Breaking the Cycles?

I haven't felt such an impact since January (the session mentioned in "Suzy, 12/11/1935" to be exact). I felt an immediate but modest improvement to my mood. For now at least, I don't feel so suicidal I have major difficulty concentrating on anything.

I found myself being able to think clearer once again, and this session felt like an accelerated journey through my earlier sessions: I felt a floating sensation (Fifth Post and Fear and Underwhelming) and had a bird's eye view of the world ("Suzy, 12/11/1935"), for instance.

Yet, unlike other sessions (This Is Getting Monotonous) where I experienced the same thoughts I had in earlier sessions, this did not feel monotonous.

For instance, revisiting my obsessive fear of certain things (Third Session, Fifth Post, Sixth Post, and Fear and Underwhelming) has made realize how far I've come since then. As I explained in Fear and Underwhelming, a major problem of mine has been going through certain thought patterns over and over again as a result of my brain becoming wired that way over the years. Ultimately, this is a neurological, rather than psychological, problem, though.

I've come to realize that the way the brain works really is analogous to the way muscles work in one respect. It seems that just as moving your muscles a certain way repeatedly thickens the myofibrils used for that activity (such as a boxer doing punches whenever he jogs), thinking certain thoughts over and over thickens the axons used for thinking that thought (such as my getting used to the worst scenario that may happen for some situation (Third Session and Fifth Post) practically becoming my assuming that it will happen). That realization has made me better at catching those thought cycles and nipping them in the bud.

That's not the only line of thinking I've revisited in a meaningful way, however. I've re-experienced clearing the clutter that's come from over-relying on conscious thought and revisiting the sense of Zen that comes from letting your subconscious do the thinking (The Self). Just as I've gotten better at nipping the thought cycles responsible for the fears mentioned in the previous paragraph in the bud, I've gotten better nipping the one responsible for overthinking in the bud. I still have  along way to go before I can be confident I've those problems, however.

I also revisited the "theme" of self-referentiality mentioned in The Self. This time, though, I had some new thoughts. As I thought about how self-referentiality might have to led to consciousness via self-awareness, I started to wonder how that would work on a physical level. How can our minds be conscious when our brains consist only of unconscious molecules? Could it be like water being wet even though a single water molecule isn't? That seems too passive to be  a satisfactory explanation. The brain generating the mind could be like a crowd generating a wave, but what specifically could make subjective experiences possible? Quantum mechanics, as I understand, is key to solving this mystery. As I thought about how, though, I ended up thinking about other topics.

When it was done, the nurse unhooked me and told me I was free to go. I was surprised. Other times, I'd asked the nurse administering it to me in San Francisco how much longer I'd have to wait before I'd be allowed to go. Apparently, I'd taken longer than usual to recover. So much longer, in fact, that I didn't have to wait impatiently before got the go-to to leave.