When I had depression, my main coping strategy was to keep busy and always connected to an input – music, podcasts, reading, TV, socials. As long as I didn’t have a chance to notice my own thoughts, I could function. It worked well enough that no one except Christine knew I was depressed. Even she didn’t know for a long time.
Getting better involved the opposite. A therapist helped go into my thoughts and figure out what was going wrong.
I wonder about our society’s reliance on inputs. We’ve created an infrastructure designed to keep us receiving media at all times. As I write this, I have three devices within touching distance that are capable of playing media at me. They are silent right now because I can’t think my own thoughts while someone else is telling me theirs.
I love streaming music, TV and movies. I love having access to the world’s knowledge. I love all the creativity my connected devices show me.
I also love silent time to think. That’s how I stay mentally healthy. That’s when I mix up all the stuff that’s gone into my head and turn it into new things.
Do you have a healthy rhythm of input and silence?
Can you spend a little more time with silence today than you did yesterday?
Do you wonder how much sadness we are hiding in all the noise?
Okay, this is the opposite of silence, but I’m going to see The National at Cardiff Castle this evening, so here they are at Glastonbury a few days ago.
Grow slowly
Jeff
I was blown away by this concept when I learned in adulthood as an extroverted Gemini with ADHD that in fact:
“According to neuroscience, the human brain is not able to focus on two things at once. When people think they are multitasking, they are actually switching between tasks very quickly, a process called task switching. This process uses up brainpower, working memory, and can make people less observant and more likely to make mistakes.”
I’m a loner. Only my inner circle know me because I do many things others don’t. So I choose who I spend time with and when I sense it’s time to go do me, I do. I rewrote my narrative of my life how I want. It’s time to live🪷and accept everything and blink at it.