# Thoughts about Not Thinking About Self



## Guest

I want to start us off here with a few ideas I had lately regarding the ol' Janine Advice of "Focus Outward"

One mistake I used to make when trying to not self-monitor was that I'd keep reassuring myself of the Positive aspect of reality: I'd say "this is real" or "I am real, this feeling is not real, this is not going to scare me, this is not going to get to me.." etc.

terrible ideas.

The part of the mind that responds to those thoughts is the Unconscious and the Unconscious doesn't care if you say "I am" or "I am not" - it doesn't 'hear' the "not" part.

Example: if you lie down to sleep and talk to yourself for half hour about how no matter what you are NOT going to have a dream about your boss at work, and you keep telling yourself that, well....you probably will have several dreams...about the boss.

The Unconscious mind hears the TOPIC not the 'negation' and it will keep the topic fresh in mind's reserve.

Point is this: don't spend much time telling yourself "I am not going crazy" etc...instead when you feel fears like that, try as hard as you humanly can to turn your attention to ANYthing else. It is so hard and you won't succeed for very long, but every second you succeed is a massive stride.

To avoid 'watching self" you can't tell yourself you are not going to watch self! You must instead, for as long as you can make yourself, think about ANYTHING besides you.

Make sense?

Peace,
Janine
p.s. and WELCOME BACK TO EVERYBODY


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## Guest

Good idea Janine.

I just purchased your e-book. How long does it take to send? :lol:

-Kari


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## Guest

Nevermind, it just came. haha.


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## person3

Oh my god..that changes everything.

Thanks!


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## Guest

> Oh my god..that changes everything.
> 
> Thanks!


Hahaha smart ass!!


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## Guest

Wow I like this new look.

Hey Janine, good to see you hear!

So if I understand correctly, the more I tell myself I have nothing to be afraid of all my brain hears is fear?

Are we meant to ignore the thoughts, feel the fear & just focus outward & eventually things get better?


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## person3

Kari I was serious actually, I totally got it at that moment.

I am having terrible trouble with it now unfortunately. I can't get myself to STOP thinking and REALLY apply it...I could for a moment after I read this, should have stuck with that moment but wanted to come back and type something on here...daaaaaaaaaaaaamnit I hope I can do it again.

Wait..that's the topic :roll:


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## DutchMark

This definitely works for me, don't expect it to work instantly, but in time, my obsessive thougts about myself seem to fade away


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## nemesis

Hi Janine!
Is there any chace we may be able to have your e-book posted back up?


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## Guest

Janizzle Baker back in effect

haters get the bozack


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## jc

there is a ctach though.....by visiting this forum we are maybe reinforcing the fact that we have dp ?


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## Guest

It all depends on what one does while being here. It's the Intensity of emotion invested in certain thoughts that have Power, not just calm, intellectual thinking.

Example: if I come to the site and read about other people's experiences and find some comfort in not feeling alone and ask a few questions and have conversations, share a few laughs, raise a few ideas, etc. then there is nothing harmful there at all. yes, technically, I am "thinking about dp" but I'm doing that thinking in a very sophisticated manner - using what is called Secondary Process thought.

Thoughts themselves are not dangerous. It's not that you have to work hard to NOT THINK about certain topics.. it's that you don't want to obsess and/or "tune in" to the self-watching that we dp'ers do too well.

Second example: if I come to the site and read others' experiences and then try to imagine how those experiences feel, put myself INTO those descriptions, try it on for size, for example, then I am "wandering" into dangerous turf. If I read others' words and then tune in to my own dp experience, and "watch myself" at the moment and think "yes, I do that too.." or "no, that's not what this is, mine feels more jittery, or mine feels more deadened..." then at that moment you are tuned IN to your own symptoms and that solidifies them.

Come to the site but don't "bring" your dp. Think about the dp in memory, not in the moment. Don't watch yourself watching yourself. Don't tune into the way your mind/body feels at the moment. But thinking objectively about yourself is different. One way involves a shift in self-consciousness - and that increases dp. The other is pure intellectualization and doesn't increase the dp at the moment.

Peace,
J


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## jc

i must admit when i first visited this site/andys i used to read all of the 'suffering' posts so that it gave me a feeling of not being alone with my suffering,now i mainly come on here to get stuff off of my chest and to read the 'im getting better' posts,so i suppose there is that natural progression....
i should try maybe to stop airing my bad times so much but its just my way of getting bad things out


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## Digitalbath

hi



> Point is this: don't spend much time telling yourself "I am not going crazy" etc...instead when you feel fears like that, try as hard as you humanly can to turn your attention to ANYthing else. It is so hard and you won't succeed for very long, but every second you succeed is a massive stride.
> 
> To avoid 'watching self" you can't tell yourself you are not going to watch self! You must instead, for as long as you can make yourself, think about ANYTHING besides you.


well i understand what you mean by this but it bothers me that whenever i try to do this, the thought that "im not being myself when i do this," or "im not facing the true reality that I am facing with when I neglect and try to don't mind it" that seems to be right and believable, and if i try to dont mind it, it feels like im doin the wrong thing., though i know im not. or im aware that it is just because of the fear of it-- .. well i hope u get what im saying...


