Your internal monologue shapes your mental wellbeing. The silent conversations people have with themselves influence how they live their lives. Every person sometimes finds themselves listening to an unhelpful voice in their head. While learning how to harness the voice in our head is not a happy pill, it is possible to dampen the noise and manage our experiences more effectively.&nbsp;

Internal monologue

According to research, engaging in introspection can do significantly more harm than good. Our thoughts don't save us from ourselves but can lead to grave consequences. It does not mean that we should avoid and repress our thoughts. Instead, we should take a step back and get some perspective to avoid getting overwhelmed.

Introspection can be harmful

According to one study, we talk to ourselves at 4,000 words per minute. (By comparison, 6,000 spoken words, such as the state of the Union Address, lasts more than an hour.) No wonder that listening to it can be exhausting! It can also be self-sabotaging. Ruminative thoughts take hold of us and overrun and ruin outer experiences. But those who are able to quieten their inner voice are happier.

Too much self talk

<ul><li>Venting to friends does more harm than good because it pushes away those you need most.</li><li>Distanced self-talk - speaking to yourself in the second or third person - helps to gain emotional perspective "Rachel, you should calm down, it is not the end of the world."</li><li>The power of touch - putting your arms around someone.</li><li>Activities that induce "awe", such as a walk in the mountains or looking at a great work of art, can help with a sense of perspective.</li><li>Writing a daily journal.</li><li>Creating exterior order can impact your interior order.</li><li>Temporal distancing. Try to see yourself one year from now.</li></ul>

Techniques to dial down chatter

Your internal monologue shapes mental wellbeing, says psychologist Ethan Kross. He has the tools to improve your mind’s backchat

Stashed ideas

Turn it down: how to silence your inner voice

A fear or feeling of uncertainty is never a pretty picture. This usually happens when we&#39;re frustrated about not having control over something or when we feel hurt and criticized.
The feeling of uncertainty is like having someone poke our heart and from then our defense mechanism would start to kick in until it it grows into a continuous blaze until we&#39;re in full-on disaster mode and in order to cope with this gigntic fire we either yell, throw a tantrum, shut down, or even isolate ourselves.
But during this time we must remember to be more loving towards ourselves and that it will pass.

Spinning Into Disaster Mode

The secret to preventing a meltdown from happening is to catch it early because it will still be manageable. In order to prevent a meltdown we must do the following:
<ul>
<li>Take a few deep breaths</li>
<li>Give ourselves compassion and space to then</li>
<li>Let go and move on </li>
</ul>
But how do we catch it early? The answer to that is through reflect from previous experiences and practice. When we start noticing where the spark comes from it will be easier to recognize and not to add fuel to it.

Preventing A Meltdown From Happening

How to Stop From Spinning Into Meltdown - zen habits

The term wellness encompasses an extensive range of activities, such as juice cleansing, meditation, napping, drinking charcoal water, citrus diets, ketosis, halotherapy, talk therapy, avoiding blue light, the Alexander Technique, and forest bathing.
The wellness industry is worth about $4.5 trillion and is growing at 6.4 percent a year.

Wellness encompasses a broad range of activities

The desire for alternative forms of wellbeing is not new. It may even feel necessary. Many of the wellness trends come from indigenous practices. Wellness tourism is not new either. In the early twentieth century, tubercular patients travelled to the desert of New Mexico to breathe the thin, dry air. But what makes modern wellness different is its relentless focus on the self as the base for all improvement.

Wellness is not new

Modern wellness assumes that if you work hard enough on your body and mind, you will reach the top of the world and spread it to people around you. The latest focus is on individual enhancement. It makes sense then that the wellness industry shifted to podcasting. People listen alone to a deeply individualistic medium. While it may seem like a collaboration between host and listener, it is really a one-way dialogue that ultimately leads to an advertisement addressing something essential that you lack.

The trickle-down wellness

The work is never done. We are always one more item away from glory. This quest-like quality is at the centre of modern wellness. Yet, no matter how far you travel, the promise to wellness is always another step away.

Wellness is never complete

In “POOG,” two comics explore the perils—and the absurd pleasures—of a trillion-dollar industry.

