Decisions! Decisions!

Some of the skills that I pride myself in my work are my problem-solving and decision-making skills, knowing all the facts and being able to act when needed quickly and efficiently and the fact that I can quickly problem-solve if things are not going as they should. I am particularly good at it, and I have always been perceived as a top achiever which served my need for validation and showed that my people-pleasing is on point. Made for customer service, I was. It helps that tools and processes are cause and effect. Easy, predictable outcome, tick the right boxes and this is what should happen. One would think that a person who can make a career out of planning and decision-making can easily navigate the issues of their own life and while some of them may very well be, those skills are not transferable for me.

In real life, if something comes up, my mind starts reeling and thinking of all the scenarios that could happen and then I start trying to see what I don’t know and what is in the realm of the possible so, I go to Google. Three hours later down that rabbit hole, I am so hyper-stimulated that my thoughts are like runaway trains. All of my fears take hold, and I feel like I am collapsing on the inside. I start talking to myself, I do it aloud sometimes and in public. It might be a sign of mental illness but, sometimes saying things aloud gives them power and it helps me concentrate on one thing at a time rather than having five competing thoughts coming at me at the same time. I just start thinking about the facts and analysing, playing devil’s advocate with everything. I then started to consider that I have analysed things before, and I was wrong so how do I know I will be right this time? Even more so, I have a history of ignoring things just to get what I wanted in the moment and hurt my chances in the long run. I have blown things out of proportion before, and I have trusted people I should not have trusted so; can I know I am being right now? I know myself the best so, I hurt myself the most and I start thinking of all the times things have gone wrong. After this, I come to the conclusion that I may be …possibly… potentially… I don’t know…overthinking this? I try to focus on something else, trying to change the subject of myself. After some failed attempts at that, I realise that I am no closer to a decision but one person I can’t trust is myself and I have the overwhelming feeling that I need someone else to deal with it because everybody else seems to be better at it then me and no matter how much I split hairs, I cannot figure out the answers and protect myself from any bad thing happening.

“Just stop worrying about it!” Aww, that’s cute! Why didn’t I think of that? Just stop worrying. Seems legit! I find it so amazing that you think that is an option that is available to me. I have three days of internet research deep, two anxiety attacks, one night waking up from my sleep when the thought occurred, and one important training that I was looking forward to but couldn’t concentrate on deeply. Your “when you think of doing it, don’t!” is a water pistol versus a rainforest fire scenario and it just says that you don’t want to talk about it, which is fine. Say you don’t care, say you can’t take it, say you don’t know how to help. I can respect all of that rather than slogans. I know I am unhinged and paranoid what helps is talking through things and being supported in figuring out what is a genuine problem and what is not. My brain flooded with every worry I ever had so I needed help in regulating, and I needed someone that would openly disagree with me. I am not interested in hearing what I want to hear, if you want to be a cheerleader for me, tell me what I need to hear and will me get genuine results. Sometimes, when one is drowning, and can’t be part of their rescue, the saviour renders the victim unconscious to save them. That is the moral punch in the face that is required. Be mean to be kind!

I clearly can’t control my thoughts. Have you ever thought of something and then felt instant shame about the thought, looked left and right as if somebody was watching you and they could hear your thoughts so, you started to flood your own mind with white noise thoughts to confuse this imaginary mind reader? Do you ever think that something happened because you thought certain things and if you had thought something different, the outcome would have been different? Well, imagine saying that when your gran dies, certain situations will resolve themselves and then the next you get a text that your gran is dead. Can you imagine? I can cause that is what happened. #therapycontinues

Trying to make it stop and just ignoring the situation just makes it worse. Even more when I then worry about how much time I spent worrying and I feel guilty for it. Everything in my body is telling me this cannot be ignored. The only way to make this go away is to address it and address it fully. All questions answered, all details figured out and every issue closed fully so this needs to come back on the table again.

“You worry too much!” Look at that. Another piece of valuable feedback. Do you think that I don’t know that if worrying and jumping to conclusions would be a sporting event, I would win medals and awards at a global level? The problem is that this is what I have always done and while I am aware of it, it is not an easy nut to crack. There is a need to become aware of what overwhelms me and accept it. There will be negative emotions, and it will be hard but trying to pretend that ignoring them will help, is the worst thing that I can do. I need to sit with it and realise what my brain is trying to tell me. Why is this so uncomfortable? Why is it coming up again and again in my head?

