alright, i havenât written anything in a long time, and itâs kind of more like the old shit i used to say, in terms of topic and whatnot.Â
so lately iâve been trying to change; stuff like whenever i notice that i think something negative of myself - that was occurring alarmingly frequently -i would try and turn them into something constructive, something i can work with or just completely shake it off and tell myself not to be so negative.
at the same time iâm reading up on zen buddhism and trying to apply it to my life, as zen buddhism is supposed to be something any ordinary person is able to âlive byâ kinda. the main point i gathered is living as part of the world and not an existence that experiences happen to; not a mind that thinks of himself as an abstraction; there is no mind, as something being apart. there is no self; what we think of as self is the summary of experiences as they were perceived by the mind. we are supposed to leave all this mind and consciousness behind and just be, act according to our nature, not by a second control mechanism based on abstractions of the way we experience the world.
alright iâm not explaining it well enough, but the part about the mind building up the self from past events - events being every little thing possible - *as perceived by it* is a very important distinction for someone with social anxiety. essentially everything i think of myself is already filtered through a mind that is not functioning properly, feeding me false data from which i build up an image of myself. i realize now that the image i have of myself might be very very distorted, causing me further anxiety.
and now we get to the part that i initially wanted to talk about, which is that i thought of another, pretty accurate metaphor for how a mind with social anxiety works like.
first of all what happens is, when youâre alone you can be yourself - or act according to your natural, âbuddha selfâ - but when the mind becomes aware of another person perceiving it, it turns into Windows with a highly sensitive firewall. every little thing you do prompts these bullshit warning windows popping up. every movement, every gesture, every sound, every thought. a mind with social anxiety is second-guessing literally everything you do. am i chewing too loud? is me elbowing on the desk rude? i should move my elbows. what do i do with my arms now? reach for the water bottle but uâre still chewing, so u canât actually drink. now your hand is just there, taking the cap off, opening the bottle. start playing with the cap, youâre still chewing. why are you chewing so slowly? and so on and so on. and while all this is happening inside the head, there are people around you and you ought to have a conversation going with them. so what do u talk about? and then this overwhelms u so much that the negative thoughts come back
âyouâre pretty shit at this thing called life, huh.â
so anyway. i need to somehow get out of my head, because i spend way too much time in there and my head is absolutely fucked.
dailybridgerton
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