A big part of getting better, mentally and emotionally, isn’t just admitting that something is wrong. It’s REALIZING that something is wrong. REALLY wrong.
Anxiety–Acute in Intensity, Chronic in Duration
The main thing that I first noticed—and when I say first, I mean I’ve been feeling it for years and somehow failed to manage to draw the simple conclusion that I was feeling it—was this constant, unbearable tension. I say that it felt unbearable, but of course, I was in fact bearing it. Minute by minute, hour by hour, for most of the time, for years.
Forgetting Things
I also noticed some issues with memory. A few minor but still noticeable things. One of my bosses saying, “We talked about this, don’t you remember?” It would occur to me in a vague way that maybe there were just too many “things” in my day, too much pressure, and that that might mess with my memory. But I couldn’t focus on it.
Hyperreactivity To…Everything
I was reactive. This is a total understatement, and in fact I’m not sure I should put in a list of things that I noticed until much later period. When I heard Tim Ferriss say something in a podcast or Ted Talk about being hyperreactive to people, I recognized it. But it had been happening for a long long time before I noticed it.
A lot of things have been happening for a long time, before I identified them as properly pathological. It often took a Ted Talk, or a podcast, or an article that popped up during a Google search for me to put words to it.
Constant Rumination
One big one was “rumination”. I didn’t realize that I spent almost all my time doing this. There are always imaginary conversations in my head. And they usually make me very upset. Somehow I replay situations over and over again with people real or imagined, that leave me angry, helpless, and feeling unheard.
Anhedonism
Another big thing I noticed, when reading various articles, etc, was my complete joylessness. During my breakup, the ex said to me “I think you want to be happy, but I don’t think you know how.” I used to think that about my father. He just never seemed happy.
When reading over symptoms of depression or some other issue I was reading about, there would often be a phrase like “you don’t take pleasure in the things you used to do”. Or, “remember the things that used to bring you pleasure as a kid.” And, yes, somehow, even thinking back, even knowing that it (probably) wasn’t true—gosh, couldn’t possibly be true—I couldn’t remember ever being happy.
That felt like the case, even though I know full well that I have a rushes of extreme happiness. I just couldn’t call on anything that felt remotely akin to it. When you add it all up, it was just a miserable existence. And I just was losing any hope that I knew how to fix it. How did I end up this way after 50 years of life? I had the same hopes, ambitions, and certainty of doing something amazing that anyone else did growing up. As a member of the current generations, I had access to the best ideas history’s ever produced. And yet, I ended up five decades in, feeling like I have basically nothing to show for my life.
I was a chronic massive underachiever who was unable to feel any kind of simple satisfaction.
One big clue was the rapid decline in my mental health during the three months caring for my grandmother. Obviously, that’s a situation with an incredible amount of stress attached to it. But, what I was really reacting to was my family dynamic. It turned me into something rather Gollum-like. That was the first big thing that I cut out of my life because it wasn’t contributing to my happiness. Or, in this case, because it was poisoning any chance I had at happiness.
I just refuse to spend time around my family now. It doesn’t benefit me. And now I think of being able to do that someday—having family members in my life in a limited way—as maybe some sort of “final exam” version of self-improvement. Maybe someday. But not now. The difference is, now, I’m doing this knowing that I have nothing to feel guilty or wrong about.
Not that it still doesn’t feel wrong. I’m conflicted every time I get a text from a family member. But I cut down family contact to you nearly nothing.
Inability to Concentrate
Another main symptom is an inability to focus. I lose time. I can’t concentrate on one thing. It takes me hours to do what should take minutes. I have always noticed, to my surprise, that I struggle with protocol-type processes. I end up being incredibly slow. When I decide to do something, often I will get distracted and do other things before settling down to it. Sometimes I never settle down to the job.
Sometimes it seems like the trigger for procrastination is just deciding to do something. Even if that thing is fun. Deciding to do it suddenly reverses the switches. Sometimes I’ll find that I’ve just paced around, or sat in my head, for hours without getting anywhere.
Naturally, this causes huge problems at work. I’ve noticed how much struggle it is adapting to a billable hours system, where my time is literally tracked. I’m losing sleep over the problem right now. And suddenly, I’m wondering how I hold down a job and get decent employee reviews. Though, I have to admit I haven’t had an actual employee review for a very long time.
This problem means that a very long time can go by—months, or years, and I just don’t feel like I’ve done anything. This isn’t fringe-level procrastination, it’s not on the periphery. It’s in the center of my life.
Inability To Task-Switch
Another symptom is…actually, I suppose it’s part of the same symptom as procrastination, but it almost feels like a different one. And that is, I get lost in transitions. It takes tremendous time and energy to switch tasks. It also puts me in danger of getting lost completely. I was sometimes feel like I need a complete reboot between tasks.
And multitasking? Forget it. Multitasking is bullshit, which is a motto I’ve adopted in the past couple of years. At the very least, it’s hell when I manage it. And I’m over the notion that “multitasking” is some beneficial ability that should be developed. It’s garbage.
Anticipatory and Social Anxiety
And to return to it, because it’s a big deal in my life: I am absolutely hyperreactive to people. This is social anxiety, I guess. I have anticipatory anxiety when any sort of social activity is scheduled, even a Zoom call. After any social interaction, I’m usually a wreck for the rest of the day. I ruminate replaying pieces of the conversation over and over again, worrying about being misconstrued, or having misunderstood something. I can’t switch off or calm down. I spend a lot of my time pacing around anxiously. Any sort of confrontation, no matter how minor, gets me spun up in my head. I find it almost impossible to calm down and move on after social encounters.
The Pandemic: An Unexpected Upside
Isolation has been the blessing in the curse, certainly the silver lining, of the Covid pandemic. I’ve played it for all it’s worth as a defense against spending time with my family. I’ve also enjoyed the huge relief not having to go anywhere, and of the work from home trend which leaves me alone or mostly alone at work. It’s also allowed me to see the stark contrast between my alone time and time spent in social situations, how problematic this is when I interact with other people, and it plays out like some huge drama for me. Not conversations themselves—the conversation can be totally innocuous. But my own energy levels and obsessive replaying of a semi-real version of that conversation.
Rumination: I Lose Even in My Imagination
I am routinely either passive or hyperreactive in conversations, and I’m traumatized by either the anticipation of things not going my way, or the reality of even the slightest criticisms. I have just realized that I spend so much time ruminating, and the theme of these ruminations are conversations. These conversations are usually imaginary. Either completely imaginary, as in imaginary people and imaginary contexts: conversations that have never happened had never will happen, in other words. Or they are anticipatory or remembered conversations with people, and my rumination rewrites them to some extent, usually trying my best to explain my meaning over and over again. So I realized that I’ve spent oh, I don’t know how much time, but a LOT, possibly most of my waking time, practicing failed conversations over and over again. Frustrating conversations, conversations where I can’t make myself heard. So, even though real conversations don’t go that badly, they’re always triggering.
The more I realize about myself, the crazier I think I might be. But nothing can get better without self-awareness. So I’m trying to face it all.