It's a Sh!t Show

Sensitive to environment - overstimulated by loud noises, or lots of movement.

Engaging in more risky behavior - generally with huge overtones of anger.

Breaking down over little things - The printer is out of ink

Struggling to make plans for the future - I don't even know what I'm doing in the next 5 minutes let alone tomorrow night.

Snapping at inconveniences - You can hold it until we get to where we are going! I told you to use the bathroom before we left.

Acting out of character - I don't want to ...... it's not fun anymore.

Difficulty following conversations - I was hearing you but I have no idea what you said.

Struggling to do daily task - piles of dishes, clothes, trash.... etc.

Your brain consist of about one billion nerve cells (neurons)

Each neuron is connected making up roughly a trillion connections. Memories are stored throughout these connections, the result of all this is that brain has the capability to store around 2. 5 petabytes of memory.

To put it into perspective. That is enough storage it would essentially allow you to leave a DVR running on a television consecutively for over 300 years and still not fill up the memory space.

So, no wonder you can't forget it, or let it go. There is not a single thing wrong with you, your brain has just cataloged and saved all the "threats" you have encountered.

An emotion only last 90 seconds.

Seems inaccurate, right? If the emotion only last 90 seconds then why does the feeling hang around for days, weeks, or maybe even months?

Well first, we have to remember that our brain catalogs those negative emotions and experiences better than positive ones because it is doing its best to help keep us alive and safe.

With this in mind we can infer that our negative experiences are going to linger in our thoughts a lot longer than the good ones. So, simply put, every time you think about what made you feel bad your brain runs through the rolodex of emotions and pulls the exact one that was present at the initial negative experience, and now your brain is sending your whole body messages telling it that you are back in that negative scene.

Although you consciously know that you are not back in that situation, your subconscious does not, and by constantly thinking about the bad things that happened to us we constantly replicate the feelings along with the experience and those feelings begin to manifest into a whole mood, and now, you just feel mean, nasty, and negative.

It takes the brain 30 days to get over any traumatic (WTF) experience. Meaning that it takes the prefrontal cortex (controls thinking/logic) of your brain 30 days to gain function back from the amygdala (controls feeling/emotion), and it takes 90 days for the brain as a whole to begin functioning in the "new normal" it has created for you with the WTF information it just received.

When facing those WTF experiences, the brain will hold on to the negative feeling/s you are having and adapt to those emotions over others. It does this to keep you out of danger, more importantly though, it will not ask your permission to do this.

-We are designed this way to help us with survival-

When this happens, the thing or things you reacted to negatively, will become a cognitive trigger to you. Then, the amygdala will fire off a bunch of messages telling everyone to "suit up", resulting in regular overreactions to small situations that make you feel anxious with little, if any knowledge as to why.

Your brain is not trying to make a mess of anything. Like I said earlier, it's just trying to keep you alive. Unfortunately in doing so, it ends up overstimulating the brain stem ( controls fight, flight, freeze) and now you have to go to the bathroom and cry or just jump up and down because, WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING TO ME RIGHT NOW!!

As upsetting as this is, it's okay.

When facing feelings like this you should not ignore or suppress them. This will only reinforce the WTF factor of the whole experience and create more stimulus that you already don't know how to expel or transfer, making it way worse each time it happens.

Try this: Name the feeling/anxiety and talk to it like you would another human being.

Tell it when its being a problem, tell it to sit down, tell it to save you, tell it whatever it is that its doing to you, how it is affecting you.

Eventually, it will no longer work against you and start working with you or even just at the right time.