Too Much Mental Chatter
How I Managed To Turn Off My Brain
I’ve been having some insights lately.
First one happened while I was kayaking with my son in Long Beach. Too hot for a hike, which was our plan that day, we were having a heat wave. So kayaking in the marina for the win!
While there, I experienced a clear mind.
For reference, my brain never shuts up. It’s always. It’s just soooo always. So much chatter. But the bigness of the marina, the feel of the water, there was so much “new” to look at and experience, that my brain just completely shut the hell up. It was so nice.
We are currently reading “The Power of Wonder” in the ADHD Big Brother book club, and we were chatting about this during our zoom meetup. A question that popped up was whether this sense of quietude in my brain would be there if I kayaked every single day. That was such an interesting thought.
I believe that once my brain got used to the scenery, it would get right back to blowing me up with it’s chatter.
There is a peacefulness to new environements. It’s a bunch of new stimulating stuff to look at and experience, and it shuts my brain up.
I tried an aspect of this on a walk recently. I gave myself something new to do…see how many different sounds I can notice. While I was doing that, and noticing sounds, guess what was surprisingly quiet? The brain was too busy looking for new sounds.
I talked about some of this on my podcast this week, and how talking out loud is such an effective way for me to work through stuff, because it doesn’t allow my brain to jump in. When I’m talking, my brain has to shut up. Here’s the episode if you want to give it a listen.
As many of you know, I don’t take medicine for my ADHD. The side effects got me! So I have to do a lot of figuring out how to deal with the chatter that the medicine is so good at handling. These three things I mentioned do wonders for me!
Let me know what works for you to quiet your mental chatter!
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