My comments on the article called “14 Things Only Over-Thinkers Will Understand”.

14 Things Only Over-Thinkers Will Understand

 

I thought I’d respond to the 14 things listed in the article above cause it would be fun since the article fit me pretty well. My responses are italicized. The list from the other article are in bold letter and numbered.

(Just click on the purple words at the top to see the original post.)

 

 

1. When we say “we’re sorry,” we mean we’re really sorry. If we feel like we’ve hurt your feelings, what you didn’t see is the hours we spent going over every single detail of our fight. Seriously, rest assured knowing that whether you accept our apology or not, this will not soon be forgotten.

 

This one hits home! When I was a kid, somewhere under the age of nine, my mom had a serious passion filled talk with my sister and I about the word, “sorry”. She made it very clear to us that when someone said sorry what they were really saying was, “I’m sorry until next time”. In other words, she believed when people said sorry they were not genuine and just being patronizing.  Thus, I lived with a fear of saying sorry to anyone, I was afraid they would take it wrong. However, when I said or thought the word sorry, I meant it from the bottom of my heart and had spent time going over what it meant to be sorry. A genuine sorry can be a very important thing to say at times and not something to be afraid of saying. Once I reprogrammed my self after the age of thirty eight I stopped caring wither people believed my sorry or not. If they didn’t, it was their problem. I meant my words and that was that. 

 

2. We’re not insecure control freaks, we just think. A lot. I mean you don’t have to call us back right away when you’re out, but just know that our mind is playing out a bunch of horrible scenarios in which you’ve cheated. Or died. That’s right, if we reach your voicemail, we can’t help but consider that you might not be alive.

Yes! This one can be a real pain the butt!

 

3. Our critical thinking skills are pretty on point. Seriously, we have mastered the art of interpreting what people really mean by what they say.

4.But our friends don’t seem to appreciate our analytical ninja skills. They end up saying “you are so over-thinking this I can’t even,” when we proudly tell them that we’ve figured out what something really meant.

 

Reading Malcolm Gladwell books doesn’t help this one any. But I still enjoy it! 

 

5. Sleep is probably the most difficult aspect of our lives. Laying silently in the dark without any distraction inevitably makes us sink into our racing thoughts.

Over time my self re-programming has helped a lot with this one along with a really good therapist. 

 

6.God forbid someone unfollows us on Instagram or unfriends us on Facebook. We won’t rest until we figure out who it was and why.

Yep! I so want to know, “WHYYYYYY?” lol Sometimes people get dropped on FaceBook so that makes it even crazier. I just wish people who feel the need to remove me would send me a note telling me why cause I just really want to know. 

 

7. We delete texts, hesitate over writing emails and Facebook messages, delete and re-write tweets. All because we could and should have said something other than what we did. It takes us forever to write an important message. Okay, basically any message.

Yes, this is true. But, some of my re-writing and editing is because of my bad spelling and bad typing skills. I post, edit, post, edit, post, edit… For some reasons I can see my mistakes better after it’s posted then when it’s in edit mode. 

 

8.When we go out we can be the life of the party – if the party is authentic and exciting (and has enough alcohol), we can live in the moment. Until the hangover. The next morning we are left in fear of what we could have said to that one person we’d rather die than act like an idiot in front of.

This keeps me from getting “too drunk” or really actually drunk at all. I have kids and not only is it important to me to be of sound mind in order to care for them, I also don’t care to act op in front of them due to too much alcohol even though I will act up just fine perfectly sober. But at least I have control over my so called “acting up”  when I’m sober. 

 

9.Of course, any pain in our body leads to us imagining the worst case scenario. We need someone to talk us off the ledge, and tell us they’ve experienced a pain similar to the one we’re describing.

Now that I’ve been diagnosed with IBS and acid reflux I usually just blame those things. But yeah, I’ve been concerned before and still sometimes am. 

 

10. We can’t let things go easily. We’re convinced that if we run over the details of a few more times, it will somehow change the outcome and we will uncover some new understanding of the situation.

I do like to go over all the detail so I can do better next time. People say, “don’t live in the past” and in some ways I agree. But if it’s for self improvement and not wallowing then I say, go over it and figure out what you can.

 

11. We send a lot of screenshots of stuff…and evocative details. We need second opinions.

I am often just curious about what others think. I used to need other people opinions but not so much any more. It really depends on the subject. 

 

12. We actually enjoy a break from our heads. If someone takes us somewhere stimulating enough that we won’t have to be mind-numbingly introspective for once, we’ll love them forever. Well, you know.

Maybe that’s why I love to go to the movies. When I get really frustrated in my head and I’m driving and I need to shut my thinking off I turn the music up super loud. It actually feels really good. I normally don’t keep it loud for very long. Once the presser is gone I turn it back down or off. 

 

13. What did they mean by “I’ll see you soon?” What does “soon” mean? Like soon soon? Or “soon”? We like when someone makes our lives a little less complicated and tells us straight up what they mean. I mean, we’ll probably spin it to mean something more, anyways, but it’s still nice.

Sometimes I mull over this and wonder and sometimes I know I don’t know so I make up a funny answer and laugh privately to myself. It’s my way of dealing with the unknown and cheering myself up. Humor is healthy! 

