I talked about this in another comment here, but the danger in unhealthy introspection is getting lost in your own mind in an Escher stair fashion where the immediate scope of your thinking appears to make sense. But in reality you've constructed a faulty, hard to escape representation.
It takes some time, but it helps to take a somewhat adversarial approach and try to falsify your introspection. That's why writing is important. It forces you to lay out the structure for later review. When you just think about something, how that thinking "felt" makes up a lot more of your judgement than the actual coherence or validity.
You need to be able to step outside yourself which is easier said than done, but that's a good skill for a variety of reasons. Writing is an important way of doing it. It's like a snapshot of you in a moment of time that you can review later when you are a slightly different person. Sharing your introspection with others who you trust but don't think like you can also help: good friends, therapists, mentors. LLMs can be great for this sort of thing if you approach it with healthy skepticism and avoid leading it to your answer of choice (but if people can't, who knows where they'll end up).
Setting time boundaries help a lot. Also, resetting your mind by doing something that doesn't bend much to navel gazing helps. Your garden doesn't give a shit about your thoughts. I took judo on a trial run once. Your mind clears very fast when somebody is trying to re-introduce you to the ground.
I think that today, people's ability to do this has greatly diminished. Technology has made it much easier for people to get trapped in those staircases just because it makes them feel good in the short-term. With networks, it's even worse because now they are comforted by the shared experience. Those staircases become the identity and reality rather than something to escape from.
> Any advice for getting out of the introspection hole?
For me, it is activities that "stop" the thinker - which include exercise (running), listening to music, sports etc. What stopping the thinker does is to get out of the world-models that we are trapped in.
The issue with "thinking" is an up-front realization that not all problems can be solved with thinking. There are "higher-orders" of logic at play and it is vain of us to hope for a thinking solution in the same frame that created the problem. Now, this doesnt mean that thinking is bad - as thinking serves to clarify our world-models. Only that, it needs to be paused every-so-often for the cosmic-resonance to soak in the vibrations so-to-speak which then become conceptual fodder for our subsequent thinking and refining of the world-models.
A stronger communal life and volunteering of some kind. Therapy may help, but I think it's still too focused on the self. Get out, meet people, talk to them, and most importantly, listen to them. Ask questions. Find a way to get curious about other people and the world around you. Find groups of people with shared interests, but also try to find new interests.
For me, it actually is writing. Whether it's about writing down plans or past experiences, putting them on paper (or even digital) makes it easier to drop the thoughts from my mind. Also, it creates distance: it's much easier for me to analyze a written sentence than one that's echoing around my mind.
Therapy is a great way of doing that. Even if you just see it as another person to "bounce ideas against", it can help you zoom out a bit without feeling like you completely abandon the introspection hole for "living in the moment" or whatever. Takes some time to find the right therapist, but once you find the right person it feels worth it.
I’ve found it extremely difficult. Another commenter mentioned Zen Buddhism which is also my current focus. It’s really nothing more than a philosophy that says stop thinking and go experience life.
Unfortunately it’s very simple, which us introspectives hate. But that’s why I like it!
Have a baby! You’ll definitely live in the moment when the attention is on another rather than yourself. It’s hard to wax philosophical when you’re trying to keep another human alive.
I talked about this in another comment here, but the danger in unhealthy introspection is getting lost in your own mind in an Escher stair fashion where the immediate scope of your thinking appears to make sense. But in reality you've constructed a faulty, hard to escape representation.
It takes some time, but it helps to take a somewhat adversarial approach and try to falsify your introspection. That's why writing is important. It forces you to lay out the structure for later review. When you just think about something, how that thinking "felt" makes up a lot more of your judgement than the actual coherence or validity.
You need to be able to step outside yourself which is easier said than done, but that's a good skill for a variety of reasons. Writing is an important way of doing it. It's like a snapshot of you in a moment of time that you can review later when you are a slightly different person. Sharing your introspection with others who you trust but don't think like you can also help: good friends, therapists, mentors. LLMs can be great for this sort of thing if you approach it with healthy skepticism and avoid leading it to your answer of choice (but if people can't, who knows where they'll end up).
Setting time boundaries help a lot. Also, resetting your mind by doing something that doesn't bend much to navel gazing helps. Your garden doesn't give a shit about your thoughts. I took judo on a trial run once. Your mind clears very fast when somebody is trying to re-introduce you to the ground.
I think that today, people's ability to do this has greatly diminished. Technology has made it much easier for people to get trapped in those staircases just because it makes them feel good in the short-term. With networks, it's even worse because now they are comforted by the shared experience. Those staircases become the identity and reality rather than something to escape from.
> Any advice for getting out of the introspection hole?
For me, it is activities that "stop" the thinker - which include exercise (running), listening to music, sports etc. What stopping the thinker does is to get out of the world-models that we are trapped in.
The issue with "thinking" is an up-front realization that not all problems can be solved with thinking. There are "higher-orders" of logic at play and it is vain of us to hope for a thinking solution in the same frame that created the problem. Now, this doesnt mean that thinking is bad - as thinking serves to clarify our world-models. Only that, it needs to be paused every-so-often for the cosmic-resonance to soak in the vibrations so-to-speak which then become conceptual fodder for our subsequent thinking and refining of the world-models.
A stronger communal life and volunteering of some kind. Therapy may help, but I think it's still too focused on the self. Get out, meet people, talk to them, and most importantly, listen to them. Ask questions. Find a way to get curious about other people and the world around you. Find groups of people with shared interests, but also try to find new interests.
For me, it actually is writing. Whether it's about writing down plans or past experiences, putting them on paper (or even digital) makes it easier to drop the thoughts from my mind. Also, it creates distance: it's much easier for me to analyze a written sentence than one that's echoing around my mind.
Therapy is a great way of doing that. Even if you just see it as another person to "bounce ideas against", it can help you zoom out a bit without feeling like you completely abandon the introspection hole for "living in the moment" or whatever. Takes some time to find the right therapist, but once you find the right person it feels worth it.
I am still trying!
I’ve found it extremely difficult. Another commenter mentioned Zen Buddhism which is also my current focus. It’s really nothing more than a philosophy that says stop thinking and go experience life.
Unfortunately it’s very simple, which us introspectives hate. But that’s why I like it!
Have a baby! You’ll definitely live in the moment when the attention is on another rather than yourself. It’s hard to wax philosophical when you’re trying to keep another human alive.
Try Zen tea ceremony.
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