It is hard to decide what to do when you cannot accurately interpret facts. I used to go round and round in my head and punish myself for every single mistake and use it against myself which paralyzed me even more. One day when I kept on going on and on about what if this happened or what if that goes wrong, my therapist said “Stop! You know you get paranoid when you’re anxious.” At first, I was shocked I felt like “Really?!? Is that what we are doing today? Calling me out on my bullshit like that?” but it stopped me in my tracks. She then gave me the most important mantra “You took the best decision, at the time, with the information you had!” That is one that I repeat now over and over again so I can remind myself to be kind and forgiving to myself.

Any decision has to be looked at as “Why is this important to me?” “Realistically, how long will this take to solve?” Making a list of everything involved in it, project managing it by breaking down all the steps which helps my need for control. Some tasks have to be completed before others can begin so, I cannot pressure myself for not starting early because not all conditions are met. Also, this brings to mind that some things I have power over, and some things are just out of my control. Deadlines, people’s emotions, someone’s opinion… all things that I can show up for and try to do my best to influence but I cannot control them in any way. All I can do in these situations is accept them as they come, see if I can understand and clarify but some things I just can’t change.

Another problem with overthinking is that I start creating full scenarios in my head and I start to become convinced they are true, highly likely and I hurt my feelings with them and get myself in a worse state. I have been in that state before and I have been asked if anybody had told me specifically what the outcome would be. I am used to worrying about all outcomes preparing for bad news and making decisions on what I need to do. That is just it. When nobody tells me anything or I feel like I am missing facts, my mind tries to take back control and it is heavily filling in the blanks. I have no chill. I need people to be specific with their information. I can’t hope for the best. I can’t go with the flow. I need a bit more information to make sure that I work with facts, and that I have all the details I need to make the best decision at this time.

The people who say, “Just trust me!”… I am sorry but I will need to assess our track record and see if that is based on a proven, consistent string of instances where you were reliable. Short of that, I will need people to meet me at my anxiety level. I will need to see some sort of detailed plan, Gantt chart, workflow, or anything to see what this relaxed attitude is based on before I decide if I want to be affiliated. It’s not you, it’s me. I have had situations in the past where I did trust, and the person procrastinating made me the villain for checking in and then came teary-eyed to tell me that they couldn’t keep their promise. From that point on, the only thing that helped was that I would be overthinking, and I would have several contingency plans prepared for these disappointments. Not everything is me being extra or me needing to chill. I do admit that I have issues so, please try not to be one of them.

I think that at the end of the day, if everything fails, it is a matter of choice how one sees the experience. For example, after crying for ages and being completely freaked out about the entire experience of finding a flat, I managed to find one that looked like a princess’ room in a beautiful tower-shaped building. That would have been my castle so, I arranged a viewing. I got stressed out about being alone but confident that if this works out, everything else will work out. Well, it was a rainy day, a guy was peeing on the side of the building, the lock on the front entrance was broken so it was not a secure entrance, the building itself on the inside looked derelict, and when I got in the flat, my first thought was that that I had seen pictures of a different place on the website. I got catfished by an apartment. I left crying and disheartened, and I kept on crying back to my house. I cried for this being a disaster and then I realised that I should be proud of myself. The experience was an absolute dumpster fire, but I had never done that before and I managed to take myself through the entire process. While this has not gone well, I can build on the experience and refine the method for optimal results. The biggest lesson is to stay in the moment and not allow my imagination to romanticize a place, or a person for that matter until that bridge has been crossed and I have clear evidence of things being as promised.

I wish I could say that there is an easy fix for overthinking, ruminating and my difficulty in making decisions but, it’s not that simple. If I just meditate, walk, or visualize, I am only dealing with the symptoms and putting a plaster on them, making my anxiety a little better but the real solution is in the awareness, knowing where all of this is coming from. The more I unravel all of the threads of my worrying, the more I get to a place where I can handle things easily and, in the end, I will manage to rest assured that whatever comes my way, I can handle it, I can fix it, and everything will be all right.