Reddit mentions of The Emotional Life of Your Brain: How Its Unique Patterns Affect the Way You Think, Feel, and Live--and How You Can Change Them

Words out of my mouth. With the isolation thing, I have found some like-minded individuals who I can chill with from time to time to fall into worthwhile conversation and debate. Tending to be INTJs, (not like that matters), the fresh insight and alternative perspectives that they provide make me value another's company and appreciate some relationships. Still, my amount of solitude is ridiculous. I love it, but can make me feel inadequate and ashamed when around others. A quote (from the movie Hot Rod... I know) I like to remind myself of: It's only embarrassing if you care what people think.

In terms of thinking spirals, the incessant flow of my thoughts was actually what led to my exploration of the world of intoxication. This could numb my head for a while, but believe it or not I quickly grew to miss my constant internal monologue. It's part of who you are as a person, and hey if anything it keeps things interesting.

The depressive and anxious states can be closely correlated with the constant analyzing (duh) due to the exhausting nature of such thinking, but the two are much higher correlated when negative thinking patterns have etched a strong synaptic path in your brain. Back in June I finally realized just how wholly and severely this subconscious negative spin had on my mental, emotional, perspective, and social states. Remember when you were a kid, and you'd swim in a circle in the hot tub to make a whirlpool, then suddenly try to swim in the opposite direction? That is literally (yes literally) how I visualized my thinking spiral in my mind, deciding to try to push against the current and shift my thought patterns into the opposite direction. I began reading up on not only how to shift my thinking into a clockwise direction, (get it, like counter-clockwise is negativity because you keep going back and cluttering your mind with thoughts of the past), but also why to make such a shift. Show me the statistically significant evidence and I'm in.

It's been almost four months to the day now; I've had multiple people comment on how positive, optimistic, and upbeat I am, which I find utterly hilarious. I haven't had any sharp dips in emotion, I am better able to focus my time and energy on the task at hand, and I feel almost as if I have a clearer lens on my perspective of life. It isn't even a conscious thing, which was exactly the goal. In fact, this is the first time I've thought about this in a number of months. My reflex response now moves in the clockwise (wise ha) direction of thinking. Looks like I've finally reversed the swirl of water in my whirlpool!

I'll link the sources that helped my mental shift if you want. This is really long I'm going to stop now. As much as I feel I can never properly express myself, this feels good to write it out. Thanks for that.

Edit: Hope I don't sound like I've got it all figured out. Just sharing a small victory that has had slight yet significant benefit on my life.

Edit: SOME THINGS I'VE FOUND HELPFUL: (I can't give full credit to any one thing... ultimately I just held it in the back of my mind as a goal, subconsciously acting on it)

• Mind Over Mood (workbook) by Greenberger & Padesky
  
  
• Meditations to Change Your Brain by Hanson & Mendius I highly recommend this audiobook. It allows for guided meditation... convenient and helpful. The only breakdown of the chapters that I've found is here
  
  
• On that note, Mindfulness Meditation aka Compassion Training (found in some chapters... want to say Ch 5 or 6? of the audiobook linked directly above)(the gist of it)[http://youtu.be/AKKg3CDczpA?t=23m33s]
  
  ^^ These have been most helpful to me.
  
  
• The entire lecture by Richard Davidson as also linked above is a great watch if you have some time
  
  
• The Emotional Life of Your Brain by Richard Davidson
  
  
• Words Can Change Your Brain by Newberg & Waldman
  
  
• The connections between mind-body-mood which I learned about via a CBT clinical psychology course... This is helpful for understanding just how much influence your thinking has. this is the gist
  
  
• the whole field of Positive Psychology check this out or this
  
  
• Verbal Tics That Define Us and How They Spread to Others
  
  
• The Power of Suggestion
  
  
• Can't talk about pushing for self growth without this... The Dark Side of Self-Improvement
  
  
• Ignore the title of this - I personally like this article for how neatly it organizes our levels of thought. A recent post and thus a recent read, this article has made me more aware of when I'm experiencing "primal" negative patterns, allowing me to cast such indulgent and immature thoughts aside much more easily. A longer read but WOW is it worth it.
  
  
• okay I actually just came across this website but it's actually really relevant + free + seems cool based on my 3 mins of exploring it
  
  
  
  From there, I think it was a mix of past knowledge and (some of) the sources I mentioned above, as well as random other readings and conversations. I want to continue linking things but I must go study. Here's a science of happiness research article dump (stolen from Happify): http://my.happify.com/research/ . Or just go to http://my.happify.com/science for scaled down summaries of some of these (have to make a free account first I believe... worth it).
  
  
  
  Y'all looking at this list I made I'm frustrated because I can't pinpoint one specific source that pushed me from contemplation into action. Hopefully these resources in addition to your own experiences will be enough for at least one of you to make a significant and lasting change.

