In Blackest Night – The Hyperawareness Paradox

I’ve been thinking too much
I’ve been thinking too much
I’ve been thinking too much
I’ve been thinking too much
Help me
I’ve been thinking too much (I’ve been thinking too much)
I’ve been thinking too much (Help me)
I’ve been thinking too much (I’ve been thinking too much)
I’ve been thinking too much

–‘Ride’ by Twenty One Pilots

I’ve recently fallen in love with this song, along with ‘Stressed Out’.  I’d heard them before — ‘Heathens’ was what brought me into the flight-path of the band — but my recent state of mind has opened the doorway to the lyrics and my interpretation of them.  I’ve added the remixes at the end of this post.  If you’re not familiar with ‘Ride’ the above lines will seem rather lazy but I used them to demonstrate the primary workload of my brain.  Repetition plays heavy on my mind.

From replaying various events in my life over and over in the hope that I can change the past to going back and impart knowledge to my younger self to equip me better for what the future would bring him.  I analyse every interaction I have (or don’t as the case may be) to determine if people are being ‘off’ with me or judging me or countless other possibilities as to what’s going on in their head.  The paranoia of what people are (may) be saying about me.  When I’m walking to or around town and I hear laughter behind me my mind quickly jumps to wondering if I have something on my back or if my ass crack is on show or a variety of other things regardless of the logical part of my mind trying to explain to me that they’re not concerned about me in the slightest and are laughing and joking as I often did previously.

I see people I know who appear to be looking at me then look away.  I assume the worst.  I assume they took one look and didn’t want to acknowledge me despite the fact they have their own shit going on and quite possibly didn’t see me at all.  I walk around feeling like I have ACME Invisible Paint on me.

Enter stage right, HYPERAWARENESS PARADOX.  One of the pitfalls, that I have found anyway, is that the exact aforementioned ‘observations’ end up being behaviours that I act out.  Despite being hyperaware of my surroundings (some through choice – like taking the kids to school and making sure they’re safe), I often don’t see what’s right in front of me.  There are many an occasion where I go to look for something and can’t find it only to have it pointed out to me that it was right there in front of me (or close in proximity).  Having my head on a ‘swivel’ I look around a lot but fail to register what I actually saw.  Examples are where there are people I know that I fail to actually see despite looking that way or lose my bearings even though I should know exactly where I am.  It’s almost as if my brain is failing to process the visual data that it receives or there is a substantial delay in that information passing from the eyes to the data centre inside my skull.

It’s almost as if my brain functions backwards–the awareness works on an upper level where it can project thoughts, feelings, motives and whatever else upon those around me but when it comes to physically seeing things, it falls short.  I don’t think it’s something I will ever come to understand and that, in itself, is a concern.  Just like a virgin doesn’t think she’s pregnant, I am fully aware of my situation and the strains it takes on me both mentally and physically.  But getting to the crux of it and stopping it is a whole different matter.

The mental health counsellor I saw earlier in the year told me I “think too much”.  I knew that already but what I didn’t and still don’t know is how to stop it or, at least, reduce it.  Like when your friend tells you not to laugh at someone’s false teeth slipping and, if they hadn’t mentioned it, you would never have noticed it–once you’re aware of it you can’t stop thinking about it.  What a conundrum.  I think too much, but in order to figure out how to stop thinking too much I have to think about it.

What can ya do?