people out there, need ba talaga magpa improve ng voice/accent. I have a not so good (bisaya) accent and it bothers me. Ang hirap makipag socialize.

As a preface, I am completely on board with the idea of the self not existing and thus not directing the thoughts and experiences perturbing the fabric of consciousness, but here is a question: what is then “the thing” that “directs” “one’s” attention to this over here or that over there? When focusing on the breath, what is the thing doing the focusing?

It seems to me that attention is categorically different from consciousness? It’s the filter or the prism that refracts or dulls or highens the waves of thoughts and perception. It is something that can be sharpened or widened, and if left unattended it tends to autozoom on the biggest splash that is currently occuring.

Or is it just another thing appearing in consciousness? Something akin to a morphing lens allowing consciousness to fold into itself? And when the voice says “focus your attention on your breath” that lens transforms like any other thought into something else, without any particular thing (the self) directing that transformation.

Still, attention seems different than just another kind of experience? It’s the thing directing the “experiencing”.

If that is not The Self (tm), than nothing is :)

Any thoughts?

At times I feel like I'm content with myself, like i genuinely don't gaf about my perceptions on the outside but rather how I perceive myself, which generally comes from the positive and negative actions I take. At times I can also recognise things outside myy control such as people's opinions about me and that they'll always think this or that about me but it's just something that is and I have no control over.

But at times I find myself making scenarios before any event. It could be as small as getting groceries or items from shop or just going outside alone. I can't help but be afraid of other people seeing me, judging me, criticising me, abusing me and what not. I know it is shameful but I just have to open myself up to truly learn and better myself. I don't want to find myself unable to do simple actions such as driving, going outside alone, others judgement and what not.

I'm grateful for any advice that y'all want to give me.

Here's the thing, my parents are very controlling when it comes to food, too controlling to the point it doesn't even make sense. First of all, ever since I was chubby, not fat, my parents are adamant about me becoming thin. I was 5th grade at that time, and I didn't know being chubby is a bad thing. Just like any other kids sometimes I wanted to eat chocolate , ice cream kind of stuff. But my parents never allowed it and they even ensured as far as not giving me a dime of money just so I cannot buy snacks. Eventually this controlling led me to steal money from my parents, just few loose change here and there so I can buy it secretly.

As I became teen, I was diagnosed with pcos, which I inherited genetically and by this time I was eating lot of food outside with friends, unfortunately my body put on weight while my friends haven't gained. At this point I didn't understood the concept of calories. Later in life I learnt how calories work and how hard it is for slow metabolism people like me to stay thin. On top of that pcos makes me hard to loose weight.

I am a adult in mid 20s, now I am not a kid anymore, I have my own money, and I track my calories to loose weight. I recently lost 15 pounds of weight by going to gym. I live with my parents currently but I have my own money and I also help them with my money too. I cannot move out of house too as it wouldn't make any sense and my parents want me to live with them. They are good parents except for the fact when it comes around food.

All my life I was never allowed to bring outside food, whenever I went against them and brought even something less harmful as a veggie sandwich, not even a cheese burger, they would yell literal abusive words at me. They constantly discuss about health related things all the time. Even when they are themselves they only talk about health to one another. Even if I say can I cook spaghetti at home, they will curse at me saying spaghetti isn't that healthy. For them even if its homecooked it has to be ultra healthy foods like boiled eggs, greens only.

Frankly I am not craving for junk food anymore too. But sometimes I like making myself a sandwich, spaghetti, ramen etc. But only my mom approved recipes (even omelette isn't allowed to cook) are allowed to cook in kitchen, so I cannot cook and I get this intense need to fullfill this that won't go away for days. I look forward to times when my parents leave houses to attend parties or lie to them that I am going out to meet someone. And I binge eat a lot, like I literally order all kinds of foods to satisfy myself, I overeat to the point I vomit and I gain 3 pounds at once. And I don't even like that I ate that much, but for some reason I cannot control myself, I am not enjoying food, I am force stuffing myself. Later I ensure there is no evidence of food so my parents won't find it. Last night also I did the same, my chest hurted to the point I thought I am going to have heart attack, but I smiled with pain in front of my parents because I didn't want them to find I am sick because my parents blame me even I get sick, they say things like I bought this upon myself from my unhealthy life style.

