I have an obsessive personality. I don’t know when I became like this. I don’t know if I was born this way. It has served me well though. This obsessiveness has helped me develop skills and build the life that I have.
It has also caused me an insane amount of anxiety, shame, guilt, frustration, and pointless headaches. When I’m obsessed with a subject or a person, my brain runs on all fumes. I’m excited. I’m motivated. I am pumped. I can’t stop thinking about it or them. I don’t even have to actively think. I could be doing something completely unrelated and my current obsession would pop in and out unprompted.
I’ve struggled with this at times. I have been unable to stop it even when I could see it hurting me. I’ve suffered through endless loops despite having other high-priority goals. I’ve tried different things. Only two of these things have worked to some extent.
One: burying myself into work. This helps me completely focus on something else. It comes with the cost. Exhaustion and burnout.
Two: journaling. This one is tricky. I’ve noticed that when I journal, a lot of times it helps me get over people, subjects, situations, and events. But other times, it makes things worse. When I write them down, these thoughts become real. They take a form. They are physically present. That makes it harder to discard them as unreal or impractical. However, in some instances when I put thoughts on paper, it helps me understand how meaningless my obsession is. Sometimes this helps stop the endless loop.
One thing is for sure though: these obsessions are prone to time decay. They don’t last long. It feels like the best cure is letting them be. When I’m obsessed about someone, the best thing I can do is continue living my life and understand that with time I’ll get over it.
I should not get frustrated. I should not force myself to get over it. I need to allow myself to process these thoughts then let them be. There have been several examples in recent memory. I latch on to an obsession with high intensity. It feels like I’ve never experienced anything like this before. It feels unreal, majestic, mesmerizing and captivates my soul.
Then begins the endless rumination and imaginations. The next step is practical processing. That’s where my rational brain comes into play and I weigh the pros and cons. Then I try to write them down. That already strips away a lot of majesty from it. Then, in time, it fades away and my brain latches onto something else.