I have suffered greatly from my overthinking habits. I lost people and I lost many parts of my own self. Very recently I have decided to slowly try and find a balance. This has been increasingly hard due to my anxiety, depressive and manic episode, and my attachment issues.
I shall, as always, share my experience, not asking for any pity or help. Rather I am giving help out to those who need this. Because the Lord knows I needed this before I ruin my… life. Again, this is your trigger warning.
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Life… it happens slowly. I didn’t know. I honestly did not understand much about people. Like, sure, I had classmates and friends here and there, but the majority of my time was spent in my own presence or in the presence of my family, which I either was taking abuse from or caring for them, then somehow it became this dynamic that everyone was healing and everything was calm, but the scars that were inflicted upon me… went unworthy of attention?
Perhaps, I was so used to harm that I began to harm myself. I remember the first self-inflicted injury was at the age of 8. Later on, as I became a teenager, the rationale became, if it is okay for them to hurt me so much in a way that harms me, what is their problem with me hurting myself in a way that relieves the pain I feel?
I remember being shamed by my sister if I did a minor mistake. Even if it was between me and my brother, “shame on you, just remember that people who are kind, when they stop being kind, they are the worst” or “people won’t always be there for you.” I was 8,9,….
I read it somewhere, “any negative self-talk, is just talk that someone who meant a lot to you once told you.”
Because, dear, we are not born hating ourselves.
Overthinking, at least in my case, did not manifest out of thin air. I remember sometimes as a younger version of myself, I was alive. I had a voice and I did not care all that much what other people had to say about me. Of course, that was built after years of bullying, but then what about the bullying at home?
Being accused of ill intentions when all you wished was to help. Then having to eat up all the locking up, all the shaming, all the hurtful words, because you need to keep the family together. Because every time you spoke up, you were told that there is nothing to do and that you just have to grow thicker skin. When every single person you sought protection from was a different source of harm.
Then you withdraw, your smile seems to have never existed and all forms of self-care gets thrown out the window. I am not talking as someone with no sins, rather, I am simply a human talking about the pains within her past, trying to make sense of the issues I face in my present. Perhaps, just maybe, I find a solution, or rather, something to make life more bearable, and self-harm limited.
I am someone who does not wish for much more than friendships and family, but even these… my thinking, dear lord, MY MIND.
“Dear God, I am not okay.” I cried night after night.
I think the worst kinds of wounds are those made by our own making, our own thoughts, because then, what blaming can we do?
Overthinking is quite common, but it can reach a point where it is dangerous.
I pondered upon the topic quite a lot. How do I stop? How do I start thinking… normally, and I have realized that the actual problem was never the thinking part.
Our minds are magnificent creations that can hold many thoughts and a lot of information to the point where I cannot even fathom.
The problem, in my case at least, was the focusing part.
I could have a thousand thoughts that are waiting to be thought about a thousand different things, but I would continue to focus on one very tiny thing and think a thousand thoughts about only it.
At some point that began wearing my very being out, my heart was being torn, and although at the moment it felt like the other person’s fault or the environment, or the situation’s fault, truly? It was just my mind that was making scenarios that haven’t even came to life yet. That was causing me and my heart and body so much agony.
Eventually my actions followed my thoughts, and when you act upon the unexisting you start to have problems not only within you, but with other people. You do not only cause hurt to yourself, but to the people around you. You start to have a victim mentality and you start to fall into a hole that will be very hard to climb out of.
A few life events that followed made me think.
A trait that I personally have is that when someone hurts me or treats me in a way that harms me, I look back at myself and ask, “Do I do that? Do I exhibit that very same behaviour?” and I was shocked by the answer…. yes.
I micromanage stuff, I focus on other people, I prison them with the excuse of care and worry. I suffocate with love and support to the point that it becomes poisonous, and although the symptoms of the behaviour, or how it acted out, for me wasn’t the same as my abuser. The behavior, after all, was the same, and so it may have had different ways of showing into the world, it has the same effect or results upon the inflicted, be it my very self or another human being.
And that very realisation broke me in, well, a good way. If anything, I do not want to be an abuser of others.
I have made the firm decision that I am not going to get married, nor will I start a family due to my chain of unresolved trauma and eating disorder. I live by the saying “Do no harm” and “If you cannot find the sunshine, be the sunshine.”
How, deary me, can I be good to others when my goodness causes harm? Well, I can’t. So I decided I will stop focusing, and will simply start to think.
How?
I started by being extremely honest with myself, and asking myself what harms me, what is harming me at this very point in time?
And honestly, my phone was something that I was addicted to. I could not stay 15 minutes without it, I also started taking sleeping pills because of how anxious I was. Leaving me sleep deprived, yet unable to sleep without two pills.
I was also over-exercising and neglecting to take my iron pills which left me with a broken down body and a late period. That directly related to my irritated mood, depression, and inability to sleep.
The first step that I took was to start taking my iron pills again, then stopping all forms of exercise, then started using an app on my phone that allows me to put a timer and not be able to use the phone for that amount of time, then it gives me coins to plant a tree in the game if I finish the task.
I then slowly weaned off my sleeping pills, and found out that listening to my Arabic lectures and audiobooks, trying to focus on the words, and regulating my breathing while doing so, and relaxing every inch of my body put me into a long slumber, at first I needed more sleep than usual. I still get nightmares, very vivid ones if I may say, and I still wake up every few hours, but I put myself back to sleep, because it is always my own job to take care of myself.
Slowly I began feeling alive physically again, slowly my mind started thinking, not focusing, again. Slowly I forced myself to be more thankful, slowly I told myself that I miss it, and slowly I started thinking about my life. I have a family and friends and blessings. I have accomplishments and trials and challenges. I have volunteering jobs and a blog and university.
Yes, I have mental illness, but I am just as human as anyone else, and I am worthy of life too.
-Aimz
