People know so little about themselves. And I don’t even mean it from a philosophical aspect, like what’s their purpose in life or what happiness means to them. I say it from a simple physical or psychological point. Let me explain.

We usually don’t know how our body or mind works. We all had anatomy lessons back in school that were supposed to tell us how things work. But did they really? For instance, I remember that we used to study some cells, how they’re called and what’s their function for months. Or the name of the numerous bones. Don’t get me wrong, those are important to know as well, but it’s not the practical knowledge necessary for life. Sure, the lessons taught that the lungs are for breathing, the stomach is for digesting etc. We learned a few basic things but apart from that we have no idea how our organism functions. Whenever something happens, our first reaction is panic because we don’t understand what’s going on. Like when we feel a sudden ache and instantly think something is wrong and start picturing all the possible illnesses that we may have. And that makes the situation even worse cause that’s how psychosomatics work. While in reality the reason can be something really simple and not frightening at all.

Same with our minds. We expect to always feel good and stable and whenever we fall into a “strange” or negative state, we, again, think that something isn’t right, that we’re losing our minds or something. We don’t understand why we suddenly feel anxious or alarming without any particular reason, why we feel sad or depressed even when things seem okay. And we start thinking of all those horrible mental illnesses we’ve heard about and self-diagnose ourselves with the worst of them. In reality, it’s the fear of the unknown that makes everything much more frightening. When we don’t understand what’s happening, it sounds like a serious issue.

Why am I talking about such an uncharacteristic topic? Because the other night I wasn’t feeling well and I decided to talk to Chat gpt. I know, that a couple of posts ago I was all against AI, but this is actually one of the cases where I realized how helpful it is. The first thing I noticed was how easily Gpt understood what I was trying to say even though it was a little hard finding the right the words to describe it. That made me realize that there are hundreds or millions of people like me who faced the same problem, and the thought itself already calmed me. Then Gpt gave me a thorough explanation without scaring me, like Google always does. It used a scientific, yet very simple language to go through each part of my problem and tell why exactly it happens both in a physical and psychological way. I used the information it gave me, compared it with my self-perception and my own knowledge of certain things, realized the source of my problem as well as its solution. Suddenly, it wasn’t alarming or incomprehensible anymore. I understood what’s happening, and not only did it make me feel calmer, but I actually felt physically good as well.

After that I got into the flow and decided to ask about all the other things that bother me every now and then. It was like a medical checkup that made me truly understand the causes of different situations. And I truly regret not having done it earlier, because it’d definitely save me a lot of stress. And that’s when I realized the power and importance of knowledge about ourselves.

By the way, I must note that I don’t talk about serious issues or illnesses. Or that you should blindly do whatever Gpt suggests. I’m talking about simple things that happens to all of us but somehow we never wonder why it happens. Like why you feel dizzy when you just wake up; why you experience derealisation during the day; why you feel nauseous when hungry; why things seem more frightening during the night and why your brain creates terrible scenarios before going to bed.

So, my advice for this random post is: study yourself. Use Gpt or any other sources to find out how your body and brain work and why certain things happen. You’ll see that the majority of those things aren’t scary or dangerous, that’s just how your anatomy works. You simply didn’t know that. And it will make your life easier.