The Customary Over-Analyzation

After my near-meltdown at work on Friday, I'm having some serious anxiety about going back on Monday. The thought of it makes me panic, in the racing heart, shortness of breath sort of way.

I feel like something inside me snapped on Friday. My last shred of patience and tolerance is gone.

My gut reaction tells me to text my boss and tell him I'm not coming back ever again.

My brain, of course, tells me I have bills to pay and I shouldn't burn bridges. Someday I'll need a reference from these people.

I keep asking myself, would this be different if Joey was home? Like, what if I was only dealing with one very stressful situation instead of two? Yeah, work would still suck, but Joey would be here to hug me every day, to talk and listen, to share meals and help around the house. He always makes me feel so calm and relaxed and cared for. I really miss that right now.

Or what if Joey was still gone, but work didn't suck? What if work was awesome? Would it be easier for me to handle Joey's absence if I wasn't mentally drained every single day by my job?

It probably seems counter-productive to ask all these "what if" questions, but really I'm just trying to break this situation down into smaller pieces so I can understand it better.

I guess the question I'm really asking myself is, is it the difficult circumstances that are making me crack? Or is it just me and my general inability to cope with stress in a healthy way?

And because I'm a nerd for astrology, I also have to ask, is it a coincidence that my last bout of anxiety attacks happened around the same time last year? Or is there something about the transition from Virgo to Libra that's especially difficult for me, that I should learn how to handle so this doesn't happen every year. If I think back, October has always been a mentally and emotionally tumultuous month for me, even without the recent extremes of anxiety or depression.

Something that always gets under my skin is when "helpful" people try to tell me how I need to change the way I deal with things.

"You need to lighten up. Don't take everything so seriously."

"Why can't you just get your own work done and not worry about what everyone else is doing?"

"You need to stop letting it get you down."

"You need to get out more. Just do something fun to relieve stress, and you'll feel better."


I get so tired of being told by others how I should change. I already know that psychologically, I'm in the minority. So I don't expect others to understand how I work. Heck, sometimes I don't even understand how I work. Although for the most part, I know myself pretty well, and I know what I need in terms of mental and emotional support to get through a tough time. What I never seem to figure out, at least not in a timely manner, is what actions I need to take to fix a broken situation. I'm so slow to process complicated life decisions, it takes me forever to make a move.

I think perhaps this is why I've spent so much time trying to learn about myself -- it's why I know that I'm a highly introverted, highly sensitive, highly intelligent, lazy perfectionist (no, it's not an oxymoron) with a learning disorder and ADD who habitually over-analyzes everything. I've gone to great lengths to understand these aspects of my personality and behavior. If I'd known these things 10 or 15 years ago, I never would have been a music major in college. But hindsight is always 20/20, and knowing what makes me tick still doesn't help me move forward.

What I know is that I can't do anything about Joey being gone, and neither can he. And I can't do anything about what's happening at work. What I do have control over is myself and my own actions.

Do I control my own mental and emotional state? Everyone else likes to tell me I do, but I'm not so sure. They call it a "gut reaction" for a reason. It's a reflex. It happens instantly and instinctively, before your brain has had time to process it. So what am I supposed to do when my gut overwhelms my senses?

And let's not forget what I've already worked for years to overcome. When I try to control my emotions instead of feeling them naturally as they come, I end up shutting them off completely, building walls, and becoming an emotional zombie who doesn't feel anything at all.

I still remember the psychiatrist who tried for weeks to illicit an emotional response from me. I was hard as stone. Eventually I said, "look, I recognize your textbook psychiatric techniques, and I understand what you're trying to do. But I'm telling you: I don't feel anything." In fact, I was rather offended that he thought he could chip away at me without even attempting to work with me on my own terms. Needless to say, I got bored with him very fast and decided to handle the issue myself.

And I did. It took a few years, but eventually I worked it out. After all that time and effort spent trying to feel again, I'm not about to turn off the fountain now.

So that leaves me and my overly sensitive, perfectionist self hanging out in the open, trying to function in a highly stressful environment where I can't control anything that's happening. Except myself and my own reactions. Or so everyone keeps trying to tell me. Personally, I would rather feel whatever I need to feel, and take as much time as it takes to let it happen. That's how I work. Unfortunately, it's a method that's not very compatible with the rest of the world with its schedules and deadlines.

But... my company's new PTO policy offers a single measure of pleasant flexibility: one "mental health" day per year. It's an unplanned PTO freebie, no questions asked. And I think tomorrow's the day to use it.

In my best Cartman voice:
Screw you guys. I'm going home.




I've been married for 5 months today. And my husband will have been gone for 5 months on Tuesday.