I’ve gone days after an interaction with a cashier or similar (i.e. someone who will have forgotten our interaction two minutes later) thinking about how the phrase I used was dumb or weird.
With people I know it’s even worse. I get “remember that time you said that weird thing” a year later… it sucks.
Ugh, rumination!! Absolute bane of my existence! If I’m left alone with my thoughts, they go supernova on this shit. Apparently it’s a fight or flight mechanism? Or at least it’s trying to protect you, but it doesn’t, it just sends me into a spiral. I used to swear at it, but then I started swearing (at myself) in public (oops!) So I had to stop doing that.
But I’ve had so much trauma in my life, my brain has picked rumination as a way to “not get into an incident like that again, if we micro analyse every nee and old interaction” so I’m working on letting my nervous system know that doesn’t keep me safe, that’s actually putting me in danger, (it’ll break my self worth and sense of self, so much I won’t be able to socialise at all, or send me into overwhelm and distress). And i do a Physiological sigh. Mostly working so far.
I still occasionally cringe and spiral over things I did and said 15 years ago. Just typing out this comment is enough to make me feel the tug of the spiral again.
I’ve gone days after an interaction with a cashier or similar (i.e. someone who will have forgotten our interaction two minutes later) thinking about how the phrase I used was dumb or weird.
With people I know it’s even worse. I get “remember that time you said that weird thing” a year later… it sucks.
Ugh, rumination!! Absolute bane of my existence! If I’m left alone with my thoughts, they go supernova on this shit. Apparently it’s a fight or flight mechanism? Or at least it’s trying to protect you, but it doesn’t, it just sends me into a spiral. I used to swear at it, but then I started swearing (at myself) in public (oops!) So I had to stop doing that.
But I’ve had so much trauma in my life, my brain has picked rumination as a way to “not get into an incident like that again, if we micro analyse every nee and old interaction” so I’m working on letting my nervous system know that doesn’t keep me safe, that’s actually putting me in danger, (it’ll break my self worth and sense of self, so much I won’t be able to socialise at all, or send me into overwhelm and distress). And i do a Physiological sigh. Mostly working so far.
I still occasionally cringe and spiral over things I did and said 15 years ago. Just typing out this comment is enough to make me feel the tug of the spiral again.