I’ve been accused of being an over-thinker by, like, many people. And they’re not wrong. I’m also a deeply-feeling person who observes and absorbs a lot as I move about in the world. My neurodivergent brain, though frustrating at times, has its gifts too, like super-strength pattern recognition. “Don’t overanalyze it,” I’ve heard countless times in my life. “Sure,” I think, “right.”
So, I have the simple job of sorting out when my emotions have propelled me into overthinking, versus when I’m processing to make sense out of my experience after the emotions have settled.
Something jarred me emotionally this week and I jumped to immediately thinking “Here we go again, of course! I can’t do this again; I cannot handle this again,” about the inevitable emotions. The strange thing was, the emotions came and went, and my mind resumed the “I can’t, I can’t” scripts, only I didn’t feel like they were true anymore. Now I actually noticed them and they were so clearly just fears.
It struck me how much more emotionally resilient I felt than I realized I could, yet that the narratives I formed years ago while slogging through the most challenging emotional weight I’ve ever endured, those still tried to protect me from something I don’t actually need protecting from anymore.
I am still a flawed, messy, and wounded human, but I’m certainly proof that therapy works; digging into yourself works.
And if I had to sum up my most valuable lesson it’s the importance of the practice of sitting with what I feel. There have been many times I thought that what I was feeling would break me, I know now precisely because that’s how it felt. I had to change the story I tell myself to “it feels so heavy” and stop entertaining the thought that I would break. Big waves of emotion still come, you just get better at riding them and keeping your head above water.
