is one way of avoiding it.

On Causality

Maybe this is one of the things many people get wrong about thiking about our position in life (or maybe I am getting it wrong). It’s not that deep thoughtful and complex people “do not want to have fun”. It’s just that depp thoughtful people are in life situations (or passed thought situations) that resulted in that.

In other words, the environments through which a person passes set their state of mind. Not the other way around.

Latent States

But, there is also another side to this coin. While initially behaviour can be a byproduct of solely the environment, the behaviour later is what puts a person in one environment or another. There is a small caveat there: given any starting environment, there are environments which are easier to transition into than others.

And there we go. Now I understand my self.

I am worried about thinking. I am worried about planning and considering my options.

On one side I know that thinking is partially responsible for my unsatisfaction.

On the other, I know that the environment is very important too and thinking is the only way to change environments “arbitrarily”, without following the lowest effort path. As a side note: this may be why it’s important to put yourself in certain environments - their lowest effort transition may be already excellent, freeing yourself from thiking about it.

A hunch I have, this low effort transitions are probably based on having social structures in place, and those social structures probably get this power from fucking other people over, so this freedom may be at the cost of someone else.

Results

So, did I get somewhere? Did we get somewhere?

Aside from depressants, there is no way that I know of to stop thiking.

So the only way really forward is to change your state in life to something you like. Or is it? You could also break and stop caring. I do not like the idea, and the people who did seem to have from a bit to a lot of bad feelings about that, so maybe the former is indeed the only real solution.

Or maybe there is none, since this may later make you question the wasted time changing states.

Is human existence really not knowing and not thiking or knowing, thiking and not feeling very good?

I really think so, it’s what makes sense from the point of view of having a highly active brain: it is there to solve problems. It will find problems. And it will control drugs to make sure you think of the problems as important problems.

Thanks brain ò.ó

BUT, there are some things that can be done:

and many others. It looks that this is what therapy is all about: a constant battle to mitigate the effects of thinking about certain things.