Is it Over-thinking or Insanity
What you call it can stop you from addressing what really needs to be addressed; you're driving yourself crazyyyy.
3 November 2024,
This morning I woke up in my right mind; with sanity.
I’m not gon’ lie, this may be the first time that I have ever experienced this phenomenon in my life or at the very least, the first time in the last 20 years of my life… 🥹
Lately, I’ve been nurturing my relationship with prayer, my relationship with God/Spirit and my higher self and I have to say—my prayers are being answered in record speed. To be fair and completely honest, I’m praying for myself and my own healing more than I ever have before and with the knowing that I’m actually ready for the healing I’m asking God for.
I’m not just asking to be rid of pain because I don’t want to feel it though.
I allowed myself to feel my pain and grieve until the pain and grief started to consume me and become a part of my identity that I had begun to outgrow.
It got to the point that, I was going through motions and emotions that I had already been through, felt through, processed, reconciled and made it on the other side of.
At this point, I realized that I was stuck in a thought/feeling loop (many thought loops actually) that was starting to hinder me—a thought loop that I had essentially finished (gave enough of my energy to) thinking through.
I didn’t ignore the feelings I needed to feel. I didn’t ignore the parts of myself that needed to grieve, just so I could participate in life in the ways life was demanding me to.
I allowed space for every part of myself that needed to be expressed in these moments.
I allowed myself to play out every hypothetical and imaginary situation and conversation from every angle that I could until I realized that, anxiety and my imagination on the situation had nothing new to offer me. And seeing how there was no movement in the actual situation that was continuing to rob me of my heart, my mental space and my sanity and peace—I decided to ask God if they could help me to return to myself.
Quick sidebar: I changed the sentence above, from “my anxiety” to just anxiety. It’s harder to let go of things when we accept ownership of them and claim them as “our own” or belonging to us. Anxiety doesn’t belong to me. It’s not mine. What we say to ourselves (the words we use), matters, and if we accept certain words as [our] truth, those truths will shape our reality.
Anyway, I asked God to restore my heart and mind. And 8-12 business hours later (1 sleep), my heart and my mind are both clear in such a way that I now have the space and capacity to feel and think what I want with them.
The strange thing about this [for me], is I can not tell you the last time I’ve ever felt this feeling; this emptiness of mind. And I know this is what it feels like to be sane.
This is what it feels like to be mentally free.
I’m finding that I don’t actually know what I’m supposed to do with a free mind. I almost keep trying to make my mind go back into the multiple thought loops and entanglements that I was just freed from. But I keep interrupting the thoughts and stopping myself from falling back into that old pattern of thinking.
I’m realizing, that sometimes when we don’t know what to do or how to be, we’ll go back and cling on to the familiar; no matter how bad the familiar is for us and our [mental] health. We have to realize that, if what’s familiar is not what works, then we need to trade in what’s familiar for what works.
This means we need to learn or seek something new. We have to figure out a way to navigate through a new terrain. And this process can be scary. Very scary.
But I want to go back to the earlier comment that I made about how:
“what we say to ourselves matters and if we accept certain words as truth, those truths will shape our reality.”
A lot of us have gotten so used to reading, hearing, saying and accepting the term “over-thinking” as normal. We don’t realize that what we have normalized as over-thinking, is really anxiety border lining insanity.
We are literally driving ourselves crazy, but because the wording is so normalized, we have actually disconnected ourselves from our understanding of our thinking; our thoughts on our thinking (metacognition) and the semantics of what certain words actually mean—which we need to know in order to understand what is truly happening within us.
I mean, I can only speak for myself here, but what do you think is happening when you are in a constant state of being trapped inside of your mind trying to figure out every angle, to make every right decision, to calculate every move that you make in an effort to gain what you want or to self-protect from what you don’t want?🧐
Then for us elite level “over-thinkers”, we are also trying to put ourselves in other people’s shoes and think through those very same things from their perspective. And do you think that we are applying this process to only one other relationship in our lives??? No, this process goes on for every relationship in our lives that is important or relevant to us. And this is only if you have some semblance of personal boundaries.
Some people literally place weight on every interaction that they have with others to the degree that a complete stranger can send them into a spiral of questioning themselves and their self-worth.
Fun fact: I used to be some people, until I started #DoingTheWork to define myself for myself.
We don’t even realize how disembodying (not being present within your own body) this whole process is. It takes us away from ourselves; our true selves. Until one day, we don’t even know who we are or where we are.
This is why we have to be able to call and name things as they truly are.
Words matter. Semantics (the meanings of words) matter. The words we choose to use matter and have relative, specific and sometimes contradictory meanings.
For example, if you are lost somewhere in Kansas but think you are in Maine, and you’re telling the people that are trying to help guide you back home that you are in Maine, none of the directions will be able to guide you home.
Your mind is your home. Your body is your home. And if those 2 places are not in harmony with each other, you are going to have a dysfunctional home life; with symptoms showing up and behaving like out of control and undisciplined children; who are unruly and doing whatever the fuck they want—and making you look bad in the process.
Naming things accurately and honestly helps you to return [home] to yourself. Some of us don’t even know who that self is anymore.
Some of us have gotten so far away from our true selves, that we don’t even recognize who that person is or was; we no longer know who we are.
The hardships of life have gotten in the way and separated us from our true selves.
This can look like self-abandoning. This can look like behaving without conscience. This can look like not recognizing and actively avoiding the person you spend 100% of your time with (yourself). This can look like a complete 180 from the person you are, want to be, are capable of being and in some cases used to be.
I’ve been binge listening to this song on Apple Music, “Lessons (Remix)” by Eric Roberson, Anthony Hamilton, Raheem DeVaughn and Kevin Ross, and all the time that I have been listening to it, I’ve been thinking to myself that this is the kind of love I want; this is the kind of love I want a man to feel for me. But yesterday, as I was listening to the song, it made me realize, that this is the kind of love that I need to have for myself.
🎶 Now I realize, Everyone that let me down led me to you…
All the heartbreak I had led me to you…🎶
This song serves as a call-to-action for me to return to myself.
These lyrics are my truth and a recurring theme in my life. Every heartbreak that I have experienced has sent me down a path (a spiral really 🥴) that led to me becoming more of my best and most authentic myself—to me returning to myself and in some instances; becoming MYself for the very first time. 😮💨
Long story short (or long 🥴), life is HARD.
It’s even harder when we are using our mental energy to try to figure out other people and how scenarios are going to play themselves out.
You have to choose sanity over trying to figure out the answers that someone else is suppose to be offering you.
Relationships require conversations that lead to clarity and if your relationships are not offering you that, then you may have to make the hard but necessary choice of choosing your sanity over that relationship.
Life is hard enough without us making it more complicated for ourselves by taking on other people’s roles and responsibilities. We think we are doing “damage-control”, but really we are mentally and emotionally damaging ourselves (and sometimes others) in this process of trying to figure out how everything will go and manipulate outcomes…
I got the following piece of advice from the most ironic person in my life to be giving me this advice.
“Sometimes you just gotta exhale.”
#WooSahhhh
It’s great advice.
As always, I hope my words find you well.
Receive them with Love, KenSights.
Let me know your thoughts, feelings, personal insights on this week’s newsletter in the comments!