I'm gonna say the opposite of what others say. And it's something that has worked well for me for 15 years.
The way to deal with an unpleasant thought or feeling is to experience it. Find a quiet place where nothing will distract you. Sit down, call back the unpleasant emotion, and experience it. Don't try to "let it go" or anything; don't do any kind of thought processing. Instead, dive into the feeling completely and even "turn the volume up" on it. "These people treated me so wrong!" Let it scratch you. Let it have its say, as fully as possible.
What usually happens for me, strangely, is that the emotion has its say and then I... somehow forget what I was feeling. My mind drifts, the edge blunts, the unpleasantness becomes harder to recall. I try to call it back again with all force, and it comes back, but weaker and weaker each time. And then it becomes just another abstract item of memory, its power over me gone forever.
I think what you're describing is one of the (if not THE) primary methods that are taught for dealing with this kind of stuff. I suppose it's called "sitting in your emotions" - for a lack of better term.
I think that you're pointing out an important nuance of that method - wether to keep a distance to the emotion or "going into it". I guess something important can also be said about the difference between ruminating - i.e. thinking about the hangup - or sitting in your feeling about it (kind of like massaging the painful thought) and observing how your body and mind responds to it.
I don't really have a clear conclusion about these nuances - apart from it being helpful to try out the variations to see what works.
Close your eyes. Imagine a black tunnel that you are floating through. Every time a thought pops up, paint it black in that tunnel and then float on past it. That includes the thoughts "this tunnel is black" or anything related to your current experience. Just paint it over and float on again.
I self-taught this method at a young age and have picked up a few other "quiet mind" techniques over the years that do similar-ish things. The principle, from my pov, is to basically sit with it and proactively teach your brain to stfu, one thought at a time.
Close your eyes. For every thought you have, imagine it to be a soap bubble, floating upwards. After a few seconds of floating upwards, it pops and is gone.
Mindfulness and building the habit of letting go - let thoughts pass by like clouds, or landscape passing from a train. You notice the thought, but do not dwell on it.
The initial stage of dwelling gives thoughts footholds and reinforces them without evaluation of their validity. If a thought is worthwhile, you'll come back to it because it will stand out in the landscape of thoughts that went by.
Adopt of mindset of letting thought flow over and through you rather than catching each one and dwelling on it. When thoughts are shallow and numerous, this is like brainstorming.
Something helping me lately is focusing on practical habits and training myself to view thoughts as an outcome of my habits and physical well being, rather than (only) the opposite. In practice simple things like going to bed at a consistent early time, making my bed, shaving and getting properly dressed (on wfh days where its of no consequence otherwise). Exercise, etc. Most important, by far, had been to not view that list of things as all or nothing. Tiniest step helps, even eg cleaning just a couple dishes, single piece of trash, etc. Its helped me see all or nothing thinking as the main enemy, and these little actions as the greatest weapon against it.
The more days I tackle the little things, the more empowered i feel. And the more
I notice, now even on days where only half the list of those basic wellbeing hygiene things get done, I still feel tremendously better. Different. And the less need I feel to treat those chores as the goal and lore as a simple means to living a simple good life, and enjoying the good moments. I see the interplay of physically taking care of yourself and others, incremental progress and good habits, and a more balance outlook on life all toed together and all part of a healthier and happier mindset.
Tldr when I start to slip and spend less time diagnosing and more time finding something, anything, small to change course, and am surprised at the ripple effect is (now) has.
Oh, that's exactly where I think, and think, and think in spirals. I suppose I am at my 10 hours of phone screentime per day just not to fall in this dark thoughts spiral.
When we think of 'puzzles' in the most concrete way we think of problems that are challenging but ultimately designed to be solved in a satisfactory way.
But many problems that we want to solve aren't necessarily fair to the problem solver. They can have multiple possible solutions, only half solutions or no feasible solution at all. Some of the solutions could be obvious, some of them hidden to a degree that you may never find them. And when you find something that could perhaps be construed as a solution there's no guarantee that the solution tells you it's a good solution - or if there are better solutions hiding behind the next hill. And some problems will seem very easy to some other person but insurmountable to you. And you might never even get a satisfactory explanation to why that is.
For those problems we need to either learn to accept that the solution process never really ends and/or learn to accept and settle for a fundamentally unsatisfactory partial solution. You might one day wake up and feel that the problem is actually solved or doesn't bother you that much anymore but there's no reason to bet on that. Better to bet on acceptance. That way the process and the problem can possibly settle in our mind regardless of outcome.
Such acceptance is not easy. It can only come with practice, and by also accepting that punishing oneself for being human does not make anyone happier.
Youtube videos. I use them, and loud, to avoid thinking. I’ve been bullied quite a lot in the last 10 years (you may say as a result of being a capitalist/democracy believer surrounded by left-wingers, but that doesn’t justify bullying), and just understanding that the opponents are bad-faithed, follow no logic, goes to a point where you must let go, independently of any shower argument that you may still run in your head. And listening all the time to scientific arguments, engineering investigations, etc, is soothing because it’s logic.
At one point, the videos became less necessary. It was unhealthy in the highest year of the crisis, but less unhealthy than thinking about winning an argument with a bully.
Of course, who knew that having a lot of distractions and sources of satisfaction could lead to fewer addictions, but sometimes you don’t have them / can’t afford them.
