Always, Sometimes

You won't believe it, but I just typed out 3/4 of a post and deleted all of it because it felt like bullshit. Some sort of sugar coated crap cone that was spewed out of some online trendy page that would appeal to the majority.

Not today folks.

As you all know from previous posts, my journey of healing and self discovery has been a long, slow and sometimes frustrating process. Vivid dreaming is something that still is a part of my life, although less terrifying and more strange. 
Lately I've had a reoccurring dream that I'm on deerfoot trail, and as I go to shoulder check, I rear end a car on the side of the road. Or I'm coming around a corner and lose control of the vehicle and go flying over the guard rail. Most of these end in jarring me awake, covered in sweat.
I have good news! After discussing this with my therapist, (they're actually quite affordable and do wonders for personal growth, I promise.) She looked at me point blank and said "Your brain is begging you to STOP overthinking."
Overthinking or catastrophizing is basically making situations far worse than they actually are. Now, this is a great trait to have for a creative writing class, but for a 30 year old woman, navigating through modern dating and life in general, you can imagine how bizarre things could get.

I always had an active imagination as a kid, a hypochondriac in her finest form at age 10. The smallest dot of blood on a kleenex and I was a sobbing disaster on the bathroom floor, convinced I was going to bleed to death.
As an adult, I'm definitely still a hypochondriac but my catastrophizing has been limited to mostly relationships. Romantic and platonic.

Now, although I've been aware that I have an active imagination etc, it hasn't been until recently that I've learned a few tactics to help control these downward spirals and why they happen in the first place.
I will start with why they happen, in my case anyways. Protection. I've come a long way in the healing process of crappy relationships, and I am 100% proud of who I'm becoming. Overthinking the crap out of any situation in the dating world is my brains way of putting up walls. If I prepare for the worst, think the worst, and assume the worst, I can't be hurt. Now, don't get me wrong, I think that having high standards and low expectations is the best approach to modern dating but that being said, constantly being in a state of panic or obsession over what could go wrong is tiring and it sucks all the fun out of it. Believe me, easier said than done.

For years of my life (literally years and years) I was told and convinced to believe that there was something wrong with me, that I was hard to love, could lose some weight, I wasn't good enough, the list goes on.
Even though I've worked through that and know that wasn't the case, it's still an active thing that I have to fight against. I naturally carry the responsibility of relationships because I've always been made to feel like anything that goes wrong is my fault. Naturally as friendships and relationships shift and phase, it can be a super uncomfortable process and I generally take on that uncomfortable feeling into a downward spiral of why, when, how and what I did.
Should I have added "lol"? Should I not have said that? What if they're secretly trying to ruin my life because I upset them in 2014? My car is making a weird noise, what if my tire falls off when I'm on the freeway and I die in a car accident? Who will take care of the girls? I'm the only one who's stepped up for them, I can't let them down. Maybe if I made better choices, I wouldn't be in this position. *Enter first tactic* SOMETIMES.
My therapist taught me this when she convinced me to let my brain just go. 100% completely just spiral. Now, she was with me, and as I'm in the middle of this process, she encourages me to interrupt my thoughts with the word SOMETIMES.
SOMETIMES things go wrong. SOMETIMES things go right. Just by interrupting a spiral with that one small word, I gain a little bit of control. "Maybe I came on too strong, maybe I shouldn't have been so honest about my ex, maybe I'm bad in bed, maybe I'm- SOMETIMES".

I know this seems like a lot of crazy making and a little overwhelming for someone who cannot relate whatsoever. My motive behind this blog is to be open, raw and honest. As I grow and heal, I'm learning a lot about stress, dreams, overthinking and how they all tie together. I don't know if this is relative for any of my readers, but if it is, I hope that if you struggle with constantly overthinking and catastrophizing every damn thing, to remember the power of sometimes. 

By taking just those few seconds to gain control, it slowly rehabilitates your brain. Currently, my overthinking usually only gets out of control when I'm super hormonal or feeling insecure.
Another thing that I have learned is that when you feel insecure, your brain automatically looks for evidence to support that. So for example, putting yourself out there in the dating world can be intimidating, so when I feel uneasy or off in that area, I find I'm more likely to go through and create scenarios where I feel insecure, or remember things from past relationships that also made me feel the same way. Does that make sense? So instead, what I'm working on now, is looking at the evidence at hand. Is there current information that supports me feeling like crap? No. Has this certain person straight out told you they're mad at you, or have they given you tangible reasons to believe that they're mad at you? No. If they answer is no, you "park" the thought.
I really don't have an overall point to this post. This is more just current and up to date information as to where I'm at, what I'm learning and how I'm growing. I get so empowered some days that I have to share this information so that if any of my friends out there are just as crazy as I am, then well, we can be crazy together. Even if that means that most of our days are always, SOMETIMES.

Love and Honesty
Cass