Confused About Thoughts

[calm--]

Hi,

I've been dealing with brain fog, depression, anxiety, restlessness, irritability, very easily stressed-out, racing thoughts, over-thinking, difficulty concentrating, mind are everywhere, insomnia, crashing after meal, crashing after exercise, frequent urination, for a couple years. My symptoms are pretty bad that I've stop working and socializing. I've been doing 30 minutes seated meditation (focus on breathing) daily for a couple years, and I find it helps reduce stress, though I didn't really know what meditation and mindfulness really is.

Recently I read about being mindful during daily activities. From what I can understand, basically it is putting your attention to the present moment, to what you're doing, and not think about other thing. If your mind wander, put your attention back to what you're doing.

So lately I've been doing walking meditation. I also try to be mindful as much as I can in all my daily activities. Like when I'm taking shower, I try to notice the sensation of the water hitting my face, the feel of the soap on my body, the sound of the water hitting the floor, etc. When I'm walking at the park, I try to notice the feeling of the wind on my body, the trees, the sounds of the bird, etc. I try not to think of anything when doing these. If I think about something else, I try to put my attention back to what I'm doing. It's not easy, my mind keep wandering. But it get better. After a while, my mind wander less, and when it wander, it usually take less time to realize it and focus back to what I'm doing. I only think when I think it's necessary. When I'm able to be mindful and not think about anything, it feels nice. I notice feeling less stress. I notice I enjoy everything more. My concentration improved. I feel better. I suspect all these time I've been thinking too much, and it's a major source of my stress; worrying, analyzing, anger, feeling depressed. Which intrigued me about learning more about Mindfulness.

Right now I'm trying to read Mindfulness in Plain English, but because of my symptoms, I can't read a lot in a day. I also try to read articles and forums. I've been confused with a couple things, which stressed me out. Doing mindfulness seems to make me less stress, but thinking about it also stress me out. I'm sorry if what I ask here doesn't make sense, my mind is kinda foggy and confused right now.

1. I read a couple times that Mindfulness is not about stopping thinking. It's not about emptying the mind. That we shouldn't try to block our thoughts. That we should observe the thoughts. I'm confused. I thought that, Mindfulness is, focus on brushing my teeth when I'm brushing my teeth, and try not to think about something else. Which is what I've been trying to do. And now I'm told that I shouldn't prevent those thoughts? How can I focus on brushing my teeth if I'm thinking about something?

I also read that when we notice our mind wander, we just acknowledge it, and put our attention back to what we're doing. It just sounds to me like we're trying to stop thinking. I'm confused.

2. My understanding of being mindless is that, our mind wander not on purpose. What if we think on purpose? Let's say I'm brushing my teeth, but I'm thinking about something else on purpose, because I feel it's something I need to think about. Is this being mindful or mindless?

3. I tend to have a lot of inner dialogue, talking with myself. I dont like when it happened, because I feel it's exhausting. Mostly I'm aware when I'm doing it. But I didn't intend to do it. Sometime I have difficulty stopping it. Or like playing a song in my head. I'm aware I'm doing it, but it's not something I intentionally do. Is this being mindless?

4. I notice thoughts often pop-up about things I'm doing. Like when watching a movie, I thought how good/bad this movie is, analyzing the movie, etc. Or when listening to someone, I thought about disagreeing about what he said, thinking about what I want to say next, etc. Is this being mindless?

Sorry for the long post. Thanks for any help!

[JonW]

