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“I should know how to do this simple thing!”

aurelis

Hey all,

I was making some fish cakes and I found the process really hard. I don’t cook often, but when I do, I end up overthinking the process. my mind can be rigid to instructions, and often if there is something that I don’t understand or doesn’t make sense, I overthink it until I shutdown.

it tends to be why I can struggle to start things. I was meant to soak the fish over five days, but I was putting off starting cooking and now it soaked more than a week. 

the solution? Fortunately my mom was there to help me through the cooking process, but I was beating up myself for not getting it right and asking very rudimentary questions, and couldn’t help but think that if I was trying to do this around friends, I would feel ashamed to be this lacking in understanding. I had to realise also to let go of my male pride of “I should know this and should have control of this”, and allow my mom to help me with the process, with her showing me what things to do so that I can grow. 

I realise that to an extent this is why I’m not growing. When something becomes too overwhelming, I can shut down or blank the thing out instead of facing it head on. And I don’t ask for help, feeling ashamed. “I should understand this, it’s so simple, why am I so stupid, come on!”

anyone relate to this?

Parents
  • aurelis said:
    if there is something that I don’t understand or doesn’t make sense, I overthink it until I shutdown.

    I find a great way to nip this in the bud is to write down the problem - somehow capturing it on paper (often on a bunch of post-it notes) let me see where the grey areas are and lets me focus on these to the point I can finally see the whole thing in a way I can work with.

    I spent a long career in IT Support and management and the problems I had to deal with should have been logical, defined issues but due to bugs, bad coding, malfunctioning hardware and, err, operator error, the problem were often very subtle to resolve.

    I found by getting things down on paper in a Sherlock Holmes way I could eliminate different things and focus on those that remained until I had the solution.

    As with your fish prep, somethines things end up like a spanner in the gears so you do need to step back, work through the mental capture process with the new information and see what needs to be done to progress again - sometimes you need to ask an outside party for advice or just accept that the fish may need a bit more salt when cooked or whatever.

    Learning to accept things have changed and bend to those changes (using the technique above) has saved my sanity on countless complex issues over the years so it may be worth a try.

Reply
  • aurelis said:
    if there is something that I don’t understand or doesn’t make sense, I overthink it until I shutdown.

    I find a great way to nip this in the bud is to write down the problem - somehow capturing it on paper (often on a bunch of post-it notes) let me see where the grey areas are and lets me focus on these to the point I can finally see the whole thing in a way I can work with.

    I spent a long career in IT Support and management and the problems I had to deal with should have been logical, defined issues but due to bugs, bad coding, malfunctioning hardware and, err, operator error, the problem were often very subtle to resolve.

    I found by getting things down on paper in a Sherlock Holmes way I could eliminate different things and focus on those that remained until I had the solution.

    As with your fish prep, somethines things end up like a spanner in the gears so you do need to step back, work through the mental capture process with the new information and see what needs to be done to progress again - sometimes you need to ask an outside party for advice or just accept that the fish may need a bit more salt when cooked or whatever.

    Learning to accept things have changed and bend to those changes (using the technique above) has saved my sanity on countless complex issues over the years so it may be worth a try.

Children
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