Comment by Tagbert
3 days ago
It can be at first until you get used to it. You can observe your surroundings, make up stories about what is happening. Ask yourself questions. Listen to yourself.
This is a bit like excercise. When you first start, 30 minutes of exercise can be torture as your is out of shape and not used to the effort. Keep doing it and it feels better and you feel better.
Work on becoming a source of thoughts rather than a consumer of thoughts.
> You can observe your surroundings, make up stories about what is happening.
I had to sit still a lot as a child, since I wasn't allowed to have friends or go anywhere. I read a lot, but a lot of the time I was to tired or bored to read, so I'd just defocus my eyes, and disappear into my imagination. It would look like I'm reading, so I wouldn't get punished. In hindsight I'm not sure it's terribly healthy, as I now find it impossible to put up with boring people (which is basically everybody who has time to sit around chatting, almost by definition).
> I now find it impossible to put up with boring people (which is basically everybody who has time to sit around chatting, almost by definition).
You're being judgemental to call them boring. Plus widening your opinions to be a "definition" sounds like an unhealthy worldview. You likely appear boring to others.
Then again I have a saying I use when anyone says they are bored - I say they are boring!
> Then again I have a saying I use when anyone says they are bored - I say they are boring!
This is a very clever come back, I wonder if it might qualify as the best thought terminating cliché I've seen this year!
I never say I'm bored. The universe is too interesting a place to be bored. I did mean it, that most people, individually, are what I find boring. I'd rather withdraw into my mind and work on something interesting, whether it's about figuring something out, or trying to design something. The painful part is pretending to care long enough to get away without somebody getting butthurt.
The "almost by definition" is that the people I find interesting are usually busy doing interesting things, so the boring ones are the only regular people at social gatherings. I do not go to those anymore.
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I’m just curious about the “wasn’t allowed to have friends or go anywhere” part. Can you elaborate?
Why not? Is this some form/culture of parenting I’m not familiar with?
This idea of not allowing a child to have friends or go anywhere just sounds like actual emotional abuse.
> just sounds like actual emotional abuse.
it was. my father assured everybody that he and I were best friends and I didn't need anybody else. I was allowed to go to school, that was it.
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I have a feeling I had a similar childhood to you (strict/smothering).
I also find it problematical to deal with people who live 'normal/standard' lives who are not curious about the world and how everything works. Being put in a conversation talking about sports, gossip, celebrities is intolerable for me.
I've come to accept (and I think some people here may resonate with) that this is can be a blessing or good filtering mechanism.
People talk about this with exercise and I’ve never understood it. As someone who has exercised continuously for years - it has never gotten better.
Which, to me, makes sense because you’re supposed to always be pushing yourself. You’re not supposed to ever feel comfortable or feel better from it. You should always feel shitty because if it doesn’t hurt then you’re probably not making optimal development.
The only thing I ever “feel” good about is purely a mental thing. Eg I hit a new PR (progress), didn’t skip a lift (perseverance), or whatever. The act of exercising itself is always painful and it’s why I always dread it.
Wanting to "make optimal development" is just one of possible motivations for exercising and not everyone who does it is interested in that. Maintaining good health and generally wanting to feel better across the day are also perfectly valid reasons to exercise.
You gotta give yourself a bit more slack. We all deserve to rest and go slow now and then. What's the point of living if you can't take a break?
We are chaotic and beautiful bundles of dozens of trillions of cells that evolved over 4 billion years. We breath. We feel. We are alive. We aren't math problems that need to be "solved" or "optimized".
> Which, to me, makes sense because you’re supposed to always be pushing yourself. You’re not supposed to ever feel comfortable or feel better from it. You should always feel shitty because if it doesn’t hurt then you’re probably not making optimal development.
You are way too demanding of yourself my friend :(
> if it doesn't hurt then you're not making optimal development
this is almost certainly wrong - 100% balls to wall training will surely be suboptimal (on avg) to achieving most fitness goals - eg within a running training block there will generally be recovery and "general aerobic" runs which are easy in effort relative to the harder work in the block. These easy efforts are necessary to optimally achieve the desired physiological adaptations acquired through increased volume and "nailing" the hard workouts. The easier runs enable this by getting volume at lower risk of injury + conserving energy/will for the key workouts.
