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This thread is certainly intriguing. Lots of color and texture. So much rich individual experience.
As for me, I don't have a problem with recognizing and identifying my thoughts. I'm honest with myself about what I'm thinking, why I'm thinking it, how I feel.
I began to feel periods of extreme depression and times of intense internal anger/intense elation (which I believe was a form of hypomania) when I was a tiny child. There was serious trauma in my childhood, but not until after my parents divorced (I was age 6). Prior to that my life was secure and really very nice, except that I believe I already had the beginning of a biological mental illness.
So by the time I was in grade school I was battling with my thoughts and, ironically, beginning to learn how to work with them because I had to. By the time I was in high school in the late '70's working with one's thoughts was very en vogue, at least here in California, so I jumped right in...rap groups, Transendental Meditation, therapy of various schools, a wide variety of spiritual paths, whatever came my way, I grabbed it, on into Zen Buddhism in the '90's.
Medication - without it I doubt I'd still be walking the earth. Unless magic mushrooms turn out to be a miracle cure for All That Ails Us, or a new type of LSD is discovered that treats and cures every breed of mental illness in one day, I expect to be a devotee of Big Pharma for the remainder of my days here on this planet. I am a pill-popper and likely will remain one.
But back to thoughts. Thoughts were my hobby, my thing, my eternal fascination. Then along about my late 40's, actually one specific week in November when I was 48, for some reason things came to a dead stop and thoughts stopped being interesting. They turned on me. They became a dark mystery, a mean, creepy puzzle with pieces that kept changing form so none of the pieces would fit right. Like a nightmare.
No more interesting, no more enjoyable intrigue, no more hope for a sparkling-fresh way to manage my thoughts - okay, maybe not all the time - but enough so I felt pleasantly floating on air, not quivering like a leaf in the wind. I didn't expect this: to be 23 days from my 60th birthday and feel so completely lost. I feel ashamed, quite frankly. I truly thought I'd done better than this. I just feel so scared.
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