The One You Feed - Why You're Addicted to Thinking (And What to Do Instead) | Alex Olshonksy

Starting point is 00:00:00 I think in particular, our world is getting so fast-paced. You know, there's global wars. You know, we've now had almost two and a half decades of the smartphone era. There's now the AI intelligence craze. And I think people are just like, this is a lot. And there's got to be something else. Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have.

Starting point is 00:00:30 Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter.

Starting point is 00:00:54 It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Alex Olshanski was building Twitter during the day and sneaking a few blocks into the tenderloin to score dope between meetings. That's the double life he was living and he describes it as a literal split in the psyche. Two wolves, one with a corporate badge and the other a junkie. He's now been sober for 10 and a half years and the thing he's most focused on isn't substances. It's something subtler.

Starting point is 00:01:33 The addictive pull of compulsive thinking itself. His idea is simple that overthinking is almost always under feeling. We spin up stories to avoid making contact with whatever is actually there. Alex writes the wonderful Deep Fix Newsletter on Substack, and he's a somatic teacher and coach. I'm Eric Zimmer, and this is the one you feed. Hi, Alex, welcome to the show. Eric, so good to be here. I'm really excited to have you on.

Starting point is 00:02:03 I have been following your substack for a while now. and I think you're an amazing writer, and I think our interests cross over a great deal. And so I'm really kind of looking forward to doing this. But we'll start in the way that we always do, which is with the parable. And in the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild, and they say in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear.

Starting point is 00:02:37 And the grandchild stops, and they think about it for a second. They look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Well, first, thanks. It's great to be with you. I feel like you're an addiction OG. And it's such a good parable.

Starting point is 00:03:01 It really rings true. And I'll talk about it, one, how it applies to my life personally. and then how it applies to my work today. Okay. And on a personal level, it is just painfully accurate because I spent the first half of my life really feeding that bad wolf. And I think one thing that feels really salient about this is just how deceptive that can be. Like, you can really think that you're feeding the good wolf when, in fact, you're just totally in self-deception.

Starting point is 00:03:31 And so in my case, like, as a child and teenager, I was always fascinated. by fantasy and jedi's and magic and harry potter and tolkien and this idea that like a human can have these magical abilities that sort of transcends the typical and when i discovered drugs it was like there's my gateway there's my magic yeah there's the magic it literally like opened this portal to another world and and so at the time like it didn't seem like i was feeding the bad wolf it was actually just this is just enhancing my life and then as things progressed, it became more about like performance enhancement and doing my best work and biohacking.

Starting point is 00:04:12 Like I thought I was like a Hunter S. Thompson and Silicon Valley and really, really like justifying and feeling like this made me a better person and unlocked like capabilities that I didn't have without it. And then of course, when I finally hit my bottom and entered recovery, I started to realize just how diluted I had been and how really it had been that. that bad wolf and I don't love the term bad but yeah that one had been driving the show and it was really just like I was living with just immense shame and insecurity and lack of worth and then in recovery like just sort of outside of my control just the good wolf took over and like I just couldn't help but

Starting point is 00:04:55 become fascinated by healing and meditation and spirituality and awakening and all these different esoteric sort of practices and recovery itself. And that just became the thing that I was absolutely feeding it, but it started really feeding itself. And so the parable is like it could not be more accurate for me. And then the other part is like how it applies to my work today. I think what comes up is now like I wouldn't describe it feeling as resonant around things just being a binary within ourselves, like just a good and bad part, especially just with some of my training and background and the work what I do I do with folks is helping them understand the many different sort of identities and subpersonalities that dwell within within the psyche. And all that said,

Starting point is 00:05:41 I still find that the binary is accurate in a lot of the work that I'm doing today, which is really around helping people break free from overthinking, being lost in rumination or simply just being distracted from the present moment. And when it comes to that work, the most simple first step is cultivating what I call attentional agency. And it's really, it is binary. Like your attention, you're either aware or you're unaware. And when you're unaware, it's unconscious. You don't know what you're doing. And modern life has really just rigged the deck for us to be constantly distracted and numbing and avoiding. And in this, you know, a place where we actually don't know what's happening with our attention. And so the move towards shifting into presence, the moment, whether that's

Starting point is 00:06:30 the senses or something like just love or the field of experience, like that, that move itself, I feel like is a binary move. And the more that one does that, the more that one rests and trains their attention to rest on what's here, and then eventually even sort of inquiring and resting in like the source of attention itself, like, that's when you start entering kind of what traditions have called spiritual awakening and, you know, it can really reorganize your life. Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot in what you said.

Starting point is 00:07:03 I want to spend a couple minutes on your addiction in your story there a little bit, and then I want to really go deeper on this attentional agency idea or the idea of being addicted to our thinking. I will say that you were an enormously functional drug addict. You got through Dartmouth, right? You had jobs in the tech field. I mean, you did well in that. As a highly dysfunctional drug addict, I'm semi amazed by the length of time you manage to keep things together. But we end up in a very, very similar place.

