The Voice in Your Mind

The Voice in Your Mind

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Hey guys,

In this episode, we are starting a new series on Meditation and Mindfulness. To begin this series I am going to discuss the ‘voice in your mind’ and how it fuels the OCD, Anxiety, and Psychological Stress.

I am going to be reviewing a short passage from the book The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle and share some top insights from this book as well. 

I hope this episode can help you gain a little more perspective on the ‘voice in your mind’ and how you can start interacting with it differently to build better mental health. 

TRANSCRIPT

(00:00):

All right. Hey, my friends. And welcome back to another episode of the show. My name is Matt Hottie. I'm a licensed clinical social worker and the founder of restored minds. And on today's episode, we are going to be diving in to the voice in the mind. And I'm going to also be tying in, in this series, the idea of meditation and mindfulness and how all this stuff kind of ties together with OCD and anxiety. So what I wanted to do today is I wanted to read an excerpt of the book, the power of now by Eckhart. Totally. Now many of you have probably

(00:34):

Um, there's a, a really profound, um, you know, section, I mean, the book obviously is, is a, a great book, highly recommend it, but there's this, this quote here that I think is very powerful to understand when it comes to this idea of anxiety and what drives our anxiety and what fuels most of our anxiety and OCD as well. So, um, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go ahead and read the quote here. So, um, it reads until my 30th year, I lived in a state of almost continuous anxiety, um, inter dispersed with a periodical thoughts of suicidal depression. It feels now as if I'm talking about some past lifetime or someone else's life, this is [inaudible] talking about himself. I said, one night, not long after my 29th birthday, I woke up in the early hours with a feeling of absolute dread. Now, many of us can relate to that, right?

(01:25):

I had woken up with such with such a feeling many times before, but this time it was more intense than I'd ever been the silence of the night, the vague outlines of the furniture and the dark room, the distant noise of a passing train, everything felt so alien, so hostile. And so utterly, utterly meaningless that it created in me, a deep loving of the world, the most low sum thing of all, however, was my own existence. What was the point of continuing to live in this burden of misery? Why carry on with this continuous struggle? I continue, uh, I, I'm sorry. I could feel that the deep longing for a nine year annihilation for non-existence was now becoming much stronger than the instinctive desire to continue to live. And he continues. So, I mean, obviously like just that right there. I mean, I know many of us, including myself can, can relate to that.

(02:19):

I mean, maybe not to that extent for myself, um, if I'm transparent, but definitely, um, you know, moments where it has been, you know, like where OCD and anxiety was just so overwhelming that the idea of, of continuing another day, the idea of waking up and doing it all again, right? Like, it's just like, I don't know how I'm going to get through today. Right. And I know many of us have, have felt like that. And there's a real good probability. If you wrestle with OCD, anxiety that you have to. Um, and then, so he continues on, and this is kind of the point of wherever they want to get to is that he says at any quotes, I cannot live with myself any longer. Right. Any, and that's the quote that he has. And he says, this was the one thought that kept repeating itself in my mind. Then suddenly I became aware of a peculiar thought what a peculiar thought it was M I one or two question Mark. If I can not live with myself, then there must be two of me. The I, and the self that I cannot live with, maybe I thought one of them is real. Only one of them is real. So,

(03:30):

You know, when I, when I say about that,

(03:34):

I mean, I remember reading that a long time ago and, you know, occasionally I'll revisit books, you know, and, and I encourage you to do so too, because you know, so many times the first time I read a book, it's like, we'll read something and it just, we just won't even receive it. We won't even know what a powerful sentence or a powerful statement was because at that point of our journey, I just, wasn't something that we were ready to receive. Right. And, um, and oftentimes when you revisit a book, it's like that one sentence that you passed over before is now like that profound thing that you were ready for it, this point in your journey, right. And

(04:05):

The key to this here, right, is that,

(04:08):

You know, so much of our OCD and anxiety is fueled with this voice of the mind,

(04:15):

Right. This voice, that's just chatting

(04:19):

Away, usually, you know, spouting out these, what if thoughts? Right. And what if this, what if this terrible thing happens? What if that terrible thing happens? Right. You know? And, and then the more and more we listen to this voice, right? The more overwhelming life becomes because life then seems like one big problem that we have to solve. And the thing is, we're always solving these problems that are future based, right? Like what if, you know, fill in the blank, right? What is, is, and we're always worrying about this next thing that we may have to resolve, not realizing that for the most part, when we're just here, like right now

(04:53):

That this is where, you know, like we can handle right now. Right.

