Obsessions and tall stories
Everything goes extremely fast in my mind. I start thinking about a problem I might be facing, and everything spirals in half a second, usually towards a deep pit of shit. When facing a difficult situation, especially one that involves the heart, I tend to obsess and turn that obsessive behavior into fast, and furious, made-up fables. Everyone makes up stories in their minds, hell, everyone fantasizes from time to time about being more this and more that, or choking that annoying coworker to death while printing their resignation. It’s this daydreams that make us sleep soundly when they calm us down and make us think « that could be ». But the type of stories that I manage to build in .2 seconds in the middle of traffic because I don’t have news from that one guy that I kinda like have more of a disaster movie type scenario, the Sharknado type (unnecessarily excessive story, poor CGI, probably should laugh about it rather than believe it and get into the story). These stories usually portray me as a washed-up crying hysterical girl pulling her hair out and punching holes in the wall.
In front of a situation that bugs me, I will start making up stories about what people think, what they might say, what they will eventually label me as, what they’re up to. It usually doesn’t go well: because I don’t trust myself and am battling my depression-demons and anxiety-ghouls on a daily basis, I will imagine that I’m rejected, put down, dragged in the dirt and made a fool of. In french, we have the word « affabulation », which comes from « fable » and literally means « making up stories in anticipation ». So here’s to affabulation.
Anticipation, and ultimately, not knowing what will happen or what is going on inside someone else’s head is the fuel that allows me, unfortunately, to imagine my life in worst way possible before it even happens: « he hates me and will tell me that I don’t matter », « she thinks I’m annoying », « I’m going to fall head first on the ground and people will make fun of me » and so on. Some are more elaborate than others, obviously. Hell, I might even toss a sci-fi theme in there from time to time, like « that other girl has tremendous powers that I can’t compete with, some voodoo shit is going on ». In any case, these stories paralyze me and lead to a panic attack that prevents me from doing anything and so I start doing the ouroboros. Affabulation is truly the root of many anxieties for me, and more often than not, I can’t quite control it, as it comes in a flash and keeps growing and growing until it swallows me whole, me and my self-confidence. Like a blob that feeds on stressful anticipation and lack of self-worth while being pointed in the right direction by a mind on steroids that goes at full-speed all of a sudden. It is truly tiring, yes.
Affabulation is in all of us, I think, and is, when negative, the worst enemy you can face in any situation. Because your mind will not stop spiraling down and building scenarios, your body will start to tell you not to go, not to talk, not to live, because it might come to this, the worst, the humiliating, the hardest, toughest heartbreak. And eventually, the shitty scenario you made up in your sick head could actually come to life as you start to feel anxious and paralyzed.
Fables, stories, tall tales are therefore to avoid. In his book, Don Miguel Ruiz compares what he calls suppositions to a poison. A poison that takes over fast and leads you to the darkness. « We end up turning nothing into a drama » and that is our whole problem. Small unharmful situations turn into big failures and our own mind disables us. It’s getting hard to live like a normal person, when going out turns into a disaster in your head. And even though we know all these stories aren’t true, and a tornado made of sharks will probably not happen in your small-town neighborhood, it still scares the shit out of you to the point where you see the sharknado so clearly in your mind that you think it is definitely going to rain 50-teethed fish from the skies as soon as you step foot outside.
So how about we stop affabulating, supposing, and poisoning ourselves? I sure wish I knew how. I guess it has something to do with hope, self-confidence, probably with self-control too. But if it was that simple to trust yourself and stop making assumptions ahead of time, I would be in my hands right now, probably in the form of a pill with a sleeping smiley face on it. It must take work to train your mind not to drag you down every step of the way. It takes believing in the best rather than the worst, and trusting yourself. Gee, that’s easy.
