How To Deal With Confusion As An Over-Thinker

How It Feels To Overthink In Confusion

I had a therapist tell me once, “your truth is never confusing.” So it must be simple right? Anything that is important to me and consumes my time and is also confusing to you, is simply not your truth. To me anything confusing is a lack of understanding, uncertainty, and unclearness in my mind about something. It can also be a push and pull feeling of your brain and your heart telling you two different things. The brain knowing something isn’t for you, and the heart wanting the brain to shush so it can follow the feelings.

I think if I could have taken this quote for what it is and really utilized it, many times I could have prevented hurt on both sides of many situations. However, when I feel confused about something, typically a situation that I’m in, I will try to outthink the confusion which just leaves me even more confused. I am weighing both sides over and over, doubting if I know what’s best for me, and ignoring a feeling that being confused often is not normal. 

What overthinking about being confused is doing to my life

Feeling confused feels like knowing you experienced something, but your brain shut off but your eyes stayed on. Like you know what happened, but the comprehension of what happened is detached. The feelings, the logic, the understanding, the inner voice you have, everything that feels like your part that accompanied the situation are missing.

To be honest, I really think that I took being confused as a cop out of just ignoring what is not for me. And I saw this correlation, because I do a similar thing when I’m asked about something I want. I typically say “I don’t know” as a way to not have to listen to myself or express myself. Similarly to this saying you feel confused about something is another form of just not having to dig deep or question what the fuck you’re doing. 

What made me want to change my view on being confused

This whole copping out thing in the name of just not wanting to take responsibility or acknowledging  not only the places I was keeping myself in that I didn’t want to be in anymore (which has been on several occasions over the course of my life) but the behavior I was putting out in the world too just from being in situations I didn’t want to be in anymore was just not working for me. The thing is, when you find yourself feeling this way it is no one's fault, but it is your job to take this understanding and decide what to do with it. 

I think when you ignore what you know you need to do, the evidence of needing to listen to your inner voice just gets louder. It gets louder as you find yourself more depressed, more anxious, more confused, and feeling hopeless. In these emotions, you feel so dragged down because the weight of not removing yourself out of what you need to is indeed heavy enough to make you feel like you’re at rock bottom. 

What I thought about to make changes in my confusion 

I struggled with my whole viewpoint on confusion for a while too, because there is a part of it that I believe can be rooted in avoidance. And as a person who works and reflects on my own avoidance, a lot of the time I would continue in this state of confusion out of fear I was just being avoidant and staying would counteract that avoidance. I’m not perfect by any means and my avoidance has won many times, but I have also won over my avoidance many times as well. Perfection in a personality trait isn’t possible, but doing better each time is. 

I have a whole separate piece on avoidance itself, but there is a difference between being avoidant and staying in something out of fear of being avoidant. I believe if you’re reflecting, acknowledging, and communicating to the best of your ability and you still are confused, that’s not avoidance, that’s just knowing you don’t need to be involved in something and are still remaining in it. 

What I chose to do with what I learned about being confused 

Being confused is really just you not being able to hear yourself, and another part is not having the courage to make an effort to hear yourself. I think once that awareness part is introduced of you knowing you feel confused, the rest of the dance with that situation involves you doing something about it. The action part of anything takes the most courage, action takes courage to do something new for yourself. 

I believe anything that is louder and more chaotic than your soul that you know, it’s not worth it. Even if you are involved and on the other side of causing the chaos too, because everything has two sides-it sounds like oil and fire and you can be the one to put out that fire. 

How I carried out what I learned about being confused 

I have a habit of making things harder for myself, and I see myself using confusion as a crutch to sweep over acknowledging that maybe something is not for me. Things can be simple, and by making firm choices and choosing a different narrative than you’re used to you can.  A constant state of anything isn’t healthy, and feeling a constant state of clarity really just feels like you’re in the fog. But maybe this is because I’m just sitting in the fog waiting for it to lift, but I’m only secretly hoping for it and not moving. 

When you feel a constant state of something that feels wrong, move. Move your mindset into a new one even if it’s scary, move your body to get those thoughts moving, and move your decisions so that we can choose something different than what we are currently experiencing. Simplify it, and believe that your truth is clear, your truth is calm, and your truth is something you get to choose.