 

14. If we meet someone that makes us live in the moment, we’ll hang on to them for life. Or as long as we possibly can.

 

Maybe that’s why I found it difficult to hate that womanizer guy who used me then threw me away when his next “trick” came along. I think it had been way to long since I had “lived in the moment”. After being horribly heart broken and then getting over it I saw him mostly for who he was but still missed the “ups” he gave me. Later I was able to actually see him as the fool he is. But I still don’t hate him, I just think he’s pathetic.

 

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You just never know when your kid is gonna get it!

Last night while driving with three of my kids to the video store I found myself talking about the mental abuse I went through most my life. I’ve never really labeled it that way before. It’s so easy to be misunderstood, but sometimes that’s life!

What sparked it was my twelve year old son being concerned for my health. I have irritable bowel syndrome and am often in discomfort. I had a stressful week and stress is a big IBS trigger. It’s not always about food.

My son wanted to know what caused it. So far no one has pin pointed the cause of IBS, but many have speculated it stems from stress.

So I told him about how I was never allowed to express myself, I learned to hold everything in. I told him about as a child I was shy and quite and by the time I started coming out of my shell my mom would take personal offence if I ever expressed negative feelings. My dad was more subtle with it, he knew how to put a guilt trip on you before you ever knew what was happening.

I told my son about how at the age of about nineteen I finally barfed my feeling out in front of several people. I was on a church trip and I got extremely sick and ended up breaking down emotionally. The church leader saw tears in my eyes which normally would embarrass me terribly and insisted I talk. One of the church ladies coaxed me and before I knew it I was virtually vomiting mass amounts of mental pain I had unknowingly held in for many year.

This all happened in a van caravan along the side of the highway from Chicago to Mississippi. My mom was in the van behind us but got an earful from the church leader because much of what I spilled out was about my parents. I had never “exposed” them before. I didn’t know how to say anything bad or negative about my parents. So this was quite a shock to her. She got very upset with me and brought it up off and on for years as if I had abused her.

My son then talked about how it was good the church leader and church lady helped me get that stuff out.

I then told him that it was good but sadly that was the last time it would happen. From then on I was under their wing and I was not allowed to be myself and express myself any longer with out rebuke and retaliation. Even in regard to other church members. I was often reprimanded for not standing up for myself. But, if I did, the people I stood up to would complain to the church leader and then he would rebuke me harshly usually saying I had meanness in me and use what I did as an example for many sermons there after. If you look up brain washing this is a common technique, btw.

I then told my son that I have been out of all that for about five or six years now and that while I have healed myself mentally and emotionally, physically it can take a while. I really believe holding in stress all those years is a big contributing factor to my current IBS condition. I told him I have improved, but I have a ways to go.

After hearing the initial story he let me know this was the first he ever know of this part of my past. I explained, and was thankfully backed up by my daughters, that I had indeed talked about it in front of him many times but he likely was to young to understand. I was happy he understood that.

He told me that if he had a time machine he would go back in time and fix all that for me. I just love it when my children show empathy, it’s lovely and heart touching. I mentioned I appreciated his empathy and he asked what that was so the girls and I told him. Then I mentioned something about him being empathetic and he thought I insulted him. After all empathetic has the sound of pathetic in it. We had a good laugh over that.

He wanted to help me heal mentally so I assured him I had. He seemed to be trying to find a way to help me. I thought it was really awesome that he was taking such a mature view of it all.

I told him that when I first got out of all that stuff I desperately wished for a time machine. I wanted so badly to go back and change things. But over time I found I knew so much more then ever before and I could relate to and help people cause I understood them due to my own past experiences. I realized that if time machines were real, I could never change anything. I value what I have learned and who I have become.

After securing in his mind that I have changed and I do now express myself and am mentally doing well he moved on to my health.

I let him know I was working on it. That it would take time. He then moved on to the issue of exercise… Oh dear! lol I admitted I was doing pretty bad with that at this time. He wanted to set up a schedule for me to go to the YMCA every day while him and his siblings were at school. There was actually a time I did that. I loved it! I wanted to work with his ideas but lately I have had an appointment for one of the four kids and or myself almost every weekday. When I finally have no appointments I am plum wore out. I don’t really mind the busyness, it’s just really hard to fit exercise in to it. I told him I am looking for a free or low priced working tread mill. I really believe at this time in my life that would benefit me and the kids as well. It is a subject that has been on my mind lately.

Levi’s autism causes him to be behind sometimes. But like many autistic kids, once he gets it he’s got it better then most and he’s got it forever. Often autistic kids are misunderstood as not having feelings. They do indeed have feelings but usually express them differently and have reasons other then the norm that cause them to become emotional. Because they have a need to understand things logically when they do become emotional they often do so from a very deep place inside of themselves.  I really enjoyed watching his sweetness last night. He was sensitive but not sad, just compassionate and wanted to be a part of helping his mom.

He told me after the conversation was about over what he does. He said when he wants to cry, it doesn’t mater where he is or who is around, he cries! And when he wants to yell, he yells and so on. This sort of behavior is often what gets autistic kids bullied. It’s difficult because as their parents we don’t want to change their realness, but, we do want to protect them. It’s a constant balancing act and is never a pat answer. He then told me that if I want to cry and other people don’t want me to that I should cry extra hard and loud. I love it!

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