Brain worms

For some reason that term is really calling to me today. To me it symbolizes all the stuff that is no longer serving you that keeps sticking around anyway. Maybe it never served you. I know my traumas were complex and substantial, but I also know that mental health conditions have fed into making my thoughts and thought patterns what they are today. Most relevant right now is my brain’s tendency to project my worries and insecurities onto others and making up all these terrible conclusions about myself and how people must think about me. I can see it when it’s happening. A lot of the time I don’t really know what to do. I feel like I can push back a little bit on the putdowns and disparaging things my brain is saying to me, but it is relentless. Thankfully, a shift in environment or the people I’m around can shock my brain out of it, so it’s not ever-present.

I’m not necessarily doing this purposefully, but if you’ve noticed I’m talking about 2 different actors here. Me; and my brain. See, I am the one who notices when my brain (or perhaps, the worms) is saying these things. I am consciously forming the thoughts and words to put on this page. I am deciding what I’m going to do later or tomorrow. I think about food and games and music and so on. My brain, however, loooooves to make noise about the context of all of that. Telling me that I’m only writing this to be seen by other people and that I’m silly for thinking this helps me or anyone else ever. Or saying that my plans for tomorrow are going to go poorly just because. It’s easy for me to tell myself apart from that. As I am now though, telling them apart doesn’t get me very far along the road towards ignoring the worms’ words entirely.

I will get there, I know it. It’s in me already to brush it aside occasionally. Writing about it right now is, in fact, helping me as well. I can exist beyond the brain worms when I sit with the facts of reality. A few I remind myself of often are: No one can read your mind, and vice versa. Trust in what people have said and leave it to them to communicate what they need to, none of that is on you. Your needs are your responsibility before they are anyone else’s, BUT it is ok to rely on others. Trust your future self to take care of future problems. You are loved. You have the power inside you to change your life.

Some of these things are kinda like mantras to me, or are becoming that way. I need pretty constant reminders these days or else the worms will start drowning out the wisdom that I’ve gained. Today is a victory for me. I will lose a lot. But eventually I’ll be on a winning streak that won’t end. The worms might always be there, but I won’t have to listen to them.