Ask HN: Frameworks for thinking through your thoughts and feelings? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Frameworks for thinking through your thoughts and feelings?

Every so often I get overwhelmed with thoughts and feelings, and I can't seem to be able mentally work through them.

I've tried journaling, but that always ends up with me free writing without getting much out of it.

Anybody have some good resources or frameworks for working through what I am feeling and try to come up with some actionable tasks I can take regarding them?

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https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1285077091/

You might find this book helpful - it is a textbook, but approachable, albeit a bit expensive.

I pick up this book off recommendation from Hackernews, and it has really help me work through my thoughts in a rather clear framework. Suddenly, it seems, thoughts and emotions became traceable.

I was also lucky that some of my good friends are PhD clinical psy folks (i think focusing on early childhood, mostly). According to them, this is the latest and greatest from that academic field that is riddle with charlatans and crazy methods, so please take everything with a grain of salt. The author of this book, I was told, is the father of the ABC model (Antecedent-Behavior-Consequence), which came from Skinner, the rats guy - I think...

For me - Controlling my thoughts, even when I understand them to some degree, is still very hard, everyday I'm tempted to just go the other route - medication.

This is actually a really interesting question, although I am not sure of the exact context of what you are asking about. That is, thinking about "thoughts and feelings" in terms of "existential dread" and wondering "why am I here" is one thing. Thinking through "should I buy a house this year or keep renting a little longer?" seems like quite a different thing.

I can offer three vague suggestions, all of which concern things that I am aware of, but don't necessarily have a lot of personal experience with.

In the world of mental health, there is a technique called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy[1], which - as I understand it - is heavily rooted in the idea of breaking thoughts/feelings/emotions down in rational terms and thinking (eg, "cognition") about them in rational terms. If someone believes they have serious mental health issues, they should probably consult a professional, but outside of that context there are plenty of CBT books that you can find at Amazon or B&N to get some exposure to the ideas / techniques.

Getting away from the mental health angle, if we're just talking about making good decisions about more concrete things (buy a house or not, change jobs or not) where financial factors and such-like are key elements, then you might find some value in something like A3 Thinking[2].

Taking an even broader view, there is an entire science of "Decision Theory" (or "Decision Science")[3] which deals with detailed mathematical modeling of decisions and techniques to make optimal decisions. This comes in more for things like "I'm a company and I need to decide whether to open a new factory in North Carolina and a new distribution hub in Colorado, or open a smaller factory in Wyoming and three distribution hubs in the Northeast", blah, etc. This brings in elements of Game Theory, Optimization, Operations Research, etc.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy

[2]: https://planet-lean.com/what-is-a3-thinking/

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_theory

I find CBT to be one of the best technologies we have for understanding and managing our own feelings and thoughts.

I enjoyed Feeling Great by David Burns as a practical guide to modern CBT techniques.

The subconscious brain is optimized to handle a firehose of information. The conscious brain is terrible at it.

Activate the subconscious brain instead. Take a nap, or better yet, full sleep. Or take a walk, or a shower.

Learn to observe thoughts without acting on them. You're angry at someone. Great. Don't just that anger. Just feel it but don't let it occupy your thoughts. Or maybe you're excited. Or you have 18 things you need to complete by noon. Your attention is like a flashlight, just shine it over each item, and the subconscious brain processes them.

The subconscious doesn't always do a great job, but it's best at it. There are times when you need to do something with that info -- that's when you call upon the subconscious. But when you're overwhelmed, my best strategy is to step away and let it "cool down".

You could try audio journaling. Just use the voice memo function on your phone and start talking. What you think about. What to want to get done. What questions you have. What you think how the answers might look like, or how you could approach a solution. Just talk until there is nothing left to say. 10 minutes, 40 minutes, whatever. It’s like talking to a friend. Only that you don’t get interrupted. Plus, when you actually do talk to someone afterwards, you are a much better conversational partner. Because you’re not using the other person as an echo chambers for clarifying your own thoughts anymore. Instead, you have done that part already for yourself, and are now ready to have a real conversation.

Rather than (only) a logical framework, perhaps something like psychoanalysis or psychedelic therapy would be more beneficial or complementary.

Psychedelic therapy, unless done right, would create more thoughts and narrow the aperture of any framework or safety net. It seems like a nuclear option in this context (but I’m interested in being corrected on that).

Maybe add constraints to the journaling. Using a template that forces you to be concise and focus on the pertainate parts of the scenario.

Describe the situation, describe your feelings, describe your actions, then detail the outcome and any change in your feelings. Focusing on the action-outcome relationship can help you focus on changes that can make a meaningful impact.

Currently reading How to Be an Adult in Relationships by David Richo.

It's not just about relationships, and so far it is a really interesting synthesis of what I've read and heard about feelings and the mind.

The book Difficult Conversations is geared toward interactions with other people, but I think the lessons are also valuable for understanding your own mental state and behaviors.

I made a fishing, farming and mining game about thoughts and feelings called Peace Of Mind.

There are characters in the game you can talk with about different ways of thinking and feeling. Ideas from Buddhism are about overcoming afflictive emotions and emotions of attachment. Stoicism is about asking is this situation up to me and if not then recognising that using emotional energy isn't helpful. Humanism teaches that we are rational, always have a choice and can choose what we think by responding rather than reacting. There is some cognitive behaviour therapy mentioned when talking about Humanism.

The game has a built in journal function to write about thoughts and feelings.

Some of the other techniques mentioned in the game are visualisation where you can picture thoughts or feelings being placed in a bubble or cloud and being carried away, or placed in a river and taken downstream. Another is visualising gigantic scissors that cut emotional cords attached to people, places and things.

I released Peace Of Mind on itch.io.

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