Escape The Prison Of Your Mind

Are you an overthinker? Do you feel locked up inside yourself? Do you feel like your thoughts are controlling you? Are you bullying yourself with thoughts? In this talk, I share an understanding of obsessive thinking that made me step back a little from the exhaustion of perpetual internal fights with recurrent obsessive thoughts.

Transcript

Hi,

So this talk is about obsessive thinking and I'm going to try to share with you a mindset that helped me step back from obsessive thinking.

So first of all,

Obsessive thinking is noisy,

It is loud,

It is incessant chatter of repetitions,

Insecurity on repeat.

The obsessive mindset can be really difficult to turn off because it sticks to the mind.

It goes round in circles in a self-reinforcing cycle.

And over time,

It becomes a sort of reflex in your brain.

Before you know it,

You're engaging in automatic thinking patterns that superposes themselves to reality and makes day-to-day life harder,

If not almost unsurmountable.

I've had extremely hard times disengaging from obsessive thinking myself and I am still struggling with it periodically.

Notice that I've used the word struggle and that is part of the problem.

We tend to resist these thoughts very strongly,

As if we were trying to force them out of our head.

So we don't accept these thoughts to begin with.

We rather argue with them because they're uncomfortable and by arguing with the thoughts,

We get caught in an internal conversation with them.

We are talking to ourselves,

Not even interacting with what is actually going on around you in the moment.

We are disconnected,

Making up scenarios inside our heads.

We are not listening because we are too busy making noise.

So that brings us to meditation.

Honestly,

When I heard of meditation at first,

I didn't think for a second that it would change anything to my OCD.

But since meditation translates to an unconditional acceptance of the moment,

It does change everything in the obsessive mind because OCD only works when you fight when your thoughts and reject them by engaging in a fight with them.

To me,

There is two ways in which it is possible to understand why meditation sets you free of obsessive thinking.

There is this whole idea of acceptance and the connection to the present moment.

Acceptance in the context of the obsessive mindset implies that we are not accepting the present moment.

We are not trying to change the thoughts,

Feelings and impressions that we are obsessing about.

We are not pushing them away.

We are not diminishing them nor enhancing them.

It is what it is and we are acknowledging it without judgment because then you can get a clearer view of the situation that you're in and how you feel about it.

It is about being honest to ourselves.

A good start is to stop thinking with words.

We obviously cannot stop thinking and this is not at all what I'm suggesting here.

And yes,

Words or sentences may pop up in our heads,

But just allow yourself to interrupt the narration in your head.

The inner voice that responds to your thoughts and tries to dismantle them compulsively.

Because it's perfectly sane to question yourself,

But when it becomes a compulsion and it gets out of hand and it really gets in the way of your day to day interactions with the world,

Now that is something else.

And that is obsessive thinking,

Which is trying to grasp desperately to an internal monologue in response to a feeling of insecurity,

Of unreadiness towards external events.

And then we wish to find a sense of control that is unattainable by compulsively responding to our thoughts with more thoughts,

As if we were trying to win an argument.

But you just can't fight the mind with the mind itself.

Adding more thoughts on top won't make you feel better,

Since it is thinking too much that puts you in this position at first.

Sometimes when you think too much,

When you're in a constant state of internal narration,

Your thoughts are forming a veil,

Some sort of barrier between you and the outside world.

And you can feel locked up inside yourself.

And you might try to escape yourself because you identify with your thoughts.

So if you think that these thoughts are you,

You think that you are this mess and you are helpless and broken and therefore you must escape yourself,

Get out of your body and mind as if it was even possible.

So the problem is not your thoughts per se,

It is your interaction with them,

How you resist to some thoughts and hang on to others,

And how you get caught up in their storylines.

The purpose of thoughts is not to invest in them,

Invest in reality and your thoughts can help you understand it.

They'll support you when they're actually in tune with reality,

When they're responding to it,

Not when they're creating a parallel reality.

And connecting to the present is both the condition and the result of the acceptance of what is.

Because by choosing reality over storylines,

We get in touch with our current situation and we get a peek of what it's like to be alive,

To simply exist.

And by connecting to the present,

You realize how unnecessary the storylines are,

How they are even boring compared to real events that you play a role in.

You don't have to stay back from the movement of life and think through things that will never happen or happened in the past.

Real life takes place into action,

And you can't just let it go.

You have to be able to do it.

You have to be able to do it.

Real life takes place into action,

Here and now,

And nothing can take that away from you.

For my part,

I stuck to internal storylines when I felt insecure.

It is kind of a safety reflex that allows me to retreat from the scary moment and that takes me somewhere familiar.

