Dear Ben,
Sometimes I get the feeling you are a teenage troll that is toying with us.
One advantage to being bad with remember who said what in the past, is that I take threads like this at face value as a “fresh start.”
But if you are serious, and the many bizarre threads you start are not helping you, then I suggest you get medical help. It is becoming clear that nobody here at CAF has been able to assist you to overcome the wild imaginings of your mind. That’s where you need to press the “delete” button and refuse to allow these thoughts admittance. You obsess over them, irrationally, one thread after another.
Dare I say it? This is a job for CONTEMPLATIVE PRAYER MAN! :knight2:
Time to learn about interior silence. There is no better way I can imagine to deal with thoughts that cause anxiety and sleeplessness – especially if they are irrational thoughts.
When you can’t “brute force” the thoughts out, maybe try turning the other (mental) cheek and see what happens if you just ignore them best you can?
Dear OP, as your spiritual doctor wannabe, I hereby prescribe a healthy consideration of “contemplative prayer,” to which the CCC says in 2708 that prayer “should” progress for a Christian. (See 2700-2724 for more on Expressions of Prayer)
Have you ever heard of contemplative prayer? Maybe I ran across you on other threads and mentioned it – well from what you’re saying it could be very helpful. I had thoughts running so fast I once spent several months literally wallowing on a mattress on the floor 22 hours a day, wishing I could sleep or that thoughts would go away – whatever it took except self-mutilation (and it was a struggle to avoid suicidal thoughts). My only relief was from heavy tranquilizers and even they could only get me so much sleep. Guess what brought me out of it? Much study and prayer, including strong focus on contemplative prayer and how it affected me.
There are different ways to obtain interior silence. But if we’re trying to fight your demons with logic and understanding, they might just keep getting trickier. Much more effective to achieve this inner silence, which help open us up (preparing new wineskins if you will) to receiving healing from God through the Holy Spirit.
Sounds pretty pie in the sky, but it worked for me. I was healed of a terrible “terminal” psychiatric illness, against medical expectations, and I attribute it to 50,000+ hours over 11 years of study and prayer, which but helped open me to receive the healing itself from the Holy Spirit aka the Divine Therapist, so now it’s gone. The healing was from the Lord, but the prayer helped me open myself up to receive it. My psychiatrist says that my current mental health is at a point rarely achieved – even among those who never had mental illness including many medical professionals.
Of course, I’m not saying to bypass medicine; on the contrary without an excellent doctor’s support I’d be locked up and the key thrown away by now.
Alan
