When did life force you into a period of total isolation?

Maybe a few snowstorms, where I was snowed in and stuck to hang out for a day or two, but not for long. That was prior to social media. Now, I would love to be stuck in a cozy house for a few days, in a snowstorm, as long as I had food and TV/internet and some stuff to read.

Age 45 when I realized being single was best for me. There was one particular drawback, but you can’t have everything.

Oh you are now in my head and I don’t think I’m liking that much.

The loss of a precious loved one.

@RayaHope – ATTENTION ON DUTY ENSIGN TRENDY.

@JLoon Yes Ma,am! Sorry I though my video feed was secretly turned on. (gulp)

When I was 15 I was in reform school and was put in solitary confinement for trying to escape. I was there for 8 days with nothing but a toilet, sink and cot affixed to the wall with a flat pillow and thin blanket. They’ve since done away with it for minors as cruel and unusual punishment, at least in that state. I don’t know about other states. They should outlaw it for everyone except for a brief period – 1–2 weeks. Locking people away for years with one hour of exersize a week is inhumane.

@smudges That was horrible! Why were you put in reform school? sorry don’t answer that

I think I’m currently experiencing this right now. There is nothing affecting me, I’m not forced into a corner or something. But at the same time I just don’t feel like talking as much as I used to? I really want to talk, but I just don’t have as much motivation to talk anymore. I really don’t like what is happening and I don’t know why I’m like that. Maybe it has something to do with some bad things that happen to me lately.

I can think of a few reasons why:

- I’m heading toward depression.
– I’m just bored with the normal conversation and want something more stimulating.
– I’m still dealing with the effect of the trauma.

@RayaHope Thanks! I had moved in with my 21 y.o. boyfriend (whom I later married) and my dad sicced the police on us. My dad said he didn’t think they could control me so I was sent to reform school for 8 months.

@Mimishu1995 I have a very unpopular opinion on depression. And from what you say here and in another answer I think it might be relevant.

First I don’t think that depression is made up or anything. I have family who are diagnosed and take pills and see shrinks. I tried meds and they helped but were more trouble than it was worth. But maybe everyone is different. Anyways the point is I’m not discounting it.

So my idea for what depression is is this. I will try to be as clear and respectful as I can. I wont speak about trauma since I don’t know what happened to you and would be out of place but I’ve had some bad experiences myself which affect me still.

First lets just look at something like the emotion of sadness in an objective functional light. I’m sure allot of us know that emotions have functions. I see them as behavioral protocols as well as components of information. For example anger does some specific thing to the system which puts it in a mode suitable for combat. It creates a big surge of energy. It increases pain tolerance notably. It makes the mind and body quick. It makes you breath deeply. It does allot of very specific things all of which set up a mode for fighting and I believe it’s primarily physical although we often use it for verbal or mental fighting.

Similarly sadness is the same. It takes away all interest in the world and things. It makes you want to be very still and silent. It makes you dwell on things. Negative things like problems for longer than normal. It is literally a contemplation protocol. The feeling component which appears negative and destructive and like a symptom of something that is wrong with your system is really just information. Aside from ideas and concepts happening in the thought space, there is also feeling which happens in the body and is a different kind of information component aside from thoughts. Sadness even helps your body to relax. Because relaxation of the muscles is a crucial for allowing feeling to course through the body. It is a protocol for thinking and feeling your way through something which we can call a problem or obstacle or unwanted experience or fact. I should add also that it shifts the attention more to feeling than thinking.

Depression I believe is when something in your life or your mind causes your system to recognize a serious problem and the system responds in the way that it should and is designed to.

I came to this understanding through many experiences of overwhelming feelings of personal turmoil. And one day I just gave up because I truely had no way out. No way to distract myself, or move away from it. No way to try to fix it or do anything about it. I sat in a chair because there was nothing else I could do. I couldn’t kill myself because aside from not having the courage there were/are multiple reasons why I can’t do that. Aside from the obvious sense of the fact we shouldn’t kill ourselves or each other. And the sadness was so thick I couldn’t even think. It shut everything down. But thoughts always occur. The mind never really stops thinking in my experience. And I started automatically wanting to think about the worst stuff in my psyche. I don’t know why except that the sadness makes it so. It’s part of the protocol. And slowly and clearly I started affirming certain facts about myself in my mind as if in order to see what they felt like and a torrent of emotion came out of me. In the same thick stillness and total lack of resistance to anything. I started exhaling deeply with an open mouth which I discovered is a builtin mechanism for relaxing he muscles. Exhalation that is. When it was over I felt as if I had been hit with a tranquilizer or something and noticed that this negative thing was still there in my mind. As if my mental world, my internal copy of the facts about the world and myself and everything had been altered with this negative knowledge in a way I couldn’t erase. But I felt like a burden had been lifted. The anxiety from the turmoil had also greatly diminished. Many things happened after and being me I always tried to make sense of everything that was happening and learned many things in a short period of a few months. So a kind of small personal transformation.

