blocked thoughts

I find that when I am writing a commentary for one of my class postings, I will get somewhat blocked. My ability to generate new ideas or to resonate with the subject is often dependent on how relaxed my mind is. For example, today felt very busy at work, and there were some things which caused some stress toward the end of the day for me. When I got home, I was not only distracted from the process of framing responses to the weekly writings, but even when I sat down to think about it, my mind felt a bit confined.
   Years ago, I read a study which suggests that people who suffer depression are more prone to thinking "literally" about things than others who are not depressed. I think this relates to what I experienced earlier tonight: when a person is experiencing some amount of stress, their mind will go into a kind of strategizing mode where every outcome becomes like the spaces on a chessboard. In contrast, framing responses to writing requires more parallel thinking, which seems to be inhibited somewhat by the strategic style of thinking. To a certain extent. it's as though one is telling themselves that there is no "luxury" to entertain possibilities or to think more spaciously when situations arise at work that feel dangerous. Stress in fact has a tendency to mobilize people into a mode of fight or flight.
   Of course, most of this comes from allowing certain thoughts to magnify one's experiences. A person might take 100 per cent of the blame for something and burden themselves with that sense of responsibility, only to realize later that all situations involve many factors. No single person can ever take the blame for all situations, but they can only examine which factors that they can influence. While this sounds flippant, actually, having this quiet reflection on cause and conditions sometimes mitigates the heaviness that one feels when they try to take total blame for things. Such an idea of "total blame" is not compassionate, and at times, we need to step outside of it to really get a sense of what is going on and how we can see it in new ways. The converse of blame is the "all powerful self" which is supposedly autonomous and independent--again, another kind of mythical portrayal of what accountability might look like in community with others.