Mental Health
The Monsters In Our Head
The difference between our objective reality and subjective experience is astonishingly huge….
If you’re anything like me you’re a serial over-thinker.
Every situation requires meticulous consideration to the point where you almost paralyse yourself.
I fret about quitting jobs when i know my heart lies elsewhere.
I worry about tough conversations with friends when i know they must be had.
In general, I think too much.
If you’re anything like me then your head’s perpetually in the future; analysing events that are yet to happen.
Good Anxiety
In some forms, anxiety can actually serve you well:
- You plan better for the future. When you plan for the future, you’re prepared. Like a doomsday predictor come vindicated, you’ve got all the supplies and resources required for the situation. You’ll never catch me off-guard, unprepared or off-the-ball.
- You can (sometimes) be more at ease. When i think about people who leave finding their passport till the day before their flight, i can only imagine the immense panic as they rifle through drawers and cupboards. Although they may seem more relaxed on the surface, i suspect there’s a compounding anxiety building in the days leading up to their departure. I like being prepared because i can relax in perpetuity.
- You are happier in the future. With respect to financials, the number one rule any investor guru dictates is start early. When you study any graph of compound interest it becomes particularly clear that starting early is a good idea. When you start early, your experience or money can grow exponentially over time; meaning seemingly insignificant amounts can become significant with time. Imagine a man building a wall. One year he puts one brick per day, the next year he does 2 bricks per day, the next year 3 and so on. Although his progress would seem slow and almost insignificant at first, in 40 years time he’d have a massive wall.
- You can align your actions with your underlying motivations. Because i think 5–10 years in advance, i naturally consider what i’d like to be doing at that time. As with everyone, i want to be doing something i love that correlates with my innermost desires and needs; therefore, by thinking to the future i can bring fulfilment to the now.
Monsters
Like some ghoul, goblin or gargoyle, anxieties about the future lurk in the depths of your mind, and when you least expect it, they strike.
You can be having a perfectly normal day before you, out of nowhere, are struck by an immense worry.
One time after a night out, a friend of mine took a viagra with him to meet a girl while blind drunk. Although this is perfectly normal drunk, inebriated behaviour i couldn’t help but worry about my friend’s future. Not in the “will he get a boner?” respect. More so what the interaction between being blind drunk and taking a viagra will have. Both slow your heart down and as he’d previously never taken the drug before, the consequences could be deadly.
Looking at it now, who the fuck worries about a mate taking a viagra? The drug was literally made to tackle whiskey dick.
Furthermore, i’ve also recently quit a job.
I had to leave because i’ve torn ligaments in my wrist and the job, being in a pub, required a fair amount of manual labour. In the run up to the quitting i couldn’t help but sustain a nauseous, sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I’m not sure what reaction i expected, but my stomach screamed panic and anxiety.
This continued till the moment i spoke to my boss and was met with understanding, compassionate conversation. Of course i couldn’t lift kegs with a borderline broken wrist.
As with most of these things, the image i’d built up in my head was entirely different from reality.
Monsters Aren’t Real
These monsters in our head are just that. They are monsters that DO NOT EXIST.
However much we build something up in our head has no impact whatsoever on the objective reality we eventually experience.
That’s because, now repeat it with me, monsters DO NOT EXIST.
Our imagination becomes our injury when allowed to manifest like this. Your innate human creativity becomes more of a hurdle than a help.
It’s only because we entertain the idea that these situations could be real that we do ourselves wrong. If you can learn to separate between facts and fiction then you’ll save yourself an endless amount of pain, worry and anguish.
When you next start to worry about something that’s yet to happen, remind yourself that your imagination is simply that — imaginary.
Closing Thoughts
Over-thinking could be packaged in many a pretty bow and tie but at the core — it’s anxiety.
An immense amount of stigma surrounds this word and we often think of it in an entirely negative sense. I believe we need to reconfigure our understanding of some anxiety and learn how we can use it for our development.
Anxiety, in the good sense, can be a healthy amount of consideration for the future.
Anxiety in the bad sense, is an uncontrollable, overwhelming medical condition that seriously impedes an individual.
To use your anxiety for good you need to learn how to separate facts from fiction. You need to be able to distinguish from the objective truths and subjective experiences. Next time you catch yourself worrying, ask yourself:
“What’s absolutely definitely real and true, regardless of opinion?”
And separate that from
“What have i conjured up and imagined in my head?”
It’s a simplistic methodology but so far it’s working for me.
What’s your experience with anxiety? Do you think there can ever be a healthy amount to sustain?
As Always,
Yours Honestly,
Commodore Pipas.
