Experience
During the Second Impact / Third Impact, I experienced rather deep rumination; cyclical thought patterns orbiting the deeply distressing existential issues I was dealing with. I had, perhaps, experienced this to a less degree before in my life, but this was the real deal. It’s a constricting and draining experience as it keeps the physical symptoms of anxiety fully turned up and there is little escape from the thoughts as they are able to reappear at whim, beginning the cycle again. The cycle is usually something like: the problem at hand (existential despair, fear) followed by attempting solutioning, justification, or mental escape which is then countered by a more fundamental despair. Relief from the cycle only seemed to come from attempted problem-solving. I dug into the thoughts of others online, seeking answer to the circling questions. It is this process that led me to spend days reading about Hell, then learning about historical criticism, and later things that resembled street epistemology.
Aftershock
I’ve noticed that during and since this experience I have had an increase in non-distressing looping or repeating thought patterns, especially when my background anxiety is higher. These are often purely benign things like small parts of a song or a unique word or phrase that just seem to recur throughout the day. It seems likely to me that this is a sort of mental coping mechanism; a replacement loop for what could be something more destructive. That, or it’s just a newly develop mental defect.