Quirk #13

I have a tendency to get caught in a nasty tornado of the "what if's."

This is something that, as much as I've tried, I don't completely have control over. I've tried to train myself not to do it. My psychiatrist has tried to medicate the habit out of me. So far, the only thing that works is complete and total avoidance of the world around me. This of course works, because if I'm not aware of the things I would worry about, I don't worry about them.

Unfortunately, the avoidance technique isn't a permanent solution. I mean, I can avoid things for only so long, and then there they are, back full force -- if not more so than before.

Writing it all down seems to help a little bit more than the avoidance technique, but if someone happens across my brain spillage (thats what I call it when I do that -- see last post for example), they get all sorts of worried, or take things out of context, or don't realize that its just me spewing out everything that happens to be in my head at the moment.

It's for that reason that I used to keep a journal, but no longer really do. The last time I kept a journal, it was read by someone, and the idiocies inside of it were used against me. Now I try to write in public, and only write the things I'm okay with other people knowing. That restriction makes it a lot less theraputic than it used to be.

But back to the what-ifs.

I start with something relatively straight forward, and then my mind goes into overdrive predicting all the things that can go wrong. This used to happen with everything in my life, not just the understandably scary things. Heck, it used to happen with things as basic as doing the laundry. What if all the machines are full? What if I run out of quarters? No, I have enough quarters. What if the machine breaks? What if someone decides to be bitchy and move my laundry before I go down to get it? What if management decides, for once, to enforce the curfew on the laundry room? What if, what if, what if? -- scream --

I've gotten it under control enough now though, that the what-ifs only strike when a situation is much more serious. The whole abnormal cell thing, for example. What if it's pre-cancerous again? What if it's cancer this time? What if it was cancer before, but the doctors were incompetent? What if I have to have surgery again? What if I have to have a hysterectomy? What if it's a radical hysterectomy? What if I want kids later on? What if, what if, what if? -- scream --

And the thing about it is, I can't get past it until I've worked out both my emotional and active responses to each and every what-if that comes to mind. Only then, after I've rehearsed all those things, can I sit myself down and actually take care of things. It can be crippling at times. It drives other people insane sometimes. Heck, it drives me insane. But there's just no getting around it. My brain kicks into emotional overdrive, and it won't shut off until I've appeased it appropriately.

Telling myself "I'll deal with that if it happens" doesn't work, because then my brain says "What if you put off thinking about it, and then when it does actually come up, you're caught completely unprepared, huh? Then what? Huh? Huh? Huh?!"

*sigh*

It's remarkably exhausting. And it seems to be all I'm doing lately -- if I'm not in avoidance mode, playing Wii or WoW.