Why "summary for impatient readers" not "summary"?

I've been trying it for the last couple of days. Current I have a gesture where I trace a lower case letter 'n' in the air for negative thoughts (I've had similar depressive tendencies to you) and 'd' for 'distraction' (my anxiety issues cause me to find distracting activities rather than concentrate on the task at hand that is causing me distress). So far it has been quite helpful its definitely interesting to notice when I'm distracting myself semi-subconsciously.

I'm also trying a 'p' gesture for when I'm going over past thoughts, a sideways gesture of dismissal to get something true but irrelevant off my mind and consciously smiling when I notice I'm thinking happy thoughts. But these aren't as rigorous as yet.

I'll report on my results later. Any comments on my methodology?

I think you tend to get that signal for a very good reason, and it's not generally not a signal you want to turn off.

The amount of worry and anxiety some people have in regard to their problems (say, health or financial problems) might not be healthy at all, and might lead to depressive moods. And yet, avoiding those problems by avoiding to think about them would be really bad.

Rumination and worrying are a habitual, unmindful and irrational type of thinking. They are just replaying cached thoughts, and that shouldn't even be dignified by being called "thinking". It's not good for depressed people, for anxious people or for anyone else. I absolutely agree that one shouldn't dwell on such thoughts. I'm just saying that instead of automatically stopping your thoughts, or doing anything automatically, one should have at least one good look at those thoughts and think. And I mean think mindfully, rationally and critically. I'm not saying one should necessarily think about the "problem", but rather about the thoughts themselves. Are they rational? How would I think about that if I weren't depressed? And no, don't feel depressed about being depressed or worry that you will never stop worrying ;-). Once that's done, you can let that thought drop, but not before.

More data! This apparently is also an awesome way to deal with the heebie jeebies of walking alone at night.

The other effect is that it seems to function as some sort of intra-brain communication.

This is not so surprising. Intra-brain conflicts are well-established neuro-psychological phenomena, primarily on account of the presence of two hemispheres being thinly connected by axon fibres. There is a degree of modularity in the brain, because each hemisphere tends to work within its own sphere as a general rule.

I am curious to know: which hand/finger generally exhibits these non-verbal cues for you to recognize and label particular thoughts consciously?

Being long is not a disqualifier for being in discussion. In fact, every main post could go into discussion; the question is whether a post deserves to be in main.

This seemed long enough that it shouldn't go in discussion. However, if anyone thinks otherwise, let me know and I'll move it.

Fascinating! Maybe you could write a step-by-step post, and elaborate on the specifics?

Personally I'd like to have the following questions answered:

Edit: Do you tag both emotions and thoughts?

• How do you define emotion?
• How specific/big is your Tag-cloud?
• Does it ever happen that you are unsure what to tag an emotion as e.g. what you are really feeling? (I guess you could tag that as feeling confused)
• Does tagging have any reinforcing effect?