Comment by motohagiography | Hacker News Reader

Comment by motohagiography | Hacker News Reader

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motohagiography

imo depression is a physical circumstance that selects its own downstream psychology. I don't think you can talk or reason out of depression without a radical reframing that causes your physical behavior and circumstances to change. your body and its habits create preferences for psychological intensity, which gets it hits of feelings it would get normally if the being that inhabited it were free and self accepting.

the self or ego speaks language, and the therapist's demeanour is intended to create a physical peace where the self can run and exhaust itself before becoming receptive to a (hopefully constructive) reframing. where I diverge from my psychologist friends is I think using language to relieve the suffering of the being only works accidentally, or when some language can overflow the self and unseat it from its dominion of the being. there's a state of enlightened duality where you can see your thoughts without feeling them or being directed by them, much like what meditation recommends, and from that state the being literally just chooses experiencies that bring it peace or joy. sustaining that is an effort and skill that can developed with practice and exercise.

trying to reconcile the symbols and artifacts of language with other symbols and artifacts of language is a treadmill to me. how's that working out? couldn't say precisely, but wisdom is shown to be right by its results.

Yes, the self alone is shouting in the void and appalled and confused at what it hears back. Expand the boundary to encompass enough, loose momentum and be still, and healing happens.

Mindfulness is a tool and a habit that should be embodied in everything.

I recently wrote in a document (filled with too much ego, since it's called "starting points toward a cybernetic theory of karma"):

> I suspect, subjectively we each get the world we need - but you only see when reaching the point of total stillness, so that your energy points outwards from the ordinary. Then your world view shifts, and making sense of how it works with the conceptual tools you have... Truth is a pathless land.

Framing the practice of therapy as a space for the “self to run and exhaust itself” before becoming receptive to reframing is one of the more concise and clear explanations of what therapy can be.

What complicates the process is that language based thought and emotion run as a two way feedback loop, repetitive thoughts can create neurochemical repeating patterns which can change what someone is able to experience. In this way artifacts of language alone can have an immense amount of power no?

Though subtle, speech and writing are physical acts. Perhaps thought is not.

I don't know any practicing therapists, but the self and the ego are very different things in the freudian/jungian framework. Having a precise language - regardless of the framework - can be very helpful for gaining productive detachment.

But in fiction language transcends itself and enters the realm of image and dreams, where we might encounter the psyche as soul again, without the -ology.

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