I've noticed a consistent pattern in my behavior that is annoying and a little alarming. It's just stereotypically "feminine" enough to be annoying on that account, too, aside from on its own - I totally fall apart emotionally under pressure to perform, and I've spent a lot of energy over the years trying to escape from the need to actually produce anything that I cared about, because having to present a finished product that I care about scared the crap out of me.

It's pretty consistent. Whenever I found myself with a project that I care about that I had to complete on a time frame, I'd either dodge it to avoid having to try and fail, or think about it, perfect it, and see it spiral into increasing complexity to the point that I would never realize my grand design, then proceed to disintegrate with fear when the deadline got closer, producing either nothing, or a half-assed product that I felt a great embarrassment with and need to apologize for. I find excuses not to do things because the possibility that I might not be able to do the things I can imagine scares me to death.

As part of my IB art class, each student got to put on a show. They gave me a gallery to fill, and people invited themselves - friends from work, my Grandparents, friends from school, plus the IB examiner. The day of the show, people were showing up and I wasn't there - I was busy freaking out at home, desperately trying to complete a final excellent piece that would save the show from being as sorry as it seemed to me. I was hiding at home after my parents had left, hoping to take the bus to school after finishing in just a few more hours. I never did finish it. I just flipped out panicked. The show was fine; my work was clearly the best there even without any grand project. But I felt awful. Same pattern for the art notebook I was supposed to keep, the final IB paper, every physics test, the Mathematica project, Art Final at Hendrix, IB english presentation, college admissions essay, that comic project for the guy from Ace. Everything. I procrastinate and procrastinate and then shatter when I realize the enormity of the task that I've set myself. Everything I care about doing always spirals out of control into a hugely complex task which would be beautiful if only I could complete it instead of shitting bricks of fear about the deadline.

Often, however, the inadequate half-assery that results is better than what everyone else did, anyway, so maybe I'd have a lot less trouble if I could just calm down.

I guess I'm afraid that I'll find out that I can't do the things that I want to do? I don't know. I do know that pressure to perform makes me want to throw myself off a cliff, or hide in a cave and shut the door. (I guess that's pretty much what I did in high school, isn't it? And maybe for a few years afterwards, too...) That is not a positive trait to have! It's kind of an embarrassing characteristic. :/ And unfortunately the only real solution is to 'toughen up.'

I'm pretty sure I'll manage, but I can't help the voice in the back of my head going "what if you can't?" "I will. There's plenty of evidence that shows I should be okay, etc." But that doesn't quiet it for some reason. "What if you can't?" My heart beats faster just thinking about it.

I wonder if maybe part of the reason I did such a good job for so long at repressing my emotions is that they're often unpleasant and unhelpful! Being aware of pitfalls and dangers is different from irrationally panicking. So really I just need to calm down, quiet mentally, and call the captain to the helm. ^.^ This is stupid. Hopefully I can at least make a useful learning experience out of it. I guess the solution is to use the fear as energy, rather than let it do its own thing. I wonder what doing that consists of. I guess I'll have to figure it out.

Today I came to understand a little more both about the way my mind works and the way that others(') do.

My significant other (is there a less clumsy term for that that isn't the wrong one? Maybe one should be invented.) had told me before that she didn't really believe me when I commented that I nearly always question myself critically on nearly everything. (Dialectically, I mean; this kind of self-criticism is usually a strength, not a weakness.) Her skepticism astonished me, but I see now where the disparity comes from. Like most difficult-to-acquire knowledge, it's pretty darn obvious once you have it.

What happens is that I'm constantly considering counterarguments to my thoughts, and when I talk a lot of the things I say I say as theories, hypotheses, to test whether I believe them or not. But verbally I just state my hypotheses as assertions.

My mental MO is to reach a conclusion quickly based on insufficient data, then state is as a fact, then give it the evil eye to see if it disintegrates and is therefore not a fact. I even do this when I'm writing notes to myself. Whether the things I say are right or not when I say them is not really something I'm checking until after I talk. Thinking about it, this is probably because I'm usually less concerned with being right than with becoming right. But the result is that the fact-checking part of my mental feedback look comes *after* the talking part. Which means I'm often wrong. And that's fine with me; I could care less if any specific thing I utter happens to be right.

But on reflection I can see how that would be annoying, especially if it isn't clear that I'm nearly always musing provisionally rather than dogmatically.

But the other interesting thing I learned is related to that. And it's that I almost never actually second-guess the things that come out of my mouth in normal conversation before I say them, even things that aren't factual assertions. I second-guess my thoughts constantly, but not my words. With some exceptions, in general I'm not thinking that much about how what I'm saying is going to be received, because I don't really care. I'm not worried about how I come off, so whatever; I just talk.

But on reflection, that's not quite the right attitude. It's possible to be emotionally independent of what other people see you without refraining from considering it. I consider my tone and the way I'll be understood when I'm writing, so why not with speech?

The danger would be to go to far and kill one's spontaneity by over-analysis. However, despite my penchant for over-analysis, I doubt I'm in terribly much danger of that.

Besides which, I suspect that adding that consideration to the loop is the kind of thing that actually makes you smarter. Considering counterarguments to your thoughts definitely makes you functionally smarter. Considering how one comes off to others presumably would make you think about other's values and perceptions more closely - which is precisely the kind of thing that makes you smarter, even if you don't care to hold those values yourself.

I've been wondering lately about the connection between empathy and intelligence. I think it's a pretty deep one. Douglass Hofstadter might agree, though I'm not certain that it's a clearly definable connection. Is it possible to be intelligent without understanding other minds or your own accurately? Probably. But it would be a kind of facile intelligence, of dubious ultimate usefulness to the thing that possessed it. How do you know what to use your intelligence for if you don't understand your own mind?

Perhaps what I am thinking of is that there is a connection between empathy and depth? I'm not sure.