Starting point is 00:07:43 And, you know, our stories are similar. And we both have opiates in our background is the stone that ultimately broke the camel's back. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, that's a great segue. Well, Eric, it's something I actually reflect. on quite a bit was just like how functional I was and the madness that was involved in that, like literally the sort of the double life that I was living where on the one hand I was

Starting point is 00:08:09 building these at the time, you know, paradigm shifting companies like Twitter and then on the other hand, like sneaking out a few blocks away into the tenderloin to score in between meetings and then living, you know, doing the same at night. And this sort of literally, like there was a almost like talk about the two wolves like a legitimate split in the psyche. Yeah. And you know, the term like high functioning is interesting too because like really what that is signaling is like I was able to still fit into the machine and produce great capitalistic output, you know? Like I was really able to do that well when in fact like the reality I think of the body and the pain that I was living inside was just. It was utter, like, shame and terror and madness.

Starting point is 00:09:01 And that's something that it took me a long time in recovery to really sort of like grapple with is just what was driving me to still pursue both things simultaneously. And I think just given my background and an upbringing and trying to like this this real striver identity of like wanting to prove myself and in like become a random just boy from the suburbs who wanted to just make it. his claim and the sort of insanity of propelling that towards immense, like, harm and ultimately ruin, you know? And so, it was, it was dark. Yeah. I took the route of just pretending to be a burgeoning rock star where all that just seemed like it was part of the path. The whole thing was a crazy dream. But it was a way of just sort of saying, like, well, yeah, I mean, what I'm doing, make sense, you know. It was just all kind of out there in a totally different. different way. You have so many great lines about writing, but one of the things that cracked me up

Starting point is 00:10:03 is I think you called the handicapped stall, the drug addicts office. Yeah, the junkies office, I think, which, you know, we're in the addiction space. You're not supposed to use that term, but when I'm describing myself, right? You can use it for yourself. Yes. I mean, that is just so true. By the end, for me, it was, it was all intervenious drug use, but it was the same thing. It's like, Like, is the handicapsed all open? Great. Why is he in the bathroom so often? You know, what's the matter?

Starting point is 00:10:32 Is he have a digestive issue of some sort that we need to talk about? Yeah. Yeah, why he's always rubbing his nose and why his eyes look funny? He's like, oh, your sinus infection that never goes away, huh? Right. Yes, it's like bad sinuses. That's actually true in my case, but also there was a lot of just, I was doing whatever I could to try to, you know, make it like I was not just a total polymers.

Starting point is 00:10:56 substance drug addict. Right. Let's talk a little bit about your healing journey in brief, just so people can kind of see all the aspects of it. So I don't want to dwell too much on what the bottom was like. And I mean, these stories are, they're all unique and interesting and all sort of the same at the same time, right? Which is you just, some part of you just is completely beaten, defeated, exhausted. And basically I refer to as like, I just had my ass handed to me. that's where we end. Talk to me about sort of the arc of your healing journey. You wrote the essay I was reading when you were 10 years. Where are you now? Yeah, just about 10 and a half. That was only six months or so ago. That's a six months ago. Okay. All right. Yeah, and I love what you said there. I was just so thoroughly

Starting point is 00:11:44 broken and humbled. And I think humbled is the key word for me that I had just been so embarrassed that I was just like, okay, I literally give up and had a quintessential moment. And at that point, I was actually already in outpatient treatment because I was on opiates, amphetamines, benzos. So I had to have a medically supervised detox for a year. And so I basically recommitted to that treatment, which I had done in secret because I was so petrified of the moral failing of being a drug addict amidst having this career. And so I had failed out of that several times and never actually stuck.

Starting point is 00:12:20 And I never actually stopped everything because I was always like, well, it's really only to opiates and amphetamines. And so, you know, I'm going to still smoke weed and drink, obviously, right? Like, and at that point, being so broken, I just, I dove straight into that treatment. And that's when I also dove into AA. And in particular, the men's groups, the Staggs meetings was really a tremendous force. And that led me then to, when I sort of felt like, and I love the 12 steps in that community, but like a lot of people felt like I had hit a cap at a certain point and that's when I started diving really deep into Buddhist-based recovery. And then when I was a year sober, I was doing really well. And I just made it through my my grueling year-long taper off

Starting point is 00:13:09 Suboxone. And I was now at the point where I was at a real crossroads being like, what am I going to do next? And that's when I decided to do ayahuasca for the first time. Because I was also at that point considering drinking and smoking again, thinking like, okay, the hard things are behind me, but Yep, yep. That weekend with the back-to-back ceremonies altered the course of my life. And that then propelled me down a path of plant medicine study, trips to the Amazon to study with the Shepiebo and then other Colombian lineages more locally in California and study the healing arts and yoga. And my meditation throughout had just been continued to blossom. And, you know, there's a lot.

Starting point is 00:13:52 I could list a lot of different modalities in there. But I really like this spiritual path took over my life. The Dharma became the most important thing. And that was also the most beautiful things, even though it comes with its, it's, you know, downsides when you really let something like that, when something like that just takes over. So then I would say, you know, like meditation, Dharma, yoga, and somatic psychology in particular, really doing a long in-depth study with Hakomi. somatic psychotherapy was tremendously healing for me to like really get into the places of my body and relive some of those memories in the tenderline and other sort of crime-ridden trauma-related escapades that I just wasn't able to access in any other of my talk therapy or even 12-step

Starting point is 00:14:41 work. And so it's been it's been a lot of work in a long, long journey couldn't have gone any other way. and I'm just so grateful for it, especially leading to me, I think, to where it most recently in the last, like, four years led me more into the non-dual traditions of Tibetan Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta. And that's been just tremendously life-changing. So what has been the role of entheogens in your ongoing recovery? In my ongoing recovery lately, it's non-existent. And that's something that I, uh, didn't expect to happen because I had such a profound experience with ayahuasca.

