Almost anything you give sustained attention to will begin to loop on itself

I'm a fan of this theory.

You basically have 2 chances:

1: the media hits you like a ton of bricks and enraptures the audience from the start

2: you watch it a few times (or in TVs case you catch a few episodes), think about it, ponder the lore for a bit, and get invested over time

Outside of that, media will blow by you and never leave a mark.

This was a great essay, and as someone who struggles a lot with hyperawareness OCD, I cried reading it.

First on a positive note, the example about attention on sex and arousal feeding back on itself and deepening the experience is well described and easy to relate to. But I think the "deepening an experience through attention" phenomenon applies in so many other domains as well - Sustained attention on a film or video game world, deep uninterrupted creative work for many hours, etc. It's a wonderful positive feedback loop.

It is somewhat similar to how when sitting in silence outside for a long period of time you begin to become aware of more and more subtle details of the experience that weren't immediately accessible. Almost like you're turning up the sensitivity knob on things.

Unfortunately as the author describes, the attention feedback loop can become unpleasant and even torturous when it is directed on negative sensations. For me it has been various things at different stages of my life - muscle tension, breathing, eye floaters in my vision, etc. The same process plays out - Sustained fixation of attention on the sensation increases your sensitivity to it, meaning you notice it more and it bothers you more, meaning you pay more attention to it, and it gets out of control.

The difficulty I experience is that this attention is unwanted and yet I feel my mind focus on it almost automatically. Paradoxically, most of the treatment/recovery advice for this type of OCD is to allow these sensations to be there without rejecting them, which I'm still working on.

But it is helpful to see the positive flip side of the coin too - Our minds are capable of deep focus and deep attention, which can increase sensitivity and let you see increasingly subtle details of experience, making you a better appreciator of art and life, a better creator, a better listener and friend, etc.

Yeah honestly I have good self control for a lot of drugs, but this one was pretty tricky. It took me a while to realize what was happening. I had been on Adderall for almost a year when I started a new job at a fast paced startup, and only then did my usage patterns become an issue. My golden rule now is I only ever take the same dosage at the same times of day (morning and afternoon). For a while I took extra on busy days and this led to poor sleep, additional use subsequent days to keep up, and then a crash. The crash was characterized by feeling extremely sad to the point of ruining my weekends when it happened. Now for the past few months I’ve never exceeded my daily dose and I feel much better. Sounds like with this simple guidance and your mindfulness you will do great

Pure pretension.

”Vara fokuserad” I think. Or ”vara koncentrerad”. Maybe ”uppmärksam” is a better translation of the word?

But ”have” attention exists for both of those as well. ”Ha fokus”.