Off The Top Of My Head
In my “spare” time, I have been reading several articles on Psychology Today and Psych Central. I tend to read them on a regular basis. Although they have trumped my science, tech, and various types of blog reading lately. My mind has been really consumed with relationships. My thoughts tend to linger into my inability to categorize them and put them in their proper place. I am either very hard or extremely sensitive, when it comes to my dealings with relationships. Finding a balance has been my goal; however, it is taking much longer than I expected.
I forget that relationships cannot be categorized into simplistic diagrams.
I have to remind myself that they can be complex and are unique to every individual. I seem to have some sort of ideal in my head and expect it to happen immediately. When it does not I get derailed, if the person does not do what I expect I get derailed. I also get derailed with random things that I now connect as triggers. An action (inaction, word, phrase, picture, phone message, email, etc… can cause me to go down a path of negativity and pain. Many times I am not sure what it is that has hurt me. I only feel like my heart hurts and my mind starts spinning.
I can place the trigger, but I am unsure as to what the emotion is or why it hurts.
I can only say that I feel rejected, ignored, and/or invisible. I have been gathering all of my positive interactions and focusing my mind on them. I have to say this stuff is hard. I have always been a very optimistic person, I am cynical at the same time, but I see life in a positive way. When I am surrounded by negativity, it sucks life right out of me. It is difficult to keep it going when a negative person surrounds the majority of your time. When I read The Most Dangerous Word in the World last night, I had an a’ha moment.
I have been doing the positive the things they wrote about to change my perspective.
I have been facing my negative thoughts head on and redirecting my mind into the positives. I have spent years now trying to get my “happy” back. I have had it drowned out by negativity. When I try to be optimistic or think on the positive there is someone there to take it away in an instant. I have seen with clarity how the affects of others have stolen a large portion of me. I am not blaming I am only acknowledging this and I cannot allow myself to fall into it anymore. It is a hard task to battle one’s own negative thoughts. It can be even more of a struggle to have them intensified by others who feed into the negativity.
Especially when they say and think that they are helping you.
In the article mentioned above the second paragraph caught my attention right away. It was a clear explanation why many times I cannot read facebook posts, the news, or other negative types of media. I have not been able to understand why things like the “Battle of Chick-fil-a” caused me to sob. I felt pain from both sides, I felt anger from both sides, and I had to stay away from facebook for days because it was sending me into negative loops just seeing their logo. I am not sure I can eat there for a while the whole thing was traumatic for me. Why? I did not see many constructive words, I saw many negative and condemning ones. It sent me into other trails of negative paths.
As I read the paragraph, I thought about how all of the negative images and words affected me.
“In fact, just seeing a list of negative words for a few seconds will make a highly anxious or depressed person feel worse, and the more you ruminate on them, the more you can actually damage key structures that regulate your memory, feelings, and emotions.[1] You’ll disrupt your sleep, your appetite, and your ability to experience long-term happiness and satisfaction.”
I try so hard to stay positive and I was unsure why it has been such a battle in my mind.
I understand now what has been going on. I am not going to talk about it today though. I have to think, ponder, and weed out my fears that I have about the situation. In reality, I have been miserable for years. I have felt like I am surrounded by a dark cloud. I felt swallowed up and gone. My kids have been my light and have given me so much joy. However, I have not been here for them as much I thought I was. I have felt like I was drowning alone for so long that I have not been able to give them the other side of their mom. The side that others knew years ago, even feeling alone, isolated, misunderstood, I still liked parts of me. I forgot about those parts and I squashed them.
I had unhindered laughs.
I had unhindered thoughts. I had light in my eyes that have slowly faded. I want it back and I them to know that person. I know that I will have my days, I am not saying that I will be Jolly Joyful every day. I am saying that parts of me have slowly died because I allowed other people’s negativity to swallow me. I gave up. I have been negative ruminating on all kinds of things for years. People thought that I was so “spiritual” because I could face all of these “trials” and showed a strong faith. I had no other option than to cling to faith. I felt like it was all I had. Personally, I find that to be sad. If I cling to it because it is all I have how can I truly have it? What am I really clinging to? How can you believe or care about anything that you are only holding onto because there seems to be no other options?
A little, further in the article I read this:
“Any form of negative rumination—for example, worrying about your financial future or health—will stimulate the release of destructive neurochemicals. And the same holds true for children: the more negative thoughts they have, the more likely they are to experience emotional turmoil.[4] But if you teach them to think positively, you can turn their lives around.[5]“
I have been ruminating on these types of things for years.
It has caused so much stress and exhaustion. I try very hard to teach the kids to think positively, much more than I actually do. I am sure they know this subconsciously. No matter how much I try to keep my issues away from them I know they feel that something is off with me. I know that they are intuitive to me not being fully myself even though it has nothing to do with them. It is hard to explain. The next paragraph I wish I could go into great detail with, but I cannot I am limited in my ability to share things on this topic.
I found it very eye opening.
“Negative thinking is also self perpetuating, and the more you engage in negative dialogue—at home or at work—the more difficult it becomes to stop.[6] But negative words, spoken with anger, do even more damage. They send alarm messages through the brain, interfering with the decision making centers in the frontal lobe, and this increases a person’s propensity to act irrationally.”
I am challenging every part of me, all that I have become, and my surroundings.
I have become prone to creating negative scenarios as a means to protect myself. I have learned over the years to go into complete isolation instead of reaching out. I have stopped talking to anyone about what I really feel, or what is going on in my daily life. The moment I do I start to feel guilt and automatically start blaming myself. At this very moment, my mind is clear and I see that I need to change myself and take control of what I am being exposed to, the words spoken to me, and attitudes toward me as well. I am not sure if this post makes any sense. My mind is rambling and I had to get it out. I wrote this first thing this morning off the top of my head. I hope I have been coherent!
Yet another layer that has been exposed, I have to process, and deal with it.
I do not know how to do it. It is so much easier to just keep going, stay busy, and try to ignore the fact that things are affecting me. It is so much easier to focus on my special interests. It is helping a great deal to be so distracted with school. Honestly, I am exhausted from trying to ignore and focus on other things though. It spins me into negative thoughts and it will continue until I finally start to deal with things that I have not been facing. I read this next part and was happy that I have actually been doing this the last week with school, but now I need to implement it in other areas of my thought life and physical life as well.
This post is the start of that.
“In order to interrupt this natural propensity to worry, several steps can be taken. First, ask yourself this question: “Is the situation really a threat to my personal survival?” Usually it isn’t, and the faster you can interrupt the amygdala’s reaction to an imagined threat, the quicker you can take action to solve the problem. You’ll also reduce the possibility of burning a permanent negative memory into our brain.[8] “
“After you have identified the negative thought (which often operates just below the level of everyday consciousness), your can reframe it by choosing to focus on positive words and images. The result: anxiety and depression decreases and the number of unconscious negative thoughts decline.[9]“
The rest of the article is “The Power of Yes.”
I suggest reading the whole thing if you struggle in this area as I do or if you do not read it to see what others go through and consider ways to help them. I read a few more things that I found very helpful that I will share also. I also found this Episode 44 :: Chris Mitchell :: Asperger’s Syndrome and Mindfulness.
In Relationships, Respect May Be Even More Crucial than Love
Video: What NOT to Say to Someone Who is Having a Panic Attack
10 Common Passive Aggressive Phrases to Avoid
5 Steps to Balance the Brain’s Negativity Bias
Hurtful Misconceptions Across the Introvert-Extrovert Divide
