I’d often think about social interactions ahead of time. My brain would create countless situations that I’d play out. Once I exhausted one situation, I jump into analyzing the next possible situation. On and on I’d go.
I’ve only recently been able to quiet down my beehive brain a bit thanks to a few realizations I came to about the damage it was doing to me:
- Even after analyzing 100 different possibilities, reality would often be much different than the scenarios I thought about.
- When the situation didn’t play out exactly as I’d imagined, I’d still react instantly without thinking through the new variances. In my foolishness, the unexpected scenario seemed close enough to the ones I had already thought about, so I’d respond off the cuff.
In reality, things were different enough that a pause to think would’ve been better.
- Thinking through 100 different scenarios also meant going through the emotional baggage that came with them. In my mind, sometimes people reacted positively and sometimes negatively.
Imagining all the negative ways someone could react would lead me to attributing negative feelings to them, even though they haven’t responded negatively.
On the flip side, if I attributed a specific positive outcome to someone that didn’t live up to my exact interpretation, I’d end up feeling disappointed with an outcome I should’ve been happy with.
- Lastly, I’d push to resolve a situation immediately because I didn’t want to go through another beehive of scenarios while waiting to continue the conversation another time.
Sometimes that push to resolve the conflict resulted in a positive breakthrough. However, other times the person would agree to a certain resolution due to sheer exhaustion which leave us with an unsustainable outcome.
Of course, there were other things that helped calm my brain down. Things that helped me take a step towards these realizations and act on them.
Hopefully, my comment can be one of those steps for someone else.