Some people are prone to social anxiety or whatever, so they will spend their time getting mentally wrapped around the axle imagining potential social disasters. These often focus on romantic situations and often get stuck on some personal pain point.
I did this a lot when I was younger. It was awful because it would do some things to my head space that just made me feel extremely stuck and screwed up.
First of all, I am not THAT neurotic and screwed up.
I'm generally prone to spending my time contemplating social things in my life. It's one of the reasons I handle some things better than average: Because I took the time to think about it.
I'm also medically handicapped, so sometimes my tendency to ruminate collides with my health issues and goes weird places. The best thing for me to do is just shake it off after my fever breaks or my insomnia ends. In most cases, what happens is I get mentally stuck on something that is, in fact, a genuine potential problem but due to being feverish or short of sleep, I can't come up with good answers but I can come up with a lot of anxiety, so I hit some mental wall where I just get stuck in the most stressful point of some imagined conversation and can't find a next step that doesn't make it worse, if I can imagine a next step at all.
When I find myself in that place, these days I try to take it as a cue that I am not well and I need to engage in self care and maybe play a game or something instead of dwelling on some scenario that I don't have the wherewithal to sort. When I can't manage to distract myself -- because I'm too feverish and short of sleep to be that functional -- see the point above: I need to not invest too much meaning in it when I do get mentally unstuck because I start feeling better again.
So if I start feeling better again and I find I am still actually concerned about some social detail, THEN I ask myself: What is my goal here? and I try to let that inform further rumination as to the direction of the imagined conversation or scenario.
I have never in my life actually had any of my imagined scenarios in my head play out as envisioned, so I have learned to stress less about them and to view them as a kind of safe space for practicing MY side of a conversation, knowing that the other person is pretty much guaranteed to NOT say things I imagine they will say because they are not me.
So I make sure to think about what I am really wanting to accomplish or communicate rather than some word-for-word script per se.
I also think through some first principles type stuff concerning why I feel X is an issue.
It often boils down to cataloguing the pros and cons of a particular relationship or a particular decision, knowing that other people will likely have an agenda and will often want to stridently argue that the pros count while overlooking the cons. Sometimes, I just need to get it clear in my mind what the cons are and why they are still a dealbreaker and why they matter more than the pros.
I stress a lot less than I used to about my tendency to ruminate and the fact that it is prone to going weird places when I don't feel well. I am more inclined to view that as sort of a virtual reality test of a worst case scenario rather than evidence that, wow, I'm so extremely vulnerable or I'm so extremely neurotic.
I did this a lot when I was younger. It was awful because it would do some things to my head space that just made me feel extremely stuck and screwed up.
- It would convince me that some issue (or POTENTIAL issue) I had with someone was a Really Big Deal when it often wasn't.
- It would just reinforce bad habits and make it harder for me to escape whatever thing I was fretting about.
- It made me feel really broken and neurotic.
First of all, I am not THAT neurotic and screwed up.
I'm generally prone to spending my time contemplating social things in my life. It's one of the reasons I handle some things better than average: Because I took the time to think about it.
I'm also medically handicapped, so sometimes my tendency to ruminate collides with my health issues and goes weird places. The best thing for me to do is just shake it off after my fever breaks or my insomnia ends. In most cases, what happens is I get mentally stuck on something that is, in fact, a genuine potential problem but due to being feverish or short of sleep, I can't come up with good answers but I can come up with a lot of anxiety, so I hit some mental wall where I just get stuck in the most stressful point of some imagined conversation and can't find a next step that doesn't make it worse, if I can imagine a next step at all.
When I find myself in that place, these days I try to take it as a cue that I am not well and I need to engage in self care and maybe play a game or something instead of dwelling on some scenario that I don't have the wherewithal to sort. When I can't manage to distract myself -- because I'm too feverish and short of sleep to be that functional -- see the point above: I need to not invest too much meaning in it when I do get mentally unstuck because I start feeling better again.
So if I start feeling better again and I find I am still actually concerned about some social detail, THEN I ask myself: What is my goal here? and I try to let that inform further rumination as to the direction of the imagined conversation or scenario.
I have never in my life actually had any of my imagined scenarios in my head play out as envisioned, so I have learned to stress less about them and to view them as a kind of safe space for practicing MY side of a conversation, knowing that the other person is pretty much guaranteed to NOT say things I imagine they will say because they are not me.
So I make sure to think about what I am really wanting to accomplish or communicate rather than some word-for-word script per se.
I also think through some first principles type stuff concerning why I feel X is an issue.
It often boils down to cataloguing the pros and cons of a particular relationship or a particular decision, knowing that other people will likely have an agenda and will often want to stridently argue that the pros count while overlooking the cons. Sometimes, I just need to get it clear in my mind what the cons are and why they are still a dealbreaker and why they matter more than the pros.
I stress a lot less than I used to about my tendency to ruminate and the fact that it is prone to going weird places when I don't feel well. I am more inclined to view that as sort of a virtual reality test of a worst case scenario rather than evidence that, wow, I'm so extremely vulnerable or I'm so extremely neurotic.
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