Puzzling Through Our Eternal Quest for Wellness

<ul><li>Some people experience a feeling of detachment from the self, a kind of unreality, something known as depersonalisation.</li><li>Severe and prolonged depersonalisation creates an anxiety loop and becomes a disorder, where the brain shows reduced activity in emotional responses.</li><li>Some factors that can lead to transient depersonalization are jetlag and sleep deprivation.</li></ul>

Depersonalization Disorder

Apart from trauma or panic attacks, a bad drug experience can trigger depersonalisation disorder, as a feeling of dying or going mad can cause extreme, lasting anxiety.The most common cause is cannabis usage, where a bad trip can cause a feeling of losing one’s mind.&nbsp;Some people also report:<ol><li>Seeing the world from outside their bodies</li><li>A feeling of extreme dizziness.</li><li>Being stuck in a dream.</li><li>Seeing everyone around them as robots.</li><li>Altered time perception.</li><li>Philosophical insights.</li><li>Emotional withdrawal.</li><li>Forgetfulness</li><li>Blankness.</li></ol>

What Depersonalisation Feels Like

Just like heart palpitations can be assumed to be heart attacks, the feeling of unreality can be misinterpreted as losing the mind or going crazy.Not everyone can handle the strangeness of the meta-awareness that is experienced. One has to realize that meta-awareness isn’t a bad thing.

Recognise The Unreality

Intrusive thoughts can be problematic if they are resisted. Psychologist Daniel Wegner coined the term ‘ironic process’, where the attempt to suppress certain thoughts gives them more power.Example: If we try very hard not to think of a pink elephant, the image of a pink elephant keeps forming in our minds.

Don’t Fight The Thought

To treat depersonalisation, one can focus on the sights and sounds around them, grounding themselves to reality, like watching TV or reading a book. One can be aware of their breathing and even start to learn something new, channelling the increased awareness.Regular exercise helps a lot and one has to avoid caffeine, cannabis, and other stimulants. There is no need to panic!

Treating Depersonalisation Disorder

If you feel detached from the world, you might be going through depersonalisation. Be reassured, there are ways to recover

How to cope when life seems unreal | Psyche Guides

In the Big 5 Model of personality traits, being a neurotic not only disposes you to anxiety and other negative emotions, but to spending lots of time ruminating about all those feelings.&nbsp;Negative feelings will lead a nuerotic person to either internalize, withdrawing into their insecurities and ruminations, or externalize, getting angry, irritable, or impulsive. In order to deal with this, they'll attempt to suppress negative feelings and risk developing disordered behaviors, which, essentially, are people’s ill-fated attempts to feel better.&nbsp;

What is Neuroticism? 

"Negative emotion" makes it sound like it's something you need to get rid of. Dalai Lama conceptualizes it as: Rather than calling sadness or anger a negative emotion, call it what it rightly is — a difficult emotion.

1. Reframe “negative” to “difficult.”

If you’re unwilling to experience difficult emotions, then you’re going to preclude yourself from things like relationships, fitness or career.&nbsp;To combat this, you need to develop a discipline of risk-taking, forcing yourself to do things you wouldn’t do and make that a regular part of your life. The point isn’t to cure neuroticism but to counterbalance it. The opposite of anxiety is exploration.

2. Seek Adventure 

Internally, having a fine-grained understanding of your emotional states can be liberating. When people can describe their emotional states with complexity they experience all sorts benefits, like less <a href="http://pss.sagepub.com/content/21/9/1341.short" target="_self">alcoholism</a> or <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22023359" target="_self">aggression</a> and more <a href="http://www.affective-science.org/pubs/2001/01MaprelationDiffReg.pdf" target="_self">“emotion regulation,”</a> or being able to keep your psychological footing when things get bumpy.

3. Get more granular.

The actual act of putting those states into words grants relief. Expressively writing for 20 minutes a day for three days has shown to help people become less depressed, less anxious, and take fewer visits to the doctor.

4. Put It Into Words 

Don’t believe everything you think. Dispositional mindfulness — or the quality of generally being aware of what you’re thinking and feeling — has been shown to lessen the depressive effects of neuroticism. Meditation also allows you to nonjudgmentally attend to your own emotions, even if they don’t make you comfortable.

5. Hold your thoughts with a looser grip

In the Buddhist tradition this is called self compassion. With self-compassionyou’re holding your own hand, befriending the emotion, make empathy intrapersonal.In a formal practice it would go like this: Spend five or seven minutes in body-based mindfulness, which sets the table and gets you out of your head, then summon an emotion that you’re having difficulty with — heartache, anxiety about work, regret about the thing you did last weekend — and wish yourself well. The four slogans used in Tibetan meditation are: May I be happy, May I be safe, May I be at ease, May I be healthy.

6. Befriend yourself

Or: How to adapt to your own personality.