Starting point is 00:15:24 And at that time, as you know, it was quite controversial. Like, things have changed so much in the recovery scene. But when I, you know, I remember, you know, like people in AA were like, that's a relapse. A hundred percent. That's what I would say. Yes. Yeah. I had a lot of shame around it and had to keep it really secretive.

Starting point is 00:15:43 And it was so impactful. And then I started doing like really dedicated work. around intentional work, that part of my mission really became about helping people in recovery understand that, yes, you can intentionally consciously engage with these sacraments from the earth, particularly the entheogens, which come from the earth itself and have a lineage behind them. And even ended up co-founding Natura Care, which is an addiction and anthogenic nonprofit that weaves contemplative practice, nature immersion, and retreats. And so it was a really central part of my work, but as time went on, the personal use diminished.

Starting point is 00:16:24 And especially then when I had a major shift in meditation where there was sort of a before and after, I no longer had the desire to take psychedelics because my experience was so psychedelic that I didn't need anything else. And so it's like I got sort of the ultimate recovery where it felt like I had, it's not to say that there's still. I still love that work and occasionally, you know, I could see myself personally coming back to it, but in recent times I haven't felt that call or need. We all know vitamin deficiency is a real thing, but if we're smart, we don't run out and start taking every supplement on the shelf hoping something works. We ask our doctor to run a test first so we can see where we're actually deficient.

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Starting point is 00:18:11 Tinyhealth.com slash feed. Something I hear from listeners pretty regularly is that they've done the work, therapy, reading, trying to understand their patterns, and they're still not where they want to be. I know that feeling. And part of my own treatment for depression over the years has included medication. alongside everything else I do. And having a psychiatrist who could evaluate what was going on and put together a real treatment plan made a big difference. And that's what talkiatry does. It's a fully online psychiatry practice, not therapy, psychiatry, with licensed clinicians who accept major insurers so you're not paying out of pocket or waiting months for an appointment. You fill out a short assessment, get matched with a provider, and you can be seen in days. And you stay with a

Starting point is 00:18:59 the same psychiatrist over time so your care actually moves forward. More than 300,000 people have already found care through them. Head to tachiatry.com slash feed to complete the short assessment and get matched with an in-network psychiatrist in just a few minutes. That's tachiatry.com slash feed to get matched in minutes. I'm going to spell it real quick. T-A-L-K-I-A-T-R-Y-com slash feed. It's a wild thing that we are using drugs that can be taken recreationally as healings for addiction. I mean, I certainly experimented plenty with psychedelics in my active use phase. You know, I will say there was a flavor of transcendence to it, but we were partying, right? Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 00:19:54 It was a very different animal. And so as this whole thing is sort of really blown up over the last decade, you know, seeing the anthogenes really come into, I mean, frankly, just the mainstream at this point, but be behind a lot of healing work, I found myself, I don't know how long ago it's been now, seven years maybe, six years, thinking, you know what, I want to see if a psychedelic treatment. would help with my sort of semi-trenchant depression slash low mood slash anadonia. There's plenty of studies that seem to show it's helpful for that. So I did do a psychedelic experience. I did psilocybin. And I remember I was so focused on making sure that like this is in a healing context. Right.

Starting point is 00:20:51 I would be lying if I said there wasn't a little part of the. inner, I like being high, then woke up with the idea and was like, huh, you know, like you're going to get a faster way out of your head for a while. Okay, I'll take that, you know. I noticed it wake up. And I just ended up doing it with like a therapist in a certain setting. I did it flanked by days and meditating, you know, all day Zen sitting. Like I just, you know, nestled it as deeply in healing as I could. For me, it turned out to be sort of a not a big thing. Hmm. Mm-hmm. But I have had a couple of, it sounds like you describe, some awakening experiences that fundamentally shifted who I was. And, you know, I had done a lot of Zen practice,

Starting point is 00:21:40 you know, working through 100 miscellaneous co-ons with teachers. And I just sort of saw kind of what I already knew, but in a darker light, I was getting, the slightly scarier version of impermanence on this trip, you know. Interesting. I know impermanence to be the nature of things. So I'm just sort of revealing my history with all that in service of the conversation as a whole. But I'm always curious about it since I've only played on the outside of it. I do see some people that seem to be like I'm judging without knowing enough to judge.

Starting point is 00:22:17 but I see a certain culture of cons, a very, very frequent use of these substances that looks to me more than the sacred healing ceremony. Totally. Right. And that's where, I mean, it is the Wild West. And I think for those of us in recovery, we have to be really careful and honest with ourselves.

Starting point is 00:22:41 We actually have to practice the principles of recovery. It's like, am I escaping here? Am I bypassing? or is this something that actually is serving my evolution? And, you know, I'll say for me, many people who kind of go through the sort of psychedelics to meditation and awakening pipeline, I don't think I would have got there without that experience. Like it really, it really altered the course of my life. And for me also doing, like being exposed to, in particular, ayahuasca and these lineages that are really nature and reverence, reverence towards the natural world. I became a vegan and a yogi.