I seek advice on how to control my urges, my parents will never change, but I don't want to binge eat like this and just eat foods I like at moderation. I am not enjoying binge eating, I am not feeling the food tasty, but I am still confused why I am unable to stop myself even when I am not enjoying it. It's like I am seeking for some kind of pleasure that will come. It's like gambling, even I lose today I might win someday. I am looking for some satisfaction in my binge eating but everytime after binge eating I am left with guilt and physical pain. Even when I know what is at the end, I am repeating this cycle whenever I am not under the watchful eye of my parents.

I think about the past way too much i think and i don't think it's good for me. i'm still super young (just turned 17) and ill think about it in class, watching tv, driving, etc. is it good to think about my past a lot even though i have so much more to live for? how do i stop?

Whenever I am studying, trying to sleep, just waking up, or have any time where my mind is on its own, my catalogue of thoughts opens and the the files go everywhere in the space of my brain. Sometimes they are negative, sometimes just random things. How do I quiet my mind? How do I focus on my task at hand? I'm and undergraduate student and studying is of utmost importance for me but I feel like this keeps holding me back. Pls help.

How to control lust, i have deleted social media and all but when i see a beautiful girl i kind of get attracted to her, I am not thinking anything sexual but now the problem is this it affects me mentally, i feel i treat a beautiful woman differently compared to what i maybe not find beautiful. Its like i treat her like god but why do i do this, is this lust, how do i control it? has anyone overcome this? this is affecting my dating life too i cant commit to a person because of so much exposure and stimulus-us sensing when i see someone prettier or better my curiosity inside says that i want to know that person and that makes me feel i am not being loyal. Idk this is eating me up , and i dont want to experience this feeling

In early 2021, I was diagnosed with ALS (aka. MND, Lou Gehrig’s Disease)—a terminal condition that progressively paralyzes the body while leaving the mind intact. Most patients survive only 24 to 36 months after diagnosis, with no cure and no promising treatments on the horizon.

At first, I shared this only with those who needed to know. But as I progressed from an ankle brace to a cane, then to a wheelchair, the circle widened. Now, after three years of grappling with death in the solace of this wooded Pennsylvania valley, and as a quadriplegic writing this solely with my eyes, I have something to share.

I’m profoundly grateful for the gifts that have emerged since my diagnosis. This includes the rare and unexpected gift of wrapping up life slowly, lucidly, and mindfully—something the stillness of this disease has imposed upon me.

Here’s the thing: you’re dying too. We all are. Dying from the moment we’re born. This isn’t an abstract idea—you might even beat me to the finish line. And when your time comes, you likely won’t have the luxury of contemplating it as I have.

We’re all on the same path towards death. Always have been. I’m just more aware of it now—a truth many avoid until it’s too late to either live or die well.

If you’re interested, I’ve kept a journal throughout 2024 that I’m now sharing as a blog as I revise it. Please consider it field notes from someone who has been able to scout the territory farther down our shared path.

https://twilightjournal.com/

I hope it helps.

Best,

Bill

https://preview.redd.it/2uheemdg7cge1.jpg?width=1024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=247572d034cbedc85bd614a6068f7f67f9c33b98

Hello all!

I am BA Psychology student, and I got an amazing opportunity to do an independent research.
I need around 100 people to fill a google form regarding the same. However, I am facing difficulties in gathering the data. Even after posting it on various reddit subs specially meant for research surveys, I am getting very poor response rate.

Hence I wanted to ask, if there are people interested in taking up a small survey on this sub and help me out. I have even messaged the Mods of the page, but didnt get a reply as of yet. However its a bit urgent, hence i decided to ask directly. Please drop in a comment.

