Need a break from myself

I struggle with a lot of negative thoughts and self talk. Most of the time I can't shut my brain off. Sometimes I feel like I need a break from myself which Iobviously can't get. Does anyone else have trouble with this or ideas to help with this?

Meditation tapes, manifestation tapes. You tube has a bunch of them. Manifestation changes the way you think. Positive affirmations. Give those a try.

Yep going through this now. I’m just going through forums. Watching tv and having a bath while smoking atm. Just can’t calm down. Can’t calm the visions or thoughts. Wish it would give me a fing break sigh

All the time. Have you ever read about DBT? It was developed for borderline personality disorder by Marsha Linehan. I don't have that illness, I have bipolar 1, but I find it incredibly useful and valuable. I use it every single day.

Here is a quick video on one aspect of DBT I use a lot called distraction. You might check it out and see if you find it of any interest.

YouTube

You don’t need a break from yourself, you need a break from this white noise in your head. Although, I understand what you mean.
All this self-talk is something you have telling yourself for a long time, so much that it turned into your real life.
This isn’t life. Neither it’s reality.
You need to be a little more focus on what your reality is. Your current moment, whatever you are doing at this moment.
I’m sure you’ve heard about mindfulness. It’s not another thing that convine meditation and being present with all your senses on whatever you might be doing. When eating, when reading, when walking, when resting. It’s a technique used to avoid being stuck in intrusive thoughts by not denying them of course, but not judging them either. Looking at them as normal as possible as something that it’s there but don’t control yourself.
It can get it with practise.
If you are interested you could take a look at any link that talks about practise of mindfulness.
Then, there’s a pretty interesting book called “ Get out of your mind and into your life” ( Steven Hayes)
It propose practical exercises about the way to be present and what to do with these intrusive thoughts.

Perhaps there are valuable insights buried in the negative self-talk. Get a journal and write stuff down. Let it sit for a day. Then go back and look at it. Do what I call, "Look for the seed of truth." If there is something about yourself you would like to change then parse it out. Do you want to have a better appearance? Be more outgoing? Set a work or academic goal? Usually there are clues to what we want in our ruminations...but we have to slow them down so we can listen to what we are trying to tell ourselves.

If my self-talk gets to be too disturbing...my surefire way to distract myself is with a very dark detective story streamed online.

However...I do believe it shouldn't be all distraction. I think any kind of self-talk deserves to be listened to...as, after all, it is our heart and soul crying out.

This is a very good idea. It’s a way to tidy up many of these thoughts, label them and classified them some way. So, you will observe which ones are worthy and which ones are only noise.
I do this on my journal. I normally re-read what I wrote and often my view of a particular situation changes or find the real meaning behind a particular feeling or thought I wrote down. It was a technique suggested by an online contact from one of these mental health forums and I found it very helpful.

If you can practice with discipline -

1. Meditation - If it's difficult to do 15-30 mins at a stretch, do a 2-min meditation multiple times a day.

2. Journaling - As DechanDawa said, there's valuable insight to learn from what you think about yourself. Most of it are false information fed by our caregivers, because they probably were dealing with a lot mentally themselves.

3. Gratitude - Positive psychology is underrated. What we think consciously has its roots in our subconscious. Open a notepad/journal and write 1 or 2 or 3 or 5 things you are thankful about. Slowly your subconscious will change and so will all the negative talk.

4. Exercise/Yoga/Self defense or just locking your room and dancing - When you take efforts to do good thing for your body, it feels more in control. Brain releases good chemicals. Even if it is light exercise, just the part of exercising makes the body more in control and subsequently mind feels more in control.


Good luck.

Oh yeah, I know this place, I live there too often-----I use some of the tools mentioned above. ((((hug))))