Overthinkers
get a lot of flack for overthinking, generally by non-overthinkers.
Most of the rhetoric boils down to, “Overthinking leads to anxiety,
less happiness, and 'useless' trains of thought. Shape up and quit
making the rest of us uncomfortable.” I however believe
overthinking not useless.
When
I overthink, I'm trying to figure out what to do about something
that's already made me anxious. It is soothing to have a plan.
When
I was child, I knew that monsters were make-believe. That didn't stop
me from having a nightmare about whatever I saw on T.V. It didn't
matter if it was a Scooby-Doo villain or a stop-action puppet of a
cyclops. In the circuits of my sleeping brain, they got nastier,
smarter and hunted me and my family through my home. (Also, my
dream-self seemed have the critical thinking skills of a horror movie
extra.)
Needless
to say, preteen Loren would deeply regret thumbing through the
library's folktales anthologies - vampires, fey, and werewolves, oh
my. Nightmares gained a new level of 'ick' when I was the one
bewitched into hunting my family.
The
worst bit about childhood nightmares is that after a while you dread
bedtime. It's not complicated logic. Bad stuff happens when you
fall asleep. You want to avoid bad stuff. Unfortunately, thinking
about this while laying in bed is the equivalent of daring yourself
not to think about pink elephants. You get yet more nightmares.
The
adults in my life saw I was suffering and tried to help. The most
common advice was the lucid dreamer trick. “It's your dream. You
should be able to control it.” Unfortunately, my brain never has
done things the easy way. (Most children would just turn the werewolf
into a puppy or summon Superman to come and drop kick the monster
into the sun.)
I'm
not quiet sure how it happened, but I would eventually find a way to
effect the dreams. If monsters were coming into my house, I would
make it a war of attrition.
Superpowers and magic swords tended to
fade in and out of reach, but the family kitchen always had
counterpart in those chased-through-the-house dreams. There was
garlic in the spice rack, plated silverware in the sideboard,
and a good heavy rolling pin in the drawer. I was now armed and
angry.
Unfortunately,
having a weapon doesn't turn you into Tiffany Aching or Kevin
McCallister.
Most of the the time, I still ended up monster chow. I'd trip or
dodge left when I should have gone right. When I woke up, I kept
track of 'dumb things that didn't work.'
In
the case of werewolf bites, hiding the bite or cutting the infected
limb off was a dumb move. Running out into the park to handle it
yourself was a also dumb move. Trying to get help from unreasonable dream-adults was a dumb move. (It seemed only my parents were smart enough
to know the difference between a real emergency and playing
make-believe.)
I
also had mental tally of things that worked. Werewolves didn't
survive decapitation, being set on fire, and other violent solutions.
I expanded into vampires
(like werewolves but with garlic), evil witches (climb a tree where
they can't see you and then drop something heavy on them), and even
ghosts (get a high powered vacuum or the garage fan.)
While
I never got around to writing down a formal 'In Case of' list, just
having a Plan helped. I'd been through storm watches and building
evacuations and had learned standing around clueless just made things
scarier.
The next logical step was to start planning things out
before bedtime. When I heard about something scary, I'd stop and
brainstorm what to do about it. You don't make up fire drills while
the building's smoking, right?
Eventually,
the nightmares stopped, getting replaced by the teen phobias of
giving a speech half dressed or finding out you're failing a class
you've never attended. The lists stayed. My habit of analyzing things
that scare me stayed. I've learned that can be scared by something,
but don't have to live scared.
(I
also learned that if you think about monsters long enough and from
enough angles, you can disarm some of your fear – either by
acceptance or gallows humor. I've decided if I ever contract
lycanthropy, I'm getting my teeth pulled then going to have a
concrete dog run built. If the undead apocalypse breaks out, I'll
team up with other survivors until a inevitable but unforeseen
betrayal turns me into zombie chow.)
