What My Disorganized Thoughts Feel Like
I wake up every morning not knowing if my thoughts will stay in place today.
When talking with others, my thoughts can become derailed and wander off to other related subjects. I can be perfectly aware of where the conversation is, but my mind takes me by the hand and leads me on paths that gently begin to deviate from the topic. In high school, my friends became accustomed to me piping up when the conversation headed my way, announcing, “a really weird train of thought led me to…” after making my remarks, we would retrace the steps from the original topic to my latest comment. It’s not that I’m not paying attention or any form of disrespect. I’m often aware when this is happening, but it can take an enormous amount of effort for me to keep my mind firmly in place when it wants to take a new track. Sometimes I can’t stop it at all.
Conversations with anyone other than my closest friends and family make my anxiety creep up and whisper in my ear. I worry that people will think I’m strange when my thoughts are derailed and I say something that may seem to be missing the point. But that’s not the only reason discussions can put me on edge.
It feels like there is a disconnect sometimes.
My thoughts will be in the right place, but what comes out of my mouth doesn’t accurately reflect them. Panic crawls through me as I scramble to correct myself. This happens most often during conversations where emotions are on high. I can’t seem to control it, so I quickly step back. Once I’m calmer and I’ve sorted through the thoughts in my head and arranged them in the way that I want, I can hesitantly return to the conversation.
The disconnect can even target individual words.
It’s there in my head; I know it is. But I open my mouth and something different rolls off my tongue. Sometimes it’s startling. Mostly it’s frustrating. I feel defective. Often, what I said starts with the same letter as the word I meant, but it can even take me a few tries to get the right word out – She. Sale. SAID. It sends my anxiety rocketing upwards when I’m talking to anyone who doesn’t know me well. This happens in writing as well. Mid-sentence, the word that hits the paper is not the one I intended to write. At other times, the disconnect becomes a solid barrier. The thought is there, I can tell. I know what I want to say. But I can’t get the words out. It’s not a physical issue. I can still say plenty of other things, just not what’s in my head.
But these disorganized thoughts occur even when I’m not speaking.
At times they’re like paper airplanes, flying around in my head and I’m unable to catch one and unfold it to find out what it is. Sometimes they’re constantly turning and shifting. At work I can be working on one project, only to shift to another as that thought turns away and a new one comes to the forefront of my mind. It will come back to me at some point, but, unless I force it, I don’t know when. There are other times where I’m thinking about everything at the same time, my thoughts crowding together and speaking over one another. Sometimes it feels like my mind is full of steel – solid, and I’m locked out of my own thoughts. But I feel most at a loss when my thoughts are like a deck of cards thrown into the air. They were there, so neatly arranged, but then burst into the sky, fluttering back down slowly where I must pick up the pieces of my train of thought.
Sometimes my brain makes the wrong connections altogether.
Early in my time with schizoaffective disorder, I was out at the barn, sweating in the summer sun. I’d been horseback riding, doing some jump courses. I hosed the horse down thoroughly, and as I looked at her legs to make sure there was no more sweat clinging to her, I noticed a white residue on her hoof. My immediate thought was, “that’s where the price tag was.” You know how there’s some white stuff left behind after you peel a price sticker off? The thought didn’t seem odd to me at all until I was in the car on the way home, when I remembered that horses don’t have price tags, or at least not the sticker kind.
These symptoms don’t shake me like hallucinations do, but they infiltrate my daily life.
I am acutely aware of both them happening and the potential for it to happen in situations where I feel vulnerable. At work, I needed help to relearn how to function more effectively. Sometimes I dread picking up the phone in the office, anxiety rising in my throat, afraid of saying the wrong thing. The fear isn’t there for no reason. I know there are people who have distanced themselves from me because of things that I said when my thoughts would not cooperate.
I have found safety in writing. Text allows me the opportunity to arrange my thoughts where I can see them, and then edit and reorganize appropriately. But that doesn’t mean my thoughts are always under control. There are days where I sit down to write a blog post and I have a spark of inspiration. But on many days, my thoughts are too loud, too fast, or nonexistent. Other times, I find myself starting a post with one focus, only to get halfway through and realize the focus shifted. The frustration can get so high that it’s spilling over, rolling into distress. But these symptoms aren’t easily controlled by medication. At times, I can laugh about them, but typically the only thing I can do is stop. Breathe. And find a way to keep going.
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