I Have an Unclassified Mental Disorder

For my first 30 years, insecurity and anxiety built up in my body and personality brick-by-brick. How that presents itself varies in different ways, which I’ll write about and expand on in the coming months.

One of those ways is sometimes I can’t shut the f*ck up (STFU). It’s not officially in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), but it’s an affliction, and depending on who you ask, often displays as a personality disorder.

Before 2006, like an active volcano, STFU would bubble and occasionally spit. All the signs of an eruption were there, but it wasn’t correlating with a change in my personality. Sometimes it would rumble when I was trying to be funny, or I’d say something beyond the line of what is appropriate, and especially if I was trying to make a point.

Twenty years ago, when Alisha started dating, I was that empathic (before I knew what that really meant), passive stabilizer who needed to, at least emotionally get along with everyone. If I didn’t like what was said, I would usually eat it, and stuff it deep inside.

She told me I ‘needed to be firmer or I’d get run over’ (by her).  A statement she doesn’t need to muscle test, she regrets it. But she wasn’t wrong.

In 2006, I was working really hard at a job I was proud to have. I was traveling the world reporting on sports, wrote a cover story, saw our web traffic increase, and we were building a new site to support our vision.

Then I got a new boss.

We did not see eye-to-eye. We were in different cities and didn’t know each other very well, and short-sightedly didn’t care to. As I believed it to be there was an area of the business he didn’t understand. It didn’t end well.
It changed my personality. The STFU affliction became that erupting volcanic personality disorder. I needed to be heard, I needed to be right. If you didn’t see it my way it struck a chord of bottled, but also overflowing insecurity and anxiety.  

It went on that way for over a decade. I was always on my front foot. I struggled to sit back and listen. My processing and communication internally and externally were on fire.

“When you talk, you are only repeating what you already know. But if you listen, you may learn something new,” - Dalai Lama

This quote couldn’t be more true.

I didn’t care. I needed people to know what I knew so I wouldn’t have a repeat of 2006. There is the belief that you’re right, and there is the belief that it’s a black-and-white issue. It is rarely that clean and simple.  

It was and has been a strategy as adept as running a 100-yard dash in a 90-yard gym.

I’ve recognized this pattern and have worked on it, and it is far from where I want it to be. The insecurity and anxiety still rear its ugly heads and I frustratingly look in the rearview mirror to see the damage behind me, versus having avoided it in front of me.

I am at my best when I simply STFU, listen, see, process, and engage. It sometimes can feel incongruent with the quick, sarcastic, movie/TV quote, ‘Now Hear This’ (a ranting podcast Alisha wanted me to start years ago) mentality that is part of my personality. The key is not to lose it, and still STFU.

When I STFU, I see and process the world in a whole new way.

We all have patterns we’d like to change or optimize. They take our ability to STFU or however, they manifest, and turn us inside out. Sometimes we can see it. Other times we can’t, but they’re in there, and often ‘out’ for all to experience.

We all get tested every day and will continue to be tested. Is there something you sense negatively in yourself, or how you perceive a situation, circumstances, or others?

How do you want to feel? How do you want to see yourself? How do you want to see others and the world?

Close your eyes, and sense what that feels like sense, and see that way. What does that look like?

You have the ability to change how you interact with yourself and how that impacts your relationship with others.

Whether you have STFU, or it’s something else, you can do something about it. Your conscious and your unconscious will thank you.

Peace be the journey.
Pete

P.S. To all of those who have been negatively impacted by my affliction over the years, I apologize.