When we try to escape ourselves: the pull of dark flow

States of deep absorption can feel profoundly relieving.

In moments of flow, thinking quietens, self-consciousness fades, and attention becomes fully engaged in what’s happening. Time shifts. Effort feels natural. For a while, the inner commentary that usually accompanies life falls away.

This can be nourishing and meaningful.

But not all absorption serves us in the same way.

When relief becomes the goal

There is a version of flow that doesn’t arise from engagement, learning, or mastery — but from desperation.

People sometimes describe being “in the zone” while gambling, gaming, drinking, or using substances. The experience can feel similar on the surface: intense focus, loss of time, relief from inner noise.

But something crucial is different.

Here, the absorption is not a by-product of meaningful involvement.

It is the point.

The aim is not expression, growth, or participation — but escape.

Why this kind of absorption is so compelling

When the inner world has become painful — crowded with rumination, anxiety, anger, or traumatic memory — anything that silences it can feel like salvation.

The nervous system doesn’t ask whether relief is healthy or sustainable.

It registers only that the pain has stopped.

In these states, powerful neurochemical rewards are released. Attention narrows. Self-reflection disappears. For a while, there is a sense of freedom from oneself.

This is what researchers sometimes refer to as dark flow — not because it is evil or immoral, but because it disconnects relief from meaning.

A human story

One woman described how gambling became the only place her mind could rest.

After years of exposure to traumatic material at work, she was exhausted, angry, and unable to sleep. Her thoughts replayed relentlessly — not just the events she had witnessed, but the sense of betrayal she felt at not being heard or supported.

When she gambled, everything stopped.

“When I’m there, nothing else exists. I get a break from myself.”

For a while, this worked.

Then it didn’t.

The relief shortened. The stakes increased. The consequences grew heavier. And the very thing that had offered escape began to deepen the despair it was meant to relieve.

This is not weakness.

It’s a nervous system trying to survive.

The difference that matters

The crucial distinction is not between “good” and “bad” flow.

It’s between:

• absorption that emerges from engagement, and

• absorption that is used to escape suffering

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In creative work, sport, conversation, or learning, flow tends to have:

• a natural rhythm

• a beginning and an end

• a sense of meaning afterwards

• 
  

Even when it’s intense, it leaves something behind.

In addictive forms of absorption, there is often:

• no natural stopping point

• no lasting satisfaction

• increasing cost

• 
  

Relief is borrowed from the future.

Why chasing flow doesn’t work

When flow is chased for its own sake, it turns against us.

The mind learns that relief comes only through intensity. Ordinary life begins to feel flat, intolerable, or meaningless by comparison. And as with all forms of escape, the threshold rises — more stimulation is needed to achieve the same effect.

What began as refuge becomes a trap.

This is not because flow is dangerous, but because relief without integration cannot sustain us.

What’s actually being sought

At its core, dark flow is not about pleasure.

It’s about:

• relief from self-attack

• relief from memory

• relief from inner noise

• relief from unbearable feeling

In other words, it is a longing for peace.

But peace cannot be sustained by disappearing.

A quieter way forward

The alternative is not to condemn these experiences or force them away.

It is to gently recognise what they are trying to provide — and to ask whether there are ways to meet that need without losing yourself in the process.

When the inner world becomes more workable — when self-attack softens, when feelings can be held rather than fled — the compulsion to escape often eases on its own.

Flow, then, returns to its rightful place:

a gift that arises from engagement, not a drug that must be chased.

A closing truth

Not all relief is restorative.

But the longing beneath it is always understandable.

When we stop trying to escape ourselves, and begin to make room for what’s happening inside, the need for disappearance gradually loosens.

And from there, life can be entered — not avoided.

If you’d like to continue

You might find these reflections helpful next:

• When thinking falls quiet: the experience of flow(Understanding absorption without escape.)

• When the mind turns against itself(Seeing why inner noise becomes unbearable.)

• How we lose trust in ourselves — and how to find our way back(Restoring inner safety so escape is no longer necessary.)