[roansh]

>Similarly I had the realization that when left alone, you can rapidly lose track of reality. Your emotions will influence beliefs and nobody can rebalance your mind. These beliefs can make you suffer deeply and sometimes they're completely bogus.. yet you can't easily extract yourself from this mindset, while when with others they can bring you back closer to a centered view. I kinda see social groups as balancing devices now.

I think I have experienced this. Also being among people constantly gives you these signals to process, which distract you from the self-talk. These external signals help you hook back into the collective thought?

[agumonkey]

I'd say yes. To the point that when I started recovering, I voluntarily went in parks to sit around people. Their lives would re-trigger other, warmer, emotions in me. In a way to counter the probability that I would go back to negative self-talk.

Emotions are a weird thing, people can talk you out of them, or reduce their impact on your reality a lot.

[roansh]

You could also experiment in shifting negative self-talk into positive one. Like with all changes, this won't be easy, but I believe it is doable.

Use reason, different angles, perspectives, whatever the means to shift the negative tone of the self-talk?

[agumonkey]

I tried, it didn't affect me the same way. A bit like trying to warm yourself up by rubbing your skin vs sitting under a bit of sun.