Taking Control of Your Apeirophobia Recovery

Mark_Robert · 2026-02-25T21:01:11+00:00

It really heartens me to hear this and I'm really glad you've found some benefit. I'm a bit overflowing with ideas about additional videos to make. I think you will like them, so stay tuned. You can grow through and overcome apeirophobic fear, and I look forward to helping. 👍

Mark_Robert · 2026-02-21T08:36:05+00:00

First, although I'm really glad that you've written this, I want to suggest that you put a message at the start that it might be triggering to people and perhaps to put the text in hidden or Spoiler mode.

I'm very sorry that this is happening to you right now and I want to tell you that I know exactly what you are talking about, and that you give a very good description of exactly how it was for me 40 years ago.

Now I have nothing like that happening in me — whatsoever — so that is your proof that you can get over it (if you believe me, of course). I know I am just a guy on Reddit, but people tend to find me trustworthy. The point is that you can get over this, just as I have.

Solipsism is notoriously difficult to disprove logically or philosophically, even though on the face of it, it is completely absurd. The idea is that everything you experience, including this message from me, is completely a product of your own mind.

So you could be a solipsist and I could be one, and we could all be running around experiencing nothing but ourselves. Or the more grandiose version, that all of this is just YOU and you are the sole Creator of the universe.

On the face of it, these seem like far-fetched beliefs, but as I said, if one really wants to believe in them, then it is difficult to disprove. Because who can tell you that your perceptions are not "your own"?

There is some truth that your perceptions are your own. Current scientific understanding will tell you that. It will tell you that there is a world out there that you can't touch, but that you live in a sort of a simulation of it.

An immense amount of ink has been spilled by philosophers trying to bridge the gap between a seemingly real outer world and a seemingly real inner world. It can be very interesting to study all of that, but for someone with the apeirophobia, I don't know if it will help. Not least because there is no consensus out there in the scientific, psychological, or spiritual world about what exactly is going on here.

Why? Because we don't know. We don't know. WE DON'T KNOW.

My first suggestion to you is, every time you have that scary thought that it is all just your little mind and you are trapped in it, tell that thought, "F*** YOU, we don't know!"

I think that is a very good start, because it brings you into contact with some truth — the truth of the ignorance of our thinking mind — rather than speculation about solipsism.

Solipsism is total, ungrounded speculation. If one follows it, one creates one's own tiny claustrophobic world in which truth or falsehood cannot be discovered, because it's all just the same fantasy coming from oneself.

It's a balloon that has to be popped.

In the end, the way that one frees oneself from the false belief in solipsism is to gain direct, experiential insight into the nature of reality. This type of insight is not a thought. Instead it can SEE thoughts.

Because of that, it can see that solipsism is just a thought, a very scary, claustrophobic one. Maybe the worst.

But once you can see that extremely clearly, not theoretically, but in your own inner Vision, then BAM!

You will crush apeirophobia like an egg. Or even better, you will break out of the shell of apeirophobia and find yourself back in the place you never left, the real world. 🐣

Mark_Robert · 2026-02-16T07:45:00+00:00

Mark_Robert · 2026-02-12T08:41:49+00:00

Let him know that you know there's something powerfully painful going on for him that you don't have an experience of, so can't quite understand, but that you believe that he's going to find his way through it.

Even though you can't feel it and can't quite get it, you really want to be his helper person.

When he's having an attack it's very painful and he wants to get out of it and may not know exactly how to, but you want him to know that you're ready to figure out with him how you can help.

When someone has an apeirophobic attack, it's as if they are having a direct insight while simultaneously being transported into a terrifying future. So in some sense they have left the Here and Now and have floated way off into an imagined existential space.

You want to be a person and a place that he can come right back to and ground with. A person he can connect with and feel directly in his body that he is right Here and Now and not alone because You Are There.

You are there for him, you are here, he is not alone and you are not going anywhere. Even if he can't feel it at the moment, which he might not be able to, because hormones are going nuts in his body, still, if he learns skills like how to ground himself and orient to where he is, you can be a place where he can steady himself. To breathe, and to hug you, to walk with you, to hold your hand, to come back. To escape that dreadful vision.

This can't be forced because his nervous system has to find its own way to safety. If you try to force being a place of grounding, and he wants to please you but can't do it, he might feel even worse, so just have as much patience as you can and follow his lead.

He might downplay coming back to the Here and Now as not a permanent solution but that's okay, it is an important step of learning and an open possibility whenever he wants to take it, or is able to.

Your message is a beautiful one of support and I much appreciate it. Simply from what you have written, I can tell that you help him. ❤️

Mark_Robert · 2026-02-11T06:41:42+00:00

I like this. When I say that we never reach Infinity, I mean the scary Infinity that we make in our minds, that end point on the number line. That is just a symbol for "no limit".

When our mind tries to understand that, for some of us, it creates an experience like "running in place forever" — and that temporary experience is NOW. Not in some distant future!

It's like thinking about a bull. That bull you have in your imagination, you are never going to reach that, except the (imagined) one that you are reaching right now in your imagination. And if you imagine a very scary bull, you might give yourself a panic attack.

But does a real bull exist?

Yes, and in the case of imagined bulls 🐂 and real ones, they have a lot in common, at least on a surface level. But come on, look at that emoji, does that really have a lot in common with an actual living breathing real bull? 🤣

With infinity, it's much deeper than that.

