Wonderings in wandering

Today, there is a much greater awareness and, to some extent, acceptance of mental health issues. It is as wide a spectrum of syndromes, disorders, disabilities,....as light. And as with light, some are clearly visible, some are only visible under certain conditions, while others are invisible. Just a glance at the Table of Contents of the DSM (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) or the ICD (International Classification of Diseases) section on Mental Disorders, gives an insight into the amount of, what I'll call, mental disorders. In combination, there are almost infinite diagnoses, for instance Post Traumatic Stress Disorder leading to High Anxiety related Substance Misuse causing Psychotic episodes. Now, not holding a PhD in Psychiatry or Psychology, my lack of knowledge of terms and causations may be obvious. But having suffered with higher and lower levels of Depression, Anxiety Disorder, Paranoia, along with Alcoholism and Substance Use since my late t...

What are thoughts? They can be pleasant, joyful, scary, destructive, angry... They can be treasured or forgotten, hung on to or masked, numbed. They can be distracting or focusing. I recently discovered the difference between conscious and un/subconscious thought. Now, at 43, I was kinda gobsmacked that I hadn't fully understood it before. I had always believed that a conscious thought was one that you were aware of and that a subconscious thought was invisible to the mind. For example, if I thought "that trees leaves are green", that was a conscious thought. A subconscious thought was me putting one foot in front of the other to walk, or opening my hand to pick something up. Those thoughts that seem to bubble up from nowhere I believed to be conscious thoughts because i was conscious of them, no matter how mundane or bizarre they were. Anything from "why is nicotine addictive?" to "what would actually happen if I shot someone?". From imag...