"Dear, dear! How queer everything is today! And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I've been changed in the night?".......said Alice.

I identified a new form of activity that I was engaged in - make believe! I noticed that by wishing, I kidded myself that my thoughts were real. I projected what I wanted to happen into my brain and my brain made it feel real. Obviously losing touch with reality is never ideal. It meant that I was constantly disappointing myself, hankering after something that wasn't actually there.

"Have I gone mad?" Asked Alice.

"I'm afraid so, entirely bonkers but let me tell you, the best people usually are."

I thought this was so weird, but like everything these days you can look it up on the internet! And hey! It's not just me. This sort of behaviour is quite common. Apparently it's to do with not living in the present, probably harping back to some fond (or imagined) memory that made me happy.

It's also stopping me getting on with my life.

Things I should be doing to help myself - eliminating the word 'should' from my life. (Did you see it slip in there?) Asking for help - not something I've ever found easy. Getting some perspective into what's really important rather than getting anxious about stuff that I've made up! I felt that that's what I really needed to do is... get real.

Said Tweedledum "...you know very well you're not real." "I am real!" Said Alice and began to cry.

In the "Power of Now", Eckhart Tolle says that I should watch/observe objectively what is happening in my mind, as it is happening, to distance myself and to discover how unreal it really is in relation to the reality that is now and to deny rather than feed my mind (my words). To live in the NOW, not the remembered pain of a past that has gone or anxiety about a future that hasn't arrived.

And that seems to be working.

But I am at a point where I am questioning where I go from here. I am in danger of isolating myself whilst living within myself and growing to understand life. And I am concerned. I am not a hermit and that is not the way I want my life to be. I do tend to be extreme and maybe I have 'gone over board' in chasing the rainbow. I want the happy life, the underpinning and that is my mission. But at what cost?

Alice

A Moodscope member