Reply To: Exercise 3: Inner Monologue
Inner Monologue Reflection:
Did you notice any trends?
Yes, there appeared to be a lot of negotiation and commentary. It seemed that the most of the calories were spent waffling between decisions and parsing through a flood of thoughts to process high emotion events.
Did you notice common thoughts?
Yes, common thoughts were fears and worries compared to self-soothing thoughts. Negotiating with myself took a lot of time and effort. A common trend was reluctance to honor things that I had set out for myself, or a restraining of my actions, thoughts, and choices from my natural instincts.
How do you think your thoughts compared to others?
I think my thoughts are very similar to others. I think people tend to worry more often than not, and then most of what people worry about ends up not happening. I believe that we naturally judge ourselves and are over self-critical, and we also tend to judge others and what is happening to or around us. I think it’s normal and human nature to make observations or pass judgements because it’s simply how we interpret and interact with our environments.
Where and how might you apply your experience in the rest of your life?
I feel like this exercise is really useful in processing high-emotion events. It serves to allow me to decompress and to process things mentally, verbally, and emotionally. It allows me to document my thoughts and then to observe through a second pass how I’m feeling emotionally. Gaining clarity on what I think about a situation, a person, and then being able to identify and verbalize how I’m feeling gives me a degree of closure about a conversation a situation. It allows me to proverbially ‘dump’ my brain of thoughts that I might have previously or typically ruminated on for days. I guess in some ways this exercise serves as a means to get to personal emotional regulation.