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## Guest

digital bath i know exactly waht you mean!! you feel like if you don't address the problem, it will get worse. I think with DP it's the opposite but I'm not exactly sure..


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## Guest

Right! That is a trick of the symptom. That is precisely the illusion you do not want to fall for.

It FEELS like you need to constantly be addressing the illness, to never leave it unattended for an instant...it's a complete trick of smoke and mirrors. Your mind, the part that invented the symptom of dp, wants to keep you distracted from the rest of you....it's like a nasty ghost that keeps knocking pictures off the wall and making scary noises to keep you 100 per cent obsessed with "finding the ghost"

Don't give in.

Focusing on ANYThing else besides your dp state is the way out. And I know that feels completely contrary, but that is precisely how the mind keeps you dissociated.

Peace,
J


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## dalailama15

I have tried not thinking about myself, not thinking about "it" and pushing on, for periods of years, and have done this successfully. But this eventually wears out when the moments begin to accumulate and I realize, with absolute clarity, that I am not participating in my own life. It wears out when I see, in retrospect, regardless of my efforts, that my life, over the last x years of not thinking about it, has been so shallow, so beneath human potential, so, frankly, unworth living; see that, think about it or not, it was still and always there, influencing, sometimes mandating, thoughts, choices, behaviors. And I gear up and say no, I am not prepared yet to settle for this kind of existence, and I do the only thing I can think of: don?t ignore it, accept it as real, and try to do something about it. Thinking about it is the only thing that gives me any sense of optimism. I don't want to learn how to settle for this. I don't know. I'm sorry.

. . . I have just re-read the whole thread and see that my definition of not thnking about it is a little out of context, and so am adding this edit. I know that there are different ways of thinking about self and it, both healthy and obsessive. I also know there are paradoxes involved, logical traps, in any self discussion about self. But it is a touchy idea for me, this not thinking, for the reasons above. Again I don't know. Again I'm sorry.


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## Guest

Self talk is tricky.I have always used it as a tool of management.
Personally I have found it to be sometimes most helpful.

Recently,I took a short return flight.
I'm phobic of flying and my life had been going a bit faster than usual lately so psychologically I didn't feel prepared for flying.
Somebody had just mentioned to me the day before that they didn't mind flying.They said it in a easy going , casual and most convincing fashion that I decided to use it.
So when on the plane I was feeling rather freaked,I told myself as if I was telling a stranger,"I don't mind flying"I encouraged the casual mood to accompany the thought.
It might sound odd but it did help,I almost believed myself LOL.
Perhaps I'm more suggestive than I had thought :?:

Sorry if I strayed a little off topic.

Cheers Shelly


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## person3

Oh my god...re: Janine's last post (two above mine)

and to the post she was replying to...

It's like OCD!

With ocd (I have had BAD BAD OCD to the point of paralysis on what to do sometimes), it feels COUNTERINTUITIVE not to give in to the obsession. The anxiety you get when not giving in to the obsession re-enforces the "counterintuitive" aspect. So it's hard to trust yourself with this...and intuition. Hmm.

So DP is a way to prevent anxiety, like OCD. I wonder how the hell I learn to live with the anxiety then?


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## kenc127

Such a great post, I thought I'd write something so it goes back to the front page


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## jft

I can certainly relate to all this. I became socially phobic and performance orientated early on (junior high) to the point of wanting to quit school. I also had a case of "scrupulosity" (obsession about guilt) that drove me away form religion. After starting to smoke weed I became very introspective and eventually got to the point of nasty hypervigalence while stoned....always wondering what others were saying and thinking about me. While in a group of people smoking joints I would constanty evaluate my self, wondering if my actions and words were acceptable to them. Totally "other directed". At this point I think I had become a "pure obsessional" thinker for I would ruminate for hours on things I had said that may not be accepted etc.

Anyway, I say all this becasue it was about this time that my dp/dr started. Alhough I was a heavy drug user, I was straight the night of onset. It was chronic from day one. For many years I remained hypervigalent and the dp/dr stayed alongside. As I got older this "other directedness" and hypervigalence left me in good part part becasue it did not matter to me anymore what others thought. I of course still battle with issues, but they are second nature. And so is the dp/dr. I guess maybe it has become me. I had read three very good jounal articles by Evan Torch at Emory UniversitY years ago who based his whole theory of dp on hypervigalence. Rigid, introspective, pure obessional, self doubting, self monitoring and "other directed" folks like me are good candidates for dp. He likened it to one who stares at a four legged chair for too long, one leg eventaully disappears, the illustration being it is our self that dissapears when we monitor it too long. I really seemed to relate to this.

I really believe that what Jeannine is saying in this thread is true. I know for a fact that I am best when I am distracted, when I am involved deeply in something, when I am busy, when I can be so caught up that I flow with it and do not have opportunity to doubt myself. Monitoring symptoms can never do anything positive. The time of my life when dp/dr was worst was when I was in an obsessive search reading every journal artical I could find on dp/dr and drug use and doing extensive monitoring while searching (months). It was awful. 
Ironically, I am now very symptomatic after writing this letter, probalby becasue I had to make myself aware of my symptoms. Go figure.
JFT


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## Guest

i agree with both your posts-- i feel that wat often........


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