Confessions From A Brain That Never Turns Off

For most of my life, walking into a room full of people meant taking in all of it at once.

Every conversation, including the ones across the room I was never part of. The temperature. The smells. I'd be reading faces, tracking moods, wondering what everyone was really thinking and feeling underneath what they were saying and how they were presenting themselves. And somewhere in the middle of all of it, I was watching myself too. Analyzing what to say, how to say it, and if I was being understood accurately.

It was everything, everywhere, all at once. And I couldn't turn it down.

I was never really "in" the room. I was somewhere else, observing. Analyzing. Narrating. Constantly thinking about my own thinking. Evaluating my own emotions and how I was processing the experience.
And it never. Ever. Stopped.

For years I thought something was wrong with me. I thought I was broken. I watched everyone else relax and be present and enjoy people, moments, and experiences, but why couldn't I? Why was everyone else at the party while I was stuck somewhere else?

I lived my twenties the way most people these days do. Friends, parties, nothing dramatic about it. But somewhere along the way, drinking stopped being just for fun and started being the thing I needed to feel okay around people. I couldn't relax in a room without it. The observer/narrator went quiet when I drank, and being social felt easy, so I kept reaching for that ease. For almost eighteen years.

Quitting alcohol at thirty-eight was one of the best things I have ever done. It had become something I felt like I needed, and I didn't like the control it had over me. But when I took away the thing that silenced the noise, the noise came back. All of it. At FULL volume. I then had to sit in a room with the loudest brain I had ever known, with no off switch anymore.

But I did it anyway.

And during the years that followed, I became more and more anxious about what was happening in my head. I considered so many things: autism. ADHD. And on the worst nights I was sure it was something medical - like a tumor or stroke. And while some of those things resonated, nothing fully clicked.

I chalked up the mental fatigue, overstimulation, and anxiety to perimenopause and began taking various supplements to find something to help. A higher dosage of magnesium seemed to quiet the anxiety and help me sleep a little better, but deep down I knew there had to be more to the story.

Then last week, I stumbled across a video that described my brain better than I could have ever described it myself. It broke down the characteristics of high metacognition - which, in a nutshell, is "thinking about your own thinking". It still wasn't quite the full picture, but as I kept digging, I found more connections between my other traits (like overstimulation and sensory sensitivities, the way I process things so deeply, high empathy) and those of highly sensitive people.

Honestly, the labels matter far less than what finding them did for me. It blows my mind that it took 41 years to get answers, but it has been incredibly liberating. For the first time in my life, I feel seen and understood. And it turns out this thing I've lived with all along, this constant taking in of the whole room while watching my own mind do it, is simply a way some brains are wired. It's not a defect or a problem to be fixed.

And in fact, there are people who actually work to build some of these metacognitive traits as skills. There teachers, courses, and training just to learn how to notice your own thoughts or really be present in a room.
But for me, it was never a practice I could just pick up and put down. It wasn't something I could control and refine. Because I didn't understand what it was, the constant running and looping caused stress, anxiety, and a lack of self-confidence. I was stuck.

All that time I thought I was failing at being a normal person. I felt inadequate, and constantly questioned my worth. But it turns out I wasn't failing at anything. I was just built differently. And the reason I leaned on alcohol to get through a room full of people wasn't weakness. I was trying to quiet a mind that nobody ever taught me how to live with.

Here is what I know now:
I am not a mistake. I was made on purpose, with intention, by a God who does not miscalculate or make errors. My brain is not defective. It's part of how I was designed. And the moment I could see it that way, I stopped feeling like a broken person and started feeling like a whole one. A person of worth. 

This past weekend I went to a family gathering, and I knew exactly what I was walking into. I knew the whole room was going to come rushing in the second I opened the door. The conversations, the faces, the moods.

But this time, I was ready. I had made a decision before I even got out of the car. I was going to actually be in the room. Not by numbing it. Not by force. Just by noticing when I drifted into observation mode, and gently choosing, over and over, to come back to the moment.

And it worked.

I was there. Really there. Clear-headed, and fully in it. I connected with people I love instead of watching, narrating, and thinking about my thinking. And on the drive home I realized I wasn't exhausted the way I always used to be. 

I'm sharing all of this today, because I believe God does not waste our suffering. He redeems it. And if all those years I spent feeling bad about myself can spare one person just a fraction of that pain, then it was well worth telling.

If any of this sounds like your life, I would genuinely love to hear from you. Send me a message. Tell me about your experience, your version of the noise, the thing you used to think was wrong with you. You don't need a reason and you don't need the right words. Just reach out.

Because the thing that helped me most wasn't a diagnosis or a perfect explanation. It was realizing that I wasn't the only one. And if I can be that for even one person, that's the whole reason I wrote this.

My door is open. Come find me.

#hsp #empath #metacognition #highmetacognition #faithandmentalhealth