(04:59):

We, you know, we've always been able to handle right now. You've made it up to this point in your life handling right now, when life becomes unmanageable is when we try to solve things that don't exist because they don't exist. And so we don't know how exactly to solve them. And if you think about your life,

(05:14):

Whatever, you've gone through,

(05:15):

You know, good, bad indifferent, you've been able to get through it because you're here. Right. And the only logical way to go about this is to handle right now. And that's what his book is really about. Right? The idea of the power of now, now is, is free. Now is, you know, something that you always have been and always will be able to handle because your mind knows what's going on right now. Therefore it knows how to direct you right now. It doesn't mean that you won't have pain. It doesn't mean that you won't have hard times. Of course, that's part of life, right? It doesn't even mean that you won't feel anxious. Right. But most of our suffering

(05:53):

That we experience is

(05:55):

Not just about it. It comes from this idea of trying to solve something that doesn't yet exist. Right. And then when we invest so much effort to that, that's what then drives a lot of our feelings of depression and hopelessness, because we're always trying to solve something and solve. And we look at life as one huge problem. Right. And even if it's not a problem that's happening right now, it's a problem that may happen in the future. And this voice of our mind, that's what it's trying to do. Right. It's trying to

(06:22):

Create these possible what ifs so that we

(06:26):

Then can protect ourselves from these terrible futuristic things that could happen to us. Right. And, um, you know, I just, I just thought it was such a powerful statement because once you realize that you are not the voice of the mind, right. You are the one who hears it. Right. And that's what Michael singer talks about in his book, the untethered soul, right. This idea of like, there's the I, and then there's the, uh, you know, the one that I can't live with, I can't live with myself, like, who is I? And who's myself. Right. Like even asking yourself that question. Right. Cause I'm sure, you know, there's, there may have been times where you've had that exact thought. Like, I just, I just can't go on like this. I can't live with myself anymore. Who's I who's myself. Right. And, and even just staying with that, you know, this week and really asking yourself that question, like, who is I and who is myself?

(07:16):

Right. Um, and what that means for you. Like, what if you did start to look at this voice as something other than you, something that you had a choice to listen to, something that you had a choice to respond to. Um, you know, because when you see it as such, then, then there's there's options. Right. But when you see this voice as you, and everything that is saying is you, and no matter what it's saying is something that you have to pay attention to, you have to listen to. Right. I mean like that, that is what causes, you know, most of our suffering in our life, you know, most of our suffering is actually self-created, um, believe it or not. And, and again, I went through this for, for many, many years. So when I say this is because like, look, I've lived it. Right.

(07:58):

And, um, you know, for anyone on this, on this journey right now, if this is something you're struggling with, it doesn't matter what the, what if thought is right. But even just that realization that you are not the voice of the mind, you are the one who hears it. Right. And that 99.99, 9% of the time, that voice of the mind is spouting out stuff. That just isn't true. Isn't even real. Right. Just, it's just random predictions about the future. I mean, think about how many times that voice in your mind has predicted something and it never happened. Think about all the things that never predicted that then happened. Right. I mean, you know, like these are the questions though. So once we can start to step back and as opposed to looking at what you're worrying about as the problem, the, maybe even the fact that you're listening so much for so intently, even to start even looking at the problem from that lens can sometimes open up whole new doors for your recovery. So anyways, um, that was just a thought that I wanted to share today, um, in, in this week, because again, I think that, that, that one thing can often be that like that idea alone can, can be one of those things that can open up a completely new perspective of this. Right. And as opposed to listening to the content of what that voice is saying, even recognizing that there is a voice, right. And recognizing that you aren't that voice recognizing that you hear this

(09:16):

Voice. Right. And,

(09:18):

And what that really means. And that's subject object awareness there and just how powerful that can be for your recovery. And so, um, and what we're going to do is we're going to, as we continue on this series, I want to talk about, you know, what mindfulness is, what meditation is and why we even do those things and why they help with our recovery so much. Because a lot of people think that what we're trying to do is use mindfulness and meditation to stop this voice or to silence it or, you know, or whatever. And that's just not the case. Right. And so in this series, we're going to dive in more to that. Um, but again, that's, um, that's all I wanted to share today. So if you found this helpful, um, in Reno, we have additional resources and trainings for your restored minds.com, just look in the links below. Um, and you know, we just wanted to say, thank you so much for taking the time to hang out today also would really help us if you could please share this and subscribe, um, and like as well, so that, um, you know, we can get this information to people that are really struggling. So thank you so much for hanging out today. Hope you guys have a great week and I look forward to seeing you as we continue this series together. Um, thanks so much, guys, have a great week.