In My Head

Wouldn't it be great if there was a mute button for your brain? Some switch you could flip that would silence all those little thoughts and worries, that would stop the over-thinking and the second-guessing? I'd pay good money to have one of those installed.

In skiing I am still trepidatious before dropping into something tight or steep (or steep and tight). It's funny since I know I'm skilled enough to be doing the line, but my mind goes into overdrive with what could go wrong. I start questioning my abilities and the fear creeps back, the fear I've worked so hard and long to push away. Those moments are the ones that have me wishing I could tell my mind to shut up, sit back, relax, I got this. Why do I have to be my own worst enemy? Skiing (or climbing or similar activities) is a mind game. After a certain skill level the only real impediment to growth is in your head. Being in your head can keep you safe or it can do the opposite; if you start over-thinking and second-guessing you may put yourself into danger you were not initially in.

Being too much in one's head is not a problem exclusive to action sports. If anyone has seen the movie Love and Other Disasters starring Brittany Murphy (RIP) then you know one of the secondary plot lines revolves around her gay best friend/roommate. I love the way they tell his story: they show a scenario playing out and then reveal the entire thing was in his head. By the end of the film he realizes most of his fears were completely irrational and the problems he saw were only in his mind. I think this is a problem a lot of people face; we all live with the subconscious expectation that people think and act in a way similar to us so we therefore predict how things will play out. Both fortunately and unfortunately no two people are the same, so the scenarios we try to predict in our heads rarely turn out that way. It doesn't stop us from thinking a few steps ahead though, and this can bog us down in pointless minutia and thus create problems that aren't actually there. This extends to relationships of all kinds: dating, jobs, friendship, family.

I've tried for years to get out of my head; it's noisy and weird in there. Unfortunately, that switch doesn't exist and I can't find the exit sign. I guess a burden of being in science and in grad school is that it's literally my job to think, so getting out of my head is unlikely not completely success-oriented behavior. Guess I'll just have to be 'worst-case scenario girl' and 'introvert girl' for the rest of my life. At least I've got a solid group of people in my life who not only know this about me, but for some reason love me all the more for it. If you've got to live in your head, find people who aren't scared to vacation there. The company's nice.