Starting point is 00:23:18 And like, fortunately, I self-corrected on the vegan front. No offense to any vegans out there. I was a vegan for a while. Yeah, I've been there. Yeah, yeah. And like, but it just really, like, I think it opened up a care for the natural world. And for me, this has been called the ecodelic insight. And this is particular to like the entheogens that come from the earth, where it's like you can have a sense of real connection to the natural world and mother nature.

Starting point is 00:23:45 that I think for a guy who had my background, like, I didn't really have that previously. And so it did a lot on that end for me. And, you know, working with Natura Care and the programs and the retreats that we do, you know, we're seeing some veterans who just are really in need of assistance. Sometimes people have been through, you know, every treatment possible in rehab. And they need, you know, another option. And then there's other people like you who have maybe a decade or a few years of recovery under their belt. And it's sort of like, what's next?

Starting point is 00:24:16 And so I think for certain people at the right time in recovery, it can really be a rocket, like something that sort of helps and ignite a second stage recovery. Yeah. But to your point, like in the culture we're living, it requires discernment. And I think mentorship and accountability to ensure that you're not feeding that bad wolf, deceiving yourself. Yep. Which we as addicts are enormously good at.

Starting point is 00:24:43 Right. So I want to turn a little bit towards some writing you've done more recently on what you call an addiction to thinking. And so I'm just going to read a couple of things that you wrote and then let us kind of go into it from there. So you said if there's been a through line in my work over the last decade, it's an addiction gets subtler the further you follow it. First I had to get sober from the obvious bad stuff, the narcotic chemicals. It's nearly killed me. Then I had to reckon with illegal drugs like Twitter, Instagram, porn hub, and yes, the New York Times politics section, which I used to read cover to cover as if it were oxygen. After that came other socially sanctioned drugs I had long mistaken for purely virtuous. Achievement, ideology, productivity, optimization, and having a sharp take on everything. So I love that idea that addiction gets subtler the further you go. And I think I like to circle back around and talk about whether we're calling these things addictions is useful or not.

Starting point is 00:25:48 We'll get to that in a moment. But I want to follow the thread here because ultimately for you, this all boils down to, I think you would say, an addiction to thinking. Is that the way you would sort of say, if you follow this thread all the way down, that's where it ends? Yeah, that's right. And, you know, it surprised me because it really first started with the external and then it got more subtle. And I didn't really click for me until I had also had some meditative breakthroughs, which really, and having studied numerous spiritual traditions from, you know, yoga to Hindu chantra to Hatha yoga, and then various flavors of Buddhism, like, you really see that this is what they're pointing at. They're pointing at that we compulsively think, we believe our thoughts, we believe the voice inside our heads to be us.

Starting point is 00:26:38 We fundamentally mistake our identity to be that small self, that narrative self, and instead miss that were just something much vaster, more spacious, wild, and free. And so once I was able to sort of connect the dots there, it really started to land that, yeah, if we were to look at this kind of squarely in the face, I think I personally, in the way that I would replay conversations, try to win arguments in my head, obsess about something, you know, plot my career domination. Like, it was functioning in a lot of ways just like an addiction. And I think especially if we look at like the most simple understanding of addiction,

Starting point is 00:27:19 which is that addiction has some compulsivity and consequences, negative consequences. And for me, both of those things were happening in when it comes to overthinking. And is that a provocative take? Sure. Absolutely. Like I, let's have that conversation because I want to. But then, you know, also like some of my, my favorite, you know, spiritual teachers like Adyashanti, I also later came across talking about how,

Starting point is 00:27:45 like, we're addicted to thinking. We're addicted to the me in creating this self. And that's ultimately where the, where the road led for me. And especially then weaving in sort of the third element of somatic psychology, which is that fundamentally we reach to overthink when we're feeling discomfort in the body. And so overthinking is always underfeeling. And when you look at it, like that. And that also really tracks to many flavors of Buddhism and contemplative practice, which is that, you know, we have direct sensation. And then there's either their craving or aversion to get away from that sensation. And then the mind spins up its stories to do so. And so when I saw all this, it just seemed pretty clear to me that like, oh, there's a, there's a through line

Starting point is 00:28:27 throughout all these traditions and all the stuff that I'm interested in. Yeah. And I think what you just said there, and you say in your article as you get further on, is at its root, it's you say an addiction to wanting things to be different than they are, right? And that's the, that's the Buddhist idea of aversion, the root poisons, greed, hatred, or aversion, and grasping. But it is ultimately, all right, I don't like this, whatever this is. So I'm going to, I'm going to change it somehow. And I've said for years that it feels to me if I had to look back addiction and I had to go, what was the fundamental skill I had to learn to get over it? Like to truly get on, and again, I don't want to say I'm on the other side as if relapse isn't possible.

Starting point is 00:29:17 That's not what I'm saying at all. But it was that I could recognize I can have any experience and I'm capable of handling it without having to immediately fix it. That was when I went, oh, I think I can really do this. As long as there was this like, well, but I can't handle that, or I couldn't handle that, or I couldn't take that. And look, there is more suffering to come. I never want to be like, I never want to tempt suffering with being like, I'll bring it on. That is not what I'm saying at all.

Starting point is 00:29:52 I'm just saying that that was a fundamental thing to go, okay, I don't have to necessarily immediately fix this moment. And there are so many ways that we can fix the moment. Yes. A term that I've tried to coin is modern addiction, which is that like addiction, it's not just the people huddled up on the street or in church basement or guys like us. Like today with digital technology in particular, not to mention gambling and everything else and porn, et cetera, our news cycle.