Hi calm.
Great post. Great questions.
These are only my opinions, so far from conclusive. But in answer to your questions...
1. By choosing to focus on, say, the sensations of brushing our teeth, we're not 'preventing' thoughts. We're simply choosing where to place our attention in the moment. After a while, when we've become grounded in the practice, this act of choosing becomes second nature. At least, that's been my experience.
It might be that you are conflating two aspects of mindfulness. The first is relating to thoughts purely as thoughts - recognising that they are simply passing mental events rather than anything more solid. This recognition can be particularly useful if we find ourselves caught up in negative spirals of thinking. The second is being present to our experience as it arises - in the case of brushing our teeth, the taste of the toothpaste, the sensation of the brush against our gums etc.
The key point here is that, ultimately, we can only focus on one thing at a time. If our attention is trained on the brushing of our teeth, then we're unlikely to get caught up in the content of our thoughts. That's the general idea anyway.
2. As you correctly point out, mindfulness isn't about stopping our thoughts. It's about relating to our thinking in a different way. So, for instance, we learn to make a distinction between thoughts that are useful/necessary to us and the tumble-drier of negative thinking that might include self-criticism, dark rumination about the past, worries about the future etc. Obviously, there's nothing harmful about thinking, 'I've got that dentist appointment on Thursday evening. But my boss has asked me to work late. I need to phone the dentist to reschedule my appointment.'
On the other hand, there are thoughts like, 'I'm £20 short of the rent this month. What if no one will lend me the money? My landlord might kick me out. I'll be living on the street. My girlfriend will leave me. I'll be picking food out of bins. It's dangerous living on the street. What if I get stabbed?'
Well, that kind of catastrophic thinking needs to be recognised for what it is. So, when that kind of thinking arises, we learn how to be mindful about it.
3. Pretty much everyone will be familiar with the kind of internal dialogue you describe, including people who have meditated for years. The average person has 76,500 thoughts a day. That's a lot of thinking. After meditating for quite a few years, it feels as though my mind is a lot stiller than it used to be, particularly during the years I suffered from anxiety-driven depression. But I'm not sure whether, a/ I think less these days or, b/ whether I'm simply less bothered by the chatter of my mind. I suspect it's the latter.
Today, for example, I had to complete my tax return. In the past, this is a task that would have paralysed me with fear and worry, with my mind creating all kinds of dark, terrible narratives. Today, as I prepared to begin the task, I was aware of a few familiar thoughts arising - 'I'm not going to be able to do this...What if I get it wrong?...'Why I have I earned so much less than last year'...but those thoughts ebbed away as fast as they arose.
In short, mindfulness has taught me to hold thoughts more lightly. Thoughts seem a lot less sticky than they used to be. Rarely do I find myself caught up in negative spirals of self-judgment etc. Thoughts come and go. This takes practice.
4. It's like we've all got an inner commentator, like the annoying guy on the TV who describes every move of the football match. The mind loves to compartmentalise, judge, criticise, describe, divide, explain etc. etc. A certain amount of all that is fine. Some of it is extremely useful to us in terms of negotiating our way through the day. An excess of it can be problematic. Again, we can learn to be discerning about this, learn to recognise the difference between thinking and over-thinking, the difference between responding to circumstances and reacting mindlessly to them.
The point is that the goal of practice is not to be mindfully alert every single second of our waking day. That would be an impossibility. It's more about learning to be more mindful, more awake, more aware of our moment to moment experience as it arises. Inevitably, there'll be periods in our day when we do things on auto-pilot. That's fine too. If you're driving a car, you'll reach for the gears or the clutch with little or no awareness. You've performed those manoeuvres so many times that they all come automatically to you. If you're driving a car, you need to be mindful enough to follow the highway code and not crash into the car in front of you.
There's nothing wrong with analysing the movie you are watching. There's nothing wrong with analysing the way a conversation is going. There's nothing wrong with a little daydreaming. By the same token, we could could probably all agree that living our lives entirely inside our heads is not a healthy way to live. Like anything, it's about balance. With practice, we can learn to approach our lives with more equanimity and serenity. Mindfulness offers an alternative to living our entire lives on auto-pilot. These days, so much of our lives seems to be spent trying to get, or wishing we were, somewhere else. Anywhere but where we actually are in the present moment. So many of us spend a great deal of our lives wishing that the present moment was other than it is. We want the moment to be brighter or shinier. We don’t want to be feeling the way we are. We don’t want the moment we are experiencing. We want the moment he is having, or the one she is having. And so on. Mindfulness invites us to turn towards our experience or, perhaps more accurately, turn more towards our experience.
Well, I've rambled on a lot more than I intended. But, hopefully, all the above goes some way to answering some of your excellent questions. Other forum members may have different views.
If you have any more questions or need to clarify any of the above, just fire away. It's what we're here for.
All good things,
Jon

[calm--]

Hi Jon,

Thanks so much for the through and great response.

I wonder if I've been doing Mindfulness correctly. During my daily activities, I tried to be mindful as much as possible, all day. I tried to pay attention when I open the door, close the door, walk around the house, wash my face, brush my teeth, walk at the park, watch tv, listen to people, basically every activities. I pay attention with all my senses. I notice how I feel. I pay attention to my body sensation. And of course I'm not being able to be mindful all the time, but I'm trying to do it as much as possible. If I notice any thoughts, I just tried to notice what it is (with the attitude of accepting, not getting upset, because it's normal) and go back to focusing on what I'm doing.

I only think about something, on purpose, when I feel it's something I need to think about.

On top of that, I tried to do the seated meditation, walking meditation, slow movement, and probably other practices that I intend to learn more about. I assume all these practices are meant to put us more into mindful state? I notice how much more mindful, how much better my concentration is, and how I notice the smaller details, when I start doing the walking and slow movement meditation. These practices also feel very calming.

Am I doing it correctly? Is this the basic idea of what most people do?

