I hope you don’t mind me sharing something I’ve learned that I think is truly fascinating and very powerful: If you can recognize your negative “automatic thoughts” and what triggers them, and then argue against them, it gives you incredible power over that kind of dark cloud that can hang over your life.

For example:

"Fuck it, nothing matters and the world is going to shit. Well… what caused me to think that? Could be bad sleep last night, a bad mood from getting in that argument with my friend earlier, too much time on social media reading negative news, and a general sense of exhaustion.

Ok… I might be biased in my thinking about these things without realizing it. If nothing matters, than there’s nothing to worry about. All my fuck ups are… whatever. There’s no way that I’m “supposed to be” that I’m failing at. Nowhere I’m “supposed to go”, which is actually kind of freeing. Actually, looking around I can find plenty of examples of people that think everything is meaningless but still enjoy their lives. They’re are many philosophies addressing this exact problem that I can explore.

There are a lot of bad things in the world… but also I have way more freedom and longer life expectancy than almost everyone else in human history. There are terrible things happening to the environment, but there are also millions and millions of dedicated people protecting the environment, and on the whole humanity has made a lot of progress in how we view that issue in just the last 25 years."

This is just a stream of thought example to demonstrate how it works. It’s very powerful, especially if you write the key points down. It gets much easier after doing it a few times. This is you restructuring your neural networks–its literally changing your mind. It’s eye opening to practice doing this and share it with others.

Next time something triggers these negative automatic thoughts, you’re much more likely to not only recognize that it’s happening, but also have a different way of thinking about it right there waiting for you. A doorway out of this dark loop of sadness.

I’m so glad it helped you too!

See, the way I see it is that my concerns have mostly if not always been correct. Most people might not be as observant and able to deduct consequences but I have the unfortunate ability to know exactly how something is going to pan out and when I can’t control the catalyst it causes me to have to come up with damage control methods. Don’t pretend like everything is ok. Your house needs constant maintenance or it could be costly or even dangerous, pets need constant observation to catch things early, not having a gas detector when you own a gas stove is idiotic and you should always be ready in case of the very likely such as break ins, electrical fires, broken pipes, and yes… car catching on fire. I told my SO the car smelled like gas, he said I was being paranoid. I was the only one who detected the gas being left on in a kitchen full of people. Most people don’t pay attention and leave you to have to be always on alert. Every time I just let it go or think to myself it’s nothing it ends up being something I could have prevented. I learned to listen to that anxiety and do something.

I’m so glad! I get really caught up in What Ifs and I was surprised how effective this is.

Everything eventually breaks down or dies and there’s nothing anyone can do to prevent that indefinitely. It only ever needs to work long enough to be useful. Don’t let perfection be the enemy of good enough.

I’d say that’s part of the fun of it all! How boring would it be to just always succeed? And how much pressure has to continually grow to never make an error? Nah, I say let’s try things and fuck up…or succeed! And then run with it as far as it goes, fall down, and see if we can run farther next time.

The race may never end, but I still like running it!

What if you are good enough and you do pull it off?

What if your new fix if it goes wrong reinvents your system. Gen 1 always has something. What if that little patch you’re thinking of is the right patch.

I actually do something similar. I often stop intrusive thoughts by saying “stop” to myself under my breath or if im alone, more out loud. Or i tell my brain to stfu. Happy to hear im not the only one lol.

I grammared too good

… You did grammared real good. It’s no longer necessary!

The issue with grammar posting isn’t that it’s not longer necessary, it’s that you’re being a boring dolt talking about even more trivial bullshit than the usual social media stuff!

I can relate to this, but how are you actually preparing yourself?

Are you planning your response to the problem, considering how to improve the outcome for next time, learning from any mistakes you or others may have made to end up there?

Or are you just dwelling on the possible negative outcome that hasn’t happened yet, so you can say ‘Told you so’ to yourself or anyone who will listen after the fact?

Like I said, I can relate to this, but I’m slowly trying to turn my pessimism into something productive.

Rather be pessimistic and be surprised when I’m wrong … spoiler never …

if there’s really a zero shot why not plan for adapting to the bad outcome instead of worrying about something you have no control over?

(answer, because you know somewhere that you do have some control and that there is some hope but for one reason or another you refuse to see it.)

It literally has taken me 20 years to develop this skill. I knew I was stubborn, but damn!

Are you free tomorrow?