Brain Screech and the Conversation Post Mortem
Sometimes I wonder if everyone has implicitly constructed a myth around a magical state of being called "normal" or "stable" where a person doesn't have random surges of anxiety or unpredictable plunges into depression. If this state existed, was it more common in earlier generations? Or was it just as bad as today, and everyone was lying through their teeth about how they really felt? It's hard to see past my own lens on the world, warped and cracked as it is, hard to believe that this thing called "emotional stability" was ever a real thing. I get more cynical about it over time.
Conversation Post Mortem is a bad habit to get into and impossible to shake. If a conversation I had was spoken, post-mortem begins immediately after. If the conversation is email or chat based, post-mortem begins after my latest interaction as I wait for the response. I take what I know of the other person (or what I think I know) and use it to dismantle the parts of the conversation where I had even the slightest chance of screwing up, lowering their opinion of me, or hurting them. Did I ask them for something that might even mildly inconvenience them? Heaven forbid!
It doesn't matter how many times I went over the written words, or how carefully I phrased something in speech, there is always something I overlooked or took a chance on. Something that was not perfectly conveyed. Something that has the potential to cause a breakdown in communication, one that I may not be able to fix. Then Brain Screech kicks in, slamming me into the ground over the choices I made in communication, blasting me with potential responses of the other person. I am punished, backwards and forwards, whether the other person is even aware of the issue or not. This is a fast track to anxiety, depression, or both.
But wait! There's more! The shelf life of these post mortems is forever! I still get sideswiped by interactions I had fifteen years ago. I can't believe I took part in the way I did. I apologize out loud, horrified by some minor slight that must have completely wrecked the other person. I can't seem to stop my mouth. Or my brain.
Could be this habit came from watching my every word on social media, realizing that there were so many different perspectives viewing my words that every conceivable misunderstanding was possible. Could be this habit came from interacting with people without really understanding the social dance as a kid, where I continually ran face-first into walls I couldn't see or predict. Could be this habit came from dealing with unreasonable situations where I literally could not predict what would cause relational explosions. Whatever the causes, I've developed a way of twisting my own words against myself, but usually only AFTER I've communicated. I can never comb through them thoroughly enough beforehand to prevent Brain Screech.
I am trying to change my behavior with the hopes that repeated exposure to my decisions will change this path in my brain. I take more risks in communication than I used to. I am trying to cut back on qualifying or disclaimer-type statements. I am trying to trust that the person I am talking to is a reasonable human being who will speak to me respectfully if they are upset and won't dynamite everything in response. I am trying to own the fact that I have my own opinions and needs and that I have the right to express them. Even here on this blog, already I have begun to backpedal and wonder if I went too far and said too much. I wonder if I should stick to more amenable topics, or write only innocuous posts--
NO. Not that everything I write here will be charged and controversial, but I did not move here to rebuild what I had on Tumblr. Over there, I built an image of neutrality that wasn't true. I was a coward, afraid of my readers and afraid of my own brain, and a great deal of what this blog represents is my attempt to face those fears down. Here is one of the places where I can practice speaking my mind, perhaps badly at first, but over time I will get better at it.
Complaining about how bad I am at it will never cure me. I have to be willing to fail and do it badly a thousand times before I'm ever good about it. I have to endure the brain screech and wait. See where the chips actually fall. Take responsibility for my life and my words, but not the emotional state of every single person who even slightly interacts with me. There is a fine line between being careful with others and being co-dependent with others, and I have always ever been on the co-dependent side of things. It is time to re-learn how to speak clearly.