Regarding my previous questions :

1. So I guess to be mindful, our attempt is to put our attention to the present moment (eg brushing teeth), but not attempt to stop any thoughts, because stopping thoughts is impossible. Is this what it means with "not trying to stop thoughts"? And when our mind wander, we notice it and put our attention back to present moment. And is it correct to assume that, when we're fully focused on present moment, those thoughts will usually pop-up less?

2. So when thoughts arise that we feel are useful to follow through, it's ok to think about it. But when negative thoughts arise, these are the kind of thoughts that we shouldn't follow through, and should get back to the present moment. Am I getting this correctly?

3. In the past, I often have negative thoughts, which spiraled into a mess. Like I imagine having a quarrel with a guy I don't like which turn into a fist fight. Or financial problem where I imagined my life is totally ruined. It seems that after practicing mindfulness, those thoughts happened less, and I am quicker to catch those thoughts and snap out of it, so I am really grateful for this.

But lately my thoughts are in the form of quick thoughts, like a few sentences. Like I replayed what I just said to my friend this morning, imagining talking to someone, or what I want to write on this post. They're short, but happened a lot. Mostly I'm aware when it happens, but I didn't try to do it on purpose. I find it to be annoying. This usually happened the most in the morning, when I'm the most anxious. What I am trying to ask is, is this some form of not being mindful, even when I'm aware of those thoughts when it happened? Should I treat it like other thoughts, just try to put my attention back to the present moment?

[Spaceofawareness]

If you have a negative thought and it goes unnoticed, you will essentially believe it and be effected by it, whatever the consequence of that thought might be, it usually results in some kind of emotional reaction. Some thoughts are just planning type thoughts, but might also induce a sense of unease due to schedules or time constraints, meaning you might feel anxiety, so if you were to observe those seemingly innocuous thoughts like “I’ve got X appointment today at X time”, you might be able to reduce the associated anxiety. Other ways people deal with such thoughts are distraction, which isn’t the best way, although it is still a viable coping mechanism, but it will leave the thought there in the background, as well as inducing some kind of avoidance behaviour. Another way people might deal with it would be rationalisation, which is essentially trying to convince yourself that there is nothing to worry about. Although it might help the rational side of your mind to come to terms with the issue, the underlying anxiety inducing stimuli might still remain.

So I think mindfulness is a useful strategy for observing and subduing negative thought patterns which might otherwise result in negative emotions or unproductive and avoidant behaviours. You need to examine the thought more closely and become aware of the negative emotion it is tied to, and other unconscious urges it might be inducing. Bringing these to light helps you deal with them.

The unconscious mind is extremely powerful and is essential to our daily lives, but it also induces a lot of unnecessary suffering which isn’t appropriate given our current environmental survival circumstances. It’s up to you to decide which emotions are useful and which might be holding you back. For instance, I suffer from social anxiety and am rather introverted. Lately I have been observing my own unconscious reactions to other people’s presence. Merely being around people I’m not that familiar with induces a feeling of being watched and a sense of needing to act a certain way. That can be observed, and therefore, by watching it without trying to change it, just as you do with all other sensations, one can become free from those patterns of behaviour and feelings.

[JonW]

Hi calm,
I agree with pretty much everything Spaceofawareness has said.
I'd like to add that, in trying to be mindful 'as much as possible, all day', there's a real danger of turning mindfulness into yet another form of striving.
It's much more subtle than that, at least in my experience.
We can be mindful in two particular ways.
1. We can deliberately bring mindfulness to an action. For instance, we can form the intention to eat a meal mindfully, paying attention to the way the food looks and smells, its texture, how each bite tastes.
2. We can notice that we are not being mindful (eg. lost in negative streams of thought) and simply bring our attention back to what we are doing. With practice, we can become more attentive to our inattention.
It's not much more complicated than that.
The practice does require a certain amount of commitment. Sustaining practice can be challenging for a lot of people, especially when they start looking at meditation as a chore. But I wouldn't say it requires much effort. A certain amount of 'effortless effort', perhaps.
If we find ourselves striving to be mindful, then it's possible that we're caught up in something more like acute self-consciousness than actual mindfulness.
This doesn't require too much thinking.
You ask: 'Is it correct to assume that, when we're fully focused on present moment, those thoughts will usually pop-up less?'
Maybe. Or it might be the case that thoughts keep popping up and we become less bothered by them.
Either way, we can be present with our experience as it arises.
But this isn't about getting better at mindfulness or trying to perfect something. And there's really no such thing as a 'mindful state'. It's about being exactly where we are, rather than where we think we are. We can only be present right now. 'Present but not in the way, attentive and physically active but not interfering, detached but not disinterested, watching but at the same time completely involved' as Mark Epstein puts it.
Cheers,
Jon