I will second value of asking “why am I thinking about this?” in real life. It hasn’t changed my dreaming patterns, but when I was in the active habit of it I learned a lot about how thoughts were connected in my head and how my thinking was affected by the behavior of others and more generally by my environment.
The similar “why am I feeling this?” was also a very useful exercise for flattening out post-traumatic triggers. I find it likely that continuing the exercise past that point would teach me a lot about how my feelings are affected by my environment, but I haven’t done it.
(Why? Mostly because it frightens me. Why do I feel fear when I think about it? Because I believe/alieve/intuit that valuable aspects of my personality will be put at risk if I become too aware of the specifics of how my emotions are connected to the things around me. Why do I believe/etc. that? I don’t know; certainly I have no meaningful evidence to that effect, nor any good reason to expect it, beyond the general observation that emotions and affective relations to my environment are pretty fundamental to my personality, and that attending to my emotional responses tends to alter them. Why do I believe the changes are more likely to be ones I negatively value than positively? Because these judgments are coming from a part of my psyche that does not seem to have abstracted its value system in any significant way, it values whatever it happens to value and it values valuing whatever it happens to value, la-la-la-la-la-I-can’t hear you. Do I endorse that? No, not really. Then why do I act on the basis of those judgments? Because the alternative frightens me. I do recognize this just got circular, right? I do indeed. Fear is like that sometimes. I also recognize that I’ve just transitioned from asking myself why I feel what I feel to judging myself for feeling that way, even if I word it as a question, which probably isn’t a great thing.)
I will second value of asking “why am I thinking about this?” in real life. It hasn’t changed my dreaming patterns, but when I was in the active habit of it I learned a lot about how thoughts were connected in my head and how my thinking was affected by the behavior of others and more generally by my environment.
The similar “why am I feeling this?” was also a very useful exercise for flattening out post-traumatic triggers. I find it likely that continuing the exercise past that point would teach me a lot about how my feelings are affected by my environment, but I haven’t done it.
(Why?
Mostly because it frightens me.
Why do I feel fear when I think about it?
Because I believe/alieve/intuit that valuable aspects of my personality will be put at risk if I become too aware of the specifics of how my emotions are connected to the things around me.
Why do I believe/etc. that?
I don’t know; certainly I have no meaningful evidence to that effect, nor any good reason to expect it, beyond the general observation that emotions and affective relations to my environment are pretty fundamental to my personality, and that attending to my emotional responses tends to alter them.
Why do I believe the changes are more likely to be ones I negatively value than positively?
Because these judgments are coming from a part of my psyche that does not seem to have abstracted its value system in any significant way, it values whatever it happens to value and it values valuing whatever it happens to value, la-la-la-la-la-I-can’t hear you.
Do I endorse that?
No, not really.
Then why do I act on the basis of those judgments?
Because the alternative frightens me.
I do recognize this just got circular, right?
I do indeed. Fear is like that sometimes. I also recognize that I’ve just transitioned from asking myself why I feel what I feel to judging myself for feeling that way, even if I word it as a question, which probably isn’t a great thing.)