I talk a lot about gratitude. I truly believe it’s life changing and has even been life saving for me.
I don’t entirely understand why my brain works the way it does. I mean, I know that there are chemicals and hormones at play and they require balance in order to work properly. I just don’t know why my brain isn’t balanced and working properly all on its own.
There are aspects of the way my brain works that I adore. There are other aspects of the way my brain works that feel devastating.
I love the way I can remember things. I love that I am continually hungry for knowledge. I love the way my brain seeks out puzzles to solve in efficient and effective ways.
I also find it devastating. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t have ruminating thoughts. I, sometimes, wonder what I was like as a child. I have memories but not a clear grasp of who I was. If there was a before and now I’m living in the after? Or if I always felt like this? I don’t know. I have nothing that I would consider a significant traumatic event, that might signify a “before” and having watched my kids grow up with anxiety and other mental health challenges, I believe that a huge part of my story is genetic.
Chemical deficits that lead to faulty wiring in my brain and body; or maybe generational trauma, but that’s getting deeper and headier than I was planning on getting in this post.
Regardless of the why, I’ve experienced anxiety and rumination for as long as I can remember.
For the most part, it’s under control. But I’m ever so aware, that this stability isn’t guaranteed. I don’t know exactly what triggers it but when it happens, it feels like it blindsides me.
I know it sounds strange to say that’s a good thing, but it is. I, now, have periods of time where I’m not ruminating and that’s incredible; because I have had periods of time, in my past, where I couldn’t stop the thoughts from looping.
I think the hardest part of this was growing up thinking that everybody experienced this and that they were just doing a better job of managing it than I was. I thought everybody’s brain worked like mine and they could cope a lot better than I could. I felt defective, and not capable enough to handle the regular every day pressures of life; but everybody else was doing it, so I just needed to try harder and be better.
I had no clue that it wasn’t normal to over think and over analyze every conversation you had. To pick apart everything you said and did; and based on that information, to judge yourself as lacking, foolish, inept, and basically just so stupid. I had no idea that most people didn’t hyper fixate on every social interaction and determine that others were judging you for slight social miscalculations or flubbed non-verbal nuances. That was just my normal.
But my normal was often hell. (to be continued)
