Trading Anxious Thought Patterns for Simplicity
When you’re used to feeling anxious and depressed, experiencing a more restful thought life means everything.
If I had to share the bare bones with you, here’s the summary of my mental state until the end of college:
Middle School: Anxious.
High School: More anxious.
College: Extremely anxious, nihilistic, and depressed to the measure of a medical leave
I was still fun and weird enough to keep friends around. But nothing medicated my angsty hell.
Obviously, I still lived a little. I enjoyed the midnight fast food runs, ridiculous videos made with friends. Dumb crushes. Awkward memories associated with alcohol.
But my mind overdosed on worrying.
Then the pleasure of adulting came around and I felt the weighty addition of expectations—
Feeling guilty to my parents for not wanting the traditional $$$ job for all the sacrifices they made.
Keeping loose ties to people of whom I no longer shared common ground.
Being restless to achieve something that validated my existence in society.
And my existential pessimism kept partying in the back burner.
As I kept holding my breath, I forgot why I had breath in the first place.
As a kid, I used to look forward to Sunday mornings because of rocks.
While our Korean parents were worshiping the Lord most High, my friends and I dug through bushes to find rocks that could draw in color. We found light pink, even dark blue tones. We would sharpen dull rocks to create shapes like a shoe.
We would hike the back trail of the nearby rich neighborhood to come back with sweaty armpits and red faces. We threw a large rock down a gutter that almost smashed into the front car.
We smashed red berry plants and crunchy leaves to cook ourselves a meal.
And it’s to these times, that my mind traced solace. When my mind would over complicate and give weight to too many things, when I felt mental claustrophobia, I’d reference my Lord of the Flies freedom.
That freedom, from what I remember, was my mind keeping things aggressively simple.
The last thing I was thinking about was expectations.
Trying Doses of Simplicity For a Mind Used to Complicated
I’m sure your time of reminiscence is much more exciting than crushing berries. But we all can’t deny those moments we genuinely felt at ease.
And recently I’ve had those rare days where my mind feels settled. And I feel more at peace, even though my circumstances haven’t changed.
So I want to share the two things I’ve been trying to practice. Even if they’re the obvious things we often forget —
1) Letting go.
Of expectations, of how you felt judged by this and that person, of the fear that no one fully understands or knows you, of worries, of disappointments,
one by one.
2) Focusing on what’s right in front of you.
There’s too many what if’s and intangibles for our limited prefrontal cortex to be worried and calculating all the time. Our poor mind is trying to get through the day with a steady jog but we’re demanding it to sprint three marathons in seconds.
Once we declutter our thoughts, we give ourselves more breathing room to better take in life.
Though this process doesn’t happen overnight — fingers crossed —
we are pointing ourselves towards an upward trend.
