By Mike Moritz
No, I did not name this post "A Nice Throwback" in honor of all the 90's rap that I happen to be listening to right now.
I remember my mental troubles (this is important- keep in mind that I am mentally healthy as opposed to unlucky people deal with MUCH MUCH MUCH worse struggles than I do on a daily basis-I'm grateful for my health, as you should be, too.) were oh-so-simple. The only thing I did was over think, and it only happened on the baseball field. Now a days, I deal with anxiety, easy stress, emotional takeovers and yes, over thinking- not just on the field; as I grasp a more firm grip on these issues on the diamond, I find them trickling into my personal life more often.
But today, I bring it back to "good (well, not good) ol' days." I just can't help but over think seemingly every social interaction that is remotely serious.
The horrible thing is that the deeper I get in over thinking something, at some point, the anxiety kicks in. And I HATE anxiety. But through the expirience that I have sadly put myself through too many times, I can break the process down into five steps:
One: A situation pops up in which you start over thinking in the first place. Example: "Does my girlfriend still have feelings for me?"
Two: You look for reasons to back up your irrational, emotionally driven thought. Example: "She seemed a little weird around me earlier, she was very rude to me a couple days ago, she can't hang out this weekend and did not say what she was doing."
Three: Once you- your irrational emotions rather- have established the reasons, you start to hyper analyze each reason down to a "well that happened because of..." which ultimately leads you back to your orignal question that started your freak out.
Four: After you analyze the reasons till it makes you crazy, you start to get flustered. You're not sure what to think expect "what happened?" "How did I mess this up?" You jump to conclusions that maybe just are not appropriate quite yet, if at all. Your confidence is the thing that takes the biggest hit. Blaming yourself is easy and it's probably the easiest thing for your mind to do at that point so consequently, it's your confidence that gets hurt the most.
Five: Anxiety hits home right here. If you are self aware, then it should be no problem recognizing the anxiety from the beginning. For the average human being, you might not realize it until here. I tend to be so wrapped up in the actual process that I don't realize that I have been having an anxiety attack until the end.
Yeah, that shit sucks. But the good news is that you- as in your more rational, loving and happy version of you- can enter into the process at any point and stop it.
As I learnt it, there are five basic aspects that everyone's life is based on: Environment, thoughts, moods, behaviors and physical reactions. The last four are the aspects that are always in your control. Depending on the person, those four can happen in any order and it is your duty to make it stop if you so desire happiness.
A lot of the time, if trusting your gut has worked in the past, then you should have confidence in it still. If your gut is telling you something is wrong with the situation your in, then there probably IS something wrong. It's funny because this lesson right here relates back to the previous post. If the situation is wrong for you, the continue to be patient.
Yes, that "example" situation that I used happened to be apart of my life.
And I'll cut you a deal: I'll wait with you, because what I'm looking for has yet to happen. And searching for some extra happiness is too depressing to go through alone.
