Voices in My Head
Written By Lindsay Niedringhaus
The noise in my car was loud. I wanted to cover my ears, but I was driving 80 mph down I-85, so instead I reached for the power button on my car stereo to turn off the music. However, as I hit the power button, the radio came on instead of off. That’s when it hit me:
The noise wasn’t from my car. It was in my mind.
So I rolled down the window. The blast of cold air hit my face and my hair whipped around my head, creating a powerful physical reality that quieted my mental one for a bit. The icy air forced me to take a deep breath, and the goosebumps that lined my arms drew my attention to my skin—goosebumps I could grasp at the moment; thoughts I could not.
I’ve had voices in my head for as long as I can remember. Sometimes it’s my own voice, ticking through my to-do list, cautioning me not to forget things. But often times, it’s other voices from my life. When I have my fingers in the dirt, for example, I can distinctly hear my mom instructing, “Just a little deeper. Careful of the roots. Okay, now gently pat the potting soil around this little guy so he feels comfortable.” When I feel myself stressing over a situation, I hear my college mentor, Harry Shucker, gently saying with a smile on his face, “Now Lindsay, take a deep breath. You’re a perfectionist and a people-pleaser. And you can’t please everyone perfectly.” When I’m writing a marketing estimate or thinking through business decisions, I hear my boss from Furman’s Marketing Office, Mark Kelly: “Did you really mean to use the word ‘comprised’ here? Now let’s think through their reaction when they see this. I would caution against your overusing the phrase ‘truly believe.’ Don’t assume your audience doesn’t trust you.”
Am I crazy? Perhaps. I’ve always assumed everyone else hears these voices, but maybe they don’t. I’ve really never asked. If this is something unique to me, I would assume it comes from my practice of writing. I’ve always rolled conversations over and over in my head, feeling the words bounce off my tongue and wind through my mind. It could be days, weeks, or even years later, and something reminds me of a sentence someone said to me at some point in my life. I’ve also found I have a nervous habit of spelling words in my head. The other night it was “convalescent.” So as I lay in bed, trying to fall asleep, I was tapping my teeth to “c-o-n-v-a-l-e-s-c-e-n-t.” Sometimes I’ll also tap my fingers to the keys on the keyboard as if I’m typing it. Yep, I’m a weirdo.
My point in admitting my voices and my tappings, my spellings and my repeatings, is that I’ve realized from years of journaling and therapy that for whatever reason, my mind can become loud. Sometimes it’s a happy loud, sometimes it’s an anxious loud, and sometimes it’s an angry loud; but for the most part, it’s always loud. And that loudness can feel neverending and overwhelming.
my view from the driveway
One of my favorite podcasts I’ve ever heard was from Brene Brown’s Unlocking Us, in which she interviews Emily Nagoski, Ph.D., and Amelia Nagoski, D.M.A. The sisters wrote a book called Burnout, which details how culture and life cause us to live in a perpetual state of exhaustion. During the podcast, the sisters explain that emotions are cycles in our bodies that have beginnings, middles, and ends, but many times we get stuck in the middle, which causes burnout. This “stuckness” comes from constantly being exposed to new external factors that never signify to our bodies that we’re actually out of the stressor. Yep, you heard that right—we may mentally know the stressor is gone, but our bodies don’t necessarily know because they’re being hit with even more stressors. And as much as we think we are in control of our bodies, we aren’t, so we can’t think our way out of being stressed. Instead, the Nagoskis say the best thing we can do for ourselves is any sort of physical activity that then tells our bodies the stressor is gone. This is one reason exercise is so good for us. When the exercise is done, the body lets go of the stressor.
I could go into a 15-page essay about how our bodies process emotions, stressors, and life in general, but for now, do yourself a favor and know that if your voices get too loud, signal to your body that the stressor is gone by doing something physical.
For me, that physical signal is running or hot yoga. Lately since working from home, it also comes in the form of lying on my driveway. Not kidding. If I’m feeling overwhelmed with Zooms and texts and social media DMs, I walk out my back door and lie down in the sun. Something about the heat on my skin, the smell of the nearby grass, and my 14-year-old lab panting down at me like I’m a crazy person all lift me out of my head, help the voices to fade, and bring me back to the here and now. So next time you drive by my house and see me lying on the concrete, I’m not dead. I’m just telling my body to chill.
https://www.createwithlindsay.com/blog/the-voices-in-my-head