This also doesn't consider how important recovery is to optimal results (as in sleep, rest, self-care etc).
Exercising is doing some activity that is good for your health. You’ve reduced this to some narrow set of activities that presumably make you stronger, faster, or better at some other easy to measure metric. I assure you it’s easy to enjoy exercising if your incentive is longevity and simply healthy living by a more subjective metric
I finally started getting stronger in the gym when I stopped going to failure on everything. I got in the best endurance shape by going on a steady comfortable pace for progressively longer periods of time.
Harder is not always better.
One of my favorite styles of weight training is volume based. The premise starts with something like I need 10 reps of a certain weight, but it doesn't matter how many sets it takes to get there. Each set ends if I cannot do another perfect rep. If I can't do a single perfect rep, then the exercise ends and I move on to the next thing. By requiring the rep to be perfect, it naturally keeps you from going to failure and lowers chance of injury.
There's more to it like how to pick the weight, etc... but the perfect rep piece I really enjoyed.
I noticed the same.
Also late to the party, but creatine is the body and more importantly the brains friend too.
I'd point out that at least in aerobic exercies (ie running and biking) its generally recommended that you shouldn't be pushing too hard for most of your workouts. If you're going out four days a week it's only on one or two of them that you're generally supposed to push yourself. The others should be at an easier pace. Which I tend to find more enjoyable.
There's also something to be said for seasons of maintaining a level of fitness rather than pushing for the next level!
https://stories.strava.com/articles/a-productive-weekly-trai...
It seems very likely to me that the sensations experienced during exercise are highly variable among individuals.
I say this because my experience is very different from yours: I get a very perceptible "high" once I get into the rhythm of a good workout. Think mild euphoria, mood lift, and general feeling of "rightness" in my body once it's been well wrung.
This only happens if I'm in decent shape, though. If I've fallen out of shape it's a slog.
Edit: I can't remember the podcast, but I recall some discussion of emerging clinical evidence in exercise response variability along many dimensions that may help explain the disconnect.
A friend told me he was addicted to running because he literally got high from it. I said, running hurt for me. He said it used to for him too. I asked how long until it stopped hurting. He said 2 YEARS!!!!
There's no way I'm going to run for 2 years on the hope that one day it will stop hurting and get enjoyable.
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I love working out and have for over 25 years. You should never be in real pain or feel 'shitty'. It should be challenging of course and part of that challenge is being uncomfortable. Learning to embrace being uncomfortable, IMO, is one of the super powers of being a person that translate to all other areas of life. Once a person learns to embrace uncomfortable moments, everything else just becomes...easier.
Exercise can become a form of self harm. It did for me.
But you have ability to suffer painful for a long time.
If you think that’s ability then you should see what my whole life has been. Pain from exercise is a joke in comparison.
I end up being consumed by depressive thoughts and lots of body scanning. I hate it.
Maybe your exercise can be to direct your thoughts elsewhere. Start with 5 minutes instead of 30 and actively try to think about something else when your thoughts become too negative. I can't guarantee it will help you but it's a sort of meditation that's worked for me when I felt like my brain wouldn't turn off.
Sounds like your body is telling you something?
Time to find support that you trust and face whatever is going on under the hood.
For me, the three major turning points were quitting my job, later starting somatic therapy with the right therapist, and then finally getting diagnosed with ADHD. Good luck to you :) wish you the best
Well, I have MS and I have muscle spasticity, spinal hyperactivity, etc. The feeling of not having control over your body is terrible.
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So… stimulate yourself?
> Work on becoming a source of thoughts rather than a consumer of thoughts.
This is the classic “sounds deep but actually means nothing” vague statement that’s only meant to massage one’s ego and try to reenforce an unsubstantiated idea in a faux-philosophical way.
You are always “sourcing” thoughts even when “consuming”.
Being able to sit still, quietly without having to stimulate oneself is, by all means, exactly that: avoid stimulating oneself. Looking around and trying to come up with small stimulations based on your surrounding is merely replacing one object (say, your phone) with another.
In order to avoid all stimulation, there is but one recourse, and it is rather final.
Generally, I prefer just sitting quietly and not worrying about the definition of stimulation or whether I'm doing it correctly.
A session in a sensory deprivation tank isn't final so I'd recommend that over some other solution that is final.
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