A Mind Over-Extrapolating

Sometimes the mind gets away from itself.

I am subject to the over-extrapolating of circumstances.  Always have been.  I can take any circumstance and extend it in my mind to the worst degree possible in pretty short order.  It usually results in some level of depression and hopelessness about whatever the circumstance in question is.

Take work, for example.  My constant inability to get beyond where I am and the seemingly ever-changing organizational structure, if left to my mind, sends me down trails that never work out well for me.  My mind takes over, takes the worst of situations I have experienced in the past, and plays new movies on the screen of my mind, movies of changed positions and uncomfortable work situations and bad personal relations.  The sort of things that leave you feeling trapped and hopeless for long periods of time.

I would love to say that I have some kind of antidote for this sort of thinking, some way of taking this thinking and turning it on its head.  I do not, of course - for me, this sort of thinking begets more of this sort of thinking and circumstances, of course, are seldom such that I am able to magically find something else to pull me out of my pit. And the saddest part, I suppose, is simply the wave of pointlessness that tinges everything that I do after that point - after all, if there is no good way out, any effort in that direction will only result in no improvement.

Surely there is a way out of this sort of thinking.  Surely at some level, initiative and effort will ultimately result in some sort of good entering the situation.  Surely life cannot be as bleak and without a sense of hope in such situations.

But if that is so, is my mind simply too feeble to see it?