I enjoyed 'Notes From Underground' too. Had a similar experience reading it. > While I'm not sure if that's true, I think the main danger is that, at least bas

I enjoyed 'Notes From Underground' too. Had a similar experience reading it. > While I'm not sure if that's true, I think the main danger is that, at least based on experience and observation, there's something strangely addictive to rumination. It feels useful. I think the main issue with reading these kinds of things with aims towards a solution is they support the idea that there's some problem with yourself that you need to solve in the first place, whereas—in many cases—the only problem is that one keeps trying to solve this 'problem,' and if they stopped for sufficiently long, things would eventually return to normal. Although another requirement may be that you have to consider it not a problem when negative mental states arise (otherwise you just keep trying to problem solve your mental state), and reading can definitely help to acquire that. But anyway that's just my thinking on this atm—can't say I put it into practice super well ;) Send me an e-mail if you'd like to discuss further (westoncb at google's email service).