Also if you know any sub or other platforms too, where I can get responses, please comment.

Thank you!

Hi everyone,

I am on my mindfulness path, and a question arises in me. How can you stop judging and feeling disgusted by some human behaviors? I don’t consider myself a very judgmental person. However, when I see some people behaving in such terrible ways (I am again judging), I can’t stop my mind from thinking, "Oh, these people are so wrong, they are so bad, and so poorly educated..." When I see bullies, thieves, murderers... how can I not judge them for their terrible actions? I don’t have the wisdom or the answer to overcome this kind of judgment. I have been bullied in my life, and I just can’t get past it. I am sure there is a way to become wiser. Would love to see your point of view or past experiences that helped overcome this.

A year ago, I made a choice. I decided not to move to the States. I didn’t like it there, so I worked hard to build a life in my home country, believing that was where I belonged. But life has its own way of unfolding, and despite my efforts, things haven’t worked out as I hoped. Now, moving to the States is my best option. And this time, I’m not resisting it. I’m embracing it. I’m working toward it with happiness, not hesitation. Because I’ve learned that success doesn’t create happiness, happiness creates success. At the end of the day, you have to work. There’s no alternative. Whether you like it or not, whether you fight it or welcome it, the work remains. But when you do it happily, the outcome shifts. Life feels lighter. Opportunities unfold differently. Things fall into place. So whatever you’re working on, work with joy. If you have to do it anyway, might as well do it with a smile.

I lived with devastating social anxiety for almost 20 years. I‘m almost 30 and only a couple of months ago I discovered for myself how I create my anxiety myself by following trains of thought and believing them to be reality. Since my discovery my life changed dramatically: I can go out with friends, joke around and meet new people. I can go to the office without having a panic attack the night before, I can go shopping all by myself without turning red like a tomato from fear. I can talk to the women in my gym without shaking from the inside. And I built a beautiful relationship with my mother and my brother. Here is the process I learned:

You can think of your thoughts as bubbles coming up when you heat water. They start forming, they rise to the surface of your consciousness and then they pop. You can watch this process if you pay close enough attention to your thoughts. If you don‘t interact with the thought your mind will regard it as unimportant and it will just disappear. If you interact with it, your mind will deem it as important and will produce more thoughts about this particular thought. So for example you are watching a movie and a thought comes up „I should paint this room blue.“ Most people will quickly decide that this thought is nonsense and will resume watching the movie. You will just drop it and its soon like you never had this thought in the first place. But what if the thought has a different content like „Tomorrow will be an important day, I hope I don‘t screw up.“ What happens next? A lot of people will produce more thoughts about this one thought, about what could go wrong, what other people might think and what exactly they should do or say. The thoughts will spiral and with that you will create a lot of anxiety. The one thought seems just more important than the other, right? One could lead us to end our career, the other just make us paint the room?

There is one problem people don’t see: Our physiological response. Thoughts trigger emotions. This happens extremely fast and you cannot stop it from happening. You cannot get angry without thinking an angry thought before. Nor can you feel anxious without thinking an anxious thought. Just try it. Just try to feel anger, fear, envy, etc. without summoning up a thought in your mind that makes you feel this way. Its not possible. I once read a book where they talked about this and it had a brilliant example of this in action: Imagine the mother thats really upset with her child and screams at it. The telephone rings, she picks it up and talks to her friend. All of a sudden she seems extremely calm and polite. But as soon as the call ends she looks at her child and starts screaming again. Why did she get angry again? She clearly wasn‘t angry with her friend. Of course because she thought about what made her angry again in the first place and then resumed screaming. Basically she picked the thought back up. So because one thought makes you feel a certain way and another doesn‘t we feel like one thought is true and the other is not. Or one thought is important while the other one isn‘t.

