Hi Adam,
The reason I concluded that “you are presently addicted to … worrying itself” is that you said in your last post –
Adam-H: I at least proved to myself that I could do specific, well-defined tasks while remaining carefree.
And then immediately after that –
Adam-H: What started to pull me back to where I am now was the concern that without that anxiety …
So instead of being relieved to be able to remain carefree in certain situations, what “pulled me back” was worrying about not worrying. Does it now make sense to you (more than merely “ring true”)?
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Vineeto: Perhaps you can instead rememorate how you were experiencing the world during your PCEs, or how you were when you were genuinely naïve and the world was a wondrous place to explore and appreciate? It’s enjoyment and the very appreciation of it which has the capacity to enhance feeling good, and then feeling better and feeling great. When you feel great a lot of imagined/ anticipated problems reveal themselves as phantoms – but this is not the outcome of rational thinking alone, it comes from feeling good first.
Adam-H: Part of me wants to dismiss this as a tautological/ circular suggestion. It seems like saying “try feeling good, then the worries which are preventing you from feeling good will fade away”. What’s funny is I know it has actually played out this way many times in my experience, so I’m sure it is actually a great suggestion.
Yes, logical conclusion often don’t correspond to experiential discovery – logic is so often a theoretical dead end. Did you try out the suggestion experientially?
Adam-H: I think that combating the worry itself rationally is probably a lost cause indeed. It’s me arguing against me and we are both equally intelligent (or unintelligent). Definitely a major reframing to look at this question of ‘am I actually addicted to worrying itself?’
You “think” … “probably”, which means you do not know with certainty and this uncertainty has not enough thrust to change your modus operandi regarding “combating the worry itself”. Only when you know that using rationality when feeling worried is useless, will you be able to experiment with what you so far consider “a tautological/ circular suggestion”. To gain certainty you need the experience and repeated success in getting back to feeling good first before thinking about your worry/ fear in order to change your natural habit of just rationally thinking about it.
Adam-H: What does worry do for me? Why do I ‘hold it close to my bosom’? I know my brain and my ability to think doesn’t go away when worry is gone, so am I really just uncomfortable with the experience of being unworried for extended periods of time?
Ha, here is the person who only recently said –
Adam-H: It reminded me of how people can spend their entire lives in conflict with themselves over losing weight. They can have an internal narrative about the plans to lose weight and different strategies and methods that basically goes on and on forever. Perhaps the narrative itself is a sort of ‘sustenance’ for me that I take pleasure in, and it certainly works the same for actualism. Actually doing it is quite simple – sustaining the narrative that I’m doing it or want to do it is a circus of complexity and diversion. Actually doing it goes somewhere new – sustaining the narrative is walking in a circle composed of highs and lows. And of course – as a note to myself, having this realization is not going somewhere new in and of itself, it will just be another high unless I actually walk the walk. [Emphasis added]. (24 Feb 2026)
Now you are back to being content with conjecture and guessing … and imagining.
Adam-H: I’m imagining a world where I continue sincere efforts to solve the problems my job throws at me in a cheerful and naive way. I’m realizing I don’t actually think I’ll be less capable. It’s more that I think I’ll be taken advantage of or underappreciated. But right now I’m feeling ok with that idea, if it means I keep getting paid and getting to be happy and harmless. (link)
However, your imagination reveals what it is you worry about – being competent or not – that you will be “taken advantage of or underappreciated”. You said in your last post –
Adam-H: Over the last month I started making some meaningful progress but then regressed back to normal again. (…)
What I’m going to try to do now is rememorate how I was when I was carefree, … (link)
So far, in this regression “back to normal” you have listened to, ruminated about, and taken on board the typical arguments against allowing oneself to being carefree, naïvely enjoying and appreciating being alive, allowing your naiveté to flourish, out of fear of feeling foolish, “taken advantage of or underappreciated”. Perhaps what Richard says here might give you some inspiration and courage to remember your life’s goal, your destiny –
Richard: … in a pure consciousness experience (PCE) one discovers that the universe is already benevolent and benign (it does not need ‘my’ benevolence and benignity pasted as a veneer over it). There is a passage in ‘Richard’s Journal’ which may be worth contemplating:
• ‘Innocence is something entirely new; it has never existed in human beings before. It is an evolutionary break-through to come upon innocence. It is a mutation of the human brain. Naiveté is a necessary precursor to invoke the condition of innocence. One surely has to be naive to contemplate the profound notion that this universe is benign, friendly. One needs to be naive to consider that this universe has an inherent imperative for well-being to flourish; that it has a built-in benevolence available to one who is artless, without guile. To the realist – the ‘worldly-wise’ – this appears like utter foolishness. After all, life is a ‘vale of tears’ and one must ‘make the best of a bad situation’ because one ‘can’t change human nature’; and therefore ‘you have to fight for your rights’. This derogatory advice is endlessly forthcoming; the put-down of the universe goes on ad nauseam, wherever one travels throughout the world. This universe is so enormous in size – infinity being as enormous as it can get – and so magnificent in its scope – eternity being as magnificent as it can get – how on earth could anyone believe for a minute that it is all here for humans to be forever miserable in? It is foolishness of the highest order to believe it to be so. Surely, one can have confidence in a universe so grandly complex, so marvellously intricate, so wonderfully excellent’. [emphasis added]. (page 138, Article 21: ‘It Is Impossible To Combat The Wisdom Of The Real World’; ‘Richard’s Journal’; ©1997 The Actual Freedom Trust).
I have emphasised the words which indicate one of the biggest stumbling-blocks to first setting foot upon the wide and wondrous path to an actual freedom from the human condition – the apprehension of becoming a simpleton – so as to highlight the fact that when I say naiveté I mean naiveté. (Richard, AF List, No. 27d, 23 Jan 2003).
Cheers Vineeto