Making Mountains Out Of Molehills: Negative Nelly

 

 

 

“…what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities; we are eaten up by nothing.” — Charles Bukowski

I have written before, about how I can take a simple event and I can turn it into the hugest of horrible things.  I wrote about a man, on base, come running towards our house.  He looked like my son who had just left to go to work.  Before the soldier got close enough for me to see it was not my son I ha something awful happening on base and him running to come and get us safe.  It took maybe three minutes.  I do not know why I still catastrophize things in my head, the moment something happens to kick it off.  I know when it all started.  It started when my son wea in Afghanistan on tour.   Every waking moment was scenes of disaster in my head.  Every sleeping moment was full of War Movies.  The only thing that calmed me was a video call from him, or an email, or a message, or a photo .   He was hurt.  He was in a convoy that got ambushed.  He did get away and he id make it to a British encampment.  I only heard of that, much later.  As well, he got a nail through his foot and he did have a 50 pound bolt go u under his helmet and scrape his scalp to the bone.  He did have horrible events.  He came home with serious ptsd.  But, along the way, I realized that I had a touch of it as well.  Once he was home, I calmed.  Once he was home and safe, I realize I ha reasons to be concerned, but not the events I imagined.  I overthought everything and that habit stuck for a couple of years before I got it extinguished. Now, I am almost always able to stop it when I sense it coming. 

Overthinking.  It is the acts of obsessing over something stressful that you catastrophize over.  It is not logical to do so.  It is allowing your ego/Lizard brain to take the reins and gallop away with it.  It mostly happens for most at night.  It is then that a memory of something someone said that you begin to mull over.  Suddenly it has many meanings to you and eventually you can set yourself up to ick it apart and find that it might have.  Maybe it was something they said that hit you in the belly at the time and you could not respond fast enough and so you go through the scene a dozen times thinking what you could have said in retort.   You feel powerless and you can not find any solutions, of course.  You brood and ruminate.

When that happens everything is cloudy and you can become maximum-stressed.  Suddenly you are stewing in negativity and the longer you allow ego to do it, the more stressful it becomes.  When you think of it, it is wasted time you have spent  on something that is no longer important.

I despise the feelings and doubt enters until you are second-guessing yourself Are you trying to make sense of something that has no sense to it?  Ar you resenting acceptance that what was was and what is is that you are trying to keep it all alive and in the Present moments.  Are you doing it because you want to find your own “rightness” in something that you might even be wrong about.  You spend lot of time in worrying about things until you feel paralyzed in the thoughts and the spiral continues. 

Sometimes we do self-sabotage and rumination is a way for Ego/Lizard brain to keep you in the worry place.  Self-sabotage is a way of coping but does not do anything but give you more stress. We make things bigger than they are.

Perfectionism is another tool of rumination and negative thinking.  We can be ambitious, bosses love us because we are over achievers, and we forget that there is joy in the process of things and trying to be perfect is unattainable because our Ego will never give us credit for progress.  Watch that danged Ego/Lizard Brain.

Failing at something is just another chance to do thins a better way.  The future is absolutely unknown even if you ego tries to trick you into foreseeing the future.   We are as good as we can get from moment to moment.  When we do our best, then that is our best.  It is enough.  You are enough.  Don’t let Ego tell you differently.  Don’t let Ego rob you of your present moments. 

I spent years trying to get past it and to get it at the root before it really takes hold.  I refuse to catastrophize.  I go do art as that is my sacred space and place of prayer and serenity and peace.  It is a place of meditation for me.

No one can predict the future; all we have is now. If you spend the present moment worrying about the future, you are robbing yourself of your time now.  And be grateful not regretful.  Take some time at night to write what you were grateful for that day. 

Transform your negative, anxious, fearful feelings.  They may have become a habit and habits can be broken.  Transform stress into peace, however you van do that.  Again, mine is doing art of some kind.  I have to remind myself over and over “Not my monkeys…not my circus.”  And be patient with yourself.  This coping did not happen over night and some trauma, or perceived trauma, kick started it all.  Get to know yourself better and stay conscious of the fact that you have a Negative Nelly within that needs hushing and firing.  Don’t let your Ego create a circus with three rings going at the same time…  else you be the clown in all of it.

Better Be, sisterfriends.

 

©Carol Desjarlais 14.7.22