[andai]

I've been doing a lot of mindfulness meditation lately, and also learning about self soothing, emotional processing etc.

I found that now that I can access blissful and peaceful states at will, and deal with difficult emotions without getting overwhelmed, my "need" for compulsive behaviors has dropped massively. There's no longer so much pain to medicate.

It's like you say, we use this stuff because we don't know a better way.

As for social media, there's also the systemic issue of atomization in modern society. People spend so much time alone now, so that's another great pain to cope with.

I wonder why that is. How did we get here?

[MarcelOlsz]

How does one get started? I've been doing 20 minute wim hof breathing sessions that help and I've been looking into TM due to David Lynch but nothing beyond reading.

[andai]

I use Insight Timer. The daily streak feature helped me finally make it a habit, after half assing it for many years.

When starting it can be helpful to use guided meditations. There's a bunch in that app (mostly free), and on YouTube of course.

I like Shinzen Young's videos and audiobooks, he takes a very grounded, "technical" approach to this stuff.

My main "lessons learned":

- Do it every day, even if just a few minutes. Makes a huge difference.

- Make awareness broad. This takes practice, it's like a muscle. I made the mistake of making it narrow like a laser, which is much harder, less stable, and less useful! i.e. learn to hold 2, then 3 objects in mind "at the same time". e.g. the breath, and the birds outside, and the "sense of space" of the room.

The classic meditation object is the breath. In my case, that brought up a lot of emotional pain. It's fine to use other objects in that case (though eventually you can learn to integrate / heal the emotions too), e.g. focus on sounds or anything "grounding".

[wonger_]

Not OP, but seeing a therapist, journaling, breathing exercises, and spending time lingering outside (e.g. walking), helped me regulate emotions and access peaceful states. Anxiety is the source of lots of problems for me, including doomscrolling, and unmanaged thoughts and feelings are a big source of anxiety for me. So once I learned some techniques for tending to those thoughts and feelings (instead of ignoring them), everything got a bit better.

So I guess keep reading, keep breathing, find more techniques that help you, and consider finding a professional if you need more help.