What happened was a concealed part of the psyche was brought to like. It was always there but always avoided. In the process of integrating it into the psyche, things happen in the system. Tears for example I understand as a kind of anesthesia for this automatic psycho surgery that the mind and system does on itself. It has other functions too. Hence why people say crying is good. “blessed are those who weep” and all that. This is known as shadow work I discovered later.

Afterwards the anxiety caused by that so called shadow in the psyche is greatly diminished and although the world feels slightly tainted by it, your system works better and you feel and behave better.

Once I figured it out I let it happen again and again and it always would without me doing anything. Life will just automatically setup a situation for this to happen. In my perception I perceive it on a metaphysical level, but you need not even entertain such things. It can be purely rational, psychological and down to Earth. But its very automatic.

I’m saying too much again so let me try and give clear practical advice if you’re open to it. I mean only well.

1. Learn physical relaxation and even pay attention to your posture. This allows feeling to course through the system. We falsely believe that feelings can hurt us and we instinctively run away from allot of them but if you allow the feeling and emotion to be felt in full and run its course without reacting to it mentally or physically, then it does it’s job under the hood and evaporates leaving you not only feeling better but slightly transformed. That how I understand it. Others say different things. Some more rational. Some ethereal with talk of energies and stuff. But it’s all just conceptual framework for the mind to understand, recognize and work with it. So I don’t take ideas too seriously. The mind is the biggest obstacle and it will do all kinds of things to make us run away from our feelings and it’s very good at it.

2. Learn to value truth. I can’t explain this except as it is like mana or light or energy or medicine or whatever. It is found in concealed places. The mind has been diligently concealing truths about everything from the world to yourself in order to put of feeling feelings. It’s literally just running away from feelings. So this is what they mean when they say you have to learn courage and facing fears and that kind of thing. It’s for this reason.

3. When it happens, the only task you have is to not react. We react with thinking and making up stories and getting lost in thought to run away from feeling. It’s too complex to even describe here. When you’re so depressed that thoughts hurt, you won’t want to think anyway. And then true thoughts can happen automatically and naturally, slowly and clearly.

The boredom in my experience is from a long time of us distracting ourselves with things. The reward system comes into play and we become sort of like addicted to any kind of stimulation. This will dissipate naturally over time. I don’t get bored at all now and actually greatly value the few moments I get to be alone and not do anything and just sit entertaining myself with the most simple things. Like petting someones dog or letting the body rest while I look at the sky or whatever. There’s no more overwhelming tension and mental noise and need for stimulation.

Ok I have to stop speaking or I never will. I hope it doesn’t come off unsolicited advice and snobbish or something like that. I am sincere and mean well.

@wearemiracles thank you for responding to me. I wish I had the same kind of clarity as you. I have a feeling I know what is wrong with me, but I have no idea how to resolve it. I’m a practical person and I want to find concrete solutions for things, and I’m often thrown in a spiral if I can’t find one.

I’m also someone who seeks intellectual stimulation. I like to engage in things that require brainpower like talking about deep things. Maybe it’s the source of my boredom. Do you have the same urge? How do you reach the state when the smallest thing can entertain you?

@Mimishu1995 If you’re practical and like solutions then I suggest psychological work like psychotherapy or something like it. In recent times I have discovered some things about how the mind and psyche works and see now the value of such things as psychotherapy and why so many people, even spiritual people, recommend it. In a way, I see psychology as a kind of rational paradigm of the psyche where as spirituality seems to be a more irrational or ethereal paradigm on pretty much the same thing. It’s hard to explain because I don’t understand it all but I have a conviction that any kind of work on the psyche that is known to work is a good bet and can change your life. I’ve also heard great things about CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy). And if you happen to be spiritually inclined then I could make recommendations for good practical sources which are true and consistent such as the website lonerwolf.com. Eckheart Tolle in my mind also seems very practical and down to Earth, relatively speaking. Aside from true and consistent.

