Autism On the Go 👍

🧠 The Contents Of Your Mind? — Volume VII

### Applying Function to Categorization

📅 Thursday @ 6:00 PM EST
✨ Expand Your Relational Capacities

What if some forms of overthinking are not random at all?
What if repetitive mental loops — even the painful, exhausting, counterproductive ones — are attempts by the mind to perform a function?

This week we’ll continue our exploration of the Contents Of Your Mind by examining the perceived function behind suffering-based, non-reality overthinking patterns. Together we’ll investigate:
🔹 Why the mind repeatedly returns to certain thoughts
🔹 The hidden “protective” or regulatory functions of overthinking
🔹 The difference between productive reflection and recursive suffering
🔹 How the Default Mode Network (DMN) can become trapped in repetitive predictive loops
🔹 Why understanding function may reduce shame and increase awareness
🔹 How categorization helps create cognitive clarity and emotional discernment

As part of this process, we will also practice:
🫀 Interoceptive awareness
🎭 Emotional discernment skills
🧘 Mindfulness-based observation
🔍 Meta-cognitive pattern recognition
⚡ Recognizing activation before identification and reaction

This discussion continues our ongoing exploration of what we’ve been calling:
🌌 Reverse DMN Integration
— the gradual movement from compulsive self-referential looping toward broader embodied awareness, presence, discernment, and relational connection.

👉 Prompt for Reflection:
When your mind repeatedly returns to a painful or hypothetical thought-loop… what do you believe that process is trying to accomplish for you?
Protection? Prediction? Preparation? Control? Identity stabilization? Emotional avoidance? Something else?
And…

✨ What changes when you begin observing the function of the thought rather than automatically believing the content?
Attendance is intentionally limited to allow for deeper discussion, reflection, and sharing.
Please RSVP if attending. 🌿

🧡 The Yamas & Niyamas Book Club
Exploring Yoga’s Ethical Practice by Deborah Adele

Join us for a thoughtful and structured exploration of the 10 foundational ethical principles of yoga — and it’s first two limbs - the Yamas and Niyamas — not as abstract philosophy, but as living practices for modern relational life.

We will move through the book slowly and deliberately, allowing time for reflection, discussion, and maximal comprehension. This is not a race — it is a deep dive.

Throughout the series, we will explore each principle through multiple lenses:

• The Eight Limbs of Yoga — how ethical foundations support meditation and integration
• The Attributes of Companionship — what creates steadiness, warmth, and repair in relationships
• The Framework of Relational Capacities — curiosity, regulation, empathy, attunement, meta-awareness, and expansion
• Attachment Patterns — how early bonding shapes adult connection
• Childhood Development — how adaptive strategies and nervous system learning influence behavior
• Psychological Integration — movement from fragmentation toward coherence
• Contemporary Neuroscience — including the role of left-dominant Default Mode Network activity, overthinking loops, narrative selfing, and how deeper mindfulness practices soften reactivity

We will examine feeling tone, subtle reactive pulses, and stimulus-independent thought — learning to notice the micro-movements of the mind before they crystallize into behavior. This adds a modern layer of contemplative science to the ethical foundations of yoga.

Meetings will also include guest speakers from a variety of disciplines — psychology, neuroscience, contemplative practice, somatics, and relational development — offering cross-disciplinary insight and practical application.

This is not about perfection.
It is about expansion.

Expect:
📖 deep reading
🧠 psychological insight
🧘 contemplative grounding
🤝 relational skill-building
✨ reflective dialogue

If you are interested in expanding awareness, strengthening companionship, and cultivating steadier presence in your relationships, we invite you to join us.

Meeting Day & Time: To Be Determined
Details coming soon.

Come curious.
Come reflective.
Come willing to grow.

### 🧠 What Are the Contents of Your Mind?

The Contents of Your Mind Determine the Quality of Your Life
What’s actually moving through your mind… right now?
Thoughts appear constantly —
memories, worries, plans, judgments, imagined futures.
But we rarely pause to look at them clearly.
And yet…
👉 The contents of your mind — and your relationship to them —
quietly shape your experience of life.

***

In this gathering, we’ll go deeper:
We’ll begin an examination of the categories of the contents of the mind —
and explore how much of your mental energy load each category is actually consuming.
Because not all thoughts are equal.
Some categories tend to dominate — especially in
👉 counterproductive overthinking

***

From there, we’ll explore:

• How to begin noticing and categorizing mental contents in real time
• The difference between being inside a thought vs. observing it
• Why certain categories (like worry, replaying, “what if”) tend to hijack attention
• How understanding the categorical nature of your mind helps you work with it more skillfully

***

👉 We’ll then look at practical ways to better manage counterproductive overthinking
— not by suppressing thoughts, but by understanding what category they belong to and how they function.

***

This is part of our ongoing work on expanding relational capacities —
because how you relate to your own mind directly shapes how you relate to others.

### 🧠 What Are the Contents of Your Mind?

The Contents of Your Mind Determine the Quality of Your Life
What’s actually moving through your mind… right now?
Thoughts appear constantly —
memories, worries, plans, judgments, imagined futures.
But we rarely pause to look at them clearly.
And yet…
👉 The contents of your mind — and your relationship to them —
quietly shape your experience of life.

***

In this gathering, we’ll go deeper:
We’ll begin an examination of the categories of the contents of the mind —
and explore how much of your mental energy load each category is actually consuming.
Because not all thoughts are equal.
Some categories tend to dominate — especially in
👉 counterproductive overthinking

***

From there, we’ll explore:

• How to begin noticing and categorizing mental contents in real time
• The difference between being inside a thought vs. observing it
• Why certain categories (like worry, replaying, “what if”) tend to hijack attention
• How understanding the categorical nature of your mind helps you work with it more skillfully

***

👉 We’ll then look at practical ways to better manage counterproductive overthinking
— not by suppressing thoughts, but by understanding what category they belong to and how they function.

***

This is part of our ongoing work on expanding relational capacities —
because how you relate to your own mind directly shapes how you relate to others.