My internal conversation

I am hungry.

A small buzzing feeling in my leg.

Something that fades away.

I can only do it on the spot, I think.

Spot? Where am I talking about?

How can I not understand my own thoughts? Are they smarter than me?

I feel regret.

Hunger again.

I need to tell this to somebody.

Mm, my internal conversation is pretty dim and static today. It’s not very varied.

A small world today. Hey, I made that up fast.

Am I in a psychosis?

My reality has become too narrow.

Am I telling this to myself?

Thirty, I am.

This wasn’t my real internal conversation. It didn’t sound like me.

Was it my niece?

I love you, niece. I’ll secretly treat you as mine, hihi.

 

My ex’s internal conversation, who had an eating disorder

We analyzed her internal conversation. It turned out the thoughts about hunger and thirst were never really there. Weird.

She had, like, the same conversation without a part of the internal side.

Her thoughts were something like:

“Hey, there is the dog.”

“I need to work.”

”Talking about work.”

Etc.

But she never registered her own hunger and thirst, which was annoying, because the next thought would be:

“I need to restrict my diet.”

Suddenly, it was there.

 

My brother switched states to slow, too, just like me

He has to be a little more flexible.

Or does he?

A Buddhist internal conversation

You make a bowl that is too small with your hand. You look at things a little too narrowly.

Because of that, something can only be one thing.

And something is always multiple things at the same time.

Consciousness is also multiple things at once.

It is a rhythm. It is life. It is knowing what you think and feel. It is knowing yourself inside out. It is making mistakes.

We as humans are all of those things at the same time too.

You are not one thing. You are all of those things.

For me, religion and science will always exist next to each other. It is a different game, on a different field, and that is perfectly fine. Because it is multiple things at the same time. So it is also more than religion and science—there are many more things.

It is much more magical than you think.

I have nothing against science. I went to university, but it is a very narrow way of looking at things—without you even realizing it yourself. Buddhism may be even worse in that regard. There are a lot of strategies that are far too generic. For example, going from a thought to a breath. How on earth are you supposed to get to know yourself that way? You miss the fun part.

The point of consciousness is that you learn your own body from the inside out and, more importantly, that you become the boss of your own body.

This is a brutal fight in practice.

I do it like this, but there are other ways too, of course:

First, I label everything in myself. I label all the thoughts I like and all the thoughts I don’t like. I do this with feelings too. Don’t feel that you are not entitled to have an opinion about feelings and thoughts. Since it’s your body, you do.

You look in every corner of your body. You count every thought. Make it personal. Point at the exact location where things are.

If a higher power flies down and says something about this, you say: go *** yourself. I have a right to have an opinion in my body.

This doesn’t mean you can fix everything on the spot. But that’s not the point. This is a pride thing, which is especially important if you come from a disadvantaged group. A lot of people don’t stand up for themselves within themselves.

Also, try to feel where pain comes from.

---

Originally, my internal conversation was this:

The trick is to not take all your thoughts seriously, but also not not take all your thoughts seriously.

I don’t get the sentence above myself, so I rewrote it below.

Sometimes you take your thoughts seriously, sometimes you don’t.

Look, that one I don’t take seriously, because it’s about my job. And it’s Sunday.

Look, that one I take seriously. It’s about someone who has a yellow bird suit on, which only happened in my imagination. I like that thought.

Oh, that one again. About death and violence. Yawn. I watched too much TV.

Be careful, I see one flying about Buddhism. Before I know it, we have to do breathing exercises. Who wants to do that? The real devil in disguise, Buddha.

Buddha being the devil in disguise—yeah, that’s a thought I take very seriously.

I am thirsty. That one too, because I need a hot beverage.

I am thinking about how I like everything that happens in my head, and that I am getting good at observing what happens in my head, and maybe I am overdoing it. No kidding, I am not a Buddhist.

Or a cold beverage.

Brrr, Buddhism.

I just saw a picture of a wave. Beautiful.

Thinking about something sad I read yesterday…

Had a thought about Buddhism again. Now this is a joke. I never think seriously about Buddhism. Is he still under a tree?

Staring outside, wondering when I’ll be boss of the world.

Maybe I keep my thoughts because I love these ones.

---

There is nothing wrong with that. But I made it more Italian, since I had a lot of feelings and thoughts I didn’t like.

Note: there is nothing egocentric about this. It’s also not about entitlement. If you don’t like your own feelings or thoughts, you label them and deal with them if you can. At least you know which ones there are. Some just keep coming back.

Sometimes you can’t fix this when you have very specific pain in your foot, but with thoughts you can. Also, you can proactively feel grief so that it’s gone from your body.

---

I easily spend a whole Sunday on rerouting thoughts, replacing them, identifying feelings. Things that are not acceptable get removed over time.

Especially small circles, small sequences of the same repeating thoughts can annoy you when you are older.

Or the same sequences like:

“I am worthless.”

