I could do less thinking.
Not intellectual thinking, but catastrophizing thinking. It’s so easy to get caught up in thinking about the worst thing that could happen and then everything spirals down from there. I try really hard not to get stuck in that worst case scenario game, but sometimes my brain does not care what I’m trying to do. It seems determined to take me down.
It’s so rare that anything actually ends up as the ridiculous worst case that my brain came up with. I find that saying these ridiculous thoughts out loud often stops them in their tracks. It’s like my brain lacks the context to determine whether something is real or not. “Well, this person didn’t call because they hate me because I wear striped shirts and I am not funny.”
That’s not a real example, but it’s the most ridiculous thing I could think of at the moment and I happen to be wearing a striped shirt. (sidenote – ever since college, I always say stripe-ed and not striped like it should be. I don’t even know why I do that.) It’s like my brain is forever writing a fnatasy novel about all the reasons why someone may not like me. But in actuality, people don’t call because they’re busy, they forgot, they’ve got their own shit going on, and most of the time it has nothing to do with me. It’s not that I think everyone’s world revolves around me, it’s a self-protective measure to determine when I might be in some kind of emotional danger and/or facing rejection. So the immediate action is to figure out an explanation that will excuse me pulling away from them in response to this imagined problem.
But the problem never existed in the first place. It was created in my brain. And I have learned over the years that I am not the only one dealing with this kind of nonsense. It seems to be fairly common. And sometimes people have reacted to me not calling them in the exact same way and I’m all “but what did I do that is making them back away? I told them I was busy!” And cue me backing away from them backing away from me and the cycle of overthinkers continues.
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