The biggest thing: I’m self-aware. It’s a blessing and a curse. Blessing, because I’m capable of analyzing myself and my thoughts in depth, which allows me to understand what needs to change in order for me to be happier, healthier, better partner, better friend, better person. The curse side? I am excellent at naming what is wrong with me (and therefore, possibly in others too). And this also inflates my ego because it makes me feel oh so smart.

Apparently, true self-awareness is rarer than I ever thought. Only like 20%(?) of people are capable of think about their thinking - and the rest are not. Honestly speaking, knowing this probably isn’t good for my ego because I already have a touch of superiority complex inside me. (Unfortunately you can’t really humble me about it, so don’t even try.) But, this also explains why I often feel things deeper than many, and also why I may ruminate on things longer than many - yet I also can analyze my rumination and therefore walk myself out of it, which is pretty cool.

Second thing: I’m a master at compartmentalizing. Again something, that is a blessing and a curse. Blessing, because I can let something go for a while and prioritize more pressing issues first. Curse, because I can jam things I don’t want to think about so deep into the mental drawers it takes an axe to get them out again. But, I’m currently re-learning that it’s safe to process my emotions and even get emotional while doing that. Happiness is a husband that is a safe space. 

A part of this is that I detach very easily from things, situations and people. This can either make me seem like a strong person or a very cold person. I'm cool with either. I don't really care if someone thinks a certain way about me. I cannot control that, nor do I really have any capacity to be obsessing about that with everything else I have going on in this head. Call it selfish if you must, it's all the same to me.

Third thing: I get heavily triggered by very mundane things. I don’t actually have a diagnosis, but I personally suspect I have complex trauma (CPSTD for short). This can cause a state called hypervigilance, which means I try to read everything there is to know about every situation, every word, every nuance, every microexpression, every bodily que, every unspoken thing… All of it - just to keep the situation balanced, keep people from getting mad, making them not hate me and basically trying to manage every outcome of the situation. Now as a smart person, you get why this is not realistic. I know it’s not realistic. 

So, my battle with hypervigilance is learning to self-soothe, and let the chips fall where they may. I cannot control what other people think about me - nor should that actually really matter. I have to act in a way I can look at myself in the mirror at the end of the day and feel good about it. Everything else is (nor should be) in my control. (Admittedly, I hate giving up control in every context. Very much something I need to learn.)

Fourth thing: I need to be mindful of what kind of stories I let myself tell to myself in my head. Due to hypervigilance, and noticing a lot of things, my mind creates a lot of thoughts. My issue has been that I tend to take a lot of the negative ones, and build them into a story they fit in. So basically, I have made up a lot of false theories and held them as facts, when in fact, they were just baseless, individual thoughts. Not every thought is true, not even when they feel like it. 

I’m sure there are quite a bit more things I could list, but these are the ones I could think of as I’m writing this. A good thing about a blog is that if I figure out another thing to blab about, I can just hop in and do just that. But for this post, I think all this is already a lot to take in, so let’s wrap it up!

Talk to you again soon!