The case for “dusking”: In a world of light and noise, embracing the dark can be healing - Big Think - I think this sounds like a cool idea and I might give it a go this evening.
I think one of the issues that I have with anxiety is that I worry that I’m not relaxing ‘well enough’, which totally cancels out any relaxing I might actually have otherwise been doing. When I get in from work I maybe have 4 hours to get myself fed, do a little housework and relax and recharge myself ready to do it all again the next day. But when I’m trying to chill out, I’ll be kind of worrying that I’m not getting the most value out of that time? Like, if I’m sitting watching Star Trek TNG, I might be thinking ‘this is fine, but would I be having more fun if I was playing Zelda? Am I setting myself up for a crummy day tomorrow by wasting my time watching this? But I’m already 20 minutes into the episode, I can’t just drop it now’ etc.
I think one way out is to try and learn to just do nothing again, and that unless there really is somewhere that I need to be or something that I need to get prepared for, then who cares? Just do whatever. I wonder if looking out of the window might be a good way to try this out.
It’s a bit of a shame that it’s basically impossible to do this all year round. In winter it gets dark long before I’m finished work. Maybe that just means I’ve got a chance to do this now and if I want to check it out and enjoy it, I can?