SO GOOD QUOTES

You return again and again, reframing and finding new angles each time. But this repetition felt different; less like we were uncovering, and more like we were digging a hole.

…

Since leaving therapy, I have begun to see an excess of introspection not as a sign of high personal responsibility or desire to better oneself, but as a potential symptom of captivity (self-imposed or otherwise). If you are placed in a room with four white walls, your thoughts will turn inward because they have nowhere else to go. Solitary confinement is torture precisely because of this lack of stimuli (social, physical, intellectual).

…

A culture of excessive introspection is not a sign of collective or personal growth, but a sign of disconnection from the outside world and each other. And even more depressingly, we have accepted that this is good and moral and correct; we are lauded for living alone within four white walls, and lauded for the imagery and thoughts we produce under these conditions. 

A Culture of Introspective Captivity