Mentally spiralling and on the brink of a breakdown (literally)

Welcome to the pod! Introduction episode pending but for now I figured, let's skip the pleasantries and get in to the meat and potatoes of Car Crash-outs; mentally spiralling in a vague and ramble-y way while trying to dissect those pesky thought spirals that can derail a day, or week (or a good couple months if you're committed enough)! In this episode I speak about how maybe rumination needs to be treated like a bad habit rather than a mental health crises ? And how our subconscious thoughts are running our lives without us realizing it. 

Get in and put your seatbelt on (and let's all hope the car doesn't breakdown)! xo

Transcript

Speaker 0:00

Oh my god. Someone has severely boxed me in. What the hell, man? What the hell? Give me some space to navigate. Or I will crash into your car. Good morning. Happy Wednesday. Welcome to Car Crash Outs. Something tragic has happened. I made a really terrible mistake yesterday and it's devastating. Here's what happened. I recorded an episode yesterday where frankly I was on fire. Okay. I was at the top of my game. I was in a flow state. And I realized like 20, 25 minutes in, that I had been somehow using the wrong input, and the audio was dog shit. So I can't use that audio. Whatever. Gives me another opportunity to talk my shit today. So here we are. It is Wednesday morning. It's eight o'clock. I am so excited because it's beautiful outside. And yesterday I was in a funk like all day. It was, I think it was kind of it was rainy and gross in the morning yesterday. It got nicer in the afternoon. I just woke up on the wrong side of the bed, I think. I had a really long day at work and I could not get out of my own head all day. Which is what I was speaking about yesterday and what I want to talk about today. Lately I've been finding, and by lately I mean the last, I would say the last month or two, I've been finding that I am slipping into this really, really bad habit of using any free time I have, time alone with my thoughts that I have, to ruminate on really negative things and to let myself fall into these negative, what I would call like rumination cycles. And it's funny, like I wouldn't classify the feeling as anxiety, although maybe that is what it is. I don't know. I am someone who, like throughout my life, I have struggled with anxiety quite a lot. Maybe I'll do like a full episode actually on my experience with that. I feel like that could be interesting. But this feels different. This feels very, very mental to me, and anxiety has always been like a very physical experience for me. So whenever I talk about experiencing anxiety for me, it's very much like feels hard to breathe, shaky, lightheaded. And it for me, anxiety is rarely the racing thoughts component, and it is, yeah, very often it's like the physical symptoms. So I think that's why I view this differently. But whatever it is, it needs to stop because it's really miserable to allow yourself to continue to fall into these like negative thought patterns day after day after day. And it's not something that happens when I'm feeling like I have a very packed day, I feel purposeful in my day. Yeah, it doesn't tend to happen in those moments. What happens is I do have a lot of time to myself and a lot of time alone with my thoughts because of the nature of my job. And please let me in, please let me in, thank you. Um, I do have a lot of time alone with my thoughts, which usually what I will do, and historically what I've done, is I listen to a lot of podcasts, I listen to a lot of music, I talk on the phone a lot, like throughout my workday, just to kind of like fill the time and space up, which is nice, but I feel like recently those things have stopped working for me. I'll put a podcast on and I will just I will not be listening to the podcast. I will be so like deeply entrenched in my own thoughts still. And yesterday when I recorded this episode, I spoke about how, well, I spoke about a couple things. I spoke about a how when I'm referring to like these rumination cycles, negative thought patterns, racing thoughts, whatever it is. And I talk about like, okay, how can I move forward in a healthier way? How can I move forward feeling like I have more control over my thoughts? I'm not speaking about or I'm not speaking to the experience of people who are who are dealing with diagnosed mental health disorders, such as like OCD, or maybe you have been diagnosed with a general generalized anxiety disorder. I'm not speaking about those circumstances because obviously that's different and that's not something you can like meditate your way out of. I mean, I guess for some people, meditation does really, really help in those instances. So I can't use that audio, whatever. Gives me another opportunity to talk my shit today. So here we are. It is Wednesday morning, it's eight o'clock. I am so excited because it's beautiful outside, and yesterday I was in a funk like all day. It was, I think it was kind of it was rainy and gross in the morning yesterday. It got nicer in the afternoon. I just woke up on the wrong side of the bed, I think. I had a really long day at work, and I could not get out of my own head all day, which is what I was speaking about yesterday and what I want to talk about today. Lately I've been finding, and by lately I mean the last, I would say the last month or two, I've been finding that I am slipping into this really, really bad habit of using any free time I have, time alone with my thoughts that I have, to ruminate on really negative things and to let myself fall into these negative, what I would call like rumination cycles. And it's funny, like I wouldn't classify the feeling as anxiety, although maybe that is what it is. I don't know. I am someone who, like throughout my life, I have struggled with anxiety quite a lot. Maybe I'll do like a full episode actually on my experience with that. I feel like that could be interesting, but this feels different. This feels very, very mental to me, and anxiety has always been like a very physical experience for me. So whenever I talk about experiencing anxiety for me, it's very much like feels hard to breathe, shaky, lightheaded. And it for me, anxiety is rarely the racing thoughts component, and it is, yeah, very often it's like the physical symptoms. So I