Question: What makes us obsess?
I am trying a new thing where I let go of the need for external validation. But I have old behaviors that I learned in the past tripping me up. One of those things is obsessing about a conversation or an interaction I have had for hours on end. No matter if it was good or bad. I think about it so much it apmost manifests itself as a fuzzy feeling in my brain entirely. For instance, i do this embarrassing thing I have when I was a kid: I say something wrong, overreact and joke about me being dumb or unknowledgeable, which makes people uncomfortable and try to encourage me more, which makes me feel worse because now I feel like a pitied child that needs to be babied and now I have attracted attention to myself. And I think about it for hours. So why do we obsess about conversations and arguments? We cannot change anything. Are we analyzing to see what we did wrong in order not to "get kicked out of the tribe?" Or are many of us so bored and socially unstimulated that we hyperfocus on what the most stimulating thing was, good or bad? Thoughts? Thoughts on how to beat this?
@JessieKat
Good question! I think you hit the nail on the head there about not being kicked out of 'the tribe'.
While it can be such a pain, obsessing over social interactions was a survival instinct. If we did something wrong, we were kicked out of the tribe and our safety was threatened. Given we had the capacity to think critically (aka obsess), it allowed us to avoid these dangerous situations.
It's an incredible skill, but it's not really something that we need today in 2021. It can however really help to have compassion for that part that wants to obsess because it's only trying to keep you safe.
Hi, thanks for posting and sharing about this. It’s a tough spot to be in with social anxiety. Letting go of the need for external validation and stepping into fear inducing social situations (mostly online these days) with small steps are also some things I’m working on! I think we apologize for ourselves in initial social interactions to continue the connection and then later obsess over what I said or did or acted. I agree we do it to improve and make and keep better connections. But when we replay it over and over, we might start to criticize ourselves negatively, losing some of our self compassion. So with self compassion, we can say to ourself, hey, this is tough for me in this stage of my life. I am whole heartedly fine with myself just as I am right now. The goal can be to really let this be true for us all the time , then when we go over the conversation-interaction, we have space to be okay with things we want to change next time until it’s no longer an issue anymore.
