It turns out that what kept half my life running — and made me think, ‘hey, I’m really clever’ — was hypervigilance.
Today in therapy I did an exercise to evaluate my executive functions and apparently… yeah, I’ve been compensating HARD.
I always thought I was just “very organized” or “smart with time management” because I plan everything down to the minute:
- 10 minutes to get dressed
- 20 minutes walking to the bus stop
- breakfast at exactly 11
- this task gets 1 hour and 30 minutes
- etc.
And if I don’t structure my day like that, I kind of just… stop functioning.
My therapist pointed out that this isn’t necessarily optimization. A lot of it is hypervigilance. Like I built an internal air traffic control system just to keep myself operational.
Which honestly messed with my head a little because I genuinely thought:
“wow, I’m so efficient.”
But now I’m realizing a lot of people don’t have to consciously micromanage every transition, every task, every minute of their day just to exist.
And now I keep wondering:
how do “normal” people function?
Because for me, if I “go with the flow,” suddenly nothing gets done, time becomes fake, and I’ll stare at a wall while mentally buffering like a cursed loading screen.
It’s weird realizing that something that made me feel capable was also probably exhausting me the entire time.