So now for just a brief moment imagine if you could dismiss the one thought that makes you feel bad the same way you could dismiss a thought thats irrelevant? The thing is you actually can. You have to understand that you can dismiss any thought you want. In other words you can dismiss any thought you believe you can dismiss. If you believe a thought to be too important to not think about it its logical that you will continue to think about it. We only feel like some thoughts are more important because they trigger some certain emotions. Especially negative emotions. Biologically these are more important to your body, because they could mean some form of harm or danger. Even when there is no sign of imminent physical danger.

Due to our emotional response, we value some thoughts as more important than others, but fail to see that a thought is still a thought, regardless of its content or how it makes us feel. If you would just know that a thought is a thought, that it cannot hurt you and that it has no real basis in reality you could dismiss those negative thoughts. Your thoughts are real thoughts, but their content has no basis in reality. You just think they do. You are convinced of it. But they do not. If you start to see thoughts not as grim reality but just as ideas you have - not as the reality of about your life but ideas about your life and you learn to not engage with the initial emotional response, you will find that you actually can dismiss any thought you like and you will return to a neutral state. You need to understand that your body has something called Homeostasis. Which means it will always return to a baseline, also emotionally. You will always start to feel neutral at some point again. The only thing that differs is how long it takes. So if a thought (an idea) makes you feel bad about yourself, but you still don‘t pay much attention to it, you will revert to feel neutral again. And the more you do this, the faster you will find yourself getting back to your emotional baseline. Its really just a practice of dismissing thoughts. Even if you feel they are important. But a thought has always the same structure, just different content.

Now this is not a silver bullet or that you just read a Reddit post and your issues are gone. This requires practice and most importantly attention. You have to catch yourself in the act anytime you start indulging in those super important thoughts and remind yourself that its just an idea. And ideas can be followed or can be dropped. Most of our ideas are just out right false. Your thoughts can never represent absolute truth, since they are just ideas about reality - not reality. It took me a long time to do this and even now there are days I am struggling. But I saw how my life changed when I stopped giving in to thoughts. Your life can change too.

Im recovering from a long addiction and substance abuse. I’ve stopped taking drugs two months ago and alcohol only 2 weeks ago. The thing is that I met someone on Bumble a few months ago, and we finally met this week for a quick coffee. He’s sweet and he doesn’t find it hard to understand that I don’t want to drink alcohol (we don’t really know each other very well, I don’t feel like sharing what I am going through yet). I’m scared he’ll find me boring, my life right now is all about working and going to Yoga. Should I share with him that I’m going through an ambulatory rehab…? It feels embarrassing to just write it here 😔

With mindfulness one gains the ability to end the moment, turn the page and start anew. The mind trails on and wants you to follow, conciousness gives it power, so learn to not give it conciousness. Letting go is the start of this; something I've just barely learned how to do but what a blessing it's been. At a point you can sense yourself spiraling down into thought - and at the bottom (or if you take out the depth) it's just a spiral going in circles and circles. This is all in the mind and disconnects energy from the body. The longer we stay running in circles the less we connect with our true selves/body/nonverbal/feeling/intuition. Are you happy? Must you connect more? A couple deep breaths will do. You are always running, the mind has to; but let it work for you. Set the track and magic carpet yourself to whatever success or happiness means to you homie. Feel the wind and look at the trees but remember to adjust course, you gotta stay on that same spiral - you know.. the eternal one...

Thich Nhat Hanh and Tom Campbell have really helped me out.

Are we not the sum of our learned experiences? I value the experiences i’ve gone through and the lessons i’ve learned from both the good and bad experiences - falling flat on my face and learning from it has absolutely shaped me into who I am today.

I am wondering, how do you keep being mindful and aware of how you are feeling, do you often take time to stop and think about how you may be feeling regularly during the day?

I've always loved Tim Urban's Wait by Why dot visualizations as a way of processing time, so I put my own spin on it.

Definitely scared me into spending less time on my tech (my worst habit) and making time for the things that truly matter, so figured it may help you too: https://lifedots.replit.app/

What objects remind you to stay in the present moment?

What tools do you use to practice mindfulness throughout the day?

