Folding Thoughts

Do you sometimes or often feel anxious or irritable or angry for no apparent reason? I have tried to understand why this happens, how to diagnose and how to fix it. In this post I am writing my thoughts as per my observations and I will mention a technique which I call "Folding thoughts" that might help you control your anxiety or anger.

What I have realized through my own experiences, sometimes, I just feel some sort of weight in my mind which makes me feel constrained. Where my mind tries to escape from this trapped feeling, it often comes out as anger or just makes me feel anxious for no apparent reason. But one important thing I observed was that whenever this happens, you get a feeling. You know that something is bothering me somewhere. It is usually not obvious to pinpoint the problem. But you know there is something. As we usually just get past the thought and go on with our lives without giving much thought or caring about our mental health, it keeps on piling up. After a while, the pile becomes so messy that you might be having regular outbursts of anger for something very small and you would not realize why it was so disproportionate. It can be just as a pile of clothes that are not folded but mingled with one another, making a single article of clothing difficult to find.

Someone might have hurt you a year ago and you might not have expected that person to hurt your. After a few months that person might have been insensitive towards your hobby. You might not have been able to communicate your thought with this person and the person may not realize that you were hurt because of them. Things like these keep happening and in you mind you realize that this is a small thing so why give it much thought. But when they keep piling up, all of a sudden, all you can see about this person are negative qualities and that they keep hurting you. This person may be very important in your life and they might not have intended anything bad for you but it so happened that you were hurt by their insensitivity and the pile kept on growing. Once the pile is big enough, nothing else is visible. I real life, there are so many people in our lives and so many things happen everyday. Imaging how these multiple thoughts get intermixed and cause chaos in your mind. This is just an example scenario of how these thoughts pile up like articles of clothing in a haphazard mix. This pile of thoughts is responsible for the anxiety and anger.

Now that you can think of your thoughts as articles of clothing, it is easy to think of a work around. The best way to do it is to never to go to bed without clearing your mind. You will always know if something is bothering you. You have to give it some time. Do not overthink it, as that opens up a different can of worms. Just think about why are you feeling the way you are feeling. Many times you will realize that current events in future could lead to an unfavorable outcome which is what makes it so uneasy. Now, this is the thought which is equivalent to an article of clothing. To keep your sanity, you need to fold this thought like you would fold a cloth and keep it organized. If it is a thought where you can find a permanent fix, that is great, but most of the time there is no immediate fix as things take their time before they can work out. In the event that you find a thought to fold and it does not have an intermediate fix, which means that there is something that you are going to live with for at least some time, the way you fold it is something that you will have to find out on your own, based on your own thought process.

I will however mention one way of folding your thoughts. Take the thought that is bothering you and imagine the worst case scenario. Then figure out a way that makes you not only survive in this worst case scenario but also finds happiness. Finding happiness is crucial even in worst case scenario, or else it would just mean to give which would be equivalent to throwing this thought into a different pile and not folding it. If you keep folding your thought as they come, you will still have a pile, but this pile would be smaller and organized. If something is bothering you, you will know what is bothering you and how you would fix it, so you can still be happy and there is no reason for anxiety or anger when you are happy.

It however gets difficult when you already have a big unfolded pile of thoughts. The way to go in this situation will take longer but the sooner the better. Stay with your thoughts for some time, you can talk to yourself and ask directly what is bothering you. Initially you might not get an answer, but if you trace your everyday life in the recent past, you will start getting some ideas. And one you hit a thought, trace it to the earliest thought in this line of thought and fold it. Once the earliest thought is folded, all the thoughts in this line would get folded. Repeat the same for all the different thought that might be troubling you and keep folding them. Once you have everything folded, you will have a neat pile and your mind will be like neatly organized wardrobe of thoughts that radiates happiness.

I hope this post helped you understand yourself better. Please comment your thoughts on this post. Any inputs and suggestions are welcome. Thank you for giving the time to read the post. Have a great day... everyday!

The Curtain Philosophy: The way we see the world.

                    Have you ever felt like the way you see things, no one else does? Consider this. Every person lives a unique life, has different kinds of experiences in their lifetime. There are different types of people, creative, intuitive, sentimental, assertive, turbulent etc. Thus everyone develops a unique perspective when analyzing things. A simple way of understanding these different perspectives is by use of some imagination.

                There are always many curtains in front of us, through which we see the world. Everyone is capable of removing a certain set of curtains and thus, the world looks entirely different to everyone. Every curtain that you remove helps you see an entirely different picture of the world that you have never seen before. A better picture. Try to remove as many curtains as possible and only then can you see how wonderfully this world is carved.

                    These curtains are like ones' prejudices, lack of knowledge and reflex behaviours developed by experiences and seeing different peoples' reactions to certain things, especially the ones they grew up with. They make them oblivious to what's in front of them. For example, consider a bird with broken leg. People can see it differently and the way they see it seems to be the better way for them. One can see the bird and think of it as a delicious meal. Or, some can see that the bird is in pain and it is best to help it recover and get some first aid. While there will be others who will not even notice the bird and/or the broken leg. Here, the curtains could be time, lack of empathy, personal issues, random thoughts etc. 

                    The curtains acts as barriers between you and the real world. You see what you want to see and the way you want to see it. You can see good in bad, bad in good or nothing at all. It all depends on what you want to see. You are closer to becoming perfect when you can see these curtains and manipulate them as and when required. Removing all the curtains shows you how the world really is. By using different sets of curtains you can see different aspects of it. This will give you a whole new horizon to develop your own best suited perspective of the world as you see it.

If you have any queries or similar philosophies to share, comments will be appreciated!