Dear honey:

“my mind is my greatest enemy… I need a distraction”- healthy distractions such as reading an interesting book, listening to relaxing music, taking a walk outside, engaging with other people in a healthy way, all these are excellent distractions. But there is no way that you can distract yourself 24/7, or all your waking hours, from an enemy that lives in your head, aka your brain.

1. “How can I be less alone and accept myself for who I am?”- befriend your brain. The reason your  brain is thinking so much is because it is trying to find a solution or solutions to what causes you all this suffering. Its overthinking is its effort to help you.

This part of your brain that overthinks in its effort to help you, needs your help. It needs the help of a different part of your brain, a part that will calm and talk sense to the overthinking part of the brain. I’ll call it the Calming Part of the Brain (CPB, for short).

When you find yourself awake at night overthinking, go to the CPB, that is where you can learn over time to “fully be at peace with (yourself)”. Let your CPB tell your overthinking brain that all that overthinking is not helping at all, it just causes you more distress and more suffering.

Develop your CPB, have a list of calming thoughts ready there and calming visualizations as well, words and images that calm you personally. Go there every time you find yourself overthinking and distressed.

2. “How can I accept that I’ll have to constantly experience pain and that it is simply just a part of life?”- First, you will not have to constantly experience pain, you already don’t experience pain all the time. Second, the pain that you are experiencing in the present is the same pain that you already experienced in the past (“I’ve already been through a lot, growing up I’ve experienced a lot of pain and misery”). We humans keep experiencing our past until we are able to experience something new.

Let me know if what I wrote to you makes sense to you, and if you want, we can continue to communicate.

anita