What solitary confinement taught me about surviving isolation (2020)

On a personal note an acquaintance of mine served several years for a sentence for which he was later fully exonerated. It was a thoroughly awful travesty of justice. He also underwent appalling abuses as the alleged crime for which he was convicted was sexual in nature. No system is perfect and there will probably always be mistakes made, so lets at least make sure the consequences of such mistakes don't burden our consciences any more than they need to.

You still achieve what you want. Unless you want to be cruel for the sake of it.

I thought at first you were mocking everyone acting like stay in orders were any thing like solitary confinement. But your last paragraph throws that notion off.

It’s kind of similar to that state of mind you have when you’re boiling water, you get involved with some other activity but there’s somehow an increased sensitivity to the rather subtle sound of a bubbling pot.

If you try to think too much about the observations real-time, you interrupt the primary thought process that you were trying to observe. So it’s kind of a passive process that you can then reason about later.

I think it’s just something you have to try to do until you start to get results, it’s so subtle and personal that I think it’s going to be difficult for anyone to truly give prescriptive instruction that results in success.

I have considered "meditative" to be a part of my character for nearly my whole life, while it is self-taught/self-discovered and idiosyncratic. I would read some popular accounts of meditation and hear parts which resonated and parts that just didn't seem to translate.

I already am aware of my breathing. I discovered "square breathing" for myself as a child for pain and stress management and got lots of breath-awareness through swimming. I find it odd to imagine being unaware of breathing, but I realize it must be possible from the accounts of others.

I am self-reflective and aware of my thoughts and emotional responses. I had difficult aspects to my childhood and had to learn to modulate my responses and predict the unpredictable to deal with volatile personalities in my surroundings. I find it odd to imagine being unaware of my thoughts or emotions.

In recent years, I've struggled with stress management and found myself stating things very similar to your final line. I hear people telling me to do these beginner-level meditation steps and I simultaneously feel, "I am already doing this," "it is not working," and sometimes "your advice is not actionable!" while feeling very frustrated. I might blurt out any of those statements if I get past feeling it is pointless to continue the interaction. On reflection, I think it may be impossible to know which is more true of the apparent contradictions. Am I not doing it even though I think I am? Is it working even though I don't think so? Is it really meaningless advice or I am just being petulant?

These guides and advice are written for a target audience. They are not really wrong if they do not work for some of us, as we may not be the audience. What is frustrating is that it can feel impossible to find alternative guidance if you have an atypical starting state. What is alternative advice about "being present" for someone who is stuck in hyper-vigilance due to stress/trauma? What is alternative advice about "recognizing your thoughts" for someone who is stuck ruminating and meta-ruminating? Etc.

This is one of those questions that can't be usefully answered without reference to the experience it's asking about. I can say from my own experience that what's being described isn't nonsense, but I can't put words around it that make sense as an explanation of how I know. Nor can anyone else, as far as I can tell, and I've seen many try.

The method described here seems fine as far as it goes, but it's kind of like learning to ride a bike, or maybe how to juggle. There are clear steps you can follow, but they only take you up to the point where a moment of novel insight is required to grasp the skill, and only that moment of novel insight will take you any further. Once you've had it, you never forget it, but there's a step in there that no one else can take you through - you have to find it for yourself or not at all.

It's not fair, but that's just how it is as far as I can tell. I wish I could do better, and I'm sorry that I can't.

That's one opinion, and it's far from universal even in your country, though it seems to be popular. From the outside perspective, the fact that it seems to be shared by a portion of population this large is deeply mistifying. Edit: I mean, if that's all, then that's a pretty bad deal - a society can tell you to go die in a war, hang you, starve you, make you work to pay for an ever-growing army of officials, and you get out of it just "freedom"?

> and paid for it.

Yes. That's what I said. The OP, though, wants to make him keep paying for it forever. Which is another seemingly popular, yet incredibly disturbing opinion that I can't identify with.

> self righteous people

Thank you, I'll take it as a compliment.