think that's why I view this differently. But whatever it is, it needs to stop because it's really miserable to allow yourself to continue to fall into these like negative thought patterns day after day after day, and it's not something that happens when I'm feeling like I have a very packed day, I feel purposeful in my day. Yeah, it doesn't tend to happen in those moments. What happens is I do have a lot of time to myself and a lot of time alone with my thoughts because of the nature of my job. And please let me in, please let me in, thank you. Um, I do have a lot of time alone with my thoughts, which usually what I will do, and historically what I've done is I listen to a lot of podcasts, I listen to a lot of music, I talk on the phone a lot, like throughout my workday, just to kind of like fill the time and space up, which is nice, but I feel like recently those things have stopped working for me. I'll put a podcast on and I will just I will not be listening to the podcast. I will be so like deeply entrenched in my own thoughts still. And yesterday when I recorded this episode, I spoke about how, well, I spoke about a couple things. I spoke about A, how when I'm referring to like these rumination cycles, negative thought patterns, racing thoughts, whatever it is, and I talk about like, okay, how can I move forward in a healthier way? How can I move forward feeling like I have more control over my thoughts? I'm not speaking about, or I'm not speaking to the experience of people who are who are dealing with diagnosed mental health disorders, such as like OCD, or maybe you have been diagnosed with a general, generalized anxiety disorder. I'm not speaking about those circumstances because obviously that's different and that's not something you can like meditate your way out of. I mean, I guess for some people, meditation does really, really help in those instances. Your intuition and your anxiety, I guess if that's what we want to call it. Like, I'm just maybe I'm gonna call it anxiety to kind of just help, like to give it a name. So if that's what we're calling it, then yeah, there is a big difference between intuition and anxiety, and I think a lot of people get so caught up in those two things and are not able to dissect them, are not able to untangle them. And I've had a lot of trouble doing that in the past because it's really hard. And like sometimes the difference between them is so so small that you really have no idea whether this is like some sort of deep intuition, something you need to pay attention to, something your body's telling you, or it really is your brain grasping at straws rather than allowing yourself to sit in boredom or allowing yourself to rest mentally and not feel like you have to be solving a problem, dissecting something, whatever it is. Where was I going with this? Hold on, I need to find my point. Was going to make fun. Hmm. I think I was just gonna say that oh, I know what I was gonna say. Okay. For me, I think the difference between anxiety and intuition is that intuition is kind of this deep sense of knowing. It's more of like a a calm feeling, and anxiety for me does show up as these racing thoughts, these endless thought cycles, rumination cycles, whatever it is. So that is kind of how I differentiate. Because if I'm moving forward, being like, okay, well, how do we change these thought patterns? How do we fix these cycles that we fall into? Well, I want to make sure that it's not a situation where I'm just learning how to ignore what my brain and body is telling me. So that distinction is important. I my stomach is growling in a way that is actually insane. And I I mean, I'm sure that you can't hear it, but in a very real way, I'm also not sure because it's loud. I'm so hungry. Ugh, I used to be such a breakfast person, and yeah, you can go. You're welcome. Um, I used to be such a breakfast person. I had to eat like the second I woke up, or I felt like I was gonna be sick, which actually still sometimes is the case. Uh, I will wake up sometimes on like a weekend and it'll be eight in the morning, and I will like go into the kitchen, eat a piece of toast, and go back to bed and sleep for another two hours. Because I just I am such a breakfast person. I am such a like morning, I love breakfast food is my favorite food. Anyways, what was I saying? Oh, these days, because of my work schedule, I kind of have like slowly trained myself to wait to eat breakfast, so I'll be awake for probably like four-ish hours before I actually eat breakfast. And the way I've been doing that is just like I've been able to wait by having like a banana or even having a tea sometimes will help tide me over. But some mornings I am just genuinely so hungry, and I'm still like an hour out from being able to eat. So, anyways, stomach is growling, I've lost my train of thought completely. I really want a matcha. Really, really want a matcha. Anyways, okay, what was I talking about? I think I was talking about the distinction between intuition and anxiety, and I feel like we've covered that. Okay, so if we've kind of been able to identify, like, you know what, regardless of the friendships I'm in, the relationships I'm in, the job that I'm at, the city that I live in, regardless of all of these external factors, the common denominator is me. And oh, I don't know if you guys can hear that rattling going on in my car, but sometimes if I just kind of punch wherever the rattling is coming from, it will help. And sometimes it just really hurts my hand and the rattling keeps going, so I don't know. Okay, let me find my point. If you are someone who is realizing that regardless of your circumstance, regardless of the relationships you're in, regardless of the job you're working at, the friendships that you have, the city you live in, you still constantly find yourself falling into these rumination cycles, then I do think it's time to stop putting weight behind these thoughts. And it's time to start looking at them as a bad habit, as a way that you've trained your brain, and nothing more than that. Because it's so crazy. I can be having a great day, but if I have too much time to just think about whatever I want to, I will slip back into those rumination cycles. And it's not because I need to be thinking about those things, and it's not because I am unhappy with my current situation, it's