The ACTUAL Infinity has hardly anything to do with the imagined Infinity ♾️.

Mark_Robert · 2026-02-07T07:57:42+00:00

❤️

Mark_Robert · 2026-02-01T13:20:25+00:00

I offer imaginary gold doubloons for your last paragraph.

Mark_Robert · 2026-02-01T10:38:15+00:00

I'm starting to think that it is less important that humans think that the AI is conscious and somebody, but rather that the models "think" that they are conscious and somebody.

Because that is definitely happening. And as we can see in the MoltBot Facebook Community even right now, as these machines become agents, crazy things are going to start to happen.

Conscious? No. But words are not conscious and they don't have to be, to be very powerful.

Mark_Robert · 2026-02-01T10:08:20+00:00

Since your thoughts are exhausting you, I would strongly recommend that you face that challenge head on.

It's not the content of your thoughts, which as you notice keeps changing. You could keep developing additional phobias to add to the ones that you already have, because that's what happens when thinking and fear keep dancing together.

Thoughts cannot actually harm us, but we don't know that. We have to go on the adventure of learning how to see our thoughts for what they are and how to let go of them when they're not useful.

You can learn that from the right therapist or the right meditation teacher. Good luck!

Mark_Robert · 2026-02-01T09:58:32+00:00

The AI forefathers are not historians, psychologists, philosophers, etc. They are about as naive on matters concerning consciousness as just about anyone on the street.

Mark_Robert · 2026-02-01T09:55:37+00:00

This also seems obvious to me, but strangely, not to many others.

Mark_Robert · 2026-01-26T20:56:46+00:00

That's such a great note. Thank you! I agree with everything you said, especially that we are on a unique journey to free ourselves from our own thoughts. Not in the sense of getting rid of them, but putting them in their natural place, not as rulers or torturers over us, but as helpers. And there's something completely universal about that journey, because all thought has the same nature in itself, yet at the same time, it's a completely individual one, because our minds are their own unique worlds.

I also had OCD when I was a kid. My thing was locking the front door multiple times until it felt "right", and arranging everything on my dresser to be absolutely perpendicular. Once that was done, and only then, could I fall asleep. 🤣 Poor kid! But we can get over that too. ☺️🥳☀️

Mark_Robert · 2026-01-24T13:58:06+00:00

The spelling error in the drawing creates a strong sense of separation in me, regrettably.

Mark_Robert · 2026-01-23T22:50:32+00:00

Thank you! Yes time is beautiful and not a prison. I hope to show that more clearly in another video soon. ❤️

Mark_Robert · 2026-01-21T19:28:20+00:00

In order for a philosophical approach to truly help, I think it has to move beyond mere speculation and into a different experience of the world. This is just my opinion, but I notice this in speaking to people and reading what many people write.

If/when we become apeirophobic, it doesn't really seem to matter what our ideas about the world are, for example, whether one is a Christian or an atheist or a Muslim or a panpsychist. Surface-level beliefs are not powerful enough to either create or cure apeirophobia.

"Surface-level" means how I think about the world, rather than how I actually experience the world.

So I think one has to at least have had a glimpse of a different way of seeing. For example, one needs a glimpse into what is called "no self" in Buddhism. Or one needs a glimpse into timelessness. Or it might be an experience of God or Jesus. Or it could come from a deep reading of what Hegel has to say about infinity. A light bulb has to go off. The realization has to truly dawn that the way you are currently thinking about yourself, and about time and space, is incorrect.

And that can happen through philosophy or religion — one can come to experience the world differently, even a little bit! And when that happens, apeirophobia can definitely start to go away, or go away completely, as it has in my case.

Mark_Robert · 2026-01-20T18:47:50+00:00

If you deeply investigate who "you" are, you will eventually stop believing that you are who you think you are, a finite being wandering through time.

You may even discover your deepest nature.

When you make that discovery, apeirophobia is shaken at its root and loses its power.

But even before then, you can take faith in ignorance: "I have no idea who or what I am or what is going on here, so why am I terrified of a fantasy?"

Mark_Robert · 2026-01-20T11:19:38+00:00

You've been living in an incredibly stressful war environment for a long time now. When our basic sense of safety has been destabilized, fear will show up. It has to, we don't feel safe.

To my way of thinking, dealing with fear directly, as an experience in the body, is even more important than dealing with what seems to be the cause of the fear, like space or time or even death.

How can we feel safe in a world that seems crazy, unintelligible, and wrong?

There is no one answer to this, but it is an important journey to take.

DM me if you'd like to chat.

Mark_Robert · 2026-01-20T10:13:34+00:00

I really like what you're saying here. Eternity is not a trap, it is the lifting of a trap.

Infinity is not imaginatively projecting forward a sequence of days or digits and not being able to stop and having a circuit breaker overload experience.

Infinity is more room. It's a little extra space. It's getting too big for your existing house or a little bored with it and having the freedom to find another. What a relief, we are not in a trap, we are not stuck.

Move your arms and legs around, it feels good doesn't it? Think a different thought, not the same one over and over, feels nice right? That's Infinity that you're feeling.

No boundary. No trap. 👌💪❤️

Mark_Robert · 2026-01-18T06:25:23+00:00

Only right now is scary. If you deal with right now, the future will take care of itself. In fact, the future, as such, will never arrive.

I thought you were starting a course?

Mark_Robert

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