And yes,

Even though this familiar place is nothing like one,

Sometimes we feel we can't help going back to destructive habits because we don't trust ourselves in life.

And since obsessive thinking is seeking a false sense of control by repetition,

Obsession,

And verification,

It is a matter of staying stuck in the past,

Not letting yourself go with the flow,

Not trusting yourself to the flow.

And then the danger is that we self-confirm our fears because of what the obsessive mindset itself does to us.

Let me give you an example.

I was in a room with a lot of people,

And I was really scared.

Personally,

I struggled with moments when I had the absolute fear of not being good enough.

And since I was too busy obsessing about it,

Repeating the same scenarios in my head,

It made me a lot less invested in the present moment.

So then,

When I had any opportunity,

I was barely there.

I was a lot more living in my head than in the moment,

And that is because of the fear that I couldn't stop thinking about.

But then what happened?

I would neglect my investment into these opportunities,

And I would either fail at the same time or not succeed as good as I would have wanted,

And then I would go,

I knew that I wasn't good enough.

So just like that,

I would confirm the obsessive thoughts and reinforce them,

But the problem was caused by the belief in these thoughts in the first place.

So I would neglect my investment into these opportunities,

And I would either fail at the same time or not succeed as good as I would have wanted.

So by not seeing that the obsessive thinking was both the cause and the result of the problem,

I would keep feeding this mindset.

So really,

It all goes down to trust.

We are addicted to thoughts because we are desperately seeking for a sense of control,

Of reassurance,

But the more we want it,

The more it is unattainable.

In fact,

We have no control whatsoever.

Who controls the controller?

We are self-sabotaging ourselves with inner nonsense because we are anxious to let things go their own way,

But that is much worse than anything that could happen if we let them go.

By living in our thoughts,

We say no to happiness.

We don't trust,

And out of trust,

We live in the bunker of our minds.

I will read for you a few words of Alan Watts.

It goes like this.

If you insist that your present is the result of your past,

You are like a person driving your car,

Looking always in the rearview mirror.

You are not,

As it were,

Open to the future.

You are always looking back over your shoulder to find out what you ought to do.

And this is something that I would like to tell you.

I would like to tell you that you are always looking back over your shoulder to find out what you ought to do.

And this is something absolutely characteristic of us,

And this is why human beings find it difficult to learn and difficult to adapt themselves to new situations.

Because we are always looking for precedence,

For authority from the past,

For what we are supposed to do in our behavior.

It isn't anything of the kind.

The life,

The creation,

Comes out of you now.

In other words,

Don't look for the creation back here at the beginning of where the wake fades out.

Don't look for the creation of the universe at some very far distant point in time behind us.

The creation of the universe is now in this present instant.

This is where it all begins.

And it trails away from here and eventually vanishes.

Reviews

Well said! Very relevant to me and what I’ve been struggling with my whole life. Thank you

Thank you 🙏very inspirational 💫

That was very interesting, highly recommend this talk
Thank you🌺

Excellent. Insight timer needs more content like this. I like the idea of getting away from thoughts a bit and feeling the sensations in your body. Good for detaching from obsessive thoughts and lessening their power. I love the dove flying from prison picture!

A very good talk. I identified with much that was spoken of. I’ve been thinking lately, that despite much work over many years, I’m still somewhat tethered to the past. This talk helped me see the connection between obsessive thinking, and that of a lack of trust, and feeling safe. Thank you.

Very clear, on point, and extremely helpful, thank you!! 🙏

This helped more than any meditation for compulsive thinking

I really enjoyed the content and material you covered in this meditation. Thank you for sharing. Namaste.

Such a new way for me to help myself 🙏🏼 Thank you for sharing.

Just what I needed to hear 😃

Very clear and concise.

This talk really resonated with me, I have been personally working through this issue lately. Meditating on the breath, as well as equanimity meditation, has been helping me to let go of the unskillful habits that I have developed over the years. This talk was definitely a confirmation to all of the work that I have been doing. Thanks so much for sharing your words on this topic!

i love the way Roxanne"s wisdom is so simply put

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Thankful I came across this 💓🙏

I was having a panic attack and felt I lost control of my mind and reality. I listened to this talk and it described everything I was going through. This made me make sense of what I was experiencing and have been experiencing for sometime. It puts obsessive thinking into perspective.

Très vrai!!! Merci beaucoup Roxanne, vraiment vraiment bon!! 😊

Thanks for reconnecting me with the philosophy of Alan Watts!

Thoughtful & Insightful.

A heartfelt and helpful reminder. Exactly what I needed to hear. Thank you for sharing.