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TL;DR is a monthly digest summarizing the vital bits from the previous month's "How to Live" newsletter so you don't miss a thing.
APRIL 2024
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April 3rd’s Piece Was About the Difference Between Thinking and Ruminating.
People with a proclivity toward anxiety (hello!) often believe that worrying will solve their problems. Worrying is active; it offers a false sense of control over a situation, and anxious people tend to rely on it, misusing it like a self-soothing blanket.
The problem is that anxiety traps us in place, and so does ruminating. And just like anxiety, ruminating often causes the ruminator to feel out of control. There is a very thin line between worrying and ruminating—while both are symptoms of anxiety and depression, worry is more lenient, it’ll allow any thought in, no matter what it’s wearing.
Rumination, on the other hand, has a dress code. It prefers its thoughts to behave in the same manner—stuck and recycling the same negative material over and over again.
Ruminating is a trap posing as a good plan made by a bad friend. And like a bad friend, rumination is poisonous. When it surfaces, it’s a signal that something else inside of you needs attention.
To get to the bottom of it, I could think of no better person to help me do that than Dr. Tamar Chansky, psychologist, author, and founder of the Children’s and Adult Center for OCD and Anxiety in Plymouth Meeting, PA.
This Piece from April 10th, 2024, Revealed Rules For Ruminators.
When I was writing Resolving the unresolvable: the difference between thinking and ruminating, I reached out to my friend Dr. Tamar Chansky, who is an anxiety expert, and founder of the Children’s and Adult Center for OCD and Anxiety in Plymouth Meeting, PA.to ask her advice on effectively managing or stopping rumination when you’re stuck in its teeth.
Below is a brief conversation and her tips.
AS: Could you please explain the difference between rumination and thinking?
TC: Rumination is the process of having repetitive thoughts that your mind gets you stuck on. They are usually about a negative situation—a past relationship or interaction, a mistake, or some unfinished or pending problem.
Different from thinking or processing, which can be productive, cathartic, and illuminating, ruminating causes distress because we are reliving only the direness of that situation. The focus on negativity makes us feel more hopeless and helpless. Yet, because the ruminative thoughts seem necessary, we keep doing it—even though it’s counterproductive and leaves us feeling more anxious and down.
AS: What’s the opposite of rumination?
TC: The opposite of rumination is deciding what to think about. When you choose your thoughts, you get somewhere, you get closure. When we’re thinking, thoughts wander freely through the mind; with rumination, we feel stuck inside thoughts that take up psychic space.
This Bonus Piece From April 14th, 2024 Was About The Famous 36 Love Questions.
In 1997, psychologist Arthur Aron and his team published a study on 36 questions that can make people "fall in love." The questions were designed to foster interpersonal closeness when couples took turns asking and answering them over about an hour. Remarkably, two of the study participants ended up getting married to each other just six months later!
The 36 questions have since become a popular tool for creating intimacy between strangers or partners. The questions are broken up into three sets, with each set intended to be more probing than the previous one.
Below, find the questions, and the popular newspaper piece, that kicked off the popularity of these questions, and the study.
Set I
1. Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?
2. Would you like to be famous? In what way?
3. Before making a telephone call, do you ever rehearse what you are going to say? Why?
4. What would constitute a “perfect” day for you?
5. When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?
On April 17th I Revealed Things I’m Loving.
Today, I’m doing something a little different…
I thought I’d shake things up and share with you a handful of things that bring me joy—something I’m finding harder to come by these days.
1. MUSIC (& DANCE)
I cringe when people ask me what I “do for fun.”
Perhaps it’s that I don’t have a good answer, or that I enjoy my work, and find what I do fun (except for when it’s awful).
Maybe it’s just the wrong question to ask me. After all, walking through my neighborhood is fun. Being with friends is fun. Making plans is fun. Thinking up ideas for future pieces or stories is fun. Watching TV is fun. Making dinner is fun. Snacking is fun. Reading is fun. Like, WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?
The question itself implies that fun must be compartmentalized, that it can exist only outside of one’s daily life, but I’d prefer to find ways to integrate fun throughout my day.
ALL THAT SAID, I have FINALLY found something that I DO FOR FUN….and it’s ONE DAY CHOIR 👇
This piece from April 20th, 2024, Was A Free Bonus Post About Public Libraries.
I am on the Brooklyn Public Library’s Arts & Letters Committee. We help spread the word about the value of the library, and ask people to donate to keep libraries alive and thriving.
I remember going there as a child for story hour, doing my homework, learning how to use the xerox machine, find books on my own, and when I was old enough to check them out, I was so proud of my library card, I kept it forever.
People often overlook the things they can get for free—I am not one of those people. FREE is my absolute favorite amount of money to spend.
My most recent free library acquisition were my eclipse glasses. Several summers ago, in Massachusetts, I went to the library to borrow a camping tent!!
Two years ago, Netflix invited me to fly to Toronto to be on set for the movie Adam Sandler made of my pseudonymous Young Adult novel. They booked my ticket and hotel room for the first week of August. The last week of July, I glanced at my passport, horrified to discover it was expiring in three days.
But there was a bigger problem; I could only get an appointment at the passport agency in HAWAII! There was an 8 month wait for an appointment in NYC.
I went to my local library for help.
They told me to email Hakeem Jeffries, my local congressman, and explain my dilemma. I did, and they emailed right back, asked to see my flight and hotel info, and then they got me an appointment in NYC for the next morning, and in 24 hours, I had a renewed passport.
Had I not gone to the library, I would never have known to call my local representative, and most likely, I would not have made it to Toronto.
Here are some things you might be missing. (This is Brooklyn based, but I guarantee libraries outside of NYC are doing the same things, and probably more).
This piece from April 24th, 2024, Was About What Makes a Person a Self.
Were we to be taken apart surgically, there isn’t a doctor in the world who would be able to locate this thing we call “I.”
We can’t capture it under a microscope or prod it during surgery.
The “I” of us, the “self” of me, isn’t concrete or tangible, and yet we are all, to varying degrees of consciousness, trying to grow, tame, avoid, hurt, help, and even nurture it.
But what and who are we caring for?
Who is this “I” we always speak of?
Where does the “I” of me actually live?
When we refer to ourselves, we use the names our parents chose for us, names that represent this supposed “I,” but our bodies are not who we are.
They are mere physical vehicles that allow us to contain and transport our organs from one place to another without spillage.
We constantly mistake the bodies of us for the “I” of us. This is what we humans are known for—misapprehending as real all that is phantom.
EXTRAS…
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Amanda
VITAL INFO:
Nope, I am not a licensed therapist or medical professional. I am simply a person who struggled with undiagnosed mental health issues for over two decades and spent 23 years in therapy learning how to live. Now, I'm sharing the greatest hits of what I learned to spare others from needless suffering.
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