Imagine if /u/shitty_watercolor started showing up on comments on the federated verse. That would be incredible
lots of people probably already know, but this is by u/shitty_watercolour (originally posted on twitter)
eta: also I struggle with this too :') medication generally keeps the brain fog away but then I just get caught up by task paralysis, do something else, and then end up ruminating + getting anxious about the things I should be doing/should've done.
over the years I've found things that help occupy + quiet my mind enough for me to get sleepy, usually methodical things like sudoku, solitaire, paint by number, etc. I almost always have youtube or a twitch vod playing quietly in the background to occupy my auditory attention
my conscious process to the rest of my brain:
Alright you little shit, ONE of those is going to happen and I'll even let you choose, but if you don't then I'm putting you down.
somehow i managed to nail down a technique that nearly guarantees sleep.
however, it took a lot of training and radical acceptance.
I count. not sheep. just numbers. and if I move, if i twitch, if intrusive thoughts appear, eventually I will remember that I was trying to count, and I will inwardly sigh and start over, because FUCK YOU, BRAIN. FUCK YOU. FUCKYOUFUCKYOUFUCKYOUFUCKYOU YOU FUCKED AROUND AND NOW WE GET TO FIND OUT TOGETHER - YOU WERE GOING TO FORCE ME TO SUFFER ALREADY ANYWAY, SO I SHALL CHOOSE THE MANNER OF SUFFERING AND I CHOOSE THIS
so anyway what happens is I usually start to experience discontinuities of awareness around count 300 or so. This is because without new information, the inputs from all my sensory systems start to blur sort of the way your vision gets fuzzy and gray if you stare at the exact same spot for too long: nothing new to process, process halts.
bear in mind I am not telling myself to stop thinking. I am thinking. I am thinking about the next number. sometimes other thoughts pop in, and that's okay actually because all it means is that we're starting the count over. it's not like we were going to be doing anything else.
Unless there actually IS something specific that you actually WANT to do, Brain...? Is that what you're telling me? BECAUSE YOU WILL FUCKING DO IT. It's either that or we continue counting. Next number.
sounds exhausting?
yeah that's the point that's how sleep works you get exhausted and then you fall asleep
exactly
It's funny, because, people always used to tell me "try meditation" as if the magic words "try" and "meditation" together would psychically instill within me a process for performing it
when really what i needed was for someone to tell me what i wrote above.
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ye there's the misconception that meditating means sitting cross-legged and chanting "omm", when in reality it is anything which can keep your brain free of complex thoughts. For example my meditation is usually actually think "breathe in, breathe out". If I catch myself having any other thought than those two, I banish them.
Sometimes at 11 pm I'll think "I won't do anything productive for the rest of the day, so I might as well sleep now" only to read/watch random shit on my phone for 2 hours haha