“I am going to try it.”

Trying is most important, of course, but identify the sequence too. It’s something you can attack.

---

But be careful: you can try to dismiss every thought you don’t like and suppress it, but it will bite you over time. We all make that mistake.

What a Time to Be Alive — Why I Love Sundays

The trick is to not take all your thoughts seriously, but also not not take all your thoughts seriously.

I don’t get the sentence above myself, so I rewrote it below.

Sometimes you take your thoughts seriously, sometimes you don’t.

Look, that one I don’t take seriously, because it’s about my job. And it’s Sunday.

Look, that one I take seriously. It’s about someone who has a yellow bird suit on, which only happened in my imagination. I like that thought.

Oh, that one again. About death and violence. Yawn. I watched too much TV.

Be careful, I see one flying about Buddhism. Before I know it, we have to do breathing exercises. Who wants to do that? The real devil in disguise, Buddha.

Buddha being the devil in disguise—yeah, that’s a thought I take very seriously.

I am thirsty. That one too, because I need a hot beverage.

I am thinking about how I like everything that happens in my head, and that I am getting good at observing what happens in my head, and maybe I am overdoing it. No kidding, I am not a Buddhist.

Or a cold beverage.

Brrr, Buddhism.

I just saw a picture of a wave. Beautiful.

Thinking about something sad I read yesterday…

Had a thought about Buddhism again. Now this is a joke. I never think seriously about Buddhism. Is he still under a tree?

Staring outside, wondering when I’ll be boss of the world.

Maybe I keep my thoughts because I love these ones.

Different Sides of You

Ooooh no, I get this feeling that I am going to dieeeee.

Panic, panic, panic. My heart is racing.

What if I make my anxiety a little bit worse?

Let’s fasten my heartbeat.

I am not dying.

I am still typing.

I look outside. Beautiful weather today.

Oh wait, I was panicking.

I guess it’s already less.

I got this weird feeling in my knee.

I should have worked out today. I feel guilty. No, I needed rest. Stay put, you!

I love Sundays and doing this.

Why are people actually doing things if you can spend this whole day writing what you think?

The bird is back.

How do I get a fresh set of thoughts?

Skipping Beats

^ The smart reader sees that an internal conversation has a certain rhythm.

You can, for example, separate the internal thoughts from the external thoughts.

This helps you make, like, a 3D picture of the inside of your body.

I had a girlfriend a few years ago with an eating disorder. This is the rhythm we picked up in hers:

‘’Funny thought

*silence*

Some other thought

*silence*

Fun thought.’’

My girlfriend skipped over being thirsty and hungry. She suppressed them really quickly, making it impossible to label what was happening inside her body.

So she had no thoughts about being hungry. These came in from a different angle, like anxiety.

 

These are mine in comparison, from the other text. A few are about the internal state (beverage, thinking about now). These are thoughts that spring from the internal state of the body. If you see it as a rhythm, I am not skipping beats.

‘’
Buddha being the devil in disguise—yeah, that’s a thought I take very seriously.

I am thirsty. That one too, because I need a hot beverage.

I am thinking about how I like everything that happens in my head, and that I am getting good at observing what happens in my head, and maybe I am overdoing it. No kidding, I am not a Buddhist.

Or a cold beverage.

Brrr, Buddhism.

No man, thoughts actually like being something different every now and then.

In this spot in my head, there has been that one scary thought with that purple parakeet for years.

Geez, dude, that one’s been sitting there for ages.

Nah, today we’re going through it with a fine-tooth comb.

Just let them flap around for a bit. They’ll fly away on their own. The trick is to let your thoughts become anything they want for a while, and just wait. They’ll start flying by themselves. Often they even switch places. Have you ever noticed that?

Oh yeah, that one too. That scary thought has also been sitting in the top-left corner of my head for a while. I mean, they’re there for a reason, obviously, but every now and then, taking a critical look can’t hurt.

Unless I suddenly drop dead right now, but I don’t think that’s gonna happen.

Alright. Just wait a bit.

Look, they’re flying. The purple parakeet is still sitting in that one spot. Once it’s gone, I’ll get back to having a nice fresh set of thoughts. Thoughts can’t really hold on to themselves anyway.

The first ones are leaving.

Of course, you can just stare at them. What did you think, that they’d stay sitting there otherwise?

Wait, I’ll give that one a little push. Toodles, I was already done with you anyway. And that annoying feeling over there too. Bye.

I’m lucky that I don’t know that much, so there’s plenty of room for the birds to fly around. The more knowledge you have, the more the birds start looking like each other.

Feeling the Tides

The hard problem with consciousness is the tides.

Some moments, the tide goes up: you have momentum.

Other moments, it goes down.

It largely depends on what you do.

Sitting behind a computer lowers your tide faster. But it also happens when you sit around doing nothing.

Knowing where the tides are, that is very hard.