Recommended Reading:

• Nudge (by Richard Thaler)
  
• Predictably Irrational (by Dan Ariely, he's great)
  
• Drunk Tank Pink (by Adam Alter)
  
• The Design of Everyday Things (by Don Norman, the godfather of cognitive psych)
  
• Brain Rules (by John Medina)
  
• The Tipping Point and What the Dog Saw (by Malcolm Gladwell)
  
• edit: Thinking Fast and Slow (by Daniel Kahneman)
  
• edit: The Emotional Life of Your Brain (by Richard Davidson & Sharon Begley)
  
  (Those are just the ones I have sitting on my bookshelf... I have a dozen more on my Kindle that I can add to the list if you're interested.)
  
  ---------
  
  Authors & Speakers (lots of TED Talks):
  
  
• Dan Ariely
  
• Malcolm Gladwell
  
• Rory Sutherland
  
• Daniel Pink
  
• Simon Sinek
  
• Robert Sapolsky (evolutionary biology professor at Stanford and hidden gem)
  
  ---------
  
  Let's start a book club! :)

I went to one AA meeting when I first got clean and never went back. I understand people have found support and success in it but to me, personally, I felt it only increased the stigma of drug addicts as these broken hopeless people barely hanging on by a thread. It's an outdated system that relies on little science or attempting to progress the participants and relies more on holding people in place and focusing on the past. Instead I just worked towards becoming a normal person. Here are some of the resources I used:

r/Fitness - Getting Started: Exercise is probably the #1 thing that will aid you in recovering. It can help your brain learn to produce normal quantities of dopamine again as well as improve your heath, mood, well being and confidence.

Meetup: You can use this site to find people in your area with similar interests. I found a hiking group and a D&D group on here which I still regularly join.

Craigslist: Same as above - look for groups, activities, volunteer work, whatever.

Diet

This will be the other major player in your recovery. Understanding your diet will allow you to improve your health,mood, energy, and help recover whatever damage the drugs may have done to your body.

How Not To Die Cookbook

Life Changing Foods

The Plant Paradox

Power Foods For The Brain

Mental Health

Understand whats going on inside your head and how to deal with it is also an important step to not only recovery but enjoying life as a whole.

Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy

The Emotional Life Of Your Brain

Furiously Happy

The Science of Enlightenment: How Meditation Works

Educational

If you are like me you probably felt like a dumbass when you first got clean. I think retraining your brain on learning, relearning things you may have forgot after long term drug use, and just learning new things in general will all help you in recovery. Knowledge is power and the more you learn the more confident in yourself and future learning tasks you become.

Illegal Drugs: A Complete Guide to their History, Chemistry, Use, and Abuse

Why Nations Fails

Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud

The Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the 20th Century

Thinking, Fast and Slow

The Financial Peace Planner: A Step-by-Step Guide to Restoring Your Family's Financial Health

Continued Education / Skills Development

EdX: Take tons of free college courses.

Udemy: Tons of onine courses ranging from writing to marketing to design, all kinds of stuff.

Cybrary: Teach yourself everything from IT to Network Security skills

Khan Academy: Refresh on pretty much anything from highschool/early college.

There are many more resources available these are just ones I myself have used over the past couple years of fixing my life. Remember you don't have to let your past be a monkey on your back throughout the future. There are plenty of resources available now-a-days to take matters into your own hands.

*Disclaimer: I am not here to argue about anyone's personal feelings on AA**

There are treatments, either with medications or / and cognitive therapy (or both). You should consult a specialist, someone that could truly help you not some people on the webz...

You can get lucky because of your looks, but if you want to have the real fun, you have to be able to act socially. Without proper care and professional help, you will have a hard time both in seduction and in life. We, as a species where able to achieve greatness by being social.

A great book talks about the advances in cognitive therapy and how it could help you (even more, considering your situation), you can see the link here:
https://www.amazon.ca/Emotional-Life-Your-Brain-Live/dp/0452298881

You should read it or listen to it (in audio format).

Yeah, I know what you mean. My guess is that their research involved "forcing thought changes" in people while they're under MRI, locating common patterns in this activity, and eventually arriving at their best current definition of a "thought."

(I'm recently interested in this subject after finishing reading "The Emotional Life of Your Brain", highly recommend it.)

If anyone is interested in reading more about the neuroscience of meditation, check out the work of Richard Davidson.

Here are some links for the product in the above comment for different countries:

Amazon Smile Link: Richard Davidson


|Country|Link|Charity Links|
|:-----------|:------------|:------------|
|USA|smile.amazon.com|EFF|
|UK|www.amazon.co.uk|Macmillan|
|Spain|www.amazon.es||
|France|www.amazon.fr||
|Germany|www.amazon.de||
|Japan|www.amazon.co.jp||
|Canada|www.amazon.ca||
|Italy|www.amazon.it||
|India|www.amazon.in||




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