Exercise 3

Keep conditioning your mind or it will run rampant

i was at a workshop and each participant in the room had to stand up and tell the group about themselves and why they were there. The facilitator acknowledged that this was usually an uncomfortable process and several people admitted how nervous it made them. Thus primed and forewarned, and put somewhat at ease, I spent a good deal of time, while waiting for my turn to come around, remaining calm and reminding myself there was nothing to fear from this simple, harmless thing.

But it failed me when my turn came. Unnerved, As usual I spoke too quickly as if the faster i spoke the more i could correct the blather that was spilling out and i ran quickly off my track and lost focus and memory, only recovering enough to make my main point, but rather badly.

In a conversation you pause after each point for your partner to respond. You can then clarify, say things differently, better. And so the back and forth continues until you have adequately expressed yourself. You have a chance to right wrongs.

But in the stage fright pressure of a monologue, the words come out before i have time to compose, think of what they really mean, their real impact.
I cannot edit myself.

until much later.
until it's way too late and i'm walking back to my car, alone, because everyone has scattered, even the couple of attendees who I could call friends.
so the paranoia begins,
the mind runs rampant.

I think over and over what i said. What a jerk i must have seemed. I drive myself crazy with regret and wishful do-overs as i drive home.

I replay the scene in my mind, the way it *should* have gone. in this version I don't panic. I say exactly what i mean to say, in just the right words. And if i don't get them quite right at first, i have the presence of mind to pause, rewind, then calmly say what i really meant to say. in this version I don't blather mindlessly and keep making it worse.

And I play it over and over in my mind the way i think it really went, but with no-doubt memory-based distortions, and analyse and question every word for its possible impact and interpretation. Searching simultaneously for hope that it wasn't that bad, and for the true awfulness of what i said and what it says about me. Just looking for the flaw and holding it under that magnifying glass, staring at it, torturingly.

I grow frustrated and cranky at how easily i made a bad impression on a group of people with whom i am to be spending the next 2 days (for i seem to have decided that's the most likely result of my speech). i can feel my pulse quickening, and all the other physical affects of raised adrenalin, i can sense myself working towards tears and a kind of madness if i let this run on.

I catch myself in the supermarket walking the aisles without aim, unable to really function in the most basic way. All I am supposed to be doing is choosing some dinner supplies, but I can't. i am unable to think because my head is too full of this mental horror film on endless playback loop.

I only have one choice.
Embrace it.
Learn from it.
Accept that i did not speak well and that they will form a distorted view of me – if they are biased and overly quick to judge on a first impression.
Practice: Make sure i put myself in this situation often, so eventually i will improve. I avoid these types of things, so i've no practice.
Use it: go deep into this neurosis and let it inspire my creative work.
(this blog excluded - just catharsis here now, no art)
And remind myself (this is part of the anti-rampancy training) that on the scale of stuff-ups this one was so far from monumental it's not even worth mentioning, let alone writing about.

We do not have scriptwriters planning what we say, stage managing our lives.
We do not have edit suites.
If only.

If i had someone at home to discuss this with, rationalise and diffuse this, i wouldn't need to be writing it...
Maybe.
When a friend of mine had a similar experience, she could have talked out her own paranoidly perceived stuff-up with her husband. But she didn't. She had to tell someone and emailed me - perhaps because i'd been there, at the scene of what she thought was a social faux pas. And as a sane and unbiased bystander i was able to restore her peace.

Perhaps the final lesson is choosing who you confess your paranoia to.

And a nice chamomile tea before bedtime.

Thanks for listening.