Freethinking is what I do on Sunday

Freethinking means that you can make, or you can have, any thought. This has no beginning or end or conceptual limitation. Any thought, no limitations. I never did freerunning, but I think it feels a bit like that, or skateboarding. It’s fast-paced and a lot of fun.

You can have thoughts that don’t make any sense. Or a variety of sexual thoughts. This has no limitations in color, etc. It’s limitless.

Since these concepts are always hard to explain, let me explain it the other way around.

Let’s say you are a consultant. You work 16-hour days. For 16 hours, you think about things you don’t want to think about, like PDFs and Excel sheets. It’s your greatest gift, your thinking, and you have to spend it on somebody else’s thoughts.

There is nothing wrong with that, but be careful that it doesn’t become you, and all your thoughts. Spend at least a part of your thoughts on things that matter to you. It’s a different feeling.

People that are good with thinking choose thoughts with different theming. My Sunday thoughts have a lighter feeling than my Saturday thoughts. It can easily become too heavy if you stay in the same ballpark the whole time.

The Biggest Sin Is Inattention

Don’t get me wrong, this sh*t is hard.

If you have two forms of sadness and depression within you, both coming from a different source, this is hard to untangle. It’s a little bit because of this and a little bit because of that.

Let alone if there are more.

The good news is that you can learn to talk with yourself and fix things from the inside out.

I did it too, so you can too.

Maybe you’re like me and find it difficult to express your emotions.

Emotions are complex.

We, in Western society, often see emotions as something negative. Someone who blows up at the wrong moment? Bad. They should have kept themselves under control. It’s a sign of weakness, a lack of discipline.

I don’t agree with that.

Emotions are layered. Often, I know what I think, but I have trouble explaining what I mean. That’s why I write them down, because then I can look at them from a distance.

From a distance, I see frustration (in myself). That I feel like I can do and know a lot of things, but it doesn’t come out. I can’t properly get it out. Other people don’t always understand what I mean, and then I become unreasonable.

But I also become unreasonable because I often try too hard to be nice. And that creates a lot of small irritations.

There is also a lot of despair in me. Despair because I’m afraid I’ll never get rid of certain feelings. I’m very sad, but I don’t cry. I notice in myself, and in others, that many people are not happy in this world.

There is also some kind of mechanism where I’m afraid to sit still. As if, when I sit still, everything will come over me and I’ll become understimulated and get into trouble, as if something bad will happen. As if I have to keep writing now because otherwise I’ll fall into a black hole.

I think there are many things we feel that we simply cannot explain yet at that moment. If you have experienced something terrible but you are still young, you don’t yet have the words to explain it.

I think that’s also why religion works well for many people. If you talk to something else, you can release your emotions and learn to look at things from a different angle. Somehow, it works. In my view, it’s not really about whether you are actually talking to a higher power. It’s more like: you are talking to everything else. Whoever or whatever that may be: Mother Nature, your friends or acquaintances, whatever.

Emotions need to come out. You do that by shouting, letting them out, and speaking them.

People bottle them up too much.

1) It’s tempting to constantly try to change how you feel.

2) Combine this with trying not to feel at all, and you get a dangerous cocktail.

Therefore, these things are so hard to explain. You can get depressed for two completely different reasons:

Not wanting to feel. Or changing how you feel the whole time. If every time you feel bad, you go work out, then that can be a mistake too.

Some people who are depressed turned their feelings off, don’t feel in that specific place in their bodies, and therefore everything turns grey.

It’s possible that eating disorders are more like “changing how you feel because you feel bad the whole time.”

Both have the same underlying problem, but a different output.

The Inability to Understand the Basics of the Human Body

Since I got into psychiatric hospitals because I didn’t understand the basics of the human body:

What is a feeling?

A feeling is something you go to and can feel. That is not the same as thinking about a feeling, or observing a feeling. In a lot of traditions, Buddhism for instance, this goes wrong the whole time.

You feel with that specific place in your body. If I feel anxiety, I feel that where it’s located. For me, that’s mostly inside my inner thighs, in my right leg. For you, it’s maybe somewhere else.

Let’s say you are a man, and you grow up with a harsh father.

Your father says: “Are you scared? Who gets scared watching a movie?” You pretend not to be scared. In fact, you pretend that everywhere you go, you are not scared. But you are scared. Of feeling the feeling within you.

This goes well for a long time.

“What a courageous person,” others may say. But inside you, you see that you are scared.

Or: “You have to perform in life. Performing in life is more important than what you feel.”

Do you see where I am going?

I literally have seen others besides myself going into psychiatric hospitals because of these mechanisms. I don’t mean it judgmentally. It’s easy to teach yourself the wrong way, especially when you grow up in a bad environment.

These are things that are virtually impossible to understand for people who don’t do this internally.

The only thing you do wrong is not feeling that feeling inside yourself, with your body.

It took me at least five years to fix this. After a psychosis, depression, and whatnot. All because of these learned behaviours.