Please Stop Talking, I've Left The Room

Looking back, part of what had caused my discomfort at work was the feeling of having a voice but just 'not being heard'. And one of the most pronounced symptoms of oddness post-breakdown was that I struggled with conversations: being talked around, being talked to, being talked at.  I couldn't stand 'chat'.

I'd never been able to do small talk and unless there was wit, banter, scandal or outrage involved I found it hard to wake up enough to participate. Waking myself up by suddenly lobbing an inappropriate conversational grenade was often an automatic, if slightly suicidal, tactic of last resort. And boring, monotonous, self-important people who droned on and on and on in front of me until I noticed the hairs on their chin, the stain on their trousers or the lack of suntan mark under their wedding ring, would cause me to slip into a catatonic trance with the will to live draining so far out of me that I'd actually give up and faint. But that was me.  This time it felt different.

I couldn't cope with having to concentrate, with anything coming into my brain that I would have to process and respond to.  The effort of concentration would make my forehead ache with intensity and streak pain through my watering right eye.  If someone was talking to me one-on-one I'd start to lose focus after about ten minutes with my side of the conversation gradually scaling itself back from that of a literate being to inanimate object through a declining sequence of formed sentences, truncated yes/no participation, nods and grunts and finally the fixed smile. By which point, I'd mentally left the room.

Just the pressure of someone else expecting something as simple and natural as conversation was too much. I needed space and intermittent company.  But how was I going to get company without conversation? How could I just 'borrow' a warm physical presence without the social expectation?    I needed someone I'd been married to for twenty years who moved around in the same space without even realising I was still there!  As you know, I went one better and Merlin the wizard dog is here to stay.

I made the mistake of suffering silently behind talk instead of doing something about it.  How simple would it have been to just stand up and excuse myself, to actually tell the other person how I was feeling and articulate what I needed- to go and do something else, to watch TV, to go for a walk, to have some quiet time.  Instead, I was letting myself slip further and further back into myself away from the conversation, dissociating so far that I was only superficially engaging while my mind had taken itself off to a mohito and sunlounger somewhere else entirely.  Somewhere quiet.  Somewhere it could hear itself- there were important messages coming through it needed to make sense of.

So why didn't I just stand up and ask for what I needed?  Close the conversation and give my mind the peace it craved? So easy- once you realise you can, and it's ok, and you don't need to wait for anyone else to empower you to give yourself what you need.  I had a voice, I just wasn't using it.  No wonder I wasn't being heard.

I started to talk more openly about what I was going through, which helped me to then ask for what I needed.  The psychologist helped me to realise that if I 'briefed' my friends and family, I would make things easier for everyone; if I realised what I needed myself then it was unacceptable to submit to an uncomfortable situation or environment by mentally dissociating. I started to experiment with articulating the unexpected, articulating how I am feeling in the present moment. I started to speak with a new voice, an honest one coming from a good place within.  And there it was, my voice, being heard.