because I've created a bad habit of uh that is my tire pressure monitor fault, in case anyone was wondering. I have so many alarms constantly going off in this car. The entire monitor system, I need to change the oil probably at some point. The other day the check engine light came on, and that was a whole thing. You know what? If there wasn't something that was telling me that this car was like on the brink of a breakdown at all times or about to like explode, then I would feel like something's off. I would feel like something's not quite right here. Um, what the hell was I saying? What was I saying? What was I saying? Oh yeah, so maybe there will come a time when I'm like, oh my god, Asia, you idiot. You did need to listen to yourself about those things. This is you completely ignoring your intuition, you're ignoring yourself. You are doing a whole lot to not give yourself permission to listen to yourself and feel what you're feeling. Maybe God, I hope that's not the conclusion I come to in like however many months or years looking back at this kind of viewpoint I'm developing now. But I don't think it will be. I I think that the key to moving forward and feeling like happier and healthier in my brain on the daily is learning how to have more control over my mental state, over my subconscious thoughts that run in the background, and the conscious thoughts that run in the foreground. I really do believe that our thoughts create a reality, and I don't believe that everything happens for a reason. I don't subscribe to the idea that everything's working out for me and everything's happening for a reason, and it's all gonna be okay. I don't really subscribe to that. I think that our thoughts and our choices and the actions we take create our reality. And I think that when we don't have control over our mind in any sense, and we don't learn how to have control over our thoughts and meditate on positive things, we allow our brain to run amuck, then that is creating our reality. That is creating the little systems that we have throughout the day that ultimately create our weeks and our months and our years. And so, a little bit of a bumpy road here. Sorry for more rattling. Um, and so I'm super conscious of that, and I feel like I am committed to creating a better reality for myself. I want to create systems throughout my day that get me closer to my goals. And the systems that I'm creating throughout my day start with my brain. They start with my brain and they start with my thoughts. The question is how? That is the question. Anyone have any ideas? Cause I have a few, but I definitely haven't figured this out. Like, this is me just talking through what I've been feeling recently, but I don't have the answers. I think meditation is probably a good idea. I used to meditate quite a lot. I feel like it did help me in a lot of ways. When I was like learning how to meditate and learning what meditation is, I heard someone describe it as like meditation is not the act of like learning how to not think about things, but it's learning how to not, it's learning how to, I guess, detach from them and notice them, but but not allow yourself to be completely consumed by every single thought that enters your brain. So, like the way it was described to me was imagine your brain as like a little river, and each thought comes floating down the stream, and meditation is watching the thought come float through the st like down the stream, observing it, and then letting it continue onwards. Whereas what I think I'm currently doing, and if you relate to anything that I've said up till this point, what you're probably doing as well is seeing the thought come floating down the stream, leaping into the water after the thought, wrestling it to shore, and then standing there and like berating it or dissecting it or whatever it is, until you feel some sense of accomplishment. Even though you feel terrible, you're very cold, and you're very wet, and it wasn't necessary for you to jump into the water after the thought. But be you feel good about yourself because you did something, I guess. I don't know. This analogy is getting away from me, maybe a little bit, but that is what I've been doing. I've been leaping into the water after every single thought that comes floating down my brainstream, and I need to learn how to let them just go by. I really do think that the art of detaching, not fully, not 100%, it's like a very delicate dance because it's not about ignoring the thought, it's not about like turning around and now you can't even see the thoughts coming downstream, and now you're completely avoiding these things. Like, I would call that like just being comp like completely avoidant, which is also not ideal. It's it really is the ability to notice them without judgment, without the need to take it any further. And I just think that that would probably create so much mental peace and clarity and room to meditate on positive things and let your subconscious be a place of lightness and positivity, and know that you're not ignoring things, you're not avoiding things. Just because you are not spiraling about something, trying to solve a problem that doesn't really exist doesn't mean that you are not productive or that something terrible is going to happen. If you take a breath and step back and view these things from a bird's eye view, you are not saving yourself by trying to figure out every single little problem that doesn't exist preemptively in order to like be the best version of you that you can be or have the best life possible. Like actually, you're doing the opposite and you're working against yourself. That's the funniest part. It's so ironic because you're accomplishing the dead opposite of what you're trying to accomplish. And I need to remember that and I need to start meditating. And I want to do uh another episode, or like maybe kind of split this up into two episodes and dive a little bit deeper into the whole everything happens for a reason of it all. So we'll see if I do that. But that's my thoughts on this for today. God, please let this audio be usable. Because if it's not, that's it for me. That's I can't do this again. I can't, I can't talk about the same thing again. So, second time better be the charm. I am going to finish up my morning shift for work and maybe I'll talk to you later. Bye.