Starting point is 00:30:28 like we're all subject to this. And I think that, you know, what you talk about, like having something in life that we're feeling that is uncomfortable or hard and wanting just some way to get relief from it. It's the most natural thing in the world. And, you know, now I think it's like pretty commonly accepted that, you know, if you scroll TikTok, like, that's going to distract you from whatever you're feeling. If you're going to binge Twitter and go down a Twitter rabbit hole, it's going to numb that grief that maybe you've been avoiding. So it's like that is pretty well understood now, even though we, in my opinion, we're still massively underreacting and not actually doing much around it. And so really, I'm just taking sort of the next step, which is that you have that, let's say that like well of grief that hasn't really been contacted. And, you know, instead of actually giving your chance to feel it, you just will go into the rumination. Or like you send a text to a friend and like you feel you feel something after doing it. And instead of actually just feeling that feeling of vulnerability, it's like, well, like, they don't, they're never going to respond. And, oh, I should have rewarded it differently. And, you know, like, ugh, I don't even like them anyways.

Starting point is 00:31:36 And all these things that we do that actually are one move away from just being with the feeling itself. The other side here, Eric, is that, like, when we actually really deepen that capacity, that fundamental skill that you and I both had to learn in early recovery of, like, just being with life on life's terms. that's when things get really good, right? Because you're not fighting so much with the way things are. And it's more of like a flow and surrender and opening. And then like these other great qualities of sort of like ease and carefree and lightness and humor come through. And so I know it's a provocative thesis and angle. But the point, and I think part of why it's been so resonant for people is that there's something else that's possible.

Starting point is 00:32:19 There's another way to live. And I think in particular our world is getting so. fast-paced. You know, there's global wars. You know, we've now had almost two and a half decades of the smartphone era. There's now the AI intelligence craze. And I think people are just like, this is a lot. And there's got to be something else. Check in for a moment. Is your jaw tight, breath shallow? Are your shoulders creeping up? Those little signals are invitations to slow down and listen. Every Wednesday, I send weekly bites of wisdom, a short email that turns the big ideas we explore here in each show, things like mental health, anxiety, relationships,

Starting point is 00:33:01 purpose, into bite-sized practices you can use the same day. It's free. It takes about a minute to read, and thousands already swear by it. If you'd like extra fuel for the weekend, you also get a weekend podcast playlist. Join us at one you feed.net slash newsletter. That's one you feed.net slash newsletter and start receiving your next bite of wisdom. All right, back to the show. With the idea of addiction, I mean, the other way I often think of addiction is just to make it super simple

Starting point is 00:33:35 is I just think of it as lack of control, right? I mean, that was the main problem, right? I could say I am not going to do X, Y, and Z, and then I would promptly do it over and over and over and over again, right? I couldn't make and keep any sort of promise to myself. And if, you know, thinking, if we say that we have no control over it, you could, on one hand, by that call it an addiction, what is overthinking? You know, you said a second ago, overthinking automatically means underfeeling, which I want to maybe explore a little further because I need to think about how I feel about that. But let's start by trying to say, what is overthinking?

Starting point is 00:34:14 Yeah, I mean, overthinking is, I sort of use these two terms interchangeably, which is that overthinking or compulsive thinking. And so that's pointing to like the lack of control. And so the, I mean, the classic scenario of overthinking is like an example I described where you text, let's say, you know, a friend that you really like. But there's also maybe some charge there. And, you know, the moment you do that and there's no response for, let's just say, 10 minutes, like this can be a really relatable thing to be like, oh, like, man, Eric's so busy. He just launched his book.

Starting point is 00:34:46 Like, I shouldn't be bothering him. Like, what did I write? Like, oh, that wasn't that smart. Like, should I follow up? Or should I, can I unsend it? That is overthinking in my book, right? And the thing is, and this is the thing is why it gets really subtle. It happens without most people even realizing that it's happening.

Starting point is 00:35:06 This is just the default state of the thinking mind. But typically, like, overthinking, you know, I think to be more clear for folks, it's like it has that quality of rumination, obsession, second guessing, and pain, really. Hey y'all, it's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder what if? Like, what if it doesn't hold up? That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair.

Starting point is 00:35:48 With Wayfair, there's no what if. Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit Wayfair.ca. Wayfair, every style, every home. You're good with words, so I want to ask you, I find this lost in thought idea such an odd thing. because on one hand, I am completely taken over by it. And on the other hand, I have absolutely no idea it's happening.

Starting point is 00:36:14 It's weird in that way. You got any word for that? So say more. I'm curious to hear a little bit more about your experience when you say that you're so lost in it. Let's take your scenario and let's just turn the emotional stakes up on it to make it a little bit more fun. It's somebody I'm early in a relationship with and I text them and they're not. not texting back. And I am just, like you said, I'm ruminating, I'm spinning. What did I go? What if she doesn't like me? What is she going? You know, you know, I da-da-da-da-da. And my old relationships

Starting point is 00:36:42 are flashing into my mind. I'm feeling anxious. All this is happening. And I am deeply immersed in it. But another part of me is not aware that that's going on at all. And I guess it's that my meta-awareness or my bigger awareness isn't aware that it's happening. But I just find it such a strange thing. It's like being on a roller coaster and not knowing you're on a roller coaster. It doesn't, you're like, well, hang on a second. Surely I would know I'm on a roller coaster. But not in this case.

Starting point is 00:37:14 That's right. And that's the subtlety. And this goes back to what I was talking about earlier with the two modes of attention, like either being aware or unaware. And unawareness happens like it is legitimately out of our control. We don't control. that's the nature of being unaware. We don't control when it happens.

Starting point is 00:37:31 I'm really glad you mentioned thinking about courting love. I don't even know if that's a real life scenario, but that is the best, of course, overthinking when you're left on red with someone that you love or you're into. And so that's the compulsive element where I really see it as having that addictive quality

Starting point is 00:37:50 is because we can't recognize at times that it's happening. However, there are always moments where, you know, you sort of like wake up and you're like, oh, man, I'm really losing it here. Yeah. Can you stop? And then usually there's more self-referentially negative thoughts about the overthinking itself. Yes.

Starting point is 00:38:09 And so part of why I bring the recovery frame and the addiction frame into this is because one of the things that we've been gifted with Eric is like the ability to look something square in the eyes and to be really honest about what it's doing in our lives. And for me, knowing what my life is like now, there's sort of an auto release, as I call it, towards the overthinking that came from a lot of the practices that I described and try to share. It really is painful to be living in that other way. And I just noticed how much struggle and suffering I was creating for myself. And once you remove all the other kind of substances and you're not numbing yourself with drugs or screens, like really, you're just left with relational experience. relationship with yourself, relationship with others. And it feels a lot better to me to not be sort of constantly second-guessing myself and running a war in my own mind.

Starting point is 00:39:03 Yeah, there's a term that I got from acceptance and commitment therapy that I think about an awful lot. And it's the idea of something being useful. And so when I think about like what constitutes ruminating versus thinking, that's usually the line I draw. there's a place where my thoughts, they're doing something useful. I'm solving a problem. I'm brainstorming a thing. Something useful is happening. Something generative is occurring.

Starting point is 00:39:33 And then there's a point at which it tips over. And nothing new is coming. Nothing generative is coming. Nothing useful is happening. All that's happening is I'm spinning in the same place deeper and deeper and it's getting worse and worse. And so that's for me kind of how I try and think about that. Now, that's sometimes difficult to suss out.

Starting point is 00:39:57 But I can tell there's a feeling of rumination that I know now. I understand it now. I feel it in a different way. I mean, almost all of it. And you being a semantic practitioner, you know, this is a simplification. But for me, most everything that causes some part of my body to loosen and relax, I tend to think I'm on the right track.

Starting point is 00:40:19 Yes. And the parts of it that cause my body in whatever ways to start clenching up is a sign that, like, I want to pay closer attention to like, okay, what's happening here? Right, right. And I'm glad you mentioned this because this points to an important distinction, which is what I would say is the difference between thoughts and compulsive thinking, which is what you're really just sort of gesturing to. And because like the point of what I'm trying to share here isn't to make thinking a problem. problem or go to war with the mind. It's more about actually like helping people get into what, you know, people in psychology calls flow states where you're in the flow and thinking is happening on its own and it's generative and you're sort of out of your own way such that thoughts can

Starting point is 00:41:05 arise as these unbidden manifestations of inspiration or creativity or insight. Whereas compulsive thinking is the thoughts about thoughts running in this. unaware loop that often has this really negative flavor that go with it. And so the interesting thing is that, yeah, the more you sort of practice and the more that you also mentioned sort of like the meta awareness, because it does take some interoceptive awareness to like catch your thoughts happening and to notice like when you've crossed over as in your words from sort of thinking to rumination. One of the best gateways in there for me is always like, yeah, checking in with the body

Starting point is 00:41:46 and trying to get a sense of like, oh, when it feels like I'm ruminating or overthinking, like, what am I actually feeling here? Can I slow this down and notice that and scan the body and then maybe even stay with some of those sensations? Because giving the body time to kind of complete these cycles of activation will allow the thinking to quiet on its own. And then the more that one can do that, the more that actually we get access to flow, which is where thoughts, just happen. And like it's actually thinking is way better and it's way less effortful than the alternative. In this essay that you talk about, you keep going in, but you ultimately say this ability to drop, how would you say out of thought? What's the state when I disengage? It is a relaxing move, right? So instead of the closed fits, it's the open fist. So it's this mode

Starting point is 00:42:41 of just like letting go and softening such that thoughts, the thoughts can still be happy. And they could actually be pretty high voltage, but you're not identified with them. You're not taking them to mean a code red fire drill, you know, every time they arise. And so it is a releasing identification with the thoughts, which like that's the thing that can is is trainable. It's not about stopping thoughts. And this is another, I think, common misconception. And it's like, everyone's like, oh, I want to have a totally zen, quiet, you know, still mind. And look, that, that can happen. And that does happen, you know, but more, I think what, you know, more fundamental and more realistic is, and actually more liberating is to understand that, like, the thoughts can totally still be happening, but you're letting them happen and you're something much, much bigger than the thoughts themselves. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:43:35 You're talking about that this can be trained and you say the time and effort may vary, but you sort of make the point, I don't have it cut into my notes here, but I think you made a point. a point that you spent time practicing in a way that didn't lead you here. Had you understood how to do this better, you might have made faster progress. What was the mistake you were making? Because you were in contemplative practice, I was. I assume. So what was the mistake you were trying to make and what does it look like to correct it? That's such a great question. I was and I had was a fairly experienced meditator and yogi. I mean, I think for someone who's a non-monastic, I I was about as dedicated as one can be, you know, studying with many different teachers and going on retreats and treating it like a full-time job outside of my day job. And I think early, like, I fell

Starting point is 00:44:27 into sort of like the Mick Mindfulness trap, which is, you know, there's a lot of schools of like Theravada Buddhism, which really are just about, well, and I want to be careful here, but I think at the end of the day, I was, there was a lot of just sort of following the breath or noting. noting practice. And a noting practice is sort of when you're just labeling, labeling what arises and different flavors of that. And that's all great. Those are both phenomenal practices that, like, I recommend and endorse. But noting in particular, when you're sort of just like thought or sound or sight, it's useful to a point, especially at the beginning. But then after a certain point, you're actually kind of still engaging the machinery of mind. It was something that,

Starting point is 00:45:15 I think for me actually aggravated a sense of just like this hyper-anicalypical left-brain guy, like overly intellectual man who had trouble getting into his heart and his body. And then the other element was I think when I more later on my spiritual path discovered the non-dual traditions, which have a fundamentally different premise than the progressive path. And so describe that for people who don't understand what that means. The non-dual tradition? Yeah. And how it's different.

Starting point is 00:45:44 Yeah. There's considered to be like sort of two meditative paths. One is the progressive path where you're slowly building insight and honing the mind and developing concentration. And then there's the direct path or the non-duled path. And the non-dual path, the fundamental premise is that you are already awake and enlightened and free. And you simply just need to relax more and open to what's here. And I had not been given that instruction until much later, like halfway through my meditative training. And for, again, someone like me who had, you know, hustled his way into the Ivy League and had this real striver identity, for someone to tell me like, oh, to, because I had, for better or worse, I had got the enlightenment bug.

Starting point is 00:46:31 And no one had ever just told me like, oh, you actually can just relax. And so that element of relaxing the body, that is so fundamental to this process because, again, coming back to the overthinking is underfeeling, like compulsive thinking is a result of contraction in the body. And so the more that we can relax the body, the more that actually we can soften the mind and allow it to just do its thing. And so what I didn't know was one, that sort of direct path teaching, which I hadn't been given that earlier. And then two, I hadn't been given the somatic psychology understanding, which I think is really what I see is missing in this conversation in general, bridging the two, which is that we as humans in the modern world are kind of living in chronic activation where our bodies are in like mild flight or flight stress response, trauma responses. In my case, like working in a high stress environment for many years, I was basically living in a sympathetic nervous system or arousal. Like, I just started, that just became my normal. And then once I started getting training on that and understanding actually how the body responds to stimulus and what the body needs to unwind.

Starting point is 00:47:43 And one of the core premises of Hacomni and somatic psychotherapy is that in the same way, if you got to cut on your hand, the body, like in the right conditions, is just going to heal itself miraculously. It's the same for the psyche, but we need to allow when you actually give love. loving attention to what's happening in your body. The body will just allow the psyche to sort of reorganize towards wholeness and healing. Those were the elements that I didn't get until later in my journey that I felt were missing and could save people a lot of the time. All right. Somebody hears this. They go, yeah, that's me. I mean, I think almost everybody hears a little bit, whether you want to call an addiction or not, almost everybody would be like, well, my thoughts sometimes drive me up the wall, right? I mean, at the very least, like, can we just,

Starting point is 00:48:29 could they just turn down a little bit? So everybody feels that. If somebody was going to say, all right, you know what, I do want to deal with this again. I'm going to give another run at this. Maybe they've tried to meditate a little bit. Right. Maybe they've never tried it. Maybe they've listened to an app a few times.

Starting point is 00:48:45 But for somebody who's not a dedicated practitioner. It's a great question. And there's a few different angles to take here. And so it really, one, requires a holistic approach. but just for someone who's listening who might want to say like, okay, what can I start practicing immediately? The first thing is actually having just some awareness that the overthinking is the result of a protective strategy from the thinking mind trying to keep a part of you safe, right? And so that there's a part of you when something that you're feeling in those moments

Starting point is 00:49:20 that is begging some care and some love. And so I like to first just invite people to just to have some awareness that like, oh, there's something in you that is working really hard to keep you safe and to keep you well. And then from there, I think a really great entry point is actually to like really drop down into the body with some meditative awareness. And the reason being that like most people, we most, for most people, it feels like our thoughts are located up here in the head. For some, it's in the heart. But most people, especially in our Western cultures, is in the head. And so the more. that actually you then can start resting attention on that which is not a thought and so one just

Starting point is 00:50:05 allowing attention to drop down and into the pelvic bowl breathing and filling up the three-dimensional space there maybe even going even lower all the way down to the soles of the feet and one of my favorite prompts is like imagining that each soul of your foot had nostrils and you're literally just like breathing from the earth from the souls of your feet and even if like someone's listening along and maybe just practicing that, you might notice, like, just even as I narrate this, it just slows things down, right? And the more we slow down, the more that the thinking mind can relax. And so that, in a nutshell, is just one really basic great practice that you can do at any time. And so, like, I encourage people, like, if they're busy and working, and like, so some people

Starting point is 00:50:47 might be like, I don't have time to meditate. It's like, hey, you can be in your Zoom meeting and rooting into your back body, which signals safety to the brain sound, feeling the pelvic bowl breathe, feeling the feet breathe, and really just allowing attention to be aware of those areas while you're engaging with anything else. And that will help to just reduce the noise and the thinking mind. Yeah, maybe I can start there. There's a lot more I could share about where people can go after that. That's a good start. I'm going to ask a couple questions. Let's say somebody did say, all right, I'm going to give this 10 minutes a day. You and your article claim that with 10 minutes a day, you can make some progress on this.

Starting point is 00:51:29 Yeah. Would that be it? Like, just keep my attention in my feet or in my pelvis area. And every time my attention wanders, as it inevitably will of, you know, countless times, I just bring it back to that. And that's what I kind of want to do as a starting point. I think that's a great starting point, but essay that I mentioned that I wrote. And I'm working on follow-ups. I have some follow-ups, have other, like a whole set of practices. And so really you'd want to be doing each practice for let's say 10 minutes a day for three weeks at a time until you felt good at it. And so I'd start though with something like that where you're actually building the skill going back to where we started the conversation of training attention to rest on something that's

Starting point is 00:52:11 not thought. And the body is one of the most reliable ways to get there because we all have access to it. But then from there, I'd also invite people to start paying attention to like just your whole field of experience and starting to zoom. zoom out and notice like the entirety of the visual field. And I can give a little practice here. Sure. Yeah. And so one thing that people can do that I really like is to, so if you bring your hands

Starting point is 00:52:36 to the sides of your of your head like this, like right by your ears, and what you do is you move your hands forward and back in space like this. And what you're doing is you're looking for the point in which in your periphery as you look straight ahead, the hands disappear. And when you do this in this way, it just allows your field of vision to get much wider. And you notice that there's actually this really big, miraculous, like, ultra 4K display just happening right before you. And so there's this huge thing that's right here that's not thought. And humans are primarily visual creatures.

Starting point is 00:53:16 Something like 60% of our processing happens from like the visual cortex. And so using this whole, the bigness of the visual field is a great thing for people to notice because that's all of this is not a thought, right? And so that would be like a progressive practice of continuing to get like really more interested in that which isn't a thought. And then eventually as, and I've described this in some of the other practice guides, like you want to start looking into the nature of thoughts themselves. Like, am I in control of my thoughts?

Starting point is 00:53:50 thoughts in the way that I think I am I the voice in my head that I often mistake myself to be? And this is where the spiritual kind of insight comes in. And you can even make that practice digestible for 10 minutes a day. But it is a good progression to follow, I believe, where it's sort of like one, you start with the basis of sort of like recovery, then the semantics of building into the body, working with the sense gates, and then eventually start looking into the nature of sort thought itself and like who are you really and I could give a quick practice to help with that or we could just save it for another time too.

Starting point is 00:54:28 Before you check out, pick one insight from today and ask how will I practice this before bedtime? Need help turning ideas into action? My free weekly bites of wisdom email lands every Wednesday with simple practices reflection and links to former guests who can guide you even on the tough stuff like anxiety purpose and habit change feed your good wolf at one you feed dot net slash newsletter again one you feed dot net slash newsletter so i want to end with something that you mention in your writing and i talk about all the time and is in my book and i think it comes from the 12 step world idea though which is this idea of it's easier to act your way into you say new ways of thinking that it is to think your way into new ways of acting. Give me your take

Starting point is 00:55:21 on that. Yeah. Yeah. It's such a, such a good one. And I think something that surprises people, like going back to the last question, I was like, if I actually want to practice not overthinking, like, what do I do? And I've been teaching workshops on this. And what has surprised people is that you're actually already doing so much without thinking about it, whether that's walking or or driving or playing certain sports. Like we actually know how to move through the world and move through this life without thinking about it. And so one, you can start paying attention to the ways in which that's already happening. But I think just more like fundamental to this quote and recovery itself is that, you know,

Starting point is 00:56:09 you can't think your way out of addiction. You can't think your way into healing. You can't think your way into spiritual insight. You have to actually take action and move. That's what leads to lasting change. And so this one for me, I think, is so important, especially in a world in which it's so easy to distract ourselves or outsource our thinking now to AI,

Starting point is 00:56:36 where instead just do the thing. Just put one step in front of the other. Like perfection is the enemy of good in this case. case and in my life, I certainly had to just literally move forward in order to start making some things happen. Beautiful. That is a great place for us to wrap up. You and I are going to go deeper into aspects of contemplative practice in the post-show conversation where I'm going to actually get to nerd out on a couple of things. So if you want to hear that, listeners, and you want ad-free episodes and you want to support this show, you can go to one you feed.comnet slash join.

Starting point is 00:57:15 Thank you so much, Alex. It's been a pleasure to have you on. Thank you, Er. This has been a real honor. Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you found this conversation helpful, inspiring, or thought-provoking, I'd love for you to share it with a friend. Sharing from one person to another is the lifeblood of what we do. We don't have a big budget, and I'm certainly not a celebrity, but we have something even better, and that's you. Just hit the share button on your podcast app or send a quick text with the episode, link to someone who might enjoy it. Your support means the world and together we can spread wisdom one episode at a time. Thank you for being part of the one you feed community. Spotify, it's Jay Shetty.

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The One You Feed - Why You're Addicted to Thinking (And What to Do Instead) | Alex Olshonksy

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