When I’m in the office for work, I can’t get away with some Genshin Impact or kdrama catch up, because my manager sits directly in front of me and my manager’s boss sits directly to my right. The furthest I’m willing to go is this merging game called Love & Pies and a gacha dress-up game called Love Nikki. And that’s with the brightness turned way down low. But! There is something I can do that will not immediately clue people in on the fact that I am doing nothing.

Looking up random crap on Google.

Everyone uses Google, even for business purposes, so I pull up Google on my phone. If I’m particularly paranoid that day, I’ll look between my phone and my laptop screen to make it look like I’m comparing two documents. Now, when I’m searching things up, it’s a very stream-of-consciousness slew of phrases. Maybe I’ll think of some current event or maybe I want to know what books are considered classic or maybe I’ll want to do a needlessly intense dive into how internet articles think the human psyche works. And that’s usually where I stay, reading about mental illness and checking off whatever matches my day-to-day life.

I have a very strong fascination with my own brain because it really, really confuses me. Lately, it’s been even worse than usual because I’ve started working and the odd little habits I have become more noticable to me. I can’t tell if I seem smart or dumb. Intrusive or friendly. Neurotic or fun. Defeated or irritated. And I’m a very expressive person, so some people may take my reactions as exaggerations, like a caricature of what I’m feeling. I also have this habit of constantly looking over my shoulder and scanning my surroundings. I’m sure it gets a bit strange when my coworkers are speaking to me and I keep looking around like an FBI agent is about to bust through the entrance. There are the usual tics such as being restless, which means I’m rocking back and forth in my chair a lot or biting the skin around my nails and lips. I cover my face if I get too overwhelmed and play an invisible piano if I’m having trouble paying attention. All of these together can be quite odd, but it’s much more interspersed throughout my week, so that is when I start considering what a stranger sees. Apparently, I seem very normal. Until we go beyond small talk. Then, I’m bonkers.

So back to surfing the internet. “why am I so sensitive” and “feel too much” and “how to stop being emotional”. There’s always a search result that I loop back around to called HSP a.k.a Highly Sensitive Person. Very simple and very relatable for me. Here’s the definition.

A highly sensitive person (HSP) is a neurodivergent individual who is thought to have an increased or deeper central nervous system sensitivity to physical, emotional, or social stimuli.

Verywell Mind

There are a list of traits and the upsides and downsides to it, but it boils down to feeling a lot. I’ll read and reread these articles that bleed into one another because there are only so many ways a concept can be described before it gets repetitive. There is a small sense of relief that this isn’t me going crazy, it’s just me being more attuned to my emotions. The problem is, reading about how overwhelming it can be versus being overwhelmed are two completely different things. It doesn’t really make me feel better after memorizing the definition of a HSP. I want to stop freaking out so much. I want to be able to drink coffee and not feel as if I’m on the verge of a panic attack. I want to be able to talk to a friend and not wonder if they hate me now because I’m annoying. But I’m already on meds and I’m seeing a therapist. This used to be a lot worse. Why does it still feel like too much? It’s a spiral. Soon, I wonder whether I’m even as smart as people think I am or whether I’m deserving of what I have. Everyone else around me feels like they belong here. I’m an imposter. It’s not a syndrome, it’s me.

The second half of this post’s title is an occasionally helpful cognitive bias with a nice little graph to demonstrate its point. It’s the best way for me to rationalize my very irrational thoughts and emotions. Maybe I’m at the Peak of Mount Stupid, but then my confidence should be through the roof. I wobble up and down from the Valley of Despair to the Slope of Enlightenment, so according to this graph, I am possibly competent.

But really, nothing can help assuage my fears and doubts in the long run. It would take thousands and thousands of words for me to try explaining how I feel and why I hate it, and I simply don’t have the energy or motivation to do that. Instead, I write about my frustrations in a post that cannot encompass even a fraction of how I feel and I write my stories to have someone else go and process these feelings for me.

There’s no ending sentence to wrap all of this up. I just wanted to put some of my thoughts down, because writing is many things for me and it most certainly is a means of catharsis.