I spend a lot of time thinking. It’s nearly constant. When I speak of this to my mental health team they often tell me to get out of here *taps head* and get into here *gestures to heart*.
If I’m being honest I don’t really know what that means or how to implement it. I imagine that when you go with your heart, or gut, you make a more authentic choice than you would if you happened to have a habit of overthinking things.
Overthinking is basically my favourite pastime. I can spiral myself into oblivion (one way or another) in mere seconds sometimes. Maybe one day I spiral myself into believing that I am a powerful force with many things to learn and accomplish. It could be a matter of hours before I think myself into a state of utter turmoil, believing that I have nothing of substance to offer the world.
Overthinking means a lot of self reflection. Some of it is accurate and some of it is skewed, but at the very least one could say that I am self aware. I have always had a good grasp on what causes my behaviour; I can dig down to the root and identify what is going on. That’s a good thing. It’s important to know why we’re triggered by certain things in certain ways.
But the knowing is only a piece of the puzzle, and I swear to Creator I’m absolutely lost after that.
We all have things that we carry. Our baggage. Our experiences. Our interpretations. Our perspectives. Incidents become a part of us and they colour the way we see the world. The way people treat us will impact the way we believe we deserve to be treated. That’s why intergenerational trauma and abuse control families for generations. This is especially true for things we are exposed to as children. (And by the way, your trauma is valid no matter how much you feel like it’s not. You are not being overly dramatic. Honour yourself. Don’t compare your hurt to the hurt of others, ever. It doesn’t work like that.)
I’m jealous.
I had this small exchange on twitter back in March, but it’s been bouncing around inside my head ever since.
The thing is, jealousy rules my life. I don’t remember a time when it wasn’t a part of me. It’s born of insecurity, and I am extraordinarily insecure about being liked, loved and accepted. Don’t mistake this for a confession of being disingenuous because I’m about as ME as I can be at any given time. What I’m saying is that one of my core beliefs is that I am unlovable. I have told myself that for so long, it doesn’t feel like a “thought” but rather more like a fact.
I believe that I can trace most of my shortcomings to the abandonment wound that I’ve never managed to heal. It’s as fresh now as it was when he died and I realized that I would never receive the happy ending that I had convinced myself I deserved. The grief comes in waves, less often than it used to, but the wound is always with me. It’s there when I lash out at my loved ones over things that don’t warrant a strong reaction. I carry it with me when I tell myself that “if anyone really knew you they would never love you”.
It’s unfair. It’s untrue. It’s something that happened to me and I didn’t get a choice. They say that the choice is found in how we respond to our baggage, and that would look nice sewn on to a pillow, but my truth is that I can’t seem to get space between a situation and my reaction. It’s not something that I have time to overthink.
The jealousy, specifically, is so very unhealthy. It has ruined more than one of my friendships and it runs rampant in my romantic relationships. I can’t control the other people in my life. I can’t control the things that people do, as much as I might want to.
What I have to learn is how to take control of my emotional responses. How do I do that? Well, I guess it’s just like everything else – one day at a time.