I live with what seems like a pretty mild (but nonetheless debilitating) form of anxiety and/or depression. I am on treatment, and very carefully control my sleep hygiene, try not to drink alcohol and not to eat extremely chemically flavoured foods, and try mindfulness/meditate every day.
It's been central to how I now view the world. I became quite aware of just how absolutely different my thoughts would be about exactly the same person or situation one day to the next, or minutes after meditation. I realised just how much it seemed to do - a jokey comment would grow malignant in my head, swallowing all thoughts, leading to (sometimes painful) tension in my breastbone.
I am well aware when I do feel like that - once I would try to think myself out of it, but alas, that fed the fetid beast. No, the only ways it would retreat would be to target the...sympathetic (in medical terms), or emotional content of the situation. This for me is impossible without medication - I really tried sleep, food, exercise, meditation.
Once I calmed the mind, and examined the emotional earth out of which my thoughts grow, was when I could process events. Instead of the maddening two-dimensional emotion-thought, I could layer it. See the other joke, why I should not care, why it was not this impossible situation, but a product of my own mind - created by it, fueled by supposed logic.
And I wonder how many live like that? Unaware of how much anger, pain, anxiety or happiness clouds simple thought, simple perspective. I'm sure many are aware of how anger can do that, but otherwise?
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