I do have the same urge for intellectual stimulation although I’m not an academic or that smart. It’s one of the things I had to face about myself. I always wanted to be something like a scientist but have been discovering my true nature more which is no longer that interested in science and tech and intelligence.

One thing I can say is I think I discovered the source of insight and creativity, atleast for me, in stillness and silence and going slow. And also the trust that comes with faith and conviction through personal growth or spiritual growth.

I still haven’t overcome my urge to be intellectual which goes hand in hand with talking, language and verbal reasoning. Right now I’m indulging. This is all a kind of shameless delicacy talking like this and it’s out of the desire to connect with people, because of loneliness. But if you can find a means to be alone and silent for prolonged periods, just doing that has quite an effect.

Basically once the psyche becomes more integrated through personal work in whatever form it may take, psychological, spiritual, accidental, whatever, things seem to open up, like insight, peace, even miracles tbh (in my opinion and perception). And it comes from inside. But the biggest obstacle, THE obstacle, is actually the thinking mind. So it’s very counter intuitive because as modern western people we trust our thinking so much yet it is the primary obstacle to personal growth and life and peace and truth and creativity. Even health in a weird way that would take to long to explain.

So a practical recommendation I suppose I could say that you might try, is:
1. If you’re inclined, then I guarantee that simple pray will do things for you. Literally just speaking plainly to whatever notion you have of a higher power and trying to be sincere, simple, truthful and open and loving (forgiving, accepting, etc). It could be God or the higher self or the universe. Whatever. Its internal and mysterious and that’s ok. The reason why this is the number one recommendation is because from there the rest will open up on its own. Meaning, I believe now that things happen by the grace of God, whatever that is. I know this from my experience. The mind will interpret things in various ways, but they are just interpretations. I used them like here as playful things, concepts and tools for understanding and communication and recall and stuff but all of this is just concept in a thought space which is not primary to life but I think secondary or tertiary. Feeling occupies a higher rank than thought. This I know.

2. If you’re not inclined to that then try breath work. I promise that if you do, however you learn it, it will change things for you. It was one of the keys to my progress. I should be dead but somehow I feel not so bad or overcome by life even though I still have serious life problems and social problems.

3. Meditation. I’m terrible at this still but it tends to happen automatically for me. What it is is a letting go. It’s literally the combination of relaxation, wakeful alertness, stillness of the body and eye, and mental silence. This allows feeling to flourish and behind it all is a state of bliss which is the essence of who and what you are. Your natural state they say is bliss, love and awareness and I now believe it’s true.

Nonetheless as you can see my mind is still quite rampant but I have no problem figuring life out when I need to and life forces me to on a daily basis. Life is our primary teacher. I understand this on a seemingly metaphysical level. And what it is teaching us is self-knowledge as deeply as it can. Of your body, your mind, and whatever is beneath and more fundamental to those two things.

I hope some of this makes sense and is helpful. Regardless life will automatically present you with the knowledge and teachings you need at the appropriate time.

edit: How to reach the state where the smallest thing can entertain you? Well it’s by not wanting entertainment. Entertainment in any form is a desire of the mind. And we can become very good at doing it. I can entertain my mind with literally nothing. I can even talk to myself. Mostly we just think and daydream when there is no other entertainment. What you need to try to do is shift attention or awareness away from your thought space and the way you do that is by shifting it to something else. Like the internal feeling in your body. You feel your muscles and tension and the attention evaporates physical tension further calming down the mind and the entire system. You feel your breath and learn how to follow it and that works hand in hand with relaxation. As all this is happening you become more still, more silent, more at ease, more alert and aware. When thoughts comes the thinking is much improved and that becomes the major distraction. Meaning you have to then fight the urge to constantly use is for thinking which I still struggle with.

I have been isolated before, but rarely by myself. Example: we had a bad winter storm one year. We lived in the middle of nowhere. I could not driver anywhere and due to ice accumulation we ended up losing power for 6 days. It was my (ex) wife and our child. We camped out in the living room in front of the fire place and stayed warm there. This was well before social media or cell phones so it was very primitive. But we played games, took periodic jaunts outside to check things out, read stories, etc.

It didn’t impact us too much. We had enough firewood to last and the stove was gas, which was still on, so cooking was no big deal. Because the water supply was pressurized by a pump in the basement (which didn’t work with no power), we had to use buckets of water to flush the toilet, supply water for cooking, etc.