an interesting set of thoughts

A while back, I was thinking about tracking states of mind. If a mind is centered, that's one state, if it's bouncing around, that's another, if it's hard to move (you have a hard time focusing on anything, or thinking about anything), that's a third.

The past few days, I've been realizing there's a similar thing to consider about emotions. I'd been emotionally disconnected earlier in the week. I wasn't depressed (which is one of the times when I'm most frequently disconnected), but I just wasn't particularly feeling anything.

And I was wondering if that's similar to a thinking state... akin to one's brain being tired/hard to move, versus emotionally stable, versus emotionally hypersensitive.

(Maybe not. That's a risky road to go down... equating thinking states and emotional states. But there might still be some use to the model.)

But I also realized that it's possible to disconnect from one's body, or from one's emotions, or from one's conscious thoughts, and none of those things are likely to be happy/healthy states to be in.

(Herm. I'm not saying that they're bad states to be in, necessarily, more that they're a sign of something is wrong. A person in chronic pain might try to pull away from their body as much as possible, and that might be a reasonable thing to do. But that level of disconnecting happens because there's another problem - the chronic pain.)

an interesting set of thoughts

A while back, I was thinking about tracking states of mind. If a mind is centered, that's one state, if it's bouncing around, that's another, if it's hard to move (you have a hard time focusing on anything, or thinking about anything), that's a third.

The past few days, I've been realizing there's a similar thing to consider about emotions. I'd been emotionally disconnected earlier in the week. I wasn't depressed (which is one of the times when I'm most frequently disconnected), but I just wasn't particularly feeling anything.

And I was wondering if that's similar to a thinking state... akin to one's brain being tired/hard to move, versus emotionally stable, versus emotionally hypersensitive.

(Maybe not. That's a risky road to go down... equating thinking states and emotional states. But there might still be some use to the model.)

But I also realized that it's possible to disconnect from one's body, or from one's emotions, or from one's conscious thoughts, and none of those things are likely to be happy/healthy states to be in.

(Herm. I'm not saying that they're bad states to be in, necessarily, more that they're a sign of something is wrong. A person in chronic pain might try to pull away from their body as much as possible, and that might be a reasonable thing to do. But that level of disconnecting happens because there's another problem - the chronic pain.)