You will often catch yourself in a situation where your head wanders. During those unfiltered adventures, your mind might wander into extremes and create specific scenarios. How can you stop creating these fake scenarios?
There are essentially two kinds. You create optimistic scenarios that boost your current life’s predicament and bad ones where everything goes wrong. Your house burns down and at the same time, you get a call from your Girlfriend apologizing for cheating on you while the text messages from your boss say you’re fired.
Do you hear how ridiculous that sounds? But it happens more to introverts because of how creative we can get. Creating fake scenarios in your head is a normal human occurrence. It becomes a problem when people dwell on the happenings inside their heads.
What are Fake Scenarios?
Negative fake scenarios can worsen your mental health by giving you needless stress and anxiety. In your mind, you go through millions of different possibilities on how things might turn out in your life, be it work, relationships or even the next F1 race.
Excessive thinking about fake scenarios can lead to catastrophic thinking. The reason why they are called fake scenarios is because they are based in a dream setting rather than something you achieved in the real world. I routinely struggled with these and do even now, but to a lesser degree and it doesn’t harm me.
TLDR, these scenarios are never good since they worsen your anxiety, but the worst part is they waste your precious time.
How to Stop Creating Fake Scenarios in Your Head: Especially as Introverts
Set a routine, follow it, change some things up and stick to it.
- Substitute it: Substitute it with something you can concentrate on or achieve. This should interrupt the time from of when you start thinking about those scenarios. Most commonly, people dream about fake scenarios in bed. That is why, to stop catastrophic thinking before bed, grab a book!
- Focus on your goals: Set a goalpost. Do something that is purposeful. Work on your goals daily. It might be getting better at Valorant or finishing 2 books a week. Remember, your goals do not always have to be work related, have a little fun.
- Be realistic about relationships: Don’t believe in fairytales. They can only lead to expectations which will destroy your mental when the going gets tough. If people do not value you or your presence, you will know. Subtlety goes a long way.
- Work work work: COVID-19 hit me like a ton of bricks. I used to make up fake scenarios and daydream all the time. But ever since I started working, all of that has gone away. So working on yourself, your dream project, your 9-5 or whatever it is can help you a lot.
- Exercise: Exercising has proven to help with mental health issues, it can help you keep your mind off things and you will be getting into shape. When our physical and mental align, we are at our peak. Go a step further; improve your diet, routine and sleep schedule.
- Use Social Media sparingly: Social media, nowadays is filled with unrealistic depictions of the human experience. From couple videos to celebrity gossip and all of the things that will not help you or your mental health. That is why, limiting it can drastically help you and your thoughts.
- Do things that brought you joy as a child: When you have free time during the end of the day, use that time to watch your favorite childhood show, movie or do whatever that made you happy as a child. I don’t care if its climbing a tree or watching ROMCOMs, do it!
- Read and write Fiction: Why not use that creative mind of yours for writing? Write for you, not for anyone else. But publish it, show your work, it will give you a sense of accomplishment. Or to distract it, you can read fiction which is equally as good.
Final Thoughts
It can be difficult to get rid of these things all at once. It is an improvement process and you will get better overtime the more you focus on working and bettering your mentality.