Legitimate Hallucinating
I could sit still for hours, staring out the window, watching and listening to the rain as it strikes the metal and the hard floor below. The sound makes me lose track of time entirely. It's therapeutic in that it often heals me. But it also sends me on a wild ride through my own mind.
I've noticed I can get lost in imagination for hours without shifting position once. I lose track of my surroundings entirely; no noise penetrates my inner, meditative state. This is the most beautiful mental state possible, provided the mind isn't disturbed by negative thoughts. But when it's flooded with negative emotions, with thoughts of low self-esteem or self-harm, it becomes a kind of hell instead.
For me, these sessions are usually always cathartic. I think through my stories and essays in detail. Every idea that eventually becomes an essay first lives in my head as part of a longer rumination. It exists there for my mind to turn over and examine. I think, then rethink, long before I ever sit down in front of a blank screen and start typing. The same holds for my stories. Every one is carried through to its end in my head, so the full structure is already visible to me before I write a word.
By the end of a session, I almost always emerge with clarity, unless someone interrupts me and I'm forced to leave the thought unfinished. The mind is a remarkable tool, capable of decoding almost anything you set it to. René Descartes said, "I think, therefore I am." He believed that thinking things through to their core brought him more clarity than books ever could. I don't fully agree with that idea, but I don't fully disagree with it either. There's a kernel of truth in it.
Whenever I'm stuck in a bad loop of thought, I lie down on my bed and let my mind wander wherever it wants to go. I visualise everything. The only goal is to keep the mind from manufacturing anything artificial. Everything must be seen, not merely imagined in the abstract. If I want to visualise myself completing a task, I close my eyes and watch it unfold in front of me, broken down into its smallest components and steps.
That's how I construct complicated stories. Even though no one else may read them, it matters to me that they're built in a way that satisfies the reader within myself. The same technique that sharpens my creativity also helps me solve problems that would otherwise overwhelm me. It's a process that goes beyond any mental model you could capture on paper.
The next time you're overwhelmed by a problem, try visualising it in all its detail. Absorb yourself in the problem without letting emotion consume you. Don't focus on who said what; focus only on the problem itself. Stay with it until you can spot every component that contributed to its making. Even if you fail to find a solution, you'll at least understand the problem in its most absolute form, and that understanding is itself a step toward one.
I don't know how I picked up the habit of getting lost in imagination. I call creative writing a kind of legitimate hallucinating, because some days that's exactly what it feels like. This practice has also helped me stay calm, by letting me see a problem in its original form rather than through the lens of how I feel about it. You see the roots of a problem more clearly that way. And sometimes that's the best way to deal with it.