I have a very close friend (who is actually a relative, 31 years old) whom I consider the most important person in my life right now. I'm 19 and not very social, and this person is my first real best friend—the first one I share games and interests with.

The problem is that I’ve become unhealthily attached to him, and I tend to create problems whenever he doesn’t want to talk or play with me. When he says he’s busy but I see him playing or chatting with someone else, I feel hurt and upset. Every time I cause an issue, I regret it deeply, and sometimes I even end up crying because of how much I care.

We only communicate through social media since we live in different countries, which makes things even harder. Our most recent argument happened when I asked to talk, and he said he was busy, but then I saw him playing with someone else just to chat. I got really upset, blocked him, and removed him from everywhere. Later, I felt terrible about it and apologized, but he hasn’t responded yet.

I know I’ve made mistakes, and I realize my attachment is becoming a problem. I want to improve myself, become less clingy, and also figure out how to fix our relationship—if he hasn’t decided to ignore me completely.

Any advice would be really appreciated. Thank you!

In a not so rare frequency, i once again had a bizarre moment in my journey as a female leader. I recently received a feedback from a teammate that he is scared of me. So in order to foster a safe space, i asked him that what can i do better so that this feeling starts fading and he feels good. And his response was that i should act and respond like a ‘mother’..!!!

At first glance i got all confused about it, like is this how gen-z wants to be treated but then it made me wonder that would he have the same expectations for a male manager???

If at all we are assertive, then why are we asked to tone down and if we do then we are not aggressive enough!!!

I ve heard that the right part of the brain is for creativity, arts etc and the left for more rational, logic decisions.

I used to be very funny. I was a shy guy but when I felt confident, nothing could stop me. And as the time went by my, let's say that my comfort zone expanded and I could be "myself" more often.

For various reasons I started taking some SSRIs. To not say much, I had my ups and downs with these medicines but now, while I feel more confident, I feel like I lost the productive, unique and artistic self that I had. Like going from using 70% percent of my right side of my brain to only 20% (this is just a per say).

So going from an absolute charismatic and charming young man that knew what words to use and when (at least when I felt comfortable) now I feel like my thoughts are stuck. Like my EQ dropped. Overthinking every single move that I do. But I take the risk because it's the rational thing to do if I want to grow as a person but not with the same outcome as in the past, because I'm no longer charismatic

What is happening?? I really really hate living with no charisma and I know it very well because I ve been in both sides.

As a mom of 3, i don't have time for long meditation sessions and I've been looking for ways to reset and stay grounded. What’s your favorite quick mindfulness habit that helps you?

How do I snap out of it?

I'm constantly thinking about my ex. I wanted to say something, and she didn't give me the opportunity. It felt unfair. As if what happened liberated her and she had no interest whatsoever in reversing it. All I wanted to do was speak with her one last time, but she avoided, ghosted and deflected. I hoped I'd brought the point indirectly across, but I likely didn't, and the rumination was unbearable.

Subsequently, I'd see her in public in random places, and I'd always catch her staring too late. Missing the opportunity to talk. She never reached out.

2024 has been hell. Straight up schizo rumination hell. Emotional roller coaster. And for 2025, I've wanted to return to my old self. I feel like I've changed so much, and I don't know how to let go.

My original lamentation: that desire to apologize to her. To achieve clarification, make sure she knows my side, which is genuine and appreciative. Make sure she doesn't think I think poorly of her. Just to air things out between us and make sure we are on the same page, so we can both walk away with our heads held high. She is not interested in this. She moved on a long time ago now.

How do I let go of this obsession?

I’ve been meditating for a while, usually focusing on breathwork, but my mind would sometimes settle and other times resist. Recently, I tried a Sufi approach that centers on the heart rather than the mind. The result was profound—my heart took control, telling my mind to calm, and it actually listened. The ego faded, and a deep sense of peace lasted all day. It felt like the heart became the master, and the mind, once dominant, became its servant. Has anyone else experienced something similar?