What is a healthy distraction you may ask, you questioner of the universe? The seeker always has questions, and this is a good quality in my humble opinion. Personally, I hope the inner seeker will not stop asking questions until the last of the answers comes to fruition.

Will I die?

Yes, and you just did.

But will I know this as it’s happening?

[Silence]……………………………………………….

This bobcat with a back-up alarm doing laps outside my window for the last two hours is the opposite of silence. It is an unhealthy distraction evoking emotions of rage, followed by sleepiness, and then a reactive movement to noise canceling headphones and smooth jazz. Now that I have changed my environment through soft music, I can hear the inner voices once again instead of the annoyance of construction noise. A voice asks; What is a healthy distraction anyway?

Perhaps it is easier to describe what is unhealthy first, in hopes to reach an understanding of what healthy distraction could be. I tend to have a dis-ease for talking about attention deficits and how things are properly ordered. Yesterday while reading an article on ADHD and shame, I began to realize how much shame I have around how I organize and function. My way of putting things in order has always been a problem to be fixed. Another way to look at it is that my display of chaos is disordering for people around me. While feeling shameful about this pattern, and realizing the feedback I have so often gotten to attend differently, I felt an urge to watch sexual content on a screen. Screen content has been an emotional fire extinguisher for me in the past, so why not try it again?

While an emotional fire extinguisher works momentarily, it never completely prevents fires from. By putting the emotional fires out year after year, I eventually was in a pattern of suppressing my emotions. We create an emotional suppression system which is not the best long-term practice. When I am outside for a run or walk, I have very little issues in controlling where my attention goes. I am able to recognize a bird flying by even while simultaneously thinking about a number of topics, including sex. I can hear the bird’s wings flap and still maintain my pace. If it is a huge bird of prey close to my head, then I might stop for a second and cover. But soon after realizing there is no harm I am back to the task at hand, moving down the trail. When it becomes difficult for me to pay attention is typically under manufactured lights face to face with content made to evoke certain emotions.

Before we completely lose our trail, I consider an unhealthy distraction to be something that brings you out of your current experience into someone else’s emotional agenda. A healthy distraction on the other hand has the potential to add understanding to your current emotional status. A healthy distraction is like lighting a fire during a snowstorm. At the time you need some heat. The movement and act of gathering kindling, chopping wood, and sparking the flames brings an inner heat. The action takes your mind away from the cold and distracts from the impending fear of exposure to the elements. Eventually, if you get the fire going you also gain heat from the external fire.

During overwhelming times of emotion, we often look for distractions to break the tension. As a developing child this can be a healthy way of coping with an environment that you cannot escape. But as we age and supposedly mature this once healthy way of changing the moods may actually be avoidance of the emotions in the moment. Overtime and repetition these ways to distract ourselves become more and more unhealthy because they are patterns from past emotional states. Through noticing and experiencing our emotional patterns, the inner thinking and feeling is processed. This allows attention to be shifted back to the current moment. What/Who does your emotional fire burn for?   

Encouraging you all to light fire to your attention.

This post was written and edited by the real life human Clark Williamson. There was NO use of artificial intelligence in the making of this content. For more on our policy and views on ai, see imagorefresh.com/techpolicy