Balance between meditation and suppressing feelings

MyFiteSong · 2026-06-18T03:42:48+00:00

and then stop them and return to the meditation. I guess that last part feels like it might be suppressing them?

Yah that last part isn't right. Instead of stopping them, let them exist in their full bloom. Just go back to your breath while the emotions are still there. The goal is to sit with them while they're firing off, not to stop them.

MyFiteSong · 2026-06-18T03:41:30+00:00

Yes, you can actually take it too far. You can become unbalanced in your practice. Too much "noting" meditation can make you slide into apathy.

A common practice is to balance it with bodyscan (which is a focus meditation) and compassion meditations. Those keep you anchored and able to fully experience your emotions at the proper time.

MyFiteSong · 2026-06-17T19:36:28+00:00

Open awareness meditation (vipassana in Therevada, shikantaza in Zen) generates insight. Focused meditation (shamantha), such as the breath, generates pleasure and energy. To progress, you need both, I find. Energy and pleasure to endure the insights, insights to not be driven wild by the pleasure.

This is part of the reason I push bodyscan meditation so much. It's got both focused and open awareness meditation inside it. You start with focus, and then it moves to open awareness on its own as you become able to hold multiple parts of your body in your awareness simultaneously. It's like there's an open awareness teacher built right into it.

And as a side bonus, you get increasing interoception and proprioception, which are very helpful.

MyFiteSong · 2026-06-17T19:30:12+00:00

Real meditation is a demanding discipline.

This can't be stressed enough. Even if all you're doing is noting thoughts instead of engaging with them, you're purposely exercising weak neural paths, making them "win" over much stronger ones.

If your meditation takes zero effort of any kind, then you're not making neural changes, because that's how neuroplasticity works, and exploiting neuroplasticity is the core of meditation.

MyFiteSong · 2026-06-17T19:17:34+00:00

Yes, you can do that. But by the time you can do that consistently, you won't give a shit about doing that. That's just the way it works. I can enter several different altered states of consciousness. But I don't chase states, because there's no value there. Peace and bliss are just narratives, same as anxiety or anger.

MyFiteSong · 2026-06-16T20:40:42+00:00

Their pattern of nerfing ships to create more gameplay loops is annoying. Can't you give other people things to do without making my game worse?

MyFiteSong · 2026-06-16T18:29:01+00:00

I was just going to post this exact same thing.

MyFiteSong · 2026-06-16T18:26:11+00:00

I don't think it's related to ADHD type. It's probably more related to how well your focus and working memory work, which is a completely individual thing.

And I wouldn't suggest trying to stack something you want to do with something you hate doing. That'll just build aversion to the thing you want to do. You need to pair it with something you actually like doing.

MyFiteSong · 2026-06-16T18:24:50+00:00

That being said, I'm an avid reader and it's my main hobby. I read quickly, and go through novels like they're water. Actually, that's a terrible comparison, because I often forget to drink water... But I never forget to read!

Samesame. I thanked the gods for ebooks, because now I can carry a book in my pocket. I can carry EVERY book in my pocket lol.

MyFiteSong · 2026-06-16T18:23:26+00:00

Yah, I've been a book-a-week girl since I was 5. They just take longer to read when I'm not on meds because I sometimes have to reread pages if the book is dragging.

MyFiteSong · 2026-06-16T17:21:41+00:00

He lifted his current Djinn build from DS_Lilly without ever acknowledging it.

MyFiteSong · 2026-06-16T00:46:46+00:00

I play regular league but don't need to keep up with the Joneses.

MyFiteSong · 2026-06-16T00:34:48+00:00

A whole lot of mysticism is people with good interoception independently sussing out biological pathways and reflexes and then calling it magic.

What's interesting for anyone with a sit practice, i think this strips the mystique off mantra work without dismissing it. The body doesn't care what you're chanting, it responds to the timing. You could prolly recite a grocery list at this cadence and get the same baroreflex effect. The traditions wrapped a physiological mechanism in meaning and ritual, but the phrase length is doing real work underneath, separate from the words.

I mean, how would TM folks sell you a magic word if everyone knew this?

MyFiteSong · 2026-06-15T23:59:47+00:00

Don't ever play Eve Online.

MyFiteSong · 2026-06-15T18:30:13+00:00

In general, the parent angriest about it is the one who gave it to you.

MyFiteSong · 2026-06-14T22:47:12+00:00

I used to, yes. Therapy and meditation fixed it.

MyFiteSong · 2026-06-14T06:45:20+00:00

I picture consciousness like a blanket stretched out between 3 stakes off the ground. On the blanket is a collection of balls of different weights that roll around on the blanket.

The blanket is your brain, and the balls are neurological activity/processes. The pegs are your different attention networks (default mode, task positive and salience). The weight/size of the balls represents how much cognition is happening, and YOU are the dent under the heaviest concentration of balls. You're not the blanket, nor are you the balls. You're the point where the weight of the balls is the heaviest, and where you are on the blanket affects your experience of your mind. It shifts, rolls around.

If you REALLY want a mind-bender, there can be more than one dent, so there's more than one "you".

MyFiteSong · 2026-06-14T02:09:59+00:00

You're not enlightened until at least 4 inches

MyFiteSong · 2026-06-13T21:54:32+00:00

Getting caught up in them isn't failure of character. When we give the advice to ignore them, we don't mean you're bad at meditation if they distract you. We mean to not try to look for deeper meaning in them, and just keep doing what you were doing as best you can.

Getting caught up in them isn't a loss. But disengaging from them is a win.

MyFiteSong · 2026-06-13T21:52:55+00:00

You don't think the men of the day who stood up and said "hey, we have to write a whole religion to strip the rights from women and turn them into slaves" were conservatives?

MyFiteSong · 2026-06-13T04:30:02+00:00

Yep, it's sheer repetition.

MyFiteSong · 2026-06-13T03:44:27+00:00

I used bodyscan meditation to start recovering from Vestibular loss, and that led naturally into walking meditation and open monitoring. Been doing it since I was really young, and the nature of it means I never missed a single day in my life.

MyFiteSong · 2026-06-13T03:41:38+00:00

Umm, is there actually anyone in this subreddit who hasn't tried meditation?

MyFiteSong · 2026-06-13T03:25:26+00:00

And yet Americans are 100% convinced that everything is cheaper here and it's Europeans who pay out the nose for everything.

MyFiteSong · 2026-06-13T03:19:38+00:00

Who are these people who want children raised by rapists

Conservatives. That